Image courtesy Filmbuff
In the opening scene of the documentary film The Network, journalist Ahmad Shafi describes watching a public execution in Kabul during the Taliban regime: “That had become the only entertainment in the city. There was nothing else… The country had completely shut down so people didn’t have access to media.”
Directed by Eva Orner, who co-produced the Academy Award-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, The Network tells the story of TOLO TV, the first independent television network created in Afghanistan to fill the media void created by 30 years of war, repression and censorship. Since businessman Saad Mohseni first launched TOLO TV in 2004, the network has transformed from a nine-person operation to a staff of 900, filming and broadcasting everything from news reporting and travel shows to singing competitions and soap operas.
Orner spoke to WIRED about her experience making The Network — which was released this week via video-on-demand — and about how the rapid growth of technology and media, particularly in urban areas like Kabul, have influenced many young Afghans coming of age after the fall of the Taliban.
WIRED: One of the things The Network impresses on viewers is how rapidly the media landscape has changed in Afghanistan since 2001. What was it like before?
Eva Orner: When Saad arrived there twelve years ago, there wasn’t really electricity; there was certainly no media. And they came in with no knowledge — they were lawyers, investment bankers. They had to buy all the equipment and learn how to use everything, train everybody to do everything. They had to build the TV towers, and when the towers would break they’d have to climb up them with a manual and fix them. The obstacles they had to overcome could be their own film.
I was based in Kabul, which is the most progressive city in Afghanistan. It’s very young. The average age is 24… The changes have been very fast there. When [TOLO] started no one had TVs. Now, everyone’s got a TV in their house. Facebook is huge there. They don’t have a lot of mobile Internet yet because it’s so expensive and they don’t all have Internet at home, so they’ll come to work an hour earlier and stay an hour later because they’re Facebooking. Some journalists have told me about being embedded with troops in the middle of nowhere, and how some kid will come up to you and want to Facebook friend you… Once you go out into the provinces, though, the very high illiteracy rate kicks in; it’s very poor and very uneducated, but it’s changing.
WIRED: What kind of impact do you think television has had on Afghanistan culturally?
Orner: I think [TOLO TV] has really changed the country enormously. They’ve educated people. They used to have a lot of health shows on about how to look after your kids, how to wash your hands before meals. Sesame Street had a huge impact on literacy rates for adults and kids. Sesame Street is [broadcast] all over the world, but this is a place where adults can watch it to learn to read and write. They had a show where doctors would travel around the country and meet people with basic medical problems and show how to treat them. Now they’ve also got stuff like soap operas. People love the soap operas. They all talk about it. It’s just like us. It’s the same thing. The boys like cop shows.
WIRED: The film also highlights a heartbreaking advice show where you see women – who would otherwise never be able to speak up without fear of reprisal — calling in anonymously to say that their husbands are abusing them horrifically. But even then there’s no help anyone can offer them.
Orner: It’s heartbreaking. A woman calls in and says, my husband beats me. He broke my hands. He’s burning my daughter’s legs badly. And the response is not, “there is an ambulance and police on the way. You will be safe.” It’s like, “try listening to him, and don’t stoop to his level.” [One of the female TOLO producers] Marina [Zaffari] criticizes it, and rightly so, because she’s a smart, educated woman. For her, that show is really frustrating. Of course the poor psychiatrist can’t give any real advice. I can’t believe he hasn’t been killed just for talking to these women. He’s bound by this extraordinarily conventional religious society where he can’t really say anything. But I think for the women even the fact that they can be heard at all is massive.
Women have made extraordinary gains in certain parts of the country, but if you go outside Kabul, [they’re] all still wearing burqas. And a lot of women in Kabul still wear burqas, because they just don’t want to be bothered [by men]. It’s tough for women, and the women in this film are unbelievable. They’re so brave and so smart and defiant. They’re just fighting all the time. And what they’ve achieved working at TOLO is just extraordinary, because it gives them the ability to be in charge and to do things. What will happen to women? That’s what gets to me the most.
WIRED: How optimistic are you about the future of Afghanistan after your experiences living there and working with the young Afghans at TOLO?
Orner: I’m very cautiously, sort of optimistic. [laughs] That’s me not wanting to sound negative. I am very concerned. I think after twelve years it’s still incredibly unstable. The one thing that keeps me optimistic, again, is that the average age of the country is 24. That’s the hope… They want freedom. They want the ability to work. They want the ability to become upwardly mobile. It’s going to be up to them to lead the way, and that’s what I hope the kids at TOLO will do. They’re the young elite. They’re smart; they’ve got jobs, and they’ve got voices. I think they’ve got the moxie to do it. It just depends on the violence [they face].
WIRED: Obviously, there’s still a lot of violence in Afghanistan. Did you ever have any close calls while you were filming?
Orner: Saad had said to me, “everyone has a close call. If you’re in Afghanistan long enough, something’s going to happen.” Because you start getting comfortable and used to the constant security, and you get a little cavalier. He said, “always remember you’re in Afghanistan.” I was always aware that at any point you might just need to run for your life. Sometimes we’d be shooting [the film] downtown and we’d get a call from the TOLO security team saying, “there’s rumors of a suicide bombing, get off the street now.” I’d never hesitate. Sometimes we’d think, oh, it’s not going to happen. But if something happened to my driver because I wanted to get a shot? How would you ever get past that?
We filmed at Ashura, which is a Shia holy day where the men take to the street and self-flagellate with blades and they’re covered in blood. We were on the street with thousands of people… and then right after we left and drove off, we heard the big kaboom. Over 80 people died. The bomb went off pretty much exactly where we’d been for two hours. We missed it by a couple minutes. It was a bad day.
WIRED: You finished filming The Network in Afghanistan at the end of 2011. Do you have a sense of what’s changed in the country since then?
Orner: The country is really gearing up for the impending military withdrawal… so that’s obviously weighing on people’s minds. In terms of TOLO, the biggest thing over the last year has been the new premiere soccer league, which was a massive success there. I wasn’t there for it, but it’s been a massive nation-building, hero-building phenomenon. The games were televised, and it was like World Cup soccer fever in Afghanistan. They just won their first international soccer title in the South Asian Football Federation Championship, where they beat India. It was three days of partying in Afghanistan. I was talking to people who were there, and they said that you can’t even imagine the fervor in the country. It’s incredibly inspirational and aspirational, which is part of what TOLO’s always been about. Afghanistan needs heroes, people that kids can look up to.
WIRED: What about the young people working at TOLO that we got to know in the film? Have there been any significant changes for them?
Orner: Remember Marina? She was very, very powerful in the film, the presenter and producer who had her own show in the current affairs department… After not hearing from Marina for four or five months, about six months ago I got an e-mail from her. She’d gotten married to a really educated, lovely man who’s an attorney. They’re both patriotic, very proud Afghans who wanted to stay and rebuild their country, but they felt like they were in danger so they went to the Netherlands. She’d done some shows that were fairly provocative and critical of the Taliban and religious fundamentalism, and they were receiving death threats. They’ve been in a refugee camp for about eight months now. When she contacted me, they’d just had their application for refugee status denied, and she asked if I could send the film to the judge to back up her story.
Her attorney also said it would help if I could get her story published, so I interviewed her, and wrote an article for Filmmaker Magazine that was translated and published in Europe. It’s so funny, because Marina follows me on Facebook and Twitter, where I post all the press we’ve gotten. And she just wrote me this lovely letter saying that after the letter was published in Europe, a human rights attorney who is very well-regarded in the Netherlands called her and said, I’ll represent you. So that was pretty fantastic.
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