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On Newsnight Review this week Kirsty Wark is joined by Baroness Haleh Afshar, author and journalist Azadeh Moaveni and journalist Jonathan Freedland for a special programme on Iran. In the wake of the post-election uprising, we will be looking at how art and literature from Iran can inform our appreciation of the country's rich culture, and aid our understanding of its current troubles. We will also talk about the changing nature of street demonstrations - and how "citizen journalists" and the internet have changed our understanding of protests in countries where press freedoms are restricted.
Persepolis
Does the graphic novel-turned Oscar nominated movie Persepolis get to the heart of the contradictions and complexities of modern day Iran, or does it oversimplify them?
Persepolis began life as an autobiographical graphic novel
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Marjane Satrapi's account of growing up in Iran during the 1979 revolution, her move to Paris and mixed feelings towards her homeland, mirror the experience of the Iranian diaspora. In recent weeks Satrapi's cartoon images have been adapted on the internet to tell the story of the post-election uprising - the so called Persepolis 2.0 campaign. But is the image that Satrapi paints of Iran's politics too black and white? Persepolis is available on DVD.
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Nafisi book reveals an underground reading group
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Reading Lolita in Tehran is Iranian academic Azar Nafisi's account of the real story of a secret, female reading group in post revolutionary Tehran. Her students devour and discuss forbidden novels, and compare and contrast their own often harrowing experiences with those of fictional characters they encounter in literature, including Nabokov's Lolita. Margaret Atwood has described the novel as "a literary life raft on Iran's fundamentalist sea". But others have criticised Nafisi for adopting a too Western-looking approach to Iranian life, and suggest she is doing the work of American neo-conservatives in portraying Iranian culture as repressive. Reading Lolita in Tehran is published by Harper Collins.
Shirin
The Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami is also focussing on Iranian women's responses to romantic stories in his latest film, Shirin. Shirin is a 12th Century Persian poem about a doomed love triangle between the Queen of Armenia, The King of Persia, and a sculptor. But rather than tell us the story itself, Kiarostami's film concentrates on the responses of an audience of women watching a cinema screening of the tale, concentrating his gaze on the women's extreme reactions to the emotional highs and lows of the story. Shirin is on general release.
Made in Iran
Asia House in London is hosting an exhibition of works from a new generation of Iranian contemporary artists who grew up in the wake of the revolution and are all still living in Tehran.
The Asia House exhibition includes work by Simin Keramati
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Fashion, food, and city life all feature, but there is also work which has taken on a new found, and unintentional poignancy in the wake of recent events, including artist Simin Keramati's five foot high painting of a melancholic woman's face smeared with blood, and Shirin Aliabadi's photograph series Hybrid Girls - which depicts women with bleached blond hair, plastic surgery and caked in make-up. Made in Iran is at Asia House, London until 10 July 2009.
From the Tweets of Tehran
Iran is a highly computer-literate society, and the use of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to disseminate information, and disinformation, about the street protests has been one of the most fascinating aspects of recent weeks. It is how the world came to hear about the tragic death of the Iranian girl Neda - who has become a symbol of the protests. At the Royal Court Theatre in London on Wednesday night - a series of actors put together a short new play entirely based on Iran-related "tweets" from recent weeks.
Burma VJ
The Iranian protests have strong echoes of the so called Saffron Revolution in Burma two years ago, when thousands of monks rose up alongside Burmese people in protest against the ruling military junta. The new film Burma VJ charts the way that a network of video journalists risked their lives to film the protests and the military crackdown, and managed to disseminate their footage across the globe. Burma VJ is on general release from 17 July 2009.
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