This Is Not Film

Jafar Panahi, the subject of "This Is Not a Film"

I currently teach a college course, “Mass Media and Popular Culture.”  One of the issues covered is that a totalitarian regime tells its people what to do, while a democracy will use the media to persuade the populace.  There are also cases in which a totalitarian regime will suppress media with which it does not agree.  This can also happen, with more subtlety, in a democracy.  I would be hard pressed to find a better demonstration of the tension between totalitarianism and mass media than the new documentary “This Is Not a Film” opening at Film Forum on February 29.