شعله بر بام
The Stairs,The Suitcases and The Grand Hall of Books
A short Super 8 film shot while back with help and poetry of A.Sarandibi at his work place Talar Bozorg Ketab (The Grand Hall of Books) in Enghelab Street is now finally finished.
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Quiet Since March? New Horizons of the Mind, Liberation, Pain, and a Few Screenings Along the Way
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It didn’t take long for me to be back in Tehran again, this time for a family situation which was, and still is, difficult. “Sandwich generation” is what they call it, and I can completely feel it in skin and bone. Life in Tehran, on the surface, seemed as usual. People trying to resume some kind of normality, while there were no missiles or drones flying above. But scratching beneath the thin layer, the economic hardship and suppression seemed stronger than ever. While attempting to find my way through various bureaucratic, legal and emotional circumstances, I managed to run another Super 8 workshop with Left Bank Collective . This time, we worked directly on film using scratching, bleach and paint, and then projected the results. There are few joys in life that I can compare with working with young people. It was amazing how the simple act of painting and damaging film, as a collective activity, could have such a healing quality — especially at a time when everything felt so hea...
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The film is finished and the war lingers.
This has been the longest gap in the relatively routine flow of posts in this blog. The war turned everything upside down. Even though I witnessed the explosions and destruction of my home town , from a distance and through the drips of videos captured by Tehranians who stayed, there is no doubt that the period of so called 12 days war, have reshaped us all, inside and outside the country. After such a period,there comes a time of re assessing, re evaluation and re defining. Everything finds new meaning and this affects all aspects of life. It is not only one's relationship to her country, her homeland but also human relationships, friendships , reflecting on how true or untrue they are, family, motherhood, basic moral grounds like belief in peace and humanity can easily be shaken by the violence of war. The polarities become even more extreme and it is even harder to defend one's belief in human values. Closest people become far apart, distant people become cl...
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