Dear Michael,
How is life in Munich. Have you been to the movies recently ? You said you wanted to see “No-one knows about persian cats”, the movie about the rock-band in Teheran. We got it here from a friend of Shava in DVD. Its not exactly my most favorite style of music (a bid to rough and fast), but I like how the kids were fighting for their dreams, and was so funny that they not only had to struggle with the official politics that tried everything to block their music for its flavour of freedom and creativity. But in addition, they also had difficulties to be accepted by their parents, who found both the music and the way their kids dressed up very weird and dangerous. I liked this a lot, because this situation I know myself very well.
I want to ask you for something, maybe you can help. I read in a iranian news blog about a very impressive movie about the 2009 students protest (“The green wave” by Ali Samadi Ahadi). The movie was produced in Germany, and is planned to come to the cinema only in spring this year. But I googled and saw that the german TV channel “Phoenix” is going to show it already on the 11th of January, i.e tomorrow. Do you have a possibility to record the program ? This would be great. If you cannot record it, at least you may try to watch it and tell me what it is about.
I hope you are doing well,
taek care
/ghazal
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Hi Ghazal, my Dear,
It was nice reading you e-mail and hearing that you are well up. What a nice co-incidence, that you”ve got something that I was looking for since month (the movie “No one knows about Persian Cats”) and I will soon have something to give you in exchange (the record of the movie “the green wave”). It indeed will be shown on Phoenix TV tonight, and I set everything up to store it on hard-disk. Thanks a lot for this information, I probably would have missed it otherwise.
Have you started your PhD project already ? I guess you are quite bussy, this is normal at the very beginning.
Take Care, Michael
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Dear Ghazal,
The recording of the movie was successful. “The green wave” (german title is “Wo ist meine Stimme” aka “where is my vote”) is amazing, it is a realy artwork. It is mainly a record of the political protest during summer 2009 and the violent reactions of the police.
The scences are drawn like a cartoon movie, starting with vivid colours showing the peaceful student protests and their battle for a free iran. With the rising violent reactions of the police and security forces, their brutality against unarmed protesters and torture of the imprissoned students, the coulours of the movie turn more and more into a dark grey. These diary-like cartoons are supplemented with comments by Shirin Ebadi, Mohsen Kadivar and Mehdi Mohsen.
One of them said with a lot of frustration, that the people in the west are only concerned about the iranian nuclear activities, but did not care about the situation of the people in Iran. This might be true if you listen to the politicians in the west. But I can assure you that many of the educated and intellectual germans (and I guess europeans in general) follow the heroic fight of the people in Iran with great sympathy. When I saw the movie yesterday, a lot of memories came back to my mind of the political fights we had in 1989 and before, to tear down the iron-coutain in germany and to end the unjustice of the ruling political system, where a single party leaded by a handful of senile men decided about the life of 17 millions. I would say the situation was not easier, in the sense that their were only very few people brave enough to openly show their protest, much less then in Teheran. These were small groups, and when the security police came with one truck, then every single protester was guided away by two of the police men. Even among the students the number of those who decided to speak out loudely their disgrace and go out on the streets was absolutely neglectable, if I compare it to what we saw 2009 in Teheran. The pictures with tens or hundreds of thousand people walking on the streets of Berlin or Leipzig and demanding freedom were only seen after the political system already lost its omni-power. The more I admire the courage of the people in Iran, not to accept the unjustice and the lies of their gouvernment. I think hardly any other nation in the world deserves more freedom and justice than iran, since they have such an intellectual and cultural tradition.
