Shirin Neshat in P.S. 1’s "Not For Sale"
I was at P.S. 1 recently to check out Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker (see above), but got totally distracted by another show called Not For Sale.
The show is comprised of really varied works that have one thing in common: their creators say they would never sell them. I was delighted to find that Iranian artist Shirin Neshat is part of the exhibit. The work she won’t sell is above, and the reason she won’t sell is below (click on the photos to see larger images).
Neshat’s is one of the first Iranian names I saw when I moved to New York this past summer, on the spine of this book which bears her name (and which is highly recommended, by the way). I was broke and unemployed, but I promptly bought the book because it evoked an incredible homesickness (for Los Angeles and specifically Westwood, strangely enough). Seeing her photographs as part of the P.S. 1 show gave me the opposite feeling this time, helping me to orient myself in the usually alienating and intimidating space that is nearly every art gallery. Quite a nice feeling, I must say, though I think it’s probably one that occurs whenever you recognize the work of an artist you like from across the room, regardless of whether or not they share your heritage.
By the way, P.S. 1 is a really fantastic space and absolutely worth visiting; it used to be a school, so a lot of the rooms are really small and intimate, which makes it feel more labyrinthine so you don’t feel like you’re being watched all the time (like you are at the big M&M). There’s a sort of scavenger-hunt vibe about the place, hence my forgetting to see Abbas Kiarostami. I highly recommend visiting to see Not For Sale, which ends April 30. And just so you don’t do like me and get lost in the maze, don’t forget Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker, which ends April 29.
Community News & Media: Amrikaee.com Pedram Moallemian
by Sepideh Saremi
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Amrikaee.com
Congratulations to Amrikaee.com, the brain-child of Pedram Moallemian (aka The Eyeranian), which went live just this week. From the Amrikaee website:
We are Amrikaee and as our mission statement reads; “we are the progressive voice of the new generation of Iranian-Americans, to serve as a bridge between traditions and provide a home for fresh expressions, unique perspectives and alternative ideas often overlooked by mainstream media.”
That’s why the name Amrikaee also made so much sense to us. Its outlook is the future; our future, the future of our lineage and the future of our new home, our new country, with full reverence and vision that comes from our past.
It also looks like there’s a print edition on the way, though I wasn’t able to find anything about how many issues a subscription constitutes, or how the print content will be different from the web content.
I love the magazine’s name; “Amrikaee” is the word for American in Persian. So it’s really the perfect name for a magazine for Iranian-Americans. I’m looking forward to more of their issues, and it looks like the magazine is a real opportunity to form a meaningful and connected diaspora community. So check it out!
"300": A Review
Much like the early bird getting the worm, the slightly racist, somewhat homophobic, much-protested movie with amazing graphics gets the movie-goer dollar. Yes, I’m talking about “300,” and yes, I went 
to see it a couple of weeks ago, because I was curious and because a Pars Arts contributor, Javod Khalaj, wrote one of the first critiques of the film when he heard Frank Miller, a writer of the graphic novel it’s based on, reveal his rather orientalist tendencies on NPR.
That essay has been one of our most popular posts (good work, Javod), and with all the petitions and ensuing Persian angst and brouhaha the movie has invoked, I thought perhaps seeing and reviewing the movie itself was only fair.
300 is adapted from a graphic novel written by Miller and Lynn Varley that was based on Herodotus’s account of the Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 Spartans got their behinds handed to them by a gajillion-strong Persian army helmed by Xerxes. Being that Herodotus was Greek and Xerxes was very much an imperialist and kind of a jerk, the Persians don’t come off looking too great, hence the very vocal and visible protest by the Iranian community over the film. There are petitions, essays, even an awesome art site that protests the movie. Since lots of people are boycotting, we’ve decided to provide you with the Pars Arts condensed version. Enjoy:
The movie opens with an old man inspecting a baby at the edge of a cliff. Apparently the ugly babies got thrown out in Sparta, but this baby is Leonidas, future king and Spartan bad-ass, so he passes the first test and is allowed to live. No word on whether the baby gets circumcised, but my guess is yes. Next we see him learning to fight, which culminates when he’s sent off to every little boy’s dream camp of violence. To graduate, he runs around barefoot in the snow, wearing only an adult diaper and killing a wolf that has neon eyes. Taking a page right out of the Republican party’s playbook, he returns home with the dead wolf on his shoulder and becomes ruler. Which frankly is a lot more fun than the electoral process anyway.
Fast forward a few years and a sexy black Persian envoy with a silky voice (think Taye Diggs, but taller and creepier) pays a visit to Sparta and asks for homage to Xerxes, the Persian emperor. Leonidas says no and throws Taye Diggs in a really deep well, and then goes to see some rotting senior citizens with a topless psychic girlfriend.
These guys are his advisors, and when one of them licks the topless girl, she convulses artfully and advises against war. But then quality time with another topless lady, his wife, convinces Leonidas that he’s got to do the right thing. And the right thing would be to get 300 of the hottest, least clothed warriors with rippling ads to go on a stroll through the country. This is by far the best part. The guys march for a while and get to a place called the “Gates of Hell” (foreshadowing much?) where their abs continue to ripple in the face of the Great Satan: the Persian army! The battle commences and keeps going. The Spartans are like the Viagra of wartime – they just can’t say quit, and there’s round after round of blood, guts, brains, and poop. Just kidding about the poop (they’re wearing diapers, remember?). Actually, the Gates of Hell really reminded me of the place where King Mufasa died in the Lion King, so let’s take a moment and show some respect to the guy in the middle of our flag:
The Persians include a host of evil guys, and I’m pretty sure I’ve dated at least two of them: a big fat guy with swords for arms and a nose ring (commitment-phobic faux-punk) and a bumbling giant with one eye (ultra-masculine with communication issues). There’s also a swarm of guys in silver kabuki masks, elephants, and a rhino. Nobody speaks any Persian, so it’s not very believable, like when Ben Kingsley played the Persian dad in The House of Sand and Fog and didn’t pronounce his own name correctly. But cream of the crop is god-king Xerxes himself, who’s decked out in gold from head to toe with lots of face jewelry and long gold fingernails. He also plucks his eyebrows and is beyond sexually ambiguous, but he has a harem of topless (see a theme here?) dancers as his collective beard. (Come to think of it, I may have dated him too. Very briefly.)
If you want to know what happens at the end, you’ll just have to see the movie for yourself. Or you could just read this next sentence: the Spartans die and it’s really too bad, because they are really impossibly good-looking.
So why the protest? Yes, none of the Persians in this movie were as sexy as the Spartans. But maybe they should have gone to the gym more instead of going to VIP parties every night, riding up to the valet on their elephants, blasting their Persian pop music like they owned the neighborhood. Yes, Xerxes is depicted as a depraved, self-centered guy who probably has a cocaine habit and doesn’t practice safe sex, and likely only half of that was true (probably the second half). But lets give some props to the filmmakers for making him the tallest guy in the whole movie (besides the one-eyed giant). Plus, diversity: our army had black guys, Asian guys, Arab-looking guys, guys with congenital defects – the Persian army of 300 was the original equal opportunity employer.
So keep signing those petitions, or do like us and follow the packs of 14-year-old boys with dirty fingernails to a theater near you. On behalf of Pars Arts , I’m giving this pretty snoozefest four Spartan spears, or three bottles of gold nail polish, a writhing topless woman, or a spoonful of irony and a dash of not taking the movie industry or the audience of this film very seriously.
Jafar Panahi’s "Offside"
Photo: Sony Classics
Do you live in New York or LA? Well, aren’t you just fancy, because you’ll be the first to see Jafar Panahi’s dark soccer comedy Offside in theaters this Friday, March 23 (it’ll be opening in wider release shortly thereafter). From Flavorpill:
A gaggle of girls intent on catching Iran’s World Cup qualifier against Bahrain (shot in real time during the match) subvert the Iranian law forbidding women to enter spectator stadiums by decking themselves out as rabid male fans, and are snared by soldiers grudgingly serving a tour of duty. In the part-documentary, part-feature Offside, Iranian director Jafar Panahi (Crimson Gold, 2003) neatly sidesteps the character-as-essay-points strangulation that fells many works of social criticism with a hefty dose of visual wit — a new element in his already full bag of aesthetically innovative tricks — and a highly nuanced examination of gender in a country caught between two eras.
I like the tenacious girls in this movie, because it’s not what many Westerners picture when they hear the phrase “Iranian girl”… but the fact is that I’ve known very few Iranian women who are not defiant when someone tells them no. And the fact that this movie has a big element of comedy will hopefully help make it a hit with audiences beyond the Iranian diaspora.
Norooz 2007: NYC, Part II
Graphic: sungraphicsonline.com
Organizer: NYU Persian Cultural Society Nowrooz Party
Date: Saturday March 24
Time: 8pm-12am
Place: NYU Kimmel Center 4th floor (60 Washington Sq South btw Thompson & La Guardia St)
Cover: $5 students $10 general admission
For More Info: she207@nyu.edu
Organizer: Columbia Iranian Student Association Nowrooz Party
Date: Saturday March 24
Time: 8pm -2am
Place: Lerner Hall (Columbia University)
Cover: $25 general admission $7 with a CUID
For More Info: cisa@columbia.edu
Organizer: 4th Annual Persian Parade
Date: Sunday March 25th
Time: 12pm Sharp
Place: Madison Avenue (midtown to 27th street)
Cover: No fee
For More Info: info@persianparade.org or 1.866.461.3093
Organizer: NYC Persians Nowrooz Party
Date: Sunday March 25
Time: 8pm onwards
Place: Duvet (45 west 21st btw 5th and 6th ave)
For More Info: www.nycpersians.com
Happy Norooz!
Photo: Hanieh BastaniHappy Persian New Year! If you’re reading this and you’re not Persian, combine traditional New Year’s anticipation, presents from Christmas, birthday cash, brand-new-schoolyear outfits, spring cleaning, picnics in the park, feasts, a strange blackface version of an un-Santa Claus, and you’ve got the basic ingredients of Persian New Year spirit. Intrigued? Can you see why I miss being home in Los Angeles right now? If you want to read more about the holiday and how people celebrate, the blog View from Iran has the Unofficial Norooz 2007 link list up now. Maybe next year we’ll bring you a series for how to do the traditional stuff once you leave the nest… if we can figure it out for ourselves.
To all you Pars Arts readers, noroozetan pirooz! (Have a rocking New Year!) Thanks for sticking with us, and we hope you stay with us in 1386. Incidentally, if you’re not sure when the year starts where you are, here’s a handy table.
Community News & Media: Canada Freedom Is Not Free
by Farnam Bidgoli
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Freedom Is Not Free
Graphic: Freedom Is Not Free
While protesters around the world gathered last Saturday against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, rhetoric continues regarding a possible attack on Iran. On Wednesday, the UN Security Council will gather to debate tougher sanctions on Iran, including a ban on loans to the country. As President Ahmadinejad’s US visa was approved today, we’re hoping – perhaps naively – that his speech in New York on Wednesday will be a call for dialogue and not continued aggressive posturing.
As members of the Iranian diasporic community, regardless of political affiliation, now is the time to speak up to our political representatives in order to make our opinions about the possibility of an attack known. Freedom Is Not Free – a pro-Iranian political advocacy group based in Toronto, Canada – has initiated a democratic protest against an attack on Iran. The 10,000 Against War Campaign is a petition calling for the Canadian government to declare its opposition both to the possibility of an attack on Iran and to the aggressive posturing of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The group, whose name comes from Iranian journalist Akbar Ganji’s Republican Manifesto II, is a non-partisan, non-ideological advocacy group that intends, says founding member Binesh Hassanpour, “to inform decision making bodies about the nuances of the Iranian political dynamic… Our sole concern is the promotion of Iranian interests vis-a-vis responsible foreign policy. That means we want a Canadian foreign policy towards Iran that is conducive to the domestic growth of democracy and human rights in Iran.”
To sign the 10,000 Against the War petition or find out more about the group, visit Freedom Is Not Free’s website.
Farnam Bidgoli is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, where she is pursuing a joint degree in Peace and Conflict Studies and International Relations, with language studies in French and Farsi, at the Trudeau Centre. She has written for The Toronto Globalist, Incite, and Namak.
Events: Chaharshanbe Soori holidays Norooz Photography Sina Araghi tradition
by Sepideh Saremi
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Urban Chaharshanbe Soori: or, "Why are we jumping over tealights?"
Photo: Sina Araghi
Like most young people in New York who don’t have trust funds and aren’t investment bankers, I live in an insanely small room in an apartment I share with a roommate that I found on the Internet. We have a tiny courtyard, but I’m not even on the lease so starting a bonfire to jump over it for good luck on Chaharshanbe Soori would surely get me shot by the old-school Italian landlord. Similarly, the tiny living room space I share is not conducive to a full-blown haft seen. Add to that the fact that I’m living nearly 3,000 miles away from my family for the first time ever, and the idea of Norooz this year made me incredibly homesick and sad.
This year I found myself at an Irish bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with some friends on the night of Chaharshanbe Soori, which is the one tradition I take more seriously than any other in my life. Even as a kid, it was more magical to me than my birthday, maybe because it always involved elements of danger (jumping over massive fires) and lawlessness (the fire department is on high alert and usually shuts us down or makes us do the fire-jumping in designated areas) in addition to the usual community and family elements of all holidays. Because I wasn’t at home in LA this year, I had put a few tealight candles in my pockets and when we were all ready to leave the bar, I lit the candles outside and we all took turns jumping over the tiny flames. My friends are good sports, though I’m sure they thought I was making the whole thing up, and I feel a little better embarking on a new year having said the yellowness-redness chant as I hopped over each little candle. I’ve made up some of my own traditions, too, like making a wish as I do this and lining up three candles. So I guess some of it is made up, after all.
The next morning I woke up to find the awesome photo above in my inbox. It’s of fire-jumping at Dockweiler Beach in Los Angeles and it was taken by LA-based photographer Sina Araghi (who I met a few weeks ago in New York and who I’ll post about again soon). The photo reminds me of freaking out as a little kid by the thought of jumping over fires, and of the uncle or friend’s older brother who always jumped first, showing off as the flames appeared to engulf him. I was always convinced someone would be hospitalized before the night was through, but no one ever got burned. There were always baby-fires off to the side for the old ladies and little kids, and that’s where I’d be except when the aforementioned uncle would grab me by the armpits and swing me over the big fire himself. Even good luck requires a little risk. I like to think there’s no shame in tealights or baby-fires, but then I remember all the Iranian moms and dads that I’ve seen jump over fires with their squirming toddlers, and I realize I’m pretty much a wuss.
In any case, the whole night made me think a lot about assimilation and the different ways in which Iranians, particularly second-generation diaspora Iranians, preserve or reinterpret old traditions. I wonder what Iranians in other parts of the world are doing on these 13 days of Norooz, and I hope everyone had a great Chaharshanbe Soori, whether you were the big-fire bad-ass on a beach with lots of Iranians or the homesick wuss hopping over tealights on a city sidewalk with confused, good-humored Americans.
Norooz 2007: DC
photo: IRNA, via Iran Zamin
First up is the party at MCCXXIII on Tuesday night (print out the flyer and you get in free before 11, plus there’s an open bar from 10-11), which happens to be the night the year changes. If you’re too busy eating sabzi polo ba mahi with your family, watching your Norooz goldfish to make sure it sees its reflection when the year changes, there’s Wednesday night’s Norooz party at Lima Lounge, which is free all night and has a couple of open bar slots. Both events have DJ Barbari (best DJ handle ever?) spinning Persian music, among other things.
We’ll Be Right Back
Pardon our absence – we’ve had some back-to-back out-of-town visitors here at Pars Arts headquarters in Brooklyn the last couple of weeks, but we’ll be back in full-force on the day after St. Patty’s. In the works? A review of “300″ that’ll make you want to unsign all those circulating petitions, book reviews, interviews, a new-movie heads-up, and more along those lines… so don’t go away.
See you on Sunday!