The Iranian Features
March 1-5, 1999 / Esfand 10-15,1377
Today
* Nation:
The last country
Recent
* Los Angeles:
Interview in LA LA land
* Film:
Shining rotten apple
* Women:
To live or to be alive?
* Cover
story: Monica & Bill
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Friday,
March 5, 1999
Nation
The last country
They want a country? This is the time
By Mansoureh Haqshenas and
Koorosh Bayat
- You know, the U.N. has about 200 members now. Several states were
created after the break-up of the Soviet Union and most-likely you're going
to see Palestine as an independent country in a counple of years or so.
But that's about it. You aren't going to see any new significant countries
for many many years. Except for one. We will have our country too. The
last country.
- You name if babe; it's yours. Mansouria... the Islamic Republic
of Mansouria. Yeah! ... GO
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Thursday
March 4, 1999
Los Angeles
Interview in LA LA land
Akhy, the supernova of the Iranian music scene, speaks... unfortunately
By Hamid Taghavi
Recently, my friend Faramarz who has a nasty habit of producing TV programming
for the L.A. based Iranian TV stations asked me to sub for him and interview
an "artist" in his place because he had something very urgent
to take care of. Apparently, his younger brother Q-mars in Texas had gone
mad and had decided to get married. Faramarz was flying out there to talk
some sense into him and convince him to get off Satan's donkey.
I told him I didn't know how to interview artists, especially in front
of a camera, and he told me not to worry and just ask them how they feel,
since that's how they always interview people on L.A.'s Iranian TV stations.
In prepration for the interview, I called up the manager.
"May I speak to Mr Mooshy?" ... GO
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Wednesday
March 3, 1999
Film
Shining rotten apple
A horrific film that must be seen
By Jasmin Darznik
Samira Makhmalbaf is exacting, indicting in her telling of [The Apple]
. Her camera lingers at length over this abnormally infantile pair of twin
girls. She fixes her gaze on their pained attempts at communication. And
she forces us to see them.
I am convinced that "The Apple" is a story that the West has
been waiting for Iran tell about itself. To this young director's infinite
credit, it is much more than this.
Makhmalbaf has an eye for cruelty, but she has an eye, too, for the
tenacity of the human soul, its delight in beauty even when mercilessly
fettered. The girls play a game of fingerprinting on the walls, delighting
in their imprints. Straining against their bars, they water a plant in
the courtyard and watch it grow. The film has many such moments of surprising
delight and tenderness ... GO
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Tuesday
March 2, 1999
Women
To live or to be alive?
That is the question for Iranian women
By Laleh Khalili
A woman is not to instigate conversations. She is to dance beautifully,
she is to entertain, she is to serve fruit and tea and food, but she is
not to begin conversations with strange men even at a party of friends.
She is the nurturer and the seductress. I fail miserably at these roles.
I voice my boredom. I don't hide my intelligence or my interests. I don't
dance too well. I laugh too loudly. I am more at home in "male"
conversations. I know not how to flirt or seduce in this particularly complex
Iranian way where you drive the man away and you call him back, where you
look at him from under your eyelashes, where a turn of the shoulder and
the motion of hesitant fingertips can be pregnant with meaning. I am something
else, perhaps unbecomingly unfeminine, dangerous perhaps, unknowingly so
... GO
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Monday
March 1, 1999
Cover story
Monica & Bill
Photos in memory of the Lewinsky affair
Photographs by Jahanshah Javid
People in Iran, along with the rest of the world, heard all about what
Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton did. They thought for a moment. Then they
laughed and laughed.
***
Mountains of reports and commentaries have made it more difficult to
put together a clear picture of this affair. But it all started here: there
was a man, there was a woman, there was an attraction and they did what
human beings do when they are attracted to each other. The rest is, well,
a matter of opinion. You can analyzeGO
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