I am following Change_for_Iran on Twitter, which is pointing me to some photo sets and other information on what is happening in Iran right now. Here are two links.
I don't entirely know the value of watching - on one hand it feels voyeuristic. I'm hoping the value is to know, and that's enough to start. I wish there were more we could do.
Here is a very large slideshow of photos from the past couple of days: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fhashemi/sets/72157619758530748/show/. Some of these are very graphic.
Lotfan.org is run by independent group of Iranian individuals living in Toronto and concerned about Iran's future.
6/18/2009
6/15/2009
American Journalist and Filmmaker in Iran
My friend James Longley is a documentary filmmaker working in Tehran. I wrote to check in on him today, and he wrote back with an account of what has been happening for him there.
June 14, 3:51 pm
"About three hours ago I was interviewing people on the street in downtown Tehran with my translator, not far from the Ministry of Interior building.
There were some riot police about 100 meters away at the other end of the street.
A couple people spoke to the camera – one young woman was saying that "The riot police are beating people like animals. The situation here is very bad; we need the UN to come and help with a recount of the votes!"
At about that time a plain-clothes security guy started grabbing my arm, and together with several uniformed police they dragged me and my translator off to the Ministry of Interior building.
I fared much better than my translator, whom they punched and kicked in the groin. They ripped off his ID and snatched away both our cameras. A passing police officer sprayed my translator in the face with pepper spray, although he was already being marched along the pavement by three policemen.
Unfortunately my camera was still recording and the battery was dislodged in the hubbub, destroying the video file of the interview.
As we reached the Ministry of Interior building they separated us and dragged my translator by his arms across the floor and down a flight of stairs; he eventually regained his footing on the second two flights of stairs leading downward to the holding cell, where about twenty people who had already been grabbed off the streets were kneeling on the floor in the darkened room with their hands tied behind their backs.
All during this process my translator was being kicked and sworn at. The police told him how they "would put their dicks in his ass" and how "your mother/sister is a whore" and so on. At one point he was beaten with a belt buckle. At another moment, they beat him with a police truncheon across his back, leaving a nasty welt.
My translator kept on insisting that he was an officially authorized translator working with an American journalist – which is perfectly true.
At this time I was above ground, in the entrance to the ministry, yelling over and over at the police to "Bring me my translator!" It was clear that they didn't intend to beat me – although they may have wanted to – because I was a foreigner.
After a few minutes they relented and sent someone off to retrieve my translator from their holding cell, three floors down in the Ministry of Interior building.
They came into the holding cell and shouted "Where is the translator?!" and then, when he identified himself, they beat him again for "not telling them he was a translator."
An English-speaking riot policeman tried to sweet-talk me, saying that in a riot situation anything can happen. I might have taken him more seriously had a riot actually been taking place when we were arrested. He also asked my translator to convince me not to report what had happened.
Eyewitnesses are reporting that fully-credentialed foreign journalists are similarly being detained all over Tehran today. The deputy head of the Ministry of Guidance just told me on the phone that other journalists have also been beaten, and that the official permissions no longer work. Also, foreign journalist visas are not being extended, so all of those people who were allowed in to cover the elections are now being forced out in the messy aftermath.
All in all, it made me really question what I am doing in this country. It has become impossible to work as a journalist without the risk of physical violence from the government."
James asked me to post this photo, as a way for him illustrate that, at the time they were detained, the scene around them was not a riot.
June 14, 3:51 pm
"About three hours ago I was interviewing people on the street in downtown Tehran with my translator, not far from the Ministry of Interior building.
There were some riot police about 100 meters away at the other end of the street.
A couple people spoke to the camera – one young woman was saying that "The riot police are beating people like animals. The situation here is very bad; we need the UN to come and help with a recount of the votes!"
At about that time a plain-clothes security guy started grabbing my arm, and together with several uniformed police they dragged me and my translator off to the Ministry of Interior building.
I fared much better than my translator, whom they punched and kicked in the groin. They ripped off his ID and snatched away both our cameras. A passing police officer sprayed my translator in the face with pepper spray, although he was already being marched along the pavement by three policemen.
Unfortunately my camera was still recording and the battery was dislodged in the hubbub, destroying the video file of the interview.
As we reached the Ministry of Interior building they separated us and dragged my translator by his arms across the floor and down a flight of stairs; he eventually regained his footing on the second two flights of stairs leading downward to the holding cell, where about twenty people who had already been grabbed off the streets were kneeling on the floor in the darkened room with their hands tied behind their backs.
All during this process my translator was being kicked and sworn at. The police told him how they "would put their dicks in his ass" and how "your mother/sister is a whore" and so on. At one point he was beaten with a belt buckle. At another moment, they beat him with a police truncheon across his back, leaving a nasty welt.
My translator kept on insisting that he was an officially authorized translator working with an American journalist – which is perfectly true.
At this time I was above ground, in the entrance to the ministry, yelling over and over at the police to "Bring me my translator!" It was clear that they didn't intend to beat me – although they may have wanted to – because I was a foreigner.
After a few minutes they relented and sent someone off to retrieve my translator from their holding cell, three floors down in the Ministry of Interior building.
They came into the holding cell and shouted "Where is the translator?!" and then, when he identified himself, they beat him again for "not telling them he was a translator."
An English-speaking riot policeman tried to sweet-talk me, saying that in a riot situation anything can happen. I might have taken him more seriously had a riot actually been taking place when we were arrested. He also asked my translator to convince me not to report what had happened.
Eyewitnesses are reporting that fully-credentialed foreign journalists are similarly being detained all over Tehran today. The deputy head of the Ministry of Guidance just told me on the phone that other journalists have also been beaten, and that the official permissions no longer work. Also, foreign journalist visas are not being extended, so all of those people who were allowed in to cover the elections are now being forced out in the messy aftermath.
All in all, it made me really question what I am doing in this country. It has become impossible to work as a journalist without the risk of physical violence from the government."
James asked me to post this photo, as a way for him illustrate that, at the time they were detained, the scene around them was not a riot.
6/09/2009
Smackdown bears results
An artist named Kahlil Almustafa put the advice some of us gave on the Field's Smackdown panel last month to good use. I'm so happy that what we talked about had a direct impact on him and his working partner. See here: An Honest Conversation About Money
6/07/2009
TCG Post-show Exchange
Morgan v P Pecelli and Andy Horwitz (aka "I'd rather watch the fat kid dance" and "Culturebot") have a couple posts up in response to this year's TCG conference.
http://culturebot.org
http://idratherwatchthefatkiddance.blogspot.com/
I was there for several hours, accepting an award given to ERS for innovation in the field.
Taken together, Morgan and Andy's posts, plus my quick window on the conference can perhaps offer a good measure of several field-wide issues:
1. No one knows quite what to do. Many of the ideas trotted out at the conference seemed dated, but not all of them. And there was so much going on that there's no one person who could really take a complete pulse. It's too easy to be cynical, though. And it's clear we're not there yet.
2. Everyone making work is scared of losing what is most important - funding, audience, risk, buildings, staff, etc. This could be for financial reasons, reasons of larger culture irrelevancy, or other.
3. There is still a huge gap between the way those of us making work outside the confines of the regional or off-Broadway and Broadway worlds think of the process and function of the art form, from the way those inside that particular, teeny tiny beltway think about it.
4. But the parties are beginning to recognize the need to come closer together.
It was a real honor for ERS to get an award. Part of our increased visibility comes from the fact that we've been able to work both within and without more mainstream institutions. We're becoming equally at home at NYTW as we are at PS122 or the Collapsable Hole.
My hope is that the company's success navigating these several worlds can be an example that other large theaters can follow when working with ensembles and vice-versa. As I said at the awards ceremony, somewhere in every city there are a bunch of ambitious, scrappy dorks who could use a hand. If you have a theater space and it is part of a more mainstream establishment in that town, offering those dorky scrappy kids some space, a little bit of dough, some outreach, will make both your lives richer. You'll have new audiences and new ideas about the form; they'll have a chance to fall down a little bit without breaking the bank, pick themselves up again, and make the work sing its own song.
http://culturebot.org
http://idratherwatchthefatkiddance.blogspot.com/
I was there for several hours, accepting an award given to ERS for innovation in the field.
Taken together, Morgan and Andy's posts, plus my quick window on the conference can perhaps offer a good measure of several field-wide issues:
1. No one knows quite what to do. Many of the ideas trotted out at the conference seemed dated, but not all of them. And there was so much going on that there's no one person who could really take a complete pulse. It's too easy to be cynical, though. And it's clear we're not there yet.
2. Everyone making work is scared of losing what is most important - funding, audience, risk, buildings, staff, etc. This could be for financial reasons, reasons of larger culture irrelevancy, or other.
3. There is still a huge gap between the way those of us making work outside the confines of the regional or off-Broadway and Broadway worlds think of the process and function of the art form, from the way those inside that particular, teeny tiny beltway think about it.
4. But the parties are beginning to recognize the need to come closer together.
It was a real honor for ERS to get an award. Part of our increased visibility comes from the fact that we've been able to work both within and without more mainstream institutions. We're becoming equally at home at NYTW as we are at PS122 or the Collapsable Hole.
My hope is that the company's success navigating these several worlds can be an example that other large theaters can follow when working with ensembles and vice-versa. As I said at the awards ceremony, somewhere in every city there are a bunch of ambitious, scrappy dorks who could use a hand. If you have a theater space and it is part of a more mainstream establishment in that town, offering those dorky scrappy kids some space, a little bit of dough, some outreach, will make both your lives richer. You'll have new audiences and new ideas about the form; they'll have a chance to fall down a little bit without breaking the bank, pick themselves up again, and make the work sing its own song.
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