Reflect­ing on Freedom

If tyran­ni­cal dic­ta­tor­ship or “thought police” are beyond your expe­ri­ence, Foggy Bot­tom neigh­bor Azar Nafisi’s bril­liant and insight­ful essay begins with the premise “how frag­ile are rights we take for granted” as she unfolds her expe­ri­ence as a lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor in Tehran dur­ing 1979. “The Repub­lic of the Imag­i­na­tion,” exam­ines literature’s power to lib­er­ate minds and a nation’s spirit.

At this time when it seems many democ­ra­cies are being chal­lenged, we rec­og­nize the brave souls whose fam­i­lies and lives con­tinue to be at risk for voic­ing their con­cern in ques­tion of the recent Iran­ian elec­tion results.

For­bid­den to assem­ble dur­ing the day, the ever­re­source­ful Ira­ni­ans prac­ticed the non­vi­o­lent resis­tance of Gandhi and Mar­tin Luther King (shaped by New Eng­lan­der, Thoreau’s 1849 essay “Civil Dis­obe­di­ence”). They went to their roofs nightly with pro­longed chant­ing “Allahu Akbar”– God is Great. A June 28 LA Times arti­cle reported that pro-government mili­ti­a­men stormed neigh­bor­hoods, dam­ag­ing pri­vate prop­er­ties and assault­ing civil­ians in an attempt to stop the nightly chants, “rem­i­nis­cent of protests that erupted in the months that led to the 1979 Islamic Rev­o­lu­tion.” Arrests have broad­ened to those “per­ceived” as sympathetic.

WFI’s Iran­ian Film Night with Vigil
For an intro­duc­tion to Iran­ian cul­ture, Fri­day July 31, Wash­ing­ton Film Insti­tute is hold­ing Iran­ian Film Night at Carnegie Insti­tu­tion. The pro­gram includes an hour of clas­si­cal Per­sian music and a can­dle­light Vigil in addi­tion to two con­tem­po­rary Iran­ian movies.

Pro­gram Notes:
7:30 pm FILM: Ethe­real (“Asiri”) star­ring Khus­raw Shak­ibayi directed by Moham­mad Ali Saj­jadi Saman­dar and Khor­shid are liv­ing in an apart­ment given as their wed­ding present by Samandar’s father. Mean­while, Khor­shid is mys­te­ri­ously con­nected to a ghost who reveals a crime exe­cuted by Samandar’s father and uncle. Scary stuff ensues.

9 pm: Roya Bahrami
With over 22 years of expe­ri­ence per­form­ing on her Per­sian san­tur, she has stud­ied the Per­sian Clas­si­cal reper­toire (radif) with the lead­ing mas­ters of the art form on san­tur, setar and tar with Mae­stros Lotfi, Alizadeh, and Talai.She has stud­ied san­tur tech­niques with Sha­hariar Saleh, Esmail Tehrani and Kazem Davood­ian; daf with Esfan­diar Shah-Mir; piano and vocal train­ing with Gol­noush Khaleghi; fla­menco baile (dance) with Lour­des Elias, Jaime Coro­n­ado, cante (chant) with Mar­ija Temo, Jesus Mon­toya, and palos (har­monies and rhythms) with Richard ‘Ricardo’ Marlow

10 pm FILM: The Crime
(“Jenayat”) directed by Moham­mad Ali Saj­jadi After mur­der­ing and rob­bing a wealthy man, Siavash leaves the only wit­ness to the crime alive and goes into hid­ing. When a police inspec­tor vis­its and he receives a threat­en­ing phone call, Siavash goes in search of the witness.