25 march 2009
Amsterdam
Everyday there is news about Iran and the USA in the papers. It seems the whole world is waiting to see what will happen in the future, nobody is believing anything. Not words anyway. Iran had its new year and we hope to het a small movie from our reporter Pantea there soon. She just returned to Iran to live there a while. She is 18, finished highschool and wants to live in the country she left when she was 2,5.
In the meantime you vcan read some observations, i wrote for Images and voices of hope:
www.ivoh.org:
In the days surrounding the election of President Obama, Maartje Nevejan, director of Couscous Global, asked American teenagers what they would like to ask their peers in Iran. In the first 2 weeks of February 2009 Maartje collected the answers in Tehran.
Images of Hope:
A whole private party dancing at 8 although it only started at 7.
Girls alone reading in a café, just like Paris.
No billboards of naked women on the streets.
Houses with graffiti that has no propaganda in it.
A girl skating on the music of DJ Tiësto, with pink hair peeping under her scarf.
A Venus statue of 7000 years ago. The realisation that if something is old enough, it becomes modern by itself.
No Idols, Big Brother, Skating on Ice, or American soap- series on TV.
After days of Nescafé a perfect café latte in front of me in café Godot.
Two black chadors casual waving in the wind.
Cool teenagers assuring me that in 2 years time Bush will be a hero instead of the worst president ever, "It is great what he did in Afghanistan and with Sadam".
Girls on the street with make-up and colourful scarfs, a band-aid on their nose from the nose job everyone gets at 18, smiling and flirting in their half long tweed coats.
All the tears I saw in the eyes of people and the ones in my own eyes.
Ahmadinejad who, after listening to the symphony for 30 years of Islamic Revolution, climbs on stage and proclaims that "We need more music for social events.More music!"
YouTube and FaceBook popping up on my laptop without censorship.
Everybody crossing the street when the light is red.
Snowboarding, skiing and bungy jumping 30 minutes from Teheran.
Laughing girls chatting English and French in a safe-house for prostitutes, infidels and refugees.
Black eyes expressing the hurt and humaliation of being called (Axis of) Evil. My cheeks red of shame witnessing this. The humour afterwards about the dumbness of both worlds.
The beauty of the Iranian women, all looking like Sophia Loren in the 50's or Amy Winehouse before she became a crackhead.Thank God they have to hide in chadors....we Western women would not have a chance.....
My male and female collegues, young filmmakers, being beautifully styled, perfect hosts and chefs at 20 years old.
Airport Khomeini in Tehran: 100 times more modern and cleaner than JFK New York.
Voices of Hope:
A boy who studies Baroque music for years, starts the first underground Baroque orchestra in the country, for baroque being decadent and Western is forbidden. " This music makes me cry" he says" and not because I am sad".
A girl practicing Industrial Rock music, which is Satanic and thus forbidden. She has send a demo tape made in her room to the USA and got a contract to play there.
The morning laughing, giggling and twitter of young girls in black chadors walking to school.
Leila, being sold by her mother at 9, put in jail for prostitution at 14, sentenced to be hanged at 15, then rescued by a safehouse and now, at 18, learning to read and write for the first time. She reads aloud for me.
The voice of Nafisi in the book: reading Lolita in Tehran.
The music we share on our mobile telephones while hanging in a telecabine for 8 km. high up in the mountains.
A girl saying " the whole issue of chadors and veils is soooo old-fashioned and over the hill. It doesn't mean anything anymore, it is just something you have to do."
A girl who came back after 4 years of studying abroad saying: "Before I left I never even thought about my veil, it was just the way it was, But now my veil hurts me every day, it really hurts."
Farideh answering how she copes with the daily restrictions:" I see it as a game, it is quite fun to invent things around the system."
A rap-girl of 21, wanting o be interviewed on tape: "I was alone when I was young, now I want to speak out. There are more girls like me and I want them to know that they are not alone".
Intellectuals from abroad, Europe and the USA, who al come back to start art galleries, movie companies, press agencies:" It is just like NYC in the '80. So exiting. You just have to go out of the country every 3 months to get rid of he poison, that's all."
A dancer teling about her experience of seing people naked in the dressing room and on stage in the West:" I was so shocked in the beginning, but after a while I got used to it. I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing".
All the interviews I had were actually voices of hope for me and proof that people are just incredible creative, inventive and intelligent.
Being in Iran for the first time has had many levels.
There was this frequent feeling of falling through realities and value systems of good and bad. Being close to Hafez, and very close to Ahmadinejad at the same time.
The first writing poetry about his love of red wine
The latter punishing anyone who drinks it....
And the common folks, living between the two,
Loving Hafez in their private sphere
And submit to the laws of the Ahmadinejad & Co outside, in the public sphere.
There is an opening now for dialogue between the USA and Iran
Countries who are both filled with propaganda about each other.
It will be exiting to witness if and how the conversation will develop....
As Hafez wrote in 1300 AC:
"There are different wells within us.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far, far too deep
For that."
Maartje Nevejan is an awarded Dutch director of documentaries, for Dutch Public Broadcast as well as for Al Jazeera. Her last TV-series " Couscous and Cola" was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2008.
View Maartje's gallery of Iran photos.
The website www.couscousglobal.com is on air since August 2008.
Nevejan was a participant in the 2008 summit of IVOF in New York.
