We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, January 14, 2019

State versus Film-makers: Criticising Iran's Regime Through Cinema (2002)

Click here if you wish to directly access the following 15 minute video from YouTube. The transcript of the video can be accessed here. (Edited the second to the last paragraph for greater clarity at 5:21 PM CT.)

I don't understand the various dates related to this uploaded post on YouTube, but I do understand why Western capitalist ideologues want to post such anti-Iranian views on the internet. In contrast to much of the anti-Iran propaganda this video describes true events, but the issues of censorship lack any kind of context. 

Thus, no effort is made to understand that Iran has suffered so many interventions from the US-led Empire in their affairs starting in 1953 with the Anglo-American coup that replaced the elected the Prime Minister of Iran Mosaddegh with the former Shah of Iran who was something like the queen/king of England. You see, Mosaddegh wanted to get rid of the British colonial control of Iran's oil resources bv the British oil company. The directors of the Empire knew that they could use the Shah to serve their interests. In 1979 the Iranians with the backing of religious authorities finally rid themselves of this colonial puppet Shah and since then the US-led Empire (some prefer "Anglo-American Empire") has put Iran on their shit-list. Recently and currently the Empire has both forbidden them to develop nuclear weapons and have imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran.

If Iran had not been interfered with, the religious authorities who exercise so much influence in today's Iran likely would not have had such power if the secular-oriented Mosaddegh and subsequent governments had not been targeted by the US Empire, and the Iranian film industry would not now experience such censorship.

Notice that starting about 11:05m the narrator and film director Farmanara accurately state that Hollywood films, or films in the West, can be just as restrictive with the financial control of which films are made and how they are made.