Animations and documentaries from the "Films from and for Iran" program, currated by Another Gaze, a online feminist publication.
Minuet For A Disappearance - Maaman Rezaee (2016, 6’) is a visual poem, written and crafted by the filmmaker for her father, a political prisoner in Iran. Along with drawings on 16mm film and a violin piece from her childhood, her father's letters, his gifts, his phone calls and a stealthily-recorded video from within the prison walls, constitute the verses.
And Their Eyes Were Not Watching Us - Maaman Rezaee (2020, 2’) - This film is a response to the violence and horror that ensued during the 2019 protests in Iran. And it's a protest itself to the whole world entertaining their eyes as over 100 men, women and children were killed on the streets of Iran.
Dream of Silk - Nahid Rezaei (2003, 43') - In Dream of Silk, director Nahid Rezai returns to her all-girls high school twenty-five years later to explore the lives of young girls in contemporary Tehran. In this candid exploration of their dreams and hopes, the girls are at times shockingly open, often sweet, and occasionally sad as they talk about the future.
Harat - Sepideh Farsi (2007, 75') - Sepideh and Darya. Mother and daughter. A successful young filmmaker and a child with clear ideas about how to make a film. Together they make a long journey to meet members of their large family: From Paris to Tehran and further beyond the Afghanistan border. By air, train, car, they never leave the tools of their trade: two video cameras, one of which is so small that it goes by unseen. On the way, they encounter landscapes, villages, voices and faces, too long separated by distance or disparate destinies. Travel time, story time: at night, Sepideh transforms their story into a bedtime lullaby for her daughter. The complex ramifications of a genealogical tree are gathered in a subtle family album.