Heritage shmeritage
‘Preserving’ Iranian culture
March 25, 2005
iranian.com
New York has a network of dead Iranians. Last week they took
to the streets
to take part in the embarrassing and misnamed ‘Persian’ parade. Pick
up a copy of Persian Heritage magazine
and you will know what I mean. This local, bilingual rag, which benefits from
advertising the event, carries articles so
stale it can only have a readership of zombies. (Judging by its content, its
editor must have died shortly after Cyrus the Great). ‘Persian’ culture
is reduced to a few idiots waving flags wearing strange outfits and those inane
American smiles, happy and brain-dead. Even if you are not much of a flag-waver,
to see your country’s standard in the hands of escapees from Michael Jackson’s
Thriller video stirs objections.
Photographs published on this website chart the corpses plodding
around Manhattan bearing placards emblazoned with wit such as ‘The
Khorassani of Iran’ or ‘The Qashqaie of Iran’.
I suggest next year they all march under a single banner: ‘The kheyng of
Iran’.
Meanwhile, Iran Heritage
Foundation, a UK charity, is
busy ‘preserving’ Iranian culture in association with
London’s Victoria & Albert museum... and its long-running
love affair with film-maker Abbas Kiarostami continues. Here’s
their May programme in full:
Monday ‘Arabian lights, magic through a lens, and Kiarostami’:
a lecture by Time Out critic Geoff Onion.
Tuesday ‘Taa’ziyeh’: the director’s masterful
study of Islam through break-dancing.
Wednesday ‘Goats, camera,
action’: Kiarostami and the simple
genius of ‘magic reelism’.
Thursday ‘Recipe for success’: Ms. Atiqheh Qajar-Davenport
on Kiarostami’s influence on the Persian kitchen.
Friday ‘How Kiarostami nationalised the oil industry’:
a lecture by Professor Ahmad Karimi-Hikkup.
Saturday
‘Hejab and its limits’: Kiarostami directs the
Tehran All Star Women’s Synchronized-Swimming team live in
Hyde Park.
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