Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills of Iran...<BR>&nbsp;

Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills of Iran...

Blackboards, refers to the Blackboards that are carried on the backs of a group of schoolteachers, displaced men who trudge the border between Iran and Iraq looking for pupils to teach. We`re never told exactly why they`re there; the inference is that they`re Kurds who have no place in mainstream society. They`re forced to hide from choppers which patrol this mountainous region. One teacher, Reeboir, encounters a bunch of boys who work as beasts of burden, presumably smuggling goods across the border. Another, Said, meets a group of elderly men, many of them sick, looking for somewhere they can call home. One old man has a daughter and grandson and, in a strange ceremony, the woman marries Said with the blackboard as dowry...Blackboards is the second feature made by 20 year-old Samira Makhmalbaf, daughter of Moshem Makhmalbaf, and, like her amazing first film, The Apple, it has a strong documentary component. It`s an elliptical tale of hunted fugitives which builds to a truly frightening climax. One of the film`s most tender scenes has an old man ask a teacher to read a letter from his son; the letter is in Arabic and the teacher can`t understand it; but he makes up what he thinks the son might have written. Scenes like this, and the astonishing location photography, make Blackboards a unique and utterly fascinating experience.