Tahmineh milani biography of christopher

Shirin Saeidi, The European Centre for the Study of Extremism

*This piece was drafted as part of the New Analysis of Shia Politics workshop. See POMEPS Studies 28 for the full collection.

Iran’s Hezbollah

Many people involved in the cultural production of Iran’s conservative right describe themselves as “Hezbollahi.” Although its origins can be traced back to the pre-revolutionary period, the Ansar-e Hezbollah (Partisans of Hezbollah) movement was formed in the years following the 1979 Iranian revolution. The term Hezbollah is Quranic, ambiguous, and at its root, utopian, making it a difficult concept to pin down. Iran’s Hezbollah claims to embody the ideology that helped form the more widely known Lebanese Hezbollah movement, established in 1985. For instance, Shahid Mostafa Chamran, who helped train fighters in Lebanon and was later killed during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), is one of the ideologues of Iran’s Hezbollah movement. Iran’s senior Hezbollah cultural activists are in communication with their counterparts in Lebanon. They meet Lebanese Hezbollah affiliates regularly to exchange ideas and experiences, and are often fluent in Arabic and English. A steadfast opposition to the Israeli state, a dedication to Iran’s Supreme Leader, and an individual commitment to pious behavior are central to the framework of both movements.

The real time cultural activism of the official Hezbollah front in Iran is understudied, in part because it has been impenetrable for Western researchers and journalists. As a doctoral student, I met influential leaders of the Hezbollah movement during fieldwork in Iran, because they also happen to be experts on the Iran-Iraq war, the topic of my dissertation. When I returned to Tehran in 2012, I noticed that the small Hezbollah cultural institutes that had existed during my 2007 to 2008 doctoral fieldwork, were now significantly larger. Additionally, the middle-aged men interested in the history of the 1979 revolution and

By Azadeh Farahmand
Daily Bruin Contributor

It is perilous to be an artist or intellectual in Iran,
outspoken about one’s critically political and social
sensibilities.

For Tahmineh Milani, making films about the contemporary plight
of Iranian women and publicly challenging the authority of the
theocratic state have brought about both thrills and
terror. 

And Milani’s arrest late last summer by Tehran’s
Revolutionary Court brought her to a wide national audience.

Milani will be in the UCLA James Bridges Theater on Friday
afternoon to speak to the public after a free screening of her film
“Two Women” at 3 p.m.

Milani’s arrest produced a wave of alarm beyond the
Iranian borders, a call for urgent action by Amnesty International,
and a declaration of solidarity signed by over 1,500 people from
around the world, among them Francis Ford Coppola, Marina
Goldovskaya, Hanif Kureishi, Ang Lee, Chris Marker and Oliver
Stone.

Milani’s latest film, “The Hidden Half”
(2001), which opened in the Laemmle Music Hall last month, was a
pretext for her arrest on the account that she had used the medium
of art to portray leftist activists in a favorable
light. Ironically, like all domestically produced films in
Iran, “The Hidden Half” had already undergone state
censorship and approval for both its production and release.

“When we heard that she was in L.A. and that she was
interested in coming to UCLA, we wanted to do everything we could
to express our solidarity, to have her come here, show her film and
speak about her experience,”said Cheng-Sim Lim, programmer
for the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive, which has co-organized the
upcoming event on Friday, has been an avid supporter of Iranian
programs in the past few years.  Iranian film series have
consis

Women in Iranian cinema have been portrayed in many different ways. The feminist perspective has received the most attention from audiences, owing to its appeal and the realistic contributions it can provide in an Iranian context. Iranian women confront many obstacles in their daily life and struggle to get their due rights as human beings, issues which have been appropriately addressed in the works of two major Iranian filmmakers, Bahram Beyzai and Tahmine Milani. The present essay, brief as it is, aims to show the Iranian portrayal of women from a feminist view point as depicted in the works of Bahram Beyzai and Tahmine Milani, as symbols of Iranian cinema. The major concerns dealt with in the works are: the search for female identity; woman’s position in society; woman’s physical and spiritual self; woman’s power and career, and woman’s interpersonal relationships. In this regard, two influential works by these two successful filmmakers, Killing Rabids (2009) and The Fifth Reaction (2004), will be analyzed to reveal how they represent Iranian women’s social and cultural position. It is my belief that such artistic works have a great impact on Iranian women’s awareness and struggle for social improvement.

Since the 1990s the Iranian film industry has flourished, with many films and filmmakers being honored with international awards, such as Children of Heaven (1997) by Majid Majidi, Gabbeh (1996) by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Life and Nothing But (1989) by Abbas Kiarostami, The Fifth Reaction (2003) by Milani, Rabid Killing (2001) by Beyzaie, and About Elly (2009) by Asghar Farhadi, to name a few.

Iranian films deal with simple but profound subject matters taken from the realities of Iranian daily life. The issues concerning Iranian women have their specific place in Iranian cinema, and are addressed by many Iranian filmmakers, including the two treated here, Bahram Beyzaie and Tahmine Mila