Dissertation

My dissertation is titled "'A Robin Redbreast' in an 'Iron Cage': Revisiting the Intellectual Movement of Dissent in Iran between the 1953 Coup and the 1979 Islamic Revolution." Download abstract and introduction of my dissertation Abstract In the wake of the 1953 CIA-backed coup d’état in Iran and the toppling of the democratically elected government …

What Can a Viking and an Arab Learn from Each other? The 13th Warrior as Political Psychotherapy

The 13th Warrior is a depiction of a fantasy which is more real than reality. The film is of significance to the modern day audience for it offers an archetypal pattern very different from the usual course of Hollywood. It is a medieval account of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, a Muslim ethnographer, who after falling in love with a married woman, is exiled from Baghdad into Northern Europe as an ambassador.

Forough Farrokhzad’s Love Letter to Ebrahim Golestan

Farzaneh Milani recently published previously unpublished letters from Forough Farrokhzad, the celebrated Iranian poetess, to her partner, Ebrahim Golestan. I translated this paragraph, which I found absolutely breathtaking: آخ، قربانت بروم. دلم با تو در اطاق خودم بودن را می‌خواهد. آن بعدازظهرهای گرم بیهوش‌کننده و آن خواب‌های تابستانی و آن عریان سراپای ترا چسبیده به …

The Silence of Jona

(Originally published on the Film International website.) What is the last resort in the face of ubiquitous evil? Reza Mirkarimi’s Today has a simple, yet astonishing answer: silence. Today, Iran’s representative in this year’s Academy Awards competition for Best Foreign Language Film, has been underestimated thus far. Nevertheless, it contains all main traits that have universalized …

The Slippers of Ozymandias: An Allegorical Reading of Bist

Mr. Soleimani pairs his slippers with pedantic care. The stationery items on his desk are arranged with ardent adherence to the laws of geometry and his employees are efficiently worked to the last drop of energy. He is a meticulous perfectionist, a reception hall owner, a despot and a clinically morose individual. This is the …

Robocop (2014) and Operation Freedom Tehran

There is a wee contradiction—most probably an error in theory—in the 2014 reanimation of Robocop that reverses the whole hero-villain dynamic of the film. At the onset, we are shown an American army of robots “securing” the streets in “Operation Freedom Tehran”. Then a group of Iranian suicide bombers attack the robots and make sure the …

‘I was, I am not’: Asghar Farhadi’s Le Passé

In the realm of conventional cinema, a film functions like Horace’s sugar-coated pill: it instructs as it entertains. A conventional film shows life with certain elements imposed on it, so that we can deduce an ultimate ‘essence’, a ‘meaning’. Le Passé only confuses: it casts us into the extremely complicated lives of a group of people surrounding Marie (Bérénice Béjo), an employee of a Parisian pharmacy, and then abandons us there. It has no essence, no meaning, just like life, pure and simple.

چرا «او» رفت؟ تاملاتی در باره ی آخرین فیلم اسپایک جونز

سامانتا گفت:”مثل اینه که من دارم کتاب می نویسم. کتابی که عمیقن به‌اش عشق می ورزم. اما دارم آروم آروم می نویسم‌اش، طوری که کلمه‌هاش از هم دورن و فضای بین‌شون، تقریبن بی نهایته”. و بعد گفت: “من الان خودم رو توی این فضای بی پایان، بین کلمه ها می‌بینم. این‌جا فضاییه بیرون از جهان …