[spectre] FILMS FROM CONTEMPORARY IRAN 2 – 7 NOVEMBER (PRAGUE/OSLO)

[jesper alvaer]

FILMS FROM CONTEMPORARY IRAN 6 – 7 NOVEMBER

Screening of Iranian films 6 – 7 November at Soria Moria Cinema
Presentation of the magazine Pages 7 November at Torpedo Bokhandel

The screenings in Soria Moria (Torshov) follow the exhibition project
„Sunset Cinema_edition 2“ which was realized in Display gallery in
Prague, May 2006. 
The two Iranian artists living in the Netherlands, Nasrin Tabatabai
and Babak Afrassiabi, created a framework and a stage for the
screening of several films, out of which three are going to be
screened within this program.

Films from Contemporary Iran, is an initiative from Display
(www.display.cz) in Prague and Pages in Rotterdam
(www.pagesmagazine,net), organized in Oslo by UKS, Soria Moria, and
Torpedo Bokhandel. The project is supported by OCA- Office for
Contemporary Art, Norway.

(PROGRAM PRAGUE: Kino Svetozor 2-4 November)

PROGRAM DETAILS OSLO:

Tuesday 6 November
Time: 18:45 - 20:45 at Soria Moria

Introduction by Director Alireza Rasoulinezhad

Exteriors
Director: Alireza Rasoulinezhad
Iran, 2004
83 minutes, video

Exteriors is a film in three parts about a discouraged intellectual 
uncle who disappears from Tehran to lead a different life elsewhere.
He 
leaves his apartment to his nephew and niece. The two discover some 
notes on various social and cultural topics and an unfinished film by

their uncle. Inspired by their uncle’s ideas and the film footage, 
they decide to make a film together. The involvement of the two in 
pursuing the film becomes a pretext for the director of this trilogy
to 
address contemporary social and cultural issues of Iran.


Wednesday 7 November

Time: 17.00 at Torpedo Bokhandel (Hausmannsgate 42, Oslo)
Short presentation by Babak Afrassiabi of the magazine Pages

Pages is a bilingual, Farsi and English, magazine with the aim to 
function as a platform for exchange, dialogs and projects, a place 
for collaboration between artists and writers from Iran and
elsewhere. 
The magazine’s interest lies in the socio-political flows within
spaces of urban and everyday life.


Time: 18:45 - 20:45 at Soria Moria,
Introduction by Director Bahman Kiarostami

Pilgrimage
Director: Bahman Kiarostami
Iran, 2004
52 minutes, video

Shot in and around a small prosecutor’s office on the Iran-Iraq
border, 
this documentary is about illegal pilgrims who are persistent in 
crossing the Iran’s border with Iraq for the holly city of
Karbala. Being deprived of this pilgrimage for years during and after

the Iran-Iraq war, now with the fall of Saddam many attempt to travel

with forged documents or risk their lives while being smuggled across

the harsh border. “Criminal pilgrims or pilgrim criminals” this is
the 
dilemma the film is uncovering.


Shabih Khani (Re-enactment)
Director: Bahman Kiarostami
Iran, 2006
52 minutes, Video

Shabih-Khani is a documentary about men who, in the yearly held 
religious ceremony called the Ashura, re-enact the scenes of the
battle 
Karbala (that took place in 680 ac in the desert of Karbala in
current 
Iraq, commemorating the death of Imam Hossein, the grandson of the 
prophet Mohammad, and his entire family). Shabih (likeness) is a term

which refers to an actor who plays the role of the holy companions of

Imam Hossein or his enemies. The title Shabih-Khani
underlines the separation between the actors and the roles they play.

As the men are asked to play their roles in front of the camera, they

inevitably indulge in a double re-enactment of their roles, causing 
moments of confusion, bordering on farce or slapstick.



 
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