Lunch Time — Like Mother, Like Daughter

A young woman waits nervously in a hospital waiting room to perform the grim task of identifying her mother’s body. But there’s an issue — she is a woman, and a minor, and is not allowed to see her mother’s remains unless accompanied by her father, brother, or older male relative.

In the sixteen minute film, Lunch Time, Iranian filmmaker, Alireza Ghasemi, portrays her obstacles and desperate actions revealing how male interference with her mission runs much deeper than simply seeing her mother. In fact, Ghasemi shows a troubling narrative of domination passing from mother to daughter.

Nour Festival in London Features Middle East Visual and Performing Art 20 October Through 6 November

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The Arab Puppet Theatre Foundation

Those lucky enough to be in London right now will enjoy a spectacular treasure trove of culture from the Middle East. Each year the city hosts the Nour Festival featuring visual art, literature, music, and performance — this year, from fifteen countries. Appropriately, the themes of this year’s festival focus on topics of displacement and conflicted identity as millions of people are driven from homelands by war forcing them into exile and causing them to face challenges that migration brings. read more

Don’t Go to Iran, or Maybe Let’s Go

Okay, so Iran has a lot of work ahead in the realm of human rights, although many other countries do too. And even if this is a promotional video, we can agree that the greatness and beauty of Iran are its people, cities and countryside — and that beauty exists above and beyond its politics and shortcomings. Should we not go? read more

Iranian Women and Their Robots

The women are on board for the RoboCup IranOpen 2016, an international research and educational initiative whose purpose is to increase exploration of artificial intelligence along with supporting technology and engineering. And of course, being Iran, the presiding themes are those of domination of one group over another — conquering those who oppose you — aggressively undermining opponents — or, as they like to call it, soccer. read more