Iranian musician singer and song writer Mohsen Namjoo and Ensemble will be performing at the Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley (location details here) on Saturday April 28th at 7:30pm.
Vomena Team
Interview with Hamid Naficy
Hamid Naficy, a leading authority on Iranian cinema is Professor of Radio-Television-Film at Northwestern University. He is the author of An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles, and (in Persian) Film-e Mostanad, a two-volume history of nonfiction cinema around the world. Naficy helped to launch ongoing annual Iranian film festivals in Los Angeles and Houston.
UC Berkeley hosts the iranian film festival in April
The Iranian film festival will take place in UC Berkeley every weekends of April. This cultural event, organized by UC Berkeley’s Near Eastern Studies Department, will be entirely free.
Talks, lectures and screenings by reknowned filmmakers and professors will be programmed. Parviz Sayyad, Hamid Naficy, Bahram Beizai and Sahraa Karimi are part of the star guests to discover.
More about the program on this page.
Vomena team.
Jaffar Panahi’s “this is not a film” in San Francisco
The SF film society will screen “This is not a film” from the prominent director Jafar Panahi. This coming friday (April 6th) to the 12th, you can watch the movie at the following adress 1746 Post Street (Webster/Buchanan)>
“A Separation” Makes it to Oscar Shortlist
A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin), a film by Asghar Farhadi
By: Kiazad Ehya
As the film’s title suggests, director Asghar Farhadi’s film A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin), is about the separation of a married couple, but the story is actually centered on the complex interpersonal relationships between an upper class secular liberal couple and that of an impoverished religiously devoted Muslim couple. The complexities are deep, and Farhadi tries to not take the side of one family over the other in the film.
“I think A Separation is a detective story without any detectives…The film raises questions instead of imposing ideas and answers,” said Asghar Farhadi, the films director.
Women’s World in Qajar Iran
Harvard University About the WWQI Project Goals and Scope
The goal of Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran is to address a gap in scholarship and understanding of the lives of women during the Qajar era (1796 – 1925) in Iran by developing a comprehensive digital resource that preserves, links, and renders accessible primary-source materials related to the social and cultural history of women’s worlds in Qajar Iran. Through the use of technology it brings together little known archives scattered across the world.
Violence in Yemen; Graphic Novel of Iran’s Green Revolution
Zahra's Paradise is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young Iranian protestor who has disappeared in the Islamic Republic’s gulags.
This week’s Voices of the Middle East and North Africa, we explore the escalation in violence in Yemen’s capital Sanaa persists as military forces loyal to president Ali Abdullah Saleh have continued their assaults on protestors for the past four days. We’ll speak with Atiaf al Wazir, a Yemeni-American blogger and activist based in the nation’s capital Sanaa.
We’ll also speak with University of Richmond political scientist Sheila Carapico about how external powers are attempting to shape Yemen’s future.
Later in the program, we’ll feature a new graphic novel about an Iranian family’s search for their 19-year-old son after he disappears during a protest in the aftermath of the rigged 2009 presidential election in Iran. We’ll speak with Amir, who’s the author of the graphic novel Zahra’s Paradise.
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Turkey’s Role in MENA Region; Interview with Firoozeh Kashani
This week on Voices of The Middle East and North Africa we will be looking at Turkey’s expanding role in the Middle East and North Africa. We will be speaking with Dr. Karem Oktem, a research fellow at the European Studies Center of Saint Anthony’s College about Turkey’s foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa. Later on in the program, VOMENA producer Shuka Kalantari will speak with Iranian-American author, Firoozeh Kashani of Penn State University about her debut novel ‘Martyrdom Street.’
turkey
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Turkey’s Role in the MENA region; Discussion of Firoozeh Kahani’s “Martydrom Street”
Turkish Flag
This week on Voices of the Middle East and North Africa, we take an in-depth look at Turkey’s expanding role in the Middle East and North Africa. We will be speaking with Dr. Karem Oktem; a research fellow at the European Studies Center of Saint Anthony’s College; about Turkey’s assertive foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa. Later on in the program VOMENA producer Shuka Kalantari will speak with Iranian American author Firoozeh Kashani of Penn State University about her debut novel “Martydom Street.”
'Martydrom Street' book cover
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Libya & Iran Updates; Cheb i Sabbah Fundraiser
Libya Uprsing (photo by Shabaka Bark)
This week on Voices of The Middle East and North Africa, we speak with Libyan Professor Ahmida from the University of New England to update us on the current situation in Libya. We will also speak with KPFA’s music programmer Kutay Kugay about the July 8th fundraiser for Bay Area based musical pioneer Cheb i Sabbah who has been diagnosed with cancer. We also discuss the state of political prisoners in Iran and talk with Executive Director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran Hadi Ghaemi.
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