To Light A Candle is a film by journalist Maziar Bahari, author of Then They Came for Me, focusing on the Baha’is of Iran and their peaceful response to decades of state-sponsored persecution. The Baha’is are Iran’s largest religious minority. Persecuted because of their faith, they are barred from teaching and studying at University. The Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE) was established in 1987 to give young Baha’is a chance to pursue knowledge and receive a quality education.
The informal courses take place in people’s homes, via mail correspondence and online lectures. The Iranian government regularly raids BIHE classes and arrests its students. Hundreds of Baha’is have been jailed for teaching and studying the BIHE. Yet, the BIHE continues to function and now 79 Universities around the world accept qualifications from the BIHE.
To Light A Candle offers a hopeful story of the BIHE and Iran, highlighting a paradigm shift in Iranian society where influential political and cultural figures are beginning to speak out about the situation of the Baha’is. In 2015 the film sparked the global Education Is Not A Crime campaign for universal access to higher education.
#NotACrime works to stop the human rights abuse of Iranian Baha’is and encourages universities around the world to admit Iranian Baha’i students. Maziar Bahari, a former Newsweek journalist who was jailed in Iran and became the subject of Jon Stewart’s film Rosewater, started the initiative.
Iran’s Baha’is are the country’s largest religious minority. Baha’is are frequently jailed on false charges and denied access to higher education. Thousands of Baha’is are currently studying through an underground education system known as the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE).
#NotACrime began in New York City in September 2015 with 11 murals on education equality and freedom of expression across the city, attracting international media attention. Leading street artists from around the world painted artworks designed to provoke conversation about the Iranian government’s long history of violating the human rights of its citizens. The campaign has spread to Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, Cape Town and Johannesburg, and Sydney. Nearly 100 universities – including several in the United Kingdom, such as University College London and the University of Manchester – currently accept the BIHE certificate.
Azadeh Moaveni is a journalist and writer who has covered the Middle East since 2000. She was Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, and is the author of Lipstick Jihad and Honeymoon in Tehran. She is lecturer in journalism at Kingston University and is working on a book about women and radicalisation.
Director: Maziar Bahari
Country: Iran/United Kingdom
Runtime: 54′
http://www.notacrime.me/
@notacrime
Legendary Iranian photographer Abbas joined journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari in a conversation at the Frontline Club on 3 February 2016, chaired by CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.
Bahari and Abbas have collaborated to launch abbas.site, a platform showcasing Abbas’s photographic body of work on Iran since 1970, including his coverage of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Legendary photographer Abbas & @maziarbahari at @frontlineclub to talk about our new website https://t.co/bZLo4xtbIW pic.twitter.com/6mhEP8fXJx
— JournoIsNotACrime (@JournoNotACrime) February 3, 2016
Abbas’s work includes “the most iconic photos of Iranian history between 1971 and 2005,” said Bahari. “He shows parts of Iran in one photograph in a way that some people have to write many books about.”
“This is the first time I’m showing contact sheets,” said Abbas, as he showed his images of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s Persepolis celebration in 1971. “Normally photographers don’t show them. It’s like your personal diary, but I thought after 37 years, I can show not just the photos, but what led to the photos.”
“I wanted to show the complexity of Iran through the complexity of the lives of 12 Iranians. One would lead to another, like a circle. But the revolution started, and that was the end of the work.”
“How did you make sure you didn’t get hurt when the revolution turned violent?” asked Palmer.
“Well, I ran fast!” said Abbas.
“Some of the violence and hate which emerged later was already written on [the revolutionaries’] faces,” Abbas said, on the subject of his work in the early stages of the Islamic Revolution in 1977.
He showed his photos of Iranian Prime Minister Hoveyda at home, and then in a morgue shortly after his execution by the Revolutionary Guard in 1979.
“Although you feel very strongly for the man on the slab, you still do your work as a photographer. You try to compose the best picture… In all situations of strife or violence or emotional upheaval, you put a curtain between you and what’s happening. Because if you don’t, you can’t function,” he said.
“As a photographer, you don’t think, you just act. You capture energies you’re not even aware of. It’s when you do the editing and the sequencing that you become conscious.
“The act of photography is very intuitive. Your intuition is fed by your education, your culture, by the argument you had with your girlfriend the night before… that makes you take this picture instead of that one.”
Khomeini’s return to Iran in 1979, captured by Abbas @frontlineclub pic.twitter.com/7jdRut7I3y
— Charlotte Beale (@CharlotteAGB) February 3, 2016
Abbas commented that great photography is a combination of two things – “information and aesthetics.”
“When the two come together, in a suspended moment, that’s it. I don’t freeze the moment, I suspend it. I like to give the impression to my reader that the people in my photograph kept on doing the thing they were doing before I took the photograph.”
On the subjectivity of his work, Abbas commented: “the difference between a militant and a photographer [is that] the militant has his own agenda. The photographer, although he feels strongly, has a duty to his readers and also as a historian of the present, to be as fair as possible.”
In response to a question on how he manages his presence as a photographer, Abbas responded: “as much as possible, you try only to be a witness, not a partisan. Sometimes it’s hard, because of course they know what you are when you have a camera in your hand.”
In response to an audience member who asked what model of camera he prefers, Abbas said, “my favourite camera is my eye. It works very well.”
The discussion then moved to Abbas‘s references as a photographer, with Bahari commenting: “when you ask about Abbas‘s icons he doesn’t talk about Cartier-Bresson – he talks about Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Cezanne, who really painted life.”
On the methods of the photographer, Abbas commented: “Instead of writing with words, you write with light.”
Visit abbas.site to view the project in full.
]]>Join us at the Frontline Club for this reactive briefing to discuss the detainment of the filmmakers, the battle for press freedom in Iran and the regime's relationship with foreign media.
]]>Almost two weeks after their arrest, little has been heard about the fate of the six Iranian filmmakers who are currently being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison with no access to their lawyers.
Accused of collaborating secretly with BBC Persian and illegally supplying content portraying Iran in a negative light, they have been condemned as “a group of terrorists, Bahais, communists and devil worshippers” by Iran’s Minister of Intelligence.
Iran insists that the filmmakers are part of the British Secret Service working under the guise of the BBC – allegations the BBC has denied.
In a statement released last week the BBC said that the filmmakers currently detained in Iran are independent documentary makers and BBC Persian television had bought the rights to broadcast their film. Iran and the BBC have had a tense relationship since the 2009 revolution, when Iran accused the BBC of fostering the unrest that followed the elections.
These latest arrests also raise concerns about what appears to be a wider crackdown: two leading Iranian filmmakers, Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof have been arrested and imprisoned in the past year.
Join us at the Frontline Club for this reactive briefing to discuss the detainment of the filmmakers, the battle for press freedom in Iran and the regime’s relationship with foreign media.
Chaired by Lindsey Hilsum International Editor for Channel 4 News.
With:
Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari who was detained in Iran during the 2009 uprising;
Drewery Dyke, Amnesty International’s Iran researcher;
Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, BBC Senior Correspondent and producer of The Ways of the Ayatollah;
Saeed Kamali Dehghan, award-winning Iranian journalist who writes for The Guardian. He was named 2010 Journalist of the Year at the Foreign Press Association Awards;
Picture Credit:
An image taken from award-winning Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film that documents his house arrest as he waits for a court verdict that, when it comes, could mean he will spend six years in jail and be banned from writing or filming for the next 20 years. The film was codirected by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb one of those who has been arrested. We will be screening the film in October.
]]>Newsweek reporter, film maker and Frontline Club regular Maziar Bahari has been detained in Tehran. Maziar has been living in the Islamic Republic for the past ten years. Foreign media have been barred from covering the post election protests and many journalists, including the BBC’s Jon Leyne, have been kicked out of the country. A total of 24 journalists and bloggers are reportedly among the hundreds of people who have been detained by the Iranian authorities since the protests began. You can listen to Maziar talking about the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the government in Iran in the video above.
]]>