This program features a group of Iranian women filmmakers, both in Iran and in diaspora. These films are best described within the frame of documentary and experimental work, exploring ideas such as identity, war, immigration, and womanhood.

This program was curated by Homa Sarabi and Ghazaal Bakhtazad. Sarabi is an artist and educator from Iran. She works primarily with moving images and examines the potential of documentary in personal storytelling. She is an affiliated faculty at Emerson College, where she teaches 16mm experimental filmmaking. Bakhtazad is a filmmaker and an activist. She is a professional lighting technician who is committed to empowering women who enter the patriarchal world of cinema in Iran.

30/900 by Shirin Maleki
A video installation exploring a once familiar and now estranged everyday landscape of a life left behind. The videos read the fragmented experience of an immigrant going through temporary residencies in a forever-liminal otherness between departure and a promised arrival.

LOST IN HER HAIR by Pegah Pasalar
Starts with an excited young Iranian girl getting ready for her first day of school. As her mother is brushing her hair and dressing her, she has varied conversations with off-frame family members that reflect cultural specificities.

WHEREVER THE WAR, WHOEVER THE ENEMY by Anisa Hosseinnejad
Depicts the battlefields imagined by the U.S. Military. War machinery and soldiers are erased from the 2018 U.S. Army Advertisement Campaign, “Warrior’s Wanted.” The imagined landscapes of war and the artifacts of digital manipulation are left behind.

WATER FOLKS by Azadeh Bizargiti
The story of a group of fisherwomen in the south of Iran. Supporting their families by their work.

HOW GREEN WAS OUR VALLEY by Fereshteh Joghataee
A poetic story of the struggles of a village to stay above water as the neighboring dam threatens their landfills.

In Persian with English subtitles

Brattle passes not accepted