Afghan Uses TV for Education, Activism

The Afghan filmmaker and novelist Atiq Rahimi spoke about transnational identity and cultural revolution yesterday in a Humanities Center presentation called “From Political Exile to Poetic Wandering.”

Rahimi, who now divides his time between Paris and Kabul, encountered complex issues of language and expression after fleeing Afghanistan for France in 1984. Such an experience of geographical displacement can intensify artistic drive, Rahimi said.

Yesterday’s discussion was part of the France in the World seminar, which this year focuses on foreign-born Francophone authors living in France.

“We are interested in how he has turned his political exile into what he calls poetic nomadism, how he moves between countries, languages, culture and media,” said Kirkland House Master Verena Conley, one of the seminar leaders and a long-term visiting professor of romance languages and literatures.

Rahimi recounted his arrival in Paris, when he spoke no French and found no use for his native Persian. He said he turned to the world of film.

“I was looking for another language, a language that was accessible to me, and that was images,” he said through a translator, his publisher Judith Gurewich.

Rahimi suggested that his wandering was at once physical and artistic. After studying film at the Sorbonne, and releasing more than 20 documentaries, he began to write novels in Persian. His first novel in French, “Singue Sabour” (“Stone of Patience”), earned him the Goncourt Prize in 2008.

The visiting polymath—Rahimi also speaks Urdu and some English—spoke of his most recent project in his homeland. As creative advisor to Afghanistan’s largest media group, Rahimi trains young filmmakers and has led the development of the country’s first soap opera.

To bring about political change in his country, Rahimi insisted that Afghanistan needs a cultural revolution led by youth and artists. His real goal was “to use television as a tool for education, because this was a way to reach people who don’t know how to read and write,” Rahimi said through a translator.

Javed Rezayee, an Afghan student in his senior year at Tufts, said he was highly impressed.

“It’s great to see Afghans and diaspora doing something good for the country, so I’m proud,” he said.