Search­ing for Sal­im Sha­heen: Afghanistan’s Z‑movie king

“You know who I am?” Sal­im Sha­heen, per­haps the most famous enter­tain­ers in Afghanistan, asks an audi­ence of sol­diers. He’s here to screen his newest – and 109^th – fea­ture film, and his ques­tion is a play­ful wink to a coun­try that knows him well thanks to his ubiq­ui­ty on Afghan tele­vi­sion. Sha­heen is an actor, writer, direc­tor and all-around enter­tain­er, the so-called ​‘Prince of Noth­ing­wood’ – a joke on Afghanistan’s zero-bud­get indus­try. His fas­ci­nat­ing life and work are the sub­ject of a new doc­u­men­tary by French jour­nal­ist Sonia Kro­n­lund, who was recent­ly in Mon­tréal to present the film at the RIDM (Mon­tréal Inter­na­tion­al Doc­u­men­tary Film Festival).

Kro­n­lund is a French jour­nal­ist best known for her pop­u­lar radio show, Les Pieds sur terre, a cul­tur­al doc­u­men­tary series not unlike NPR’s This Amer­i­can Life that airs dai­ly on France Cul­ture. With straight-for­ward report­ing, Kro­n­lund allows sub­jects to speak for them­selves, with­hold­ing com­men­tary and opin­ion from her radio doc­u­men­taries. She has cov­ered a wide range of top­ics from lin­guis­tics to war, all with the same insa­tiable curios­i­ty. Her report­ing in Afghanistan is how she was first intro­duced to the larg­er than life Sal­im Sha­heen and then years ago in Paris, a friend of hers gave her a col­lec­tion of his DVDs.

“You know Salim’s DVDs are very fun­ny, they are very kitsch, so I thought why not? I would take a chance and go meet him, it could be fun. Then when I first met him, and he start­ed to tell me about his life and his child­hood, it seemed to me that it was more than just fun, there is a much big­ger sto­ry here,” she explained. In Noth­ing­wood, Sal­im Shaheen’s newest film depicts the sto­ries of his youth that first attract­ed Kro­n­lund to the film. Not so much a coin­ci­dence, it reflects the blend­ing of author­ships of Kronlund’s film with Shaheen’s. Ini­tial­ly, Kro­n­lund hoped to make a more tra­di­tion­al film about Sal­im Sha­heen, blend­ing obser­va­tion­al doc­u­men­tary with recon­struc­tions of Shaheen’s past. She quick­ly real­ized this was not going to be pos­si­ble: Sha­heen felt Noth­ing­wood was as much his film as it was Kronlund’s. From the begin­ning, Sha­heen tried to direct the recon­struc­tion sequences and the large, expen­sive equip­ment proved inef­fi­cient for the con­di­tions of mak­ing films in Afghanistan.

To get a bet­ter sense of Shaheen’s films, they are not tied down to the same con­ven­tions as we expect from main­stream cin­e­ma. They are made quick­ly, Kro­n­lund says that Sha­heen would rarely shot for more than thir­ty min­utes per scene, and are a strange hybrid of Bol­ly­wood play­back musi­cals and action extrav­a­gan­zas. The real world vio­lence of Afghanistan serves as a back­drop, using real weapons, chick­en blood and sol­diers in his films. Sha­heen was even mak­ing films while he was a com­man­der dur­ing the Afghan Civ­il War in 1992, hav­ing his sol­diers work as actors and extras. As is clear through­out the film, shoot­ing so quick­ly was not just a quirk of care­less­ness in tech­ni­cal qual­i­ties but rather a neces­si­ty. Kro­n­lund would also have to make an adjust­ment, which is why she would work with Sha­heem on ​“his” newest film about his youth, which would serve a sim­i­lar pur­pose with­in Noth­ing­wood. The pair would strike up a kind of part­ner­ship, shar­ing resources and to a cer­tain extent, credit.

“Afghanistan teach­es you to let go,” Kro­n­lund says. ​“As some­one who is a big con­trol freak, I like to go to Afghanistan because I am forced to let go. It was no longer a ques­tion of what we are film­ing, who is the author, who is the one direct­ing the scene or is any­thing that [Sha­heen] say­ing true or not? It is all irrel­e­vant.” Truth is ren­dered flex­i­ble and through­out the film and the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing it, there is a col­lec­tive delu­sion in regards to truth.

In one scene, a father accepts mon­ey to have his daugh­ter dance in one of Shaheen’s film, but even while she is lit­er­al­ly danc­ing in front of him, he stands firm that she will not dance but not as a means of stop­ping her, but rather as a way of sav­ing his rep­u­ta­tion. ​“Do you know why he asks her to not dance?,” Kro­n­lund says. ​“It’s to save face, it is to main­tain his role as a father who is not sell­ing out his daugh­ter, even though that is what he is doing. It is a scene that explains lay­ers of com­plex­i­ties, you have a girl who wants to dance, who is hap­py, who has a dream like an Amer­i­can teenage girl and a father who needs mon­ey but wants to main­tain his hon­our, and who says she can’t dance. He knows she will dance, and he says you can’t be on cam­era, even though there are cam­eras everywhere.”

This scene comes to serves an impor­tant role in under­stand­ing both the cul­ture of Afghanistan and its enter­tain­ment indus­try. Through­out the film, every man Kro­n­lund meets says they would nev­er allow their daugh­ter to dance in pub­lic, one say­ing jok­ing­ly, ​“she prefers to die than to not be in Shaheen’s film.” Sha­heen though may be push­ing against cul­tur­al­ly accept­able bound­aries but is not real­ly break­ing any laws or reg­u­la­tions. Embroiled in con­flict, chaos, and cor­rup­tion – there are very few rules in what can be screened in Afghanistan – there is no stand­ing gov­ern­ment to enforce it any­way. ​“There are over 100 tele­vi­sion chan­nels in Afghanistan and the State Tele­vi­sion doesn’t real­ly work. The prob­lem of cen­sor­ship doesn’t real­ly exist, and Sha­heen will auto-cen­sure him­self enough, it is real­ly a part of the cul­ture,” she explains.

As the shoot winds down on Shaheen’s film, he brings Kro­n­lund to the site of the Bud­dhas of Bamiyan, mon­u­men­tal stat­ues of the Bud­dha carved into a cliff side between 507 CE (AD) and 554 CE. In 2001, the Tal­iban used to dyna­mite to destroy them. Sha­heen describes his feel­ings about that event say­ing, ​“When the Tal­iban blew up the Bud­dhas, I felt they are against art, against cul­ture and against all mankind. As an artist, that’s what I felt.”

Noth­ing­wood pre­miered at the Cannes film fes­ti­val in May 2017. Kro­n­lund was joined by was by Sal­im Sha­heen, Qur­ban Ali and anoth­er minor char­ac­ter from the film. The movie was received to a 20-minute stand­ing ova­tion for an audi­to­ri­um of 800 peo­ple. ​“I was there with my false mod­esty and the three Afghan’s, well,” and she rais­es her hands in the air with all the tri­umph of an ath­lete who has just cap­tured the World-Cup. ​“We’re all a lit­tle cyn­i­cal, I pre­tend to be mod­est,” Kro­n­lund says, but there is a clear sin­cer­i­ty in Shaheen’s craft and pres­ence that might be a lit­tle more hon­est. For Sha­heen, Noth­ing­wood is as much his film as it is Kronlund’s – in one inter­view when asked what it was like being the sub­ject of a doc­u­men­tary he answered, ​“You know, I’ve made 110 films and this was one of the most difficult.”

While Sha­heen returned home fol­low­ing the film’s Cannes suc­cess, his actor Qur­ban Ali did not. In Noth­ing­wood Qur­ban is Shaheen’s actor of choice, a tall man with a gen­er­ous smile who plays women. He is demon­stra­bly effem­i­nate, some­thing that Kro­n­lund believes is accept­ed because he has a wife and Afghanistan has a fair­ly high tol­er­ance for eccen­tric­i­ty. Qur­ban, how­ev­er, did not return home, claim­ing refugee sta­tus in France.

Since his return to Afghanistan, Sha­heen has slowed down mak­ing films, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly by choice. ​“There was a peri­od he was mak­ing a film a month,” Kro­n­lund says. The econ­o­my has wors­ened sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the past few years though, and there is less mon­ey to make films and less mon­ey to buy DVDs. ​“Now, he’s mak­ing about a film a year.” In the extend­ed after­math of the Amer­i­can coali­tion that arrived in 2002, the country’s sta­bil­i­ty is con­stant­ly in ques­tion and at the moment, the Tal­iban still con­trols about half of Afghanistan. Daesh as well has become a pres­ence, attack­ing most­ly Shi­ite Mus­lims all over the coun­try and vio­lence con­tin­ued to rise espe­cial­ly in Kab­ul. ​“One month ago,” Kro­n­lund explains. ​“Sha­heen was in a mosque where there was an attack where about one hun­dred peo­ple died. He was there, peo­ple died beside him. He is Shi­ite, and there are a lot of anti-Shi­ite attacks right now in Afghanistan from Isis.”

The Prince of Noth­ing­wood is release 15 Decem­ber. Read our review.