ANOTHER IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY

Quite a few posts, back I included the photos of a couple of Iranian teenage girls in tight-fitting outfits, out on the Tehran town shopping. I called them the founding fathers of the Iranian revolution. I thought they were showing a lot of courage to be out their doing what they did and dressed as they were. It just seemed to me to be fitting that women would be the Thomas Jeffersons and George Washingtons of the Iranian freedom front rather than men. I must also wonder how our own Christian fundamentalists would be judging the dress and manner of these two young women? Wouldn't they be castigating the young women for dishonering their parents and acting up against authority? I have heard more than one Christian say nasty things about freedom. They have a slight tendency to honor obedience over freedom.

The following photo is of Samira Makhmalbaf, an 18 year old Iranian director who has already made two films that have received honors at Cannes.


“Blackboards” directed by Samira Makhmalbaf

"Originally released: 2000

"Teachers walk the mountains of the Iran-Iraq border, blackboards strapped to their backs, but no-one here seems to want their kind of learning. For many, Blackboards was one of the best films of 2000, a symbolic allegory worthy of Beckett. I'm not so sure. It's an important work, with moments of visual beauty and dark humour, but never achieves the tone of transcendence it strains for. Where The Apple transfigured a real story through its compassion, Blackboards seems to use Kurdish suffering rather coldly, clinically - especially compared to A Time For Drunken Horses, a simpler but perhaps more effective film rooted in the same setting."

—SF Said (Found on the internet.)

My wife and I checked this film out of the Spokane Public Library, watched it this weekend, and it was a very interesting film.

PS: These are the dog days for my garden. I don't have enough late blooming perennials and many of my plants have leaves that go ratty in August. As I was doing some watering tonight, I realized how bad things were getting to look. Plus, I haven't been keeping up on dividing some of my plants that have been around for four years. They're looking bad too. Smaller blossoms and droopy stems and thin plants. One or two of my purple cone flowers seem to be dying. Also, I've got a lot to learn about grouping my plants into pleasant combinations.