BBC Radio 3 – Iran Special

BBC3’s flagship arts and ideas programme Nightwaves invited us on to take a look at Iran this week, this is your last chance to listen. Originally we were meant to cover A Separation, This is Not a Film and the ambitious The House of Bernarda Alba, somehow Panahi’s letter from Iran This Is Not a … Continue reading →

Middle Eastern Photography – 12th & 18th December

Omid Salehi “My Car is My Love” series Highlights of a conversation between writer Malu Halasa with curator Rose Issa at the National Portrait Gallery December 2011. “Documentary portrayals of reality can threaten the preferred narratives of authoritarian religious regimes […] and can also thwart Western misconceptions.”  From the pamphlet by Malu Halasa Alternative Histories … Continue reading →

How Tea-Drinking Has Calmed Us Over Many Generations…

This month Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai shows ‘Obscure Stream of Life, But I’m Still Having My Afternoon Cuppa’ by Iranian artist Bita Fayyazi, with whom we speak, for this week’s Six Pillars to Persia. Comparing Fayyazi’s decisively instinctive modus operandi and her tumultuous underlying concerns to the stream-of-consciousness writing of that towering figure … Continue reading →

Leeds International Film Festival – Monday 7th November

This week’s show takes a look at the Leeds International Film Festival, and the two films in the line-up that deal with Iranian culture. “Miss Dalloway, a young woman from Tehran’s high society, is sent to Paris by her parents to protect her from the political violence in Iran. She falls in love with Gecko, … Continue reading →

Three Women – Competition

We have ten tickets to give away for a 9-11pm screening on September 5th at Cine Lumiere, 17 Queensberry Place London, SW7 2DT. UK Iranian Film Festival celebrate summer with a series of imaginative events, of which this screening of a poetic study of contemporary women in Iran is one. Iran / 2008 / 94 … Continue reading →

A Mystic’s War on Terror….

At the Omar Khayyam Society’s event A Mystic’s War on Terror, Autumn 2010, we caught up with the main Sufi speaker Ammat Un Nur. Read her speech from the night on the above link, a speech that contained the quote by Jimi Hendrix who said, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, … Continue reading →

Women Without Men – Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan

Film still: one of the characters momentarily flies, launching herself from the rooftop. How do you explain the interior workings of such a complex and beautiful thing as a woman? It’s a task that is never straightforward if the story being told is to have any integrity. Add to that the complexities of Iranian society … Continue reading →

Iran Symposium Tomorrow in London

The 7th programme in our series on ‘The Idea of Iran’ explores a critical period of Iranian history, when the Abbasids’s power in Baghdad waned and a series of autonomous Iranian dynasties (Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids and Buyids) emerged in the eastern provinces. Around 1000 CE the Ghaznavid and Seljuq sultans took over, their arrival marked … Continue reading →

A Contemporary Iranian Music Event & Maria Kheirkhah

Most Iranian parents want their children to be lawyers or doctors, so how do aspiring musicians fare with their parents when making out-of-the-ordinary career choices and what does contemporary music mean to most young Iranians? Fari Bradley reports from the Contemporary Iranian Music event at the Camden Underworld and interviews artist Maria Kheirkhah live in … Continue reading →

Critics Choice – The Independent 25th Feb

Six Pillars to Persia is today’s critic’s choice in The Independent. Click here for the high def version. Many thanks to artist Amanda Moss, who texted to let us know. Continue reading →