V&A in row over self-censorship after Muhammad image is taken down

Poster removed from museum website – but scholars of Islamic art fear ‘terrible loss for shared global heritage’

The Victoria and Albert museum is one of a number in the UK whose collections contain images of Muhammad. Photograph: Alamy, courtesy The Guardian.

Warning: this article contains the image of the prophet Muhammad, which some may find offensive.

by Emma Graham-Harrison, The Observer

The Victoria and Albert museum has attempted to conceal its ownership of a devotional image of the prophet Muhammad, citing security concerns, in what is part of a wider pattern of apparent self-censorship by British institutions that scholars fear could undermine public understanding of Islamic art and the diversity of Muslim traditions.

Similar images have been shown in exhibitions across Europe and America without prompting outrage, much less protests or a violent response. Made by Muslim artists for fellow Muslims, they come from a long but often overlooked tradition.

British museums and libraries hold dozens of these images, mostly miniatures in manuscripts several centuries old, but they have been kept largely out of public view. Fear of displaying them is apparently driven by controversy about satirical or offensive portraits of Muhammad by non-Muslims, despite the huge difference in form and purpose.

When the V&A was asked if it held any images of Muhammad after the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, it said there were none. A US expert later provided a link to a poster in its collection, with the inscription “Mohammad the Prophet of God”. That page in the database was deleted last week, but can still be found in a cached version. A spokeswoman said their original response was “an honest error”.

“Unfortunately we were incorrect to say there were no works depicting the prophet Muhammad in the V&A’s collection,” a spokeswoman, Olivia Colling, said in an email, adding that the image had subsequently been taken down because of security concerns. “As the museum is a high-profile public building already on a severe security alert, our security team made the decision that it was best to remove the image from our online database (it remains within the collection).”

The museum has many items that are not on display but form an important part of its educational and cultural mission. Colling declined to say whether the museum had consulted Muslim communities about who might consider the image offensive, or whether it had received any threats directly related to the poster, created in Iran around 1990.

There was not a single complaint when another contemporary Iranian image of Muhammad was included in a 2013 exhibition in the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, hung next to a Christian icon, as part of an exhibition on cross-cultural encounters.

Barbad Golshiri's Boneyard

Reflections by the artist:

Golshiri explains his focus on obsequies and grave markers. He reflects upon politics of hallowed grounds with examples of his grave markers, both in cemeteries and white cubes. 

Image 7. Dr. Mossadeq’s fallen memorial. Êbn-ê Bâbêvayh cemetery. Photo by the author, 2013. Courtesy Universe in Universe.

by Barbad Golshiri, Universe in Universe

No other human activity is as rich and old as the obsequies and making of grave markers. Nearly all that we know from old ages we know from the graves and, say, the urns; it is mostly through these human manifestations that we understand what ruled peoples’ minds, for instance, what prehistoric religious beliefs and practices were. Where there are no historic records, obsequies speak: the way people buried the dead, the orientation of the corpse, the grave goods they buried along with the dead, how did they mark the graves and so forth. Art history thus is but an infant when compared with this history.

But one must be blind if one does not see the things these two fields share. Cemeteries could be perceived as "highly educational" places, as education lies in remembrance and knowledge in accumulation. In no other place than in cemeteries one can take a one-hour tour and skim through a vast history of architecture. These architectural phases are not necessarily bounded to their geographical contexts; Greenwood Cemetery, for instance, was founded in 1838, yet gathers centuries of diverse forms of architecture and art. Cemeteries also encapsulate misfortunes and calamities of societies and host memorials for national heroes and figures. These spaces are heterotopias of time for they enclose objects and people of all times and of diverse artistic and architectural styles in one real space. There’s only one other architectural space that functions as such: the museum. Museums too enclose all times and epochs in one immobile space and it is custom that the objects a museum holds, again like in a cemetery, shall remain intact. Cemeteries and museums are public spaces and most recently, in many countries they have turned to green open spaces. This though is not the case in Iran.

Like many other public spaces cemeteries are highly legislated, both written and unwritten. A close historical example is Bêhêsht-ê Zahrâ, located in the southern part of metropolitan Tehran, the largest cemetery in Iran. This cemetery plays an unrivaled role in Iran’s contemporary history and politics. On 1 February 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini returned victoriously to Iran, he went straight to this cemetery and addressed the nation amongst the revolutionaries, martyrs, the dead and gone, unblemished mausoleums, broken tombstones and unmarked graves. It was among those grave markers that he rejected Shah’s regime and the new prime minister and his administration. Apart from Ayatollah’s followers, Iran’s history lies beneath the cemetery’s soil: It hosts corpses of martyrs of Iraq-Iran war to dissidents such as Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (image 1), a radical Marxist-Leninist movement formed in 1971, an organization that fought both against the Shah and the Islamic Republic; members of the Tudeh (= masses) Party of Iran; The People's Mojahedin of Iran, Sakineh Ghasemi aka Pari Bolandé, the legendary prostitute of Shah’s time, cinema superstars, athletes, Ahmad Shah, the Qâjâr king and his wife, Reza Shah’s last wife, Sa’eed Emami, one of the master minds behind the serial killings of intellectuals, and most recently, martyrs of the Green Movement. No other space embraces such diversity. Though one can add to this list infinitely, there are those expelled from this hallowed ground, for the reason that infidels and apostates shall not contaminate the resting place of Muslims.

The Koran Does Not Forbid Images of the Prophet

The Charlie Hebdo killers were operating under a misapprehension. Courtesy Topkapı Palace Library and Newsweek.

by Christiane Gruber, Newsweek

In the wake of the massacre that took place in the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, I have been called upon as a scholar specializing in Islamic paintings of the Prophet to explain whether images of Muhammad are banned in Islam.

The short and simple answer is no. The Koran does not prohibit figural imagery. Rather, it castigates the worship of idols, which are understood as concrete embodiments of the polytheistic beliefs that Islam supplanted when it emerged as a purely monotheistic faith in the Arabian Peninsula during the seventh century.

Moreover, the Hadith, or Sayings of the Prophet, present us with an ambiguous picture at best: At turns we read of artists dared to breathe life into their figures and, at others, of pillows ornamented with figural imagery.

If we turn to Islamic law, there does not exist a single legal decree, or fatwa, in the historical corpus that explicitly and decisively prohibits figural imagery, including images of the Prophet. While more recent online fatwas can surely be found, the decree that comes closest to articulating this type of ban was published online in 2001 by the Taliban, as they set out to destroy the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

In their fatwa, the Taliban decreed that all non-Islamic statues and shrines in Afghanistan be destroyed. However, this very modern decree remains entirely silent on the issue of figural images and sculptures within Islam, which, conversely, had been praised as beneficial and educational by Muhammad 'Abduh, a prominent jurist in 19th century Egypt.

In sum, a search for a ban on images of Muhammad in pre-modern Islamic textual sources will yield no clear and firm results whatsoever.

Everything and Nothing: A Meeting with Parviz Tanavoli in Tehran

Poet of Persia

Parviz Tanavoli as a student at Tehran’s Honarestan-e Honar-haye Ziba in 1953, and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrerra, Italy, in 1957. Courtesy Maryam Eisler and Shiva Balaghi respectively, and REORIENT.

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT 

After taking a final swig of doogh, haphazardly gathering my sundry belongings into my weathered canvas satchel, and kissing my friend three times on the cheeks, I rush down a rickety flight of stairs to a picturesque summer scene in Deh-e Vanak, a sleepy hamlet but a short drive from the mania of Tehran’s Vanak Square. Brushing shoulders with a covey of weary-eyed mechanics, their gasoline-smeared faces wisened by the beating sun and heartache in equal amounts, and traversing the pothole-laden thoroughfare with a characteristically Western trepidation, I struggle to find my taxi driver amongst the scores of moribund Peykans and sooty Peugeot 206s. By a stroke of ill luck, the traffic today is unusually awful, and I’m already half-an-hour late for another get-together with an artist. This artist, however, is somewhat different from the others I know, whom I usually meet in the tawny-hued lobby of the Hotel Homa – or rather, the ‘Old Sheraton’, as those from the pre-Revolution days are wont to call it – or in the frieze of cozy coffee shops clustered together in the Sayeh Tower opposite the Mellat Park. He’s somewhat of a legend, venerated both abroad and at home: a reality that comes as a welcome surprise in a nation whose artists usually enjoy iconic status posthumously. I had spoken to him at length over the phone towards the end of his winter ‘migration’ in Vancouver a few months ago, and he’s certainly no stranger, although I’ve yet to meet him in person. The stifling heat is certainly not making the situation any more relaxing, and, as I finally manage to furl myself in the backseat of the tiny Peugeot, I feel a tepid patch of sweat underneath my arms. ‘Agha,’ I say with diffidence, ‘can you please turn on the cooler?’. He casts a sidelong glance in the rearview mirror, flicks a switch, and we head for the dusty foothills of the Alborz mountains.

As soon as we find our way onto the highway, we hit a gridlock. While the synth-soaked sounds of a maudlin pop song set to the proverbial 6/8 rhythm continue to emanate from the car radio and we find ourselves in a midday jam, the driver decides to while away the time by striking up conversation. ‘What do you do?’ he asks. Not having the patience to get into any details, I provide a desultory response. ‘I’m in the arts business’. ‘Ah, are you a singer? A wedding singer?’ comes the reply. For God’s sake, move! I shout in vain in the recesses of my mind, looking ahead worriedly at the swarm of white and grey cars embellished with religious slogans and Zoroastrian icons. To add to the drama, the artist in question isn’t picking up either of his telephones, and I wonder whether he’ll be in his studio at all by the time we finally reach it.

Taboos Become Toxic

An Interview with Mark Cousins

by Roland Elliott Brown, IranWire

Edinburgh-based filmmaker and film historian Mark Cousins is one of Iranian cinema’s most enthusiastic advocates. He drew attention to Iranians’ cinematic achievements in his 2004 book The Story of Film, and his 2011 documentary series The Story of Film: An Odyssey. He first traveled to Iran by road from Scotland in 2001. When he visited again in 2005 to make two documentaries, Cinema Iran and On the Road with Kiarostami, he met artist, actor, and director Mania Akbari, who was best known for her performance in Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten, and for her own film, 20 Fingers. In 2011, Akbari fled to London after Iranian authorities arrested crew members working on her film Women Do Not Have Breasts. Last year, Cousins and Akbari began exchanging “cine-letters” about life, art, and the human body, which comprise their new film, Life May Be.

How did you become acquainted with Iranian cinema, and with Iran?

I saw Abbas Kiarostami's Where is the Friend's House in the late 1980s, and read about the Iranian films that the Locarno film festival was showing. In the early 1990s, when I was director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival,  I wrote to the Iranian government's film agency, asking if they would send me films.  A few months later, a shoebox arrived.  It contained videotapes of about 10 films, gems like Mohammad Ali Talebi's The Boot. The films were revelations, paradocumentaries, human, sincere, uncompromised by commerce. I fell in love.

Life May Be draws its title from Forough Farrokhsad’s poem Another Birth. What role has Farrokhsad’s poetry played in your friendship with Mania Akbari?

I first met Mania in Iran, and we went to Forough's grave together.  I loved Forough's courage, her sass, her beauty.  For me she was like Blondie meets Virginia Woolf.  As a non-Iranian, I didn't understand a lot of things about Forough, but Mania's passion for her has helped me understand more.  She's the third part of our triangle.

From institution to Iranian revolution: Unedited History 1960-2014

A new exhibition in Rome charts the enduring artistic life of Iran over the turbulence of its past fifty years

MAXXI Rome, 11 December 2014 – 29 March 2015

Behdjat Sadr at work in her studio. Photograph: Courtesy of Sadr family and the Guardian.

by Natasha Morris for Tehran Bureau, Guardian

For the exiled and disenchanted figures of Iran’s recent history, Rome has served as a place of refuge. Following the 1953 coup d’état that overthrew prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, the troubled sovereign Reza Shah Pahlavi took flight to the Italian capital. Within the same decade, his wife’s favourite artist, the notoriously irreverent painter-sculptor Bahman Mohasses, traded Tehran for Rome, where he lived in self-imposed seclusion for the next 50 years. His legacy presents him as a cigarette-puffing enfant terrible, who had a complex relationship with the authority of his royal Pahlavi patrons: he was once ordered to add underpants to his puckish Flute Player sculpture commissioned by the empress to stand outside the State Theatre in Tehran. The oeuvre from his years as an émigré in Rome forms the introductory sequence of the exhibition Iran: Unedited History, which opens from 11 December at the National Museum of 21st Century Arts in the Italian capital.

An impressive curatorial team is behind what is an extensive chronological survey, headed by Tate Modern’s Morad Montezzami. An ambitious feat by any measure, Iran: Unedited History showcases over 200 works by 20 artists, charting Iranian visual culture over the turbulence of the past half-century. The catalogue opens to a dazzling cross-section of modern Iranian art: Mohasses is here, as is his illustrator brother Ardeshir, minimalist contemporary Behjdat Sadr and new-wave film director Parviz Kimiavi.

What makes Unedited History so truly redolent of its time-span, however, is the inclusion of the peeling and scribbled paper spoils of popular culture and domestic life, from student-crafted agitprop posters to children’s drawings and a family photo album.

Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian's mirror sculptures dazzle during Prospect.3

Monir Farmanfarmaian has created work over the past fifty years that reflects the dichotomous nature of her two homes: Iran and New York City, and the dualities of her successes and devastations (during Iran’s Islamic Revolution in the 1970s, most of her work was confiscated or destroyed). Her sculptural mosaics, featured here, marry traditional Persian design motifs with elements of Western modernism, combining mirrored pieces and reverse painting on glass in striking geometric frameworks. The glass and mirrors she uses put the world’s reflection front and center, but their arrangements also explore potentially mathematical concepts of infinity, bursting with an internal light that enhances their own physicality.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian. Porto 24.

by Doug MacCash, The Times-Picayune on NOLA.com

Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian's sculptures at the Newcomb Art Gallery during New Orleans' international art festival, Prospect.3, are like giant gemstones. She creates abstract geometric shapes based on traditional Persian architecture, then encrusts them with reflective mosaics made from thousands of small, precisely cut mirror fragments. On one hand her sculptures have the cool cerebral quality of minimalism, but their glimmering surfaces lend them an irresistible gaiety as well.

Born in 1924, Farmanfarmaian has seen a lot of history go by. According to Internet references, World War II prevented her from traveling to Paris to study art as she had hoped, so she attended art schools in New York during the advent of the abstract expressionist movement, becoming friends with avant-garde stars such as Joan Mitchell, Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock and eventually Andy Warhol. By 1958 she was a star herself, representing Iran in the Venice Biennale, the international art event that is the model for Prospect.3. Her career flourished in Iran until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when much of her work was destroyed and she returned to New York.

Mirrored geometric sculptures by Iranian artist Monir Farmanfarmaian (L: Instagram photo by Doug MacCash / NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune; R: Courtesy Newcomb Art Gallery)

Persian Letters

The allure and enduring legacy of Persian Nasta’liq calligraphy

Detail of a work from Sadegh Tirafkan’s ‘Body Curves’ series. Courtesy REORIENT.

by Kevin Schwartz, REORIENT

When the famed calligrapher Mir Emad was murdered at the Safavid court in 1615 – perhaps on account of artistic rivalry or perhaps because of his religious affiliations – an important chapter in the history of the calligraphic script known as nasta’liq came to a close. Mir Emad was not the originator of nasta’liq, which emerged in 14^th century Iran as a likely marriage of two other styles (naskh and ta’liq), but he was nonetheless largely regarded as its undisputed master, attracting admirers among his Safavid patrons, Mughal emperors in South Asia, and countless others even long after his death. His demise brought to end a prolific period of nasta’liq production that witnessed the rise of an unknown script to one heightening the sensory reception of Persian verse to an artistic end in itself, often overpowering the meaning of the texts it was used to write with its visual appeal. In but a few centuries, nasta’liq had triumphed as the premier style for artfully presenting the words of poets and authors writing in Persian, both major and minor (in addition to occasionally being used for Ottoman Turkish, and in rare instances, Arabic). This rich period in the history of the script, the study of which is at times relegated to an afterthought compared to other Persianate arts such as poetry, painting, and architecture, is the subject of a new exhibition entitled Nasta’liq: The Genius of Persian Calligraphy at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. On display there are single folio pages and books featuring examples of nasta’liq in jali (large) and khafi (minute) scripts, as well as the calligraphic implements employed, making for an altogether admirable overview of a script that shot across the Persianate world between the 14^th and 17^th centuries and set the artistic standard for Persian calligraphy.

The Genius of Persian Calligraphy charts the emergence and proliferation of nasta’liq through the exploration of four of the style’s most preeminent exponents: the presumptive inventor, Mir Ali Tabrizi (active between 1370 and 1410); the exemplar of the classical style, Sultan Ali Mashhadi (d. 1520); the large-format specialist, Mir Ali Haravi (d. 1550), and the aforementioned Mir Emad al-Hasani (d. 1615). Each of these calligraphers’ artistic output mirrors an important phase in the development of nasta’liq, and lends insight into a specialised world of calligraphic expression. Beginning with the mastery of Mir Ali Tabrizi, whose talents and instruction led to the consecration of a number of selselehs (lineages) in eastern Iran and beyond, and continuing onwards to the peerless works of Mir Emad at the court of Shah Abbas the Great, the exhibition considers how the calligraphers honed their skills through long hours in their ateliers and raised nasta’liq to the highest reaches of aesthetic delight for patrons, kings, and connoisseurs throughout the Persianate world, from Anatolia to South Asia. The end result was the creation of a style equally attractive for calligraphers crafting the looping letters and diamond-shaped diacritics of the delicately curved script as it was for the connoisseurs left in awe of its artistry.

Iran Mourns Lost Youth in Thousands

The coffin holding Morteza Pashaei's body was carried through a large crowd on Sunday in Tehran. Photo by Saeed Faramarzi. Courtesy Nasimonline and The Huffington Post.

by Tara Kangarlou, The Huffington Post

For the first time in nearly three decades since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Iranian people and the government were in unison to mourn a pop singer's death -- a 30-year-old singer and songwriter who died after a year-long battle with stomach cancer last week.

According to participants and the Iranian media that covered the events, thousands of people took the streets of Tehran and other major metropolitans including religious cities like Mashhad to mourn the death of Morteza Pashaei -- the pop singer whose romantic, emotional and mostly melancholy melodies touched millions of hearts inside the country of almost 70 million, but also other Iranians around the world.

Since 2009 and the aftermath of the much-disputed presidential election where hundreds of thousands of Iranians came together to march, cry, and stand in unity for what came to be known as the "green revolution" -- last week's unexpected public gatherings were not stifled by government forces and to much surprise, were in fact supported by some Iranian officials including the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance who released a message of condolence after Pashaei's death.

"It was an incredible scene, I've never seen such coverage for a young pop singer in Iran; it was as if you're watching a western news coverage after a celebrity's death," said Hoorieh Rahimi, a middle-aged mom of three who lives in the United States and spends winters in her hometown of Tehran.

Surprised by what she saw on the national broadcasting channel that's monitored and controlled by the Iranian government and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Rahimi added that "the news would go back and forth between shots of Pashaei singing in his concerts and then show live shots the thousands of people escorting his coffin to the grave-site also known as Behesht-e Zahra."

In Iran -- a young nation, where the majority of its population is under the age of 40 -- the government only allows and propagates such public grievings to mourn the death of a cleric or to commemorate a religious figure's martyrdom or death.

'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night'

Interview with Sheila Vand 

Image via SpectreVision. Courtesy Complex.

by Tara Aquino, Complex

Sheila Vand knows she's about to confuse the hell out of you. Her two breakout acting roles are dropping this week—State of Affairs hit NBC last night and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is in theaters Friday—but they couldn't be farther apart. The former, led by Katherine Heigl, is a political drama that deals with the inner workings of the CIA, while the latter, directed by newcomer Ana Lily Amirpour, is an Iranian vampire western. For State, Vand is a brainy CIA Secretary of Defense briefer who plays BFF with Heigl; for Girl, Vand is a centuries-old vampire who sucks the life out of misbehaving men and avenges scorned women. So, you know, this week is pretty clutch for Vand's acting reel, which also includes a small part in Argo.

But Vand knows exactly what she's doing. The 29-year-old Palo Alto native is all about defying expectations and breaking free from any pigeonholing. As you'll see, she's not "Iranian-American actress Sheila Vand." She's just Sheila Vand—complicated, "new age-y," and optimistic. Should she be anything else?

What drew you to A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night?

I knew Lily [Amirpour] from before. We had done a couple short films together, so I already loved working with her. When she offered me the part, the script wasn’t written yet, but she had a pretty good sense of the world she wanted to create and knew that I wanted to live and play in that world. I was down right off the bat; she’s like a soul sister to me.

Did you have any input into your character?

Yeah, there were tons of conversations. It was a long process. On one hand, Lily’s an auteur, so she has a very clear vision of what she wants and where it’s headed, but she is also really collaborative in that she loves talking about ideas and giving you lots of resources to enrich your performance. Also, our shoot date kept getting pushed, so then we’d have another few months to go even deeper. But she wrote the part for me, so my spirit is in there more than I ever talked to her about what I wanted The Girl to be like. She already knew, and she molded it to who I am.

‘Melbourne’

Film Review: 

This remarkable debut from Iranian director Nima Javidi transcends cultural barriers with its compellingly universal and thoroughly engrossing premise.

Melbourne (2014)

by Peter Debruge, Variety

Why give an Iranian film an Australian title? In the misleadingly named “Melbourne,” the distant city is but an abstract idea — like Michael Haneke’s “The Seventh Continent” — of a new life far removed from the hassles and stress that hound its central couple. Set almost entirely in a Tehran apartment, where the action unspools virtually in real time, Nima Javidi’s unnerving debut takes an incredibly relatable premise (impossible to discuss without revealing the surprise) and invites auds to speculate what they might do in the characters’ shoes, effectively minimizing the distance that can sometimes limit Western interest in Iranian cinema.

“Melbourne” debuted at the Venice Film Festival, where it kicked off the Intl. Critics’ Week sidebar, but has since managed to confuse potential champions as it travels the circuit, the title inadvertently disguising its true cultural identity. Fest programmers are constantly on the hunt for strong new Persian voices, and Javidi demonstrates enormous potential, judging by a feature that makes such strong use of its script and two central characters, Amir (another gripping turn from “A Separation’s” Peyman Moaadi) and Sara (Negar Javaherian, every bit his equal).

This seemingly ordinary middle-class couple have one foot out the door when we meet them, via a somewhat clunky introduction: The film opens on a flustered female census worker who arrives at Amir and Sara’s flat just as the two are packing their bags to leave. (The credits unspool over a hypnotic montage of clothes being vacuum-sealed into plastic bags, which might have been a wiser way to begin the picture.) She interviews them briefly — just long enough to establish that they are on their way to Melbourne, where the couple intends to spend three years — before disappearing.

Perhaps Javidi needed a device to distract us during the film’s opening reel, which focuses on the relatively normal confusion one might expect to find in an apartment whose residents are trying to juggle the last details before a major life change. Characters come and go, including a young woman (evidently a family member, though her connection isn’t clear) who fusses with a baby sleeping in the back bedroom. And the baby? Well, she belongs to a neighbor, whose nanny asked Sara to watch little Tina for a few hours on a day when her attention is clearly elsewhere.

‘Thunder’ Rocks Iran

Rouhani Era Gets Guitar Soundtrack as ‘Thunder’ Rocks Iran

The Iranian band Thunder perform live in this photo taken from their promotional video. Courtesy Thunder and Bloomberg.

by Ladane Nasseri, Bloomberg

In the 10 months since his band was given official permission to perform, Iranian rock singer Ardavan Anzabipour has learned when to cool things down.

“People want to see some action on stage but we must be careful not to overdo it,” Anzabipour, the 40-year-old lead singer of Thunder, said in a Dubai hotel last month before its debut show in the United Arab Emirates. “It’s a challenge. We bring the excitement up but they’re not able to move” as dancing in public is banned, he said.

Since the election of moderate President Hassan Rouhani last year, the number of Iranian bands allowed to stage concerts has surged. The post-revolution era, during which live western-style music was restricted to underground events or impossible to find, is fading. Yet all public performances still need to be sanctioned by guardians of the Islamic Republic’s officially ordained values.

Sanam Pasha, Thunder’s 36-year-old female vocalist, is careful to style her image appropriately. She has to respect Iran’s dress code for women -- a headscarf and loose-fitting coat -- and appear, by local standards, neither too passionate nor sultry.

“Stepping right and left if it appears too rhythmic is no good. Sometimes it’s preferable to not even smile,” Pasha said. “Making sure my scarf isn’t sliding requires energy, too.”

And while her voice can be distinctly heard on stage, she must make sure it doesn’t rise above Anzabipour’s -- or at least only very briefly.

Repatriating The Yellow Dogs: what happened to Iran's rock stars slain in New York?

The band left their homeland to pursue their artistic dream, but it came to an end in tragedy in a New York neighbourhood. Their families then faced a fight to bring their bodies back 

Yellow Dogs memorial. Courtesy Golbarg Bashi and the Guardian.

by John Albert for the Tehran Bureau, Guardian

On a bright and cold morning on 16 November 2013, a funeral procession left Brooklyn for John F Kennedy airport. A hearse carried the body of Soroush Farazmand. Behind him in a black mini van was the body of his brother Arash, who was taller.

NoorudDean Abu Ibrahim, a Brooklyn funeral director was driving the mini van. The brothers were being flown back to Tehran for burial.

At the rear of the tragic motorcade was Peymaneh Sazegari who had driven overnight from her home in Toronto as soon as she heard the terrible news.

Sazegari was a cousin, and close to Arash and Soroush’s mother Farzaneh who was in Tehran. The two were like sisters. She had spoken frequently to the brothers about making a trip to New York to visit. She was their only family living in north America, and only an eight hour drive away, at that. But plans had always fallen through.

When Sazegari did finally visit the city, it was to help make their funeral arrangements.

Through five days of stress and uncertainty, Sazegari had kept her composure. She had navigated an unfamiliar city and handled all the necessary arrangements. But when she saw the signs for JFK, she broke down into tears.

“This is the funeral procession,” she sobbed. “This is it.”

Just a few years earlier, guitarist Arash and drummer Soroush had arrived at that airport with their instruments, excited about a future in a new country.

On 11 November 2013, just after midnight, they were shot dead in their Brooklyn home along with a close friend and collaborator, Ali Eskandarian. Their killer, Ali Mohammadi Akbar Rafie, or Rafi to the others, a fellow musician and expatriate with a history of mental illness, then shot and killed himself.

Sex, Drugs, and Gol-o-Bolbol

‘If Iran ever had a rock and roll dynasty, it belonged to the Qajars’

A Qajar belle given the Warhol treatment by Hojat Amani. Courtesy REORIENT.

by Joobin Bekhrad, REORIENT

It’s a stiflingly hot and humid morning in New York City. Though I probably shouldn’t, I pour myself another dose of crimson Persian chai in a kamar-barik teacup amidst a din of blaring sirens, whiny horns, scratchy radios, and Manhattan chatter steaming forth from the dirty boulevard below. I’ve got fuzzed-out riffs bouncing about in my head, and am picturing myself sauntering down St. Mark’s Place later in the afternoon before ambling into the seedy corner bar, just like Mick and Keith in Waiting on a Friend. Happily daydreaming whilst timidly sipping my tea, lest I scald my tongue, my cousin and I decide to while away the time by browsing through a mishmash of old, yellowed photo albums, lavishly-illustrated books about Iran, and some artefacts unearthed from her dusty closet of curios. My eyes glance over the panoply of pictures, ceramics, folios, and metalwork arrayed before me, none of which particularly pique my interest; I’m 16, and all I want to do is fall in love, start a rock and roll band, and bury my high school days in the dust. Khayyam? Ferdowsi? Give me the New York Dolls any day.

Just as we’re about to head out to bite the Big Apple, my cousin remembers an old oil painting tucked away somewhere she thinks I’d find interesting. As she blows away the dust accumulated over many moons from its ornate frame, my pupils dilate, and I feel the hair on my legs stand erect; I am, after all, face-to-face with the Pivot of the Universe, God’s Shadow on Earth, the King of Kings, Fat’h Ali Shah-e Qajar, in all his bejeweled and bearded glory. Though I can’t tell my Pahlavi from my Safavi, and have scarce turned a page in the annals of Iranian history, I find something alluring about this figure nonetheless. His look is sinister and haughty, his countenance overbearing and imposing; and, eyeing this hirsute sovereign (Billy Gibbons, go home) with one blessed palm resting on the hilt of a glittering dagger, and the other clutching the tortuous pipe of a gaudy ghalyan, the words on Keith Richards’ now-iconic 70s t-shirt resonate as true as ever: who the fuck is Mick Jagger?

Iranians scream into pots at new contemporary art center

 The screaming pots of artist Babak Golkar are seen at an exhibition in Tehran October 17, 2014. Credit: Mehdi Bolourian-Sazmanab. Courtesy Reuters

by Michelle Moghtader, Reuters

A contemporary art gallery in central Tehran is giving Iranians a chance to let out their frustrations by screaming into clay pots sculpted by a Vancouver-based artist, exhibiting in the country of his ancestors for the first time.

The earthen pots, some of which resemble traditional water jars, are designed not for containing liquids but to relieve the stresses of urban life - noise, traffic and pollution - if only for a moment.

"When logic fails to explain, it becomes natural to scream. The (pots) reflect many conditions that we are faced with, often unexplained with logic," artist Babak Golkar told Reuters by e-mail from Canada last week, shortly after his exhibition opened.

Gallery creator Sohrab Kashani said it has been packed with stylish Iranians screaming into vessels of various shapes and sizes. Some are designed to amplify sound, some to mute, but all made with the same clay that is typical of parts of Iran.

Golkar said he had decided the time was right to return to Tehran after years of avoiding exhibiting there.

"I was physically gone for a long time but mentally never left. To come back and engage actively and not as a passive tourist was a true privilege," he said. 

He, like many contemporary artists who have departed from traditional mediums such as painting and sculpture, had difficulty finding a place to work with experimental and performance-based mediums until Sazmanab, a privately funded art center founded by Kashani, stepped in.

Iran native eyes Schenectady café as venue for conversation

Dr. Mahmood Karimi Hakak, stands in front of 703 Union Street in Schenectady Wednesday, November 5, 2014.   Photographer: Peter R. Barber. Courtesy Gazette.

by Bethany Bump, Gazette Reporter

Fifteen years ago, Iranian officials raided Mahmood Karimi-Hakak’s sold-out production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and shut it down.

The Islamic regime in power at the time had been sending censors to observe Karimi-Hakak’s take on one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, and they objected to a scene in which an actor made a pushing gesture toward an actress from 10 inches away. Men and women were forbidden from touching on stage, and from a certain angle an audience member might think the actors had touched, the officials told him. Karimi-Hakak increased the distance.

But on the fifth night of sold-out performances, officials raided the show, shouting violent threats and calling the women on stage whores. With hundreds of people in the audience, Karimi-Hakak urged the raiders to sit down with him on stage and discuss their concerns with the audience. If the audience believed them valid, he would happily shut down, he said.

“I said, ‘Look, theater is an art based on dialogue; therefore, stage is the most appropriate place for opposing forces to sit down and have a conversation,’ ” the Niskayuna resident and Siena College professor recalled 15 years later. “Of course, they did not do it, because they knew if there was a dialogue, they’d have no legs to stand on.”

Now, Karimi-Hakak has a new plan to foster dialogue, right here in Schenectady. He’s asking the city for approval to open a café at 703 Union St., a two-story building across from Union College, to host film screenings, poetry readings, arts and crafts exhibits and plain old conversation.

Café International would offer coffee, pastries, Persian teas and sweets. With some minimal renovations and city Planning Commission approval later this month, it could open by March, right in time for the Persian New Year.

“I want to gather people under the same roof for tea and conversation,” Karimi-Hakak said. “All kinds of people: academics, artists, students, people from all walks of life. As a theater artist, I sincerely believe that the only way to survival as human beings is to have conversations with one another to understand that we can live in this world together and we don’t have to think the same way to do it.”

"In Iran, art fills a void"

Interview with the Iranian theatre director Amir Reza Koohestani

A photo of Amir Reza Koohestani's production of Chekhov's "Ivanov" (photo: Mani Lotfizadeh). Courtesy Qantara.

Interview by David Siebert, Qantara

Amir Reza Koohestani is currently the most sought-after theatre director in Iran. David Siebert talked to him about censorship, the enthusiasm for theatre among young Iranians and the new cultural freedom under President Rouhani

You began studying in Manchester in 2007. When the Green Movement emerged in Iran two years later and tens of thousands of Iranians began protesting against suspected fraud in the re-election of President Ahmadinejad, you immediately returned home. Why?

Amir Reza Koohestani: I had the feeling that this was a historic moment not to be missed and that I couldn't just sit around idly. When I returned to Iran in July 2009, the government and the authorities had already quashed the Green Movement. The whole country was suffering under a massive depression. Everyone had lost hope, especially artists and intellectuals. I made reference to these events in my stage play "Where were you on 8 January?" and shortly thereafter encountered problems with the authorities. But only indirectly – public funds for my theatre company "More" suddenly dried up.

In 2011, you staged Chekhov's drama "Ivanov" in Tehran. Iranian critics named it "best stage play of the year". Why did you decide to stage one of the classics of European theatre?

Koohestani: The censors were watching me. It was clear that I couldn't stage any of my own works anymore. So I chose Chekhov's "Ivanov" in order to hide behind it, so to speak. The play initially comes across as a simple, harmless love story.

Chekhov's tragedy from 1887 tells the story of Ivanov, a depressive Russian landowner, who falls in love with the much younger Sasha. On the surface, it is a play about a mid-life crisis, but what it really does is satirise the apathy and stagnation of Tsarist Russia at the end of the nineteenth century. You adapted the play to mirror the current situation in Iran. Was this an attempt to describe the lethargy and hopelessness in Iran after the failure of the Green Movement?

On the surreal in contemporary Iranian cinema

Surreal images permeate FAT SHAKER

by Travis Bird, Shotgun Cinema

Contemporary Iran is one place where the very fact that a film is made is just as vital as what’s in it. It defies the comfortable notion that art can exist in an idealized vacuum. Art is made by and experienced by individuals, and in the case of Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution, cinema in particular sends filmmakers and cinephiles on their own strange trips.

Cinephilia and filmgoing is something Americans can take for granted (maybe too much so), but in Iran, it ranges from difficult to ridiculous. As Azadeh Jafari and Vahid Mortazavi detail in this piece for Reverse Shot, encountering movies in Islamic Iran has often involved black-market VHS peddlers and non-subtitled material, in addition to dubbed and censored versions of more generic fare. As the authors suggest, encountering non-standard cinema was (and is) often an individual exercise, both empowering and isolated.

Independent filmmaking, similarly, has become an isolated exercise in Iran. Actually, most of what Americans hear about contemporary Iranian cinema revolves around its not being produced, mainly due to individual bans on filmmaking doled out by the Iranian government. Jafar Panahi has been perhaps the most notable cause célèbre, in part because of his success before receiving a 20-year ban and six-year jail sentence in 2010, but also because he has in fact managed to defy the ban by making (to date) two powerful feature films, This Is Not A Film (2011) – which was smuggled out of the country to the Cannes Film Festival on a flash drive hidden in a birthday cake – and Closed Curtain (2013).

Panahi was and remains a genuinely significant filmmaker, and his post-ban films can be read as evidence of the psychological deterioration he’s endured as an ideological target: as desperate as they are defiant, as much therapy as protest. The cake story in particular adds a darkly surrealistic element, showing just how extreme the measures must be taken in order to avoid being caught, which in turn suggests just how nightmarish it would actually be to get caught.

The Republic of Imagination

Azar Nafisi’s latest is an ode to literary America, from Iran, with love

by Robert Fulford, National Post

In the fall of 1979, during the early days of Iran’s Islamic revolution, the 24-year-old Azar Nafisi was teaching her students at the University of Tehran the virtues of two American books, Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby. At the same moment, in the courtyard below, Islamists were shouting, “Death to America!” and the nearby U.S. embassy was under siege by screaming, murderously passionate anti-Americans.

“The new regime,” as she remembers it, “was leading a bloody crusade against Western imperialism, against the rights of women and minorities, against cultural and individual freedom.” That was the program of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And she, through literature, was doing her best to teach the reverse.

“Suddenly a new regime had established itself, taking hold of my country, my religion, my traditions, and claiming that the way I looked, the way I acted — what I believed in and desired as a human being, as a woman, a writer and teacher — were all alien.”

Under pressure at the university, she continued her classes at home, meeting discreetly with a few students who weren’t worried about official dogma. Eventually Nafisi left Iran and ended up in Washington as an American citizen and a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. Her experience with private teaching in Tehran led eventually to Reading Lolita in Tehran, published a decade ago, in which she described what free literature meant to women living sharply circumscribed lives. She imagined that with luck her book would sell 9,000 copies; it sold 1.5 million, in 32 languages. It outraged Iranian critics and made her famous.

The fine line between what is permitted and what is not

Ramin Sadighi, the founder of Iranian world music label Hermes Records, talks about the constraints on artists in the Islamic Republic, the battle against copyright infringement and what international sanctions mean for his record label 

Interview by Shahram Ahadi, Qantara

Mr Sadighi, let's imagine the following situation: your label comes to an agreement with an artist, and nothing stands in the way of producing a record. But there's still the matter of obtaining the necessary permit from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Ershad). Have you encountered problematic cases like this before? 

Ramin Sadighi: I completely disagree with artists having to get a permit from the ministry because things like that are not only directed against the work of an artist, but against society as a whole...

Excuse me for interrupting you at this point, but what official channels does an artist have to go through in order to finally obtain the necessary permit? 

Sadighi: There are three hurdles: if the type of artistic product we're talking about is song, then the whole thing first has to be passed by a so-called "song panel". They won't permit anything that insults Islam or any political content.

And therein lies the problem: a lot of artists in Iran today want to use their songs to address social problems in their country, and if the song panel doesn't agree with certain points, you don't get a permit. The decision also depends on which "evaluation team" the panel assigns. You can never say exactly where the boundaries between what's allowed and what is forbidden are going to be.

What about classical songs? Do you encounter similar problems there?

Sadighi: Yes. There are some songs about love, like for example some works by Molana (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi). It's often ruled that one verse or another has to be left out.

And what happens once you have actually managed to get a permit from the song panel? 

Sadighi: After that, the musical product as a whole has to be approved in order for it to be released. The entire artistic endeavour is gone over by the "music committee". If you get over that hurdle, the music can finally be produced. But in the course of production, there can also be personal checks on the artist.

Dancing around clichés

The film "Desert Dancer" tells the story of an Iranian dancer in a land where dancing is not permitted. Audiences are once again presented with a biased picture of a complex country. This review questions the tendency of filmmakers to portray Iran in an exclusively negative light

Still from the film "Desert Dancer" (photo: Senator). Courtesy Qantara.

Marian Brehmer, Qantara

The opening scene is of a boy sprightly dancing in front of his jubilant classmates. Moments later, he is caught by his glaring teacher. Switch to the next scene: on the way home from school, the boy tells his mother that he was beaten by his teacher. The background setting is arranged down to the smallest detail: behind the pair, a propaganda mural featuring soldiers can be seen on a wall. Off to the side, a market scene is being acted out: a handful of women, all of whom are shrouded in chadors, are clamouring around a vegetable stand.

The concerned mother, who is the only woman in the scene wearing a loose-fitting headscarf, explains the nature of the world to the young would-be dancer. "Do you see those men over there?" The camera pans to a group of young men with beards and white shirts. "They are the Basij, the morality police. If they see you dancing, you will suffer a lot worse."

Every cliché within the span of two minutes

It doesn't even take two minutes for "Desert Dancer", a new film set in Iran by the British director Richard Raymond, to serve up all of the popular clichés about Iran. The set pieces are so tightly packed together that anyone in the audience who knows Iran will feel their stomachs churning. In order to avoid any misunderstandings, let us be clear about a few things: a good deal of what is portrayed in the film is reality in Iran. But, as is so often the case, the greater part of reality is simply filtered out.

The plot of the film, which is based on a true story, can be quickly summed up: the young Afshin has a dream; he wants to become a dancer. But, dancing is frowned upon in his native Iran, and a career as a dancer is impossible. When Afshin moves to Tehran to study, he sets up an underground dance group.

The godfather of Iranian hip-hop wants grassroots change

Being a hip-hop artists in a country where the genre is banned, comes with many challenges.

by Mari Shibata, Index on Censorship

I’m a hand that has become a fist…
I’m a Shia in Bahrain, I’m an Armenian in WWI
I’m the one who is starving, with ribs obvious from starvation

They are raping someone and I am the sound of the agonised screaming
When they tell him or her “relax, so that we can enjoy it, whore”, I’m that tense muscle
I’m an Afghan homosexual woman that lives in Iran

Iranian rapper Soroush Lashkari, aka Hichkas, is sharing extracts from an unfinished song for his new album Mojaz, translating the lyrics into English on the spot. Hichkas (Nobody) has been called the godfather of Iranian hip-hop, which seems fitting for a man who turned the local calling code for Tehran — 021 — into song and a sign language that became the symbol of the Iranian hip-hop movement and its followers. But being a hip-hop artist in a country where the genre is banned comes with many challenges.

“When we made physical copies of our first album Jangale Asphalt in 2006, we were arrested whilst selling it on the streets of Tehran,” Hichkas, now in his late twenties, tells Index on Censorship. “You can’t just sell records in Iran, you need to seek approval from the authorities before you release anything or perform concerts. There is no structure or support system for musicians to perform freely, and in particular for hip hop artists.”

Anyone who wishes to publish, distribute or perform music in Iran is required to submit their work for review by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG), which is guided by Islamic law in force since the country’s 1979 revolution. The MCIG operates under the influence of the minister of culture, who is chosen by the president and the parliament. Even if the amount of freedom artists may experience varies under each presidency, all recordings submitted are archived to ensure the authenticity of Iranian musical culture is maintained. Exposure to Western music is also heavily scrutinised with genres such as hip-hop banned altogether. The implication is that musicians adopting traditional Iranian standards are favoured over artists incorporating external sounds tainted with “decadence”. The name of Hichkas’ upcoming album Mojaz -– meaning an album or artwork within the mojavez, the seal of approval required from the MCIG to sell records in the country.

Simin Behbahani: National Poet, Nation's Mother

Behbahani at a Glimpse

Image courtesy of Tavaana

by Tavaana

Simin Behbahani, one of Iran’s most prominent poets, was born to a cultured family and raised amongst the literary elite. Behbahani published her first poem when she was only 14 years old, and in the years that followed, she gradually developed her own style of writing as she became a renowned poet. Prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution, Behbahani worked as a songwriter for the Iranian National Radio. She was also a member of the Iranian National Radio and Television Council for Music for some time.

Alongside her career as a poet, Behbahani was always involved in social and civic activism. In her youth, she was a member of the Tudeh Party of Iran’s Youth Organization, and later on, she helped found the Iranian Writers’ Association. In later years, Behbahani became known as a women’s rights activist respected by the young members of the Iranian feminist movement. Even though her poetry mainly touches on personal themes, socio-political concerns, too, played an important part in informing her vision. Social justice, poverty, women’s rights, freedom of speech, and resisting censorship are all central themes in many of her poems.

In recent years, the Iranian government had imposed restrictions on Behbahani’s activism, and the authoritarian voices in the media attacked her character. Nevertheless, Behbahani continued to express herself and chose to address these attacks from a compassionate perspective. She passed away at age 87 in August 2014.

A Poet Raised from Her Mother’s Bosom

Simin Khalili, better known as Simin Behbahani, was born on July 20, 1927 in Tehran.[1] Her father, Abbas Khalili, wrote poetry in both Persian and Arabic. He was the editor-in-chief of Nedaay-e-Islam’ newspaper before starting his own paper, Eghdam.[2] He translated over 1,100 stanzas from Ferdowsi’s mythical epic poem, the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings). Behbahani’s mother, Fakhr-Ozmaa Arghoun, was erudite and progressive: she was born in 1898 in Tehran and had learned Arabic and Persian in elementary school alongside her brothers before continuing her education in French and English at the Joan of Arc French school and the American School.[3]

Rediscovering Iranian Artist Bahman Mohassess in Fifi Howls from Happiness

Bahman Mohassess. Image courtesy of Music Box Films and The Huffington Post.

 by E. Nina Rothe, The Huffington Post

To most, the name Bahman Mohassess will not mean much. I know it didn't to me at first, before coming across a wonderful new documentary titled Fifi Howls from Happiness.

The film, directed by Mitra Farahani, is a very personal, insightful, intimate look at the exiled Iranian artist's last few months, living in self-imposed reclusion in a small residence hotel in Rome. An openly gay artist known as the "Persian Picasso", Mohassess left Iran in the late 1950s when the attention bestowed on his talents turned from praise and adoration to persecution and censorship. It was the era after the fall of Mossadegh and the incoming regime performed its own brand of cultural revolution, making artists the scapegoats.

As is often the case.

If my own ignorance was betrayed by my lack of awareness of this spectacular, satirical, utterly irreverent and unapologetic genius, the film thankfully caught me up on all I needed to know. Farahani gently introduces the audience to his work and character, while letting the artist think he's dictating the direction the documentary should take. But the director's intent is not to be manipulative, in any way, she's simply living a magnificent moment in time with the larger-than-life Mohassess, just before he's about to leave this world. The sky, quite literally, is the limit.

Farahani is ever present, her voice heard off-camera softly prodding the artist in Farsi to reveal more and more of himself; during a meal out, at a local restaurant, her salad sits untouched in front of the camera, her work to capture everything about Mohassess for posterity clearly overtaking those more mundane needs, like eating. She's teased by Mohassess, asked for cigarettes, bargained with and throughout the film, her grace shines the light on one of the great minds of the 20th Century.

The true brilliance of a documentary filmmaker lies in the editing, the way the narrative is put together to create a story worth watching, one that entertains and enlightens at the same time. As you can tell, I wish to laugh and cry, not just watch a doc to be instructed. And Farahani achieves that so seamlessly, perfectly, dancing a sultry tango with her subject. Yet she never oversteps her boundaries, she's always the student, Mohassess ever the Maestro. She intersperses her video diary with clips from the artist's favorite film, Luchino Visconti's classic Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), and statements by other artists like a favorite quote from Marino Marini: "We built, we destroyed and a sad song weighed on the world."

An Iranian artist has just one day to save her artwork from being destroyed by Canadian customs

Iranian artist and Canadian permanent resident Sadaf Foroughi is fighting to get her artwork back from Canadian customs before it is destroyed

The design of Sadaf Foroughi's Shahre Farang, a traditional Iranian peep box. Picture courtesy of Sadaf Foroughi and CBC Radio.

by CBC Radio

Iranian artist and Canadian permanent resident, Sadaf Foroughi, has spent the last two years trying to build an authentic shahre farang, essentially a traditional Iranian peep box. It's part of a project funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. After Ms Foroughi went to Iran to help build the box, that's when things got complicated.

On her arrival back in Montreal, Canadian customs held the artwork. Officers claimed it contravenes Canada's trade sanctions with Iran. And now the piece is slated to be destroyed in a matter of days.

Shahre farangs are traditionally made of thin tin, are delicate objects and date back centuries. According to Ms Foroughi the peep box was used to show pictures to children in Iran and give people a glimpse around the world -- places average Iranians would likely never visit. Ms Foroughi's installation is a modern interpretation of the shahre farang where she shows videos instead of photographs.

Ms Foroughi tells guest host Helen Mann, she doesn't understand why her work violates Canada's so-called "Special Economic Measures Regulations for Iran," because she says her piece has no commercial value.

Ms Fourghi tells Helen she told the customs agent in Montreal, "I'm an artist and I had the grant of Canada Council for the Arts and they only support independent and personal projects." But according to Ms Foroughi, the official shouted at her.

Tehran Bazaar

Untitled, 2009 (Rostam II Series), by Siamak Filizadeh. Courtesy of Aaran Gallery.

by Joobin Bekhrad, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs

In discourses revolving around Iran’s tumultuous history, particularly that of the last thousand years, a comparison has often been made between Iranian culture and the mythical phoenix. Following the decay and decline of the Sassanian Empire—heir to the legacy of the Achaemenids and Parthians, whose influence not only reached the far-flung corners of the then-known world politically, but culturally as well—Iran was plunged into a dark era that would radically alter the course of its culture, history, and identity for centuries to come. The arrival of the Umayyads and Abbasids saw not only the eradication of Zoroastrianism, the indigenous Iranian religion dominant at the time, but also the widespread suppression of the Persian language and Iranian culture, which culminated in what is now referred to as the dreaded “two centuries of silence.” And, just when the newly humbled Iranians—who had only a short while back given the Romans a run for their money—thought they had seen the worst, the Mongols, following the course of their Seljuk brethren who had recently swept through Iran and laid the foundations for modern-day Turkey, razed the land of the noble to the ground, laying once-proud Persia to waste.

Of many of the countless peoples and places Herodotus documented in his colossal Histories, only names and vestiges remain. Despite having been in the epicenter of a region continuously subject to invasion, bloodshed, intercultural tensions, and religious strife (to name a few malaises), Iranian culture has always managed, somehow or other, not only to survive, but to proudly flourish, despite various changes in its outward appearance and form. From the ashes of the remnants of the House of Sassan, and from the depths of the two centuries of silence emerged the voices of Rudaki, the first major poet to write in modern-day Persian (i.e., the Dari variant), and Ferdowsi, who, in a labor of love composed the triumphant Shahnameh, Iran’s national epic celebrating pre-Islamic Iranian mythology and lore. Later, though Iran found itself yet again under foreign occupation—this time by Turco-Mongol dynasties from the East—Iranian art and architecture flourished and adapted itself to its new surroundings. Iran later enjoyed a lavish renaissance at the hands of the first indigenous rulers of Iran since the Sassanians, the Safavids. Despite their religious zealotry and fervent promotion of Shi’ism (by sometimes questionable means), they ushered in a golden age of Iranian art and culture still looked upon with reverence and longing today by Iranians and non-Iranians alike.

An Iranian dissident returns home

Popular filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof has returned to Tehran from exile. In an exclusive interview, he explains why.

A scene from "The White Meadows", 2009, Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran. Courtesy The Global Film Initiative Blog. 

by Sune Engel Rasmussen, Al Jazeera America

Friends and family warned Mohammad Rasoulof not to return to Tehran. The award-winning director still had a prison sentence looming over his head after being arrested during a shoot in 2010, charged with threatening national security and making propaganda against Iran’s Islamic state.

Rasoulof’s friend and collaborator, the renowned director of “White Balloon,” Jafar Panahi, who was arrested at the same time, is still under house arrest. Further, Rasoulof had just released his most uncompromising film to date. “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” — which won the International Federation of Film Critics Award at Cannes and is currently screening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art — is an undisguised criticism of Iran’s feared security services, and Rasoulof’s most overtly political work yet. Still, he ignored the advice and came home.

He arrived in Tehran in September 2013, a month after the inauguration of President Hassan Rouhani. The police confiscated his passport, but have otherwise left him alone so far. Rouhani has promised to bring change to Iran, and although that change is moving slowly, things are certainly different from when Rasoulof lived here four years ago.

“When I was arrested, I was saying the exact same things as Mr. Rouhani is saying now. I wonder why nobody arrests him,” Rasoulof says with a laugh.

The 42-year-old filmmaker shuffles around his backyard in a washed-out black sweatshirt, dragging his plastic slippers along the ground with every step. When he sits back in his chair at his small working table, shaded by a tree, he can enjoy something close to silence. This is the only interview he has agreed to since his return, but he does not seem nervous. Here, sheltered from the frantic noise of Iran’s capital, Rasoulof has room to breathe. And that is exactly what many Iranian artists hope to get under Rouhani’s government.

“Of course, one has to be very stupid to think that after Rouhani’s election, the entire Islamic Republic will change,” Rasoulof says. “The important thing is that we can help move things slowly in the right direction.”