Category: Review
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Being Hassan for Morocco
A photographer, designer, and filmmaker, Hassan Hajjaj is one of Morocco’s preeminent international artists, sometimes called his native country’s answer to Andy Warhol. Entirely self-taught and influenced by a mix of London’s hip-hop and reggae scenes and his North African heritage, Hajjaj has a diverse practice that includes portraiture, installation, performance, fashion, and furniture design.…
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Illusionist Painter
Rob Gonsalves is a 55-year-old Canadian of Portuguese descent who paints scenes that fill in the space somewhere in between everyday activities and hallucinations. His images contain dual representations of reality—with his particular artistry forming at the intersection between fantasy and nonfiction. At just 12 years old, Gonsalves began acquiring perspective drawing skills and giving…
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Iranian Homosexuals in an Album
Born to Iranian parents but growing up with Swiss upbringing gave Laurence Rasti critical mind that has a flavors of both culture. In her project “There Are No Homosexuals in Iran “, we can see the alternative perspective that she brought to a social issue in Iran. “In Denizli, a small town in Turkey, hundreds of Iranian gay refugees have put…
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The Loss of High Culture
This loss of high culture is not an American phenomenon alone. English intellectual and artistic life has fallen off greatly since the generation of Evelyn Waugh, Isaiah Berlin, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. England now appears to be Mick Jagger’s country. The English novel, as written by Martin Amis, Ian -McEwan, and Salman Rushdie, attracts more publicity…
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Iranian Living Room
Middle East has been the center of attention for the last decade or so not only by anthropologists or sociologists or even economists but by the ordinary people of all walks of life. This time the orientalisim is not organized curiosity of gathering the information for the old ways of colonialism, this time it is…
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Iranian New Wave Cinema – Fat Shaker
The Fat Shaker, a movie written, produced and directed by Mohammad Shirvani, literally does what its title suggests: it shakes. Shirani’s intentional use of a digital handheld, and very shaky, camera, takes us on a roller coaster of highs and lows surrounding a morbidly obese father, Levon Haftvan, and his deaf, mute, son’s relationship. When…
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At the End of 8th Street
With her brother on the death row for murder, Niloofar, Taraneh Alidoosti, has only three days, to come up with blood money, Diya, to be paid to the victim’s next of kin, or her brother will be executed. This is the main story around which a series of events take place in the movie, the…
