WOMEN WITHOUT MEN + SHIRIN NESHAT IN CONVERSATION WITH DR PARDIS SHAFAFI (live stream) + JALAL GHOBAD (live music)WOMEN WITHOUT MEN
Shahrnush Parsipur’s censored, surreal novel of women against the state finds its perfect match in visual artist Shirin Neshat. A mysterious house outside time and place provides haunted refuge for several women. Far from society and the bonds of family, they find a new start. But what does a rich widow, a young sex worker, two spinsters, and a schoolteacher who would like to be a tree have in common?
In Women Without Men, Shirin Neshat portrays women in a society dominated by men – their lives, their dreams and their hopes – and along the way, tells a poetic and magical story of love, oppression and freedom in 1950s Iran.
Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran’s 1953 CIA-backed coup d’état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship. Acclaimed video artist Shirin Neshat makes her directorial debut with this incisive reflection on the pivotal historical moment that directly led to the Islamic revolution and the Iran we know today.
The streets of Tehran, Iran, are teeming with protesters objecting to the overthrow of the prime minister, but four disparate women have more immediate concerns. Farrokhlagha’s (Arita Shahrzad) husband thinks he’s entitled to be married to multiple women. Munis (Shabnam Toloui) is a virtual slave to her brother. Faezeh (Pegah Ferydoni) has physical and emotional troubles. And Zarin (Orsolya Tóth) is an unwilling sex worker. Boldly, the women pursue solutions to the problems foisted upon them.
In 2003 the Screenwriters Laboratory of the Sundance Institute helped Neshat to develop and begin production on the feature film Mahdokht (2004), an adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men; the screenplay is a collaboration between Neshat and the author, and the cinematography is by Darius Khondji, who also shot Tooba.
DIRECTOR
Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker living in New York. Neshat works and continues to experiment with the mediums of photography, video and film, which she imbues with highly poetic and politically charged images and narratives that question issues of power, religion, race, gender and the relationship between the past and present, occident and orient, individual and collective through the lens of her personal experiences as an Iranian woman living in exile.
Neshat has held numerous solo exhibitions at museums internationally, including the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; The Broad, Los Angeles; Museo Correr, Venice, Italy; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Neshat has directed three feature-length films, Women Without Men (2009), which received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 66th Venice International Film Festival, Looking For Oum Kulthum (2017), and most recently, Land of Dreams, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival (2021).
Neshat was awarded the Golden Lion Award, the First International Prize at the 48th Biennale di Venezia (1999), the Hiroshima Freedom Prize (2005), the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2006) and in 2017, she received the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Award in Tokyo.She is represented by Gladstone Gallery in New York and Goodman Gallery in London.
PANEL / CONVERSATIONALIST
Dr. Pardis Shafafi is an Oslo-based anthropologist specialising in political violence and peoples’ tribunals. She completed her doctoral degree from the University of St Andrews in 2015 on these and other related themes. She has special expertise and interest in enduring victim-survivor pursuits for accountability and justice in contexts of impunity for powerful perpetrators.
Pardis is the co-editor of the 2015 «States of Impunity» series for OpenDemocracy and co-editor of the 2019 special edition series «The Ethnography of Peoples’ Tribunals» for PoLAR journal. She is an advisor and associate researcher with the European Research Council «Off-Site» project and a regular media contributor, most recently with NRK, Morgenbladet, Al Jazeera and BBC radio.
Her upcoming activities include a peer-reviewed paper on Iran and enforced forgetting, an article about the symbolic relevance of the hijab in contemporary Iranian politics for Crisis Mag, and a lecture on grassroots justice movements in Iran with the Iran Academia project.
LIVE MUSIC
Jalal Ghobads musikkinteresse startet for alvor i 1973 da han begynte på den statlige musikkskolen Kakh Markazi Javanan, i Tehran, Iran. Hans profesjonelle musikkkarriere startet i 1978 da han stiftet bandet Hot Kens. Bandet opptrådte på live TV som backing band for datidens kjente iranske artister og musikere. Blant dem Nelly som etter revolusjonen la opp musikkkarrieren, flyktet til Paris og utdannet seg til å bli tannlege. Parallelt med disse opptredende jobbet han som musikklærer for ungdommer i Tehran. Etter revolusjonen i 1979 ble stort sett alt innenfor musikk forbudt i Iran, og han mistet dermed jobb og sitt livsgrunnlag. Livet som musiker ble på den tiden farlig, det kunne resultere i fengsel, tortur og etterfølgelse. Dette førte til at Ghobad flyktet til Tyrkia, hvor han igjen kunne leve av musikken med sitt eget band før drømmen om et bedre liv førte ham til Norge på slutten av 80-tallet. I Tyrkia spilte han sammen med Javad Yasari og Abbas Ghaderi. Rett etter at Ghobad ankom Norge stiftet han et nytt band (Kandoo) og jobbet videre med live musikk. Ghobad har spilt live i hele Skandinavia, og jobbet som musikklærer for det internasjonale Røde Kors i Oslo. Han har utover dette arbeidet med Rikskonsertene, og siden da arrangert, og spilt live konserter med kjente iranske artister som: Ebi, Dariush, Wigen, Moein, Mahasti, Shahram Shapare, Sattar, Leyla Frohar, Shohre, Shahrokh Shamsizadeh, Bijan Mortazavi, Kamran Homan, Afshin, og Omid. Ghobad er idag aktiv med bandet Kandoo og har fremdeles gleden av å være privat musikklærer for barn og unge i Oslo.
FOOD
Iranian food is made by Gilan Mat, a family-driven cafeteria and food truck based in Oslo.
REVIEWS
Neshat’s images are startling in their sensual immediacy and aesthetic nuance. - Chris Chang
With this debut feature, the photographer-turned-director Shirin Neshat has made a picture with vision, poetry, sexual frankness and historical sinew. - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
The film surpasses even Michael Haneke’s White Ribbon in the fierce beauty and precision of its cinematography. - Stephen Holden, The New York Times
PROGRAM
17:30 - Iranian food
18:00 - Intro
18:05 - Jalal Ghobad (live music)
18:30 - Women Without Men (35mm, 95 min, Persian with Norwegian subtitles)�
20:05 - Conversation with Shirin Neshat and Dr Pardis Shafafi (live stream)�
20:50 - The End
Cinema Tehran, Oslo is funded and supported by Fritt Ord, Oslo Kommune Kulturetaten, Cinemateket I Oslo and Anicca Pictures AS.
Event Venue
Cinemateket i Oslo, Oslo, Norway
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