Pars Arts

Dariush Mehrjui and J.D. Salinger: Franny and Zooey and Pari

As it turns out, back in 1998, J.D. Salinger blocked a New York City screening of an Iranian film that was loosely based on his book Franny and Zooey. The film was named Pari.

[...]

The film, directed by Dariush Mehrjui, was set for a screening at Lincoln Center. When Salinger got wind of this news, he sicced his lawyers on the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the screening was canceled. A New York Times article gives details.

Apparently, the adaptation was unauthorized.

via The J.D. Salinger-Iran Connection « West of Persia.

The Iranian Revolution and Tennis: Mansour Bahrami & Ali Madani

Mansour Bahrami. (Julian Finney / Getty Images)

Three decades ago, their fates in sports and in life were determined by a tennis match. Bahrami and Madani, who are now 53, were swept up in the political turmoil of the Islamic revolution. Almost overnight, tennis was forbidden, as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini viewed the game as pro-American, capitalist and decadent. To Bahrami, Madani and the handful of other fledgling world-class players, the edict was a crushing blow.

With tournaments in Iran canceled and foreign travel out of the question, the players pleaded with the minister of sport for the opportunity to compete. The government finally relented, and a tournament was organized for the last week in July 1980. It was called the Revolutionary Cup, and the first prize was a round-trip ticket to Athens.

- “Islamic Republic Crushed the Dreams of Iran’s Top Tennis Players” – NYT

Shirin Neshat: Women Without Men (Trailer)

UCLA Iranian Cinema 2010

UCLA’s 20th Annual Celebration of Iranian Cinema is coming up, with an awesome bunch of films showing Feb 5 – Feb 20. Full lineup here, buy tickets here.

The Art of Mona Shomali

Iranian-American artist Mona Shomali paints lush, vibrant images of Kahlo-esque nudes in Iran-inspired settings. We asked her about her art.

Pars Arts: Your work was featured in the all-female, SoCiArts-produced show, feminine, where it stood out because of its interesting use of nudity. Your current series is called “Naked Folklore.” Can you discuss your use of nudes and why you decided to pair nude women with Iranian motifs?

Mona Shomali: Naked Folklore is a series of paintings that pairs together brazen nude females with Iranian cultural artifacts of great significance. The women in the paintings can question and transform ethnographic taboos, assumptions, and traditional rites of passage of both Iranian and American culture without fear of repercussions. These women are surreal and provocative as they experience their own self-defined identities- regardless of what is possible.

Shab-o-Sher & Samovar - Mona Shomali

The use of nudity was my way of challenging the images of Iranian women I saw in the American media—black shrouded formless sexless women. Besides the paintings, books and photo albums of my family members, the only contemporary images of Iranian woman that I came across were with a “chador”, literally translated from Farsi to English as “tent”. I wanted to explore the sensuality, volition and complex desires of the authentic woman who was underneath the tent.

Nudity is also very significant taboo within Iranian culture and Iranian art history. Although cultures from Europe, Africa and the Pacific Islands have had their own figurative art movements featuring nudity, Iranians have not yet enjoyed their own figurative movement. A figurative art movement becomes even more difficult within the contemporary Iranian state. The Islamic government’s position is that nudity in art violates the limits of Islam – it is prohibited and shameful. This is an ironic part of my identity because the Iranian position on nudity could not be more in contrast with the bohemian “American-ness” of where I was raised: the San Francisco Bay Area.

PA: You emphasize that your work is not Iranian but Iranian-American. What distinguishes Iranian-American art – your art – from that of your Iranian counterparts? How would you define or describe the characteristics of Iranian-American art vs. Iranian art?

MS: This series is a narrative expression of what it is to be an Iranian-American woman, an illustration of societal “Iranian-ness” and individualistic “American-ness” that is experienced from adolescence to womanhood. It is about finding a personal balance between modernity and tradition – sorting through clashing cultural ideas of what it is to be a “good woman”, “good wife”, and “good daughter” and choosing a standard for oneself. It is a story that reflects a very distinct and specific period in history. My narrative also reflects the era of globalization, both the benefits and disadvantages.

Iranian-American art can not be collapsed with Iranian art because the histories and narratives are completely different and must be honored in their own right. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Iranians who live in Iran have had their own rich and difficult experiences that translate to their own collective and personal narratives. Contemporary Iranian narrative art reveals politically charged stories from the Iran-Iraq war, the divide of close-knit families, harassment by the Islamic police, the unfolding of the hostage crisis, student riots, protests, imprisonment, and so much more.

It is essential that I distinguish myself from Iranians that live in Iran. My cousin recently emigrated to the U.S. from Iran two years ago and she keeps a blog for her Iranian friends. She writes, “My friends in Iran do not know what it is like to go outside and feel the wind blowing through their hair”. Her story is of an Iranian living in America. My story is of being Iranian-American. I have never worn a chador and I have no idea what that must be like for all my Iranian female counterparts.

My Iranian-ness was experienced in the Western world – not based on contemporary Iran, but based on stories of immigrant nostalgia and American media images. Growing up with Iranian immigrant parents in the suburbs in the 1980s, it was impossible to escape the tension between Iran and the United States. I remember that at age 11, it was the first time I sensed from my friends that being Iranian was not a good thing. Unfortunately, I even asked my mom to not speak to me in Farsi in public out of embarrassment and fear of my young classmates. This was because I had internalized the negative images of Iranians I had seen in the American media. The hostage crisis had resulted in a lot of resent and hostile feelings towards Iranian immigrants.. In my early teens, I remember feeling defensive when asked questions about being Iranian. I felt as though I was always trying to compensate and trying to show alternative and positive perspectives of Iranian culture. Personally, I found it very difficult to operate and behave within two opposing cultural standards. I felt most comfortable somewhere in between rebellion and renaissance.

Iranian-American artists express the tension between the two countries of our diaspora identity, and as a result, our “Iranian-ness” becomes more accessible to the non-Iranians in the countries we live within. For example, one of my favorite artists is Iranian-French. Marjane Satrapi’s storytelling is through her comic styled books and widely acclaimed movie “Persepolis” has allowed for non-Iranians to have such a deeper understanding of Iran. Her stories are authentic and personal, but they can also be universally re-affirming for Iranians all over the world that can recognize themselves in her art.

PA: In the last few years, there’s been an inordinate amount of attention on Iranian female writers, particularly in the United States and Europe, and it’s become a bit of a fetish. Is this happening in the art world, as well? If so, how does this affect you in your work?

MS: With the current American focus on the Middle East/Iran, there is an teachable opportunity that writers can take advantage of. Especially for members of the Iranian diaspora living in America, writing a personal novel is a very revealing and non-threatening way to introduce the issues that Iranian women face.

Furthermore, writers, like artists, are interested in creating their own stories and versions of history. Unlike a textbook that deals with the orientalist version of Iranian culture, Iranian women’s art can provide a much needed indigenous perspective of culture and identity. Unlike the exact and reductionist nature of science, art is not “wrong” or “right” when it recounts events and stories that have taken place.

PA: In “Naked Folklore,” only one painting depicts a man – the rest are all of women. Can you describe the meaning of the painting with the man, “The Strength of a Vulnerable Man”?

MS: One of the reasons my mother left Iran during the Islamic revolution was because she did not want to wear the chador that would soon become mandatory Islamic rule. I always was aware of the official stated reason for the chador: that the bodies and head are covered so the women do not tempt men other than their husbands, etc. In the Koran 24:31, it states, “Tell the faithful women to lower their gaze and guard their private parts and not display their beauty except what is apparent of it.” The idea that women “tempt” men is not only restricted to the Koran. In both the Bible stories of Adam and Eve and Samson and Delilah, it is a woman that tempts the man towards sin, or betrayal of God.

In many Islamic governments, it is law that the women cover up and keep hidden in order to “prevent” the man from sinning. The restraints are not on the men’s desires, but on the object of their desires. This stems from an assumption that the sexual desire of a man is not controllable, that men are reduced to savage animals that can not control themselves. Simultaneously, it becomes the woman’s “fault” for tempting or provoking the sexual acts of a man.

I am aware that women globally have fought long and hard to shed the outdated patriarchal restrictions that have been imposed on women by men. What I can not comprehend is how the state imposed chador helps create more value and respect for women. I do understand that all of us are a product of our gender socialization and conditioning. From whatever cultural vantage point that may be, we ask, “what makes a strong man?” and “what makes a strong woman?” To what extent do we “naturally” behave like our own gender? For certain cultural belts running through the world, behaviors such as machismo, possessiveness, protection or even violence may be expected of strong men. For other cultures, male strength may be illustrated through sensitivity, rational choice, due diligence, and in the measure of self control. Personally, I acknowledge that women possess sexual power, but I also acknowledge the restraint that the modern man is capable of. This respectful restraint should not be underestimated.

The Strength of a Vulnerable Man - Mona Shomali

These ideas of strength and weakness are so deeply embedded into our cultures that we rarely question them – until these ideas clash. Gender politics are most heated when the norms and expectations for gender and sexuality are in transition. Because of these juxtapositions and contradictions between male and female strength, I wanted to illustrate the opposite of a classic image between Adam and Eve. What if it was Adam that was really tempting Eve by offering her the forbidden fruit? Would the ideas of “strength” and “temptation” change? Who would be vulnerable, and who would have to resist whom?

“Shaherezad in Santa Monica” at the Annenberg Beach House

Reading of the verse drama, “Shaherezad in Santa Monica” by Majid Naficy.

Following the romantic and immigrationary travails of the poet Shahram, his lover Shaherezad, and the new man who comes between them, this lyrical drama set in various Santa Monica sites brings Persian and American sensibilities together.

This is the debut reading of Majid Naficy’s new work. It’s on Monday, January 18, it’s free (click above to make a reservation, which you’ll need to get in), and it’s at the very cool Annenberg Beach House. A definite don’t-miss if you’re in LA.

“Blazing Grace” in London

© concept: Shoja Azari, Painting: Shahram Karimi, Coffee House Painting 2009, still from video installation East Central/London and LTMH/New York

For Londonites: The work of Iranian artists Shoja Azari and Shahram Karimi will be shown at the East Central Gallery from January 15-February 27. From press materials:

The show, entitled “Blazing Grace”, reflects on the futility of war and the trauma of a violated land, focusing on the Gulf war in 1990 and the Middle Eastern region more broadly. The exhibition is the result of an ongoing collaboration between the painter Shahram Karimiand the video artist Shoja Azari.

Five artworks from the so-called “Oil Series” will surround viewers, re-creating a cinematic experience through the canvases’ glow of mesmerising colours. Referring to the first Gulf War, and presented in the darkened subterranean floor of East Central, the “Oil Series” depicts scenes of deserts aflame, with fires scorching the skies, smoke billowing in the wind, a soldier disappearing into misty horizons and tanks reining over ashen land. When the Iraqi troupes retired from Kuwait they set afire 737 oil wells, which burned for months and months.

The works sample images from Werner Herzog’s film “Lessons of Darkness”, with scenes slowed, edited and reframed by Azari, projected as brief looping videos onto Karimi’s hyperrealist paintings which are literally brought to life, while Karimi also interweaves on the canvases barely decipherable lines of his own poetry written in Farsi, evoking intuitive thoughts lying underneath the surfaces.

Exhibited in its own enclave in this seminal show is the video projection “Coffee House Painting”, another creative collaboration between Azari
and Karimi, which was then recreated as a video projection by Azari. Rich in political and historical references, and equally critical of global
politics, the work is inspired by the traditional Persian coffee house paintings that were popular in early 20th Century Iran and which spoke of
heroes and villains from Persia’s epic history of myth and legend.

Gallery details here.

BBC News – Five Minutes With: Omid Djalili

BBC News – Five Minutes With: Omid Djalili.

Celebrities and news-makers are grilled by Matthew Stadlen in exactly five minutes in a series for the BBC News website.

This week, comedian and actor Omid Djalili talks to Matt about getting nerves on stage, playing with cultural stereotypes, how an exploding goldfish helped his early career – and tells Matt he would have bullied him at school.

(He also talks about his Baha’i faith.)

The Fruit House

The New York Times Home & Garden section goes to Gorgan.

It’s Not Easy Being (A) Green (Revolutionary)

It’s not easy being green / try to blend in with the others in the mob /

Plainclothes police will run you over / drag you over to Evin prison /

Or maybe just beat you with electric baaa-tons

(via mariamjaan.tumblr.com and seaofgreen.tumblr.com)