This Iranian American Life

August 8, 2006 4:07 PM

This Iranian American Life"This blog is for an experimental documentary that I am working on this year, where I will be shooting video of my experiences in Iran and creating shorts, interactive installations, and/or videoblogs using the footage from my experiences and the experiences of others."

Iranian-American student Paris Marashi has gone back to Tehran with the goal of documenting her own experiences with family, friends, and about town. She's also giving inexpensive cameras to Iranians to help them document their own experiences. There are only a few posts up at the moment, but it should be stay interesting as time goes on.
posted by chasing (15 comments total)

I looking forward to this with no small amount of trepidation. This could be amazing, or end very, very badly.
posted by ®@ at 4:31 PM on August 8, 2006

Very cool.
posted by chunking express at 4:42 PM on August 8, 2006

This is vastly different from the view of Iran that western media likes to paint.
posted by clevershark at 5:02 PM on August 8, 2006

It's the view of Iran that everyone forgot pretty much overnight, but was in vogue when Khatami was elected.
posted by rxrfrx at 5:04 PM on August 8, 2006

Thanks! Nice one.
posted by k8t at 5:06 PM on August 8, 2006

Very nice -- thanks!
posted by languagehat at 5:14 PM on August 8, 2006

It's the view of Iran that everyone forgot pretty much overnight, but was in vogue when Khatami was elected.

Didn't the left-wing boycott the vote last time around, or was that the second to last time? I remember hearing reports that the Iranians were trying to increase voter turn out in general in order to prove how "democratic" they were.
posted by delmoi at 5:33 PM on August 8, 2006

The left wing boycotted the vote because the entire voting process is entirely farcical- when the dictators in charge choose who you get to vote for, it's not a democracy at all.

I, too, am really looking forward to keeping up on this blog, but people should keep in mind that Iran does NOT equal Tehran. I've only spent time in three major cities in Iran- Tehran, Isfahan, and Mashad- and the character of each is VERY different from the others. Tehran might be more accomodating for modernity, but Mashad is the exact picture of what most westerners have in mind when they think of Iran.

For those worried about her safety- don't. Remember the uproar when an Iranian-Canadian was killed? Any Iranian who has a citizenship in the west knows that it is their ticket to getting away with things. If you get caught, the worst that is likely to happen to you is you will get deported, because even the Mullahs know better than to use corporal or capital punishment on a citizen of a western country.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 6:27 PM on August 8, 2006

So, who's going to be the one to register ParisMarashi as a MeFi user name?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:42 AM on August 9, 2006

Once again, I'm reassured that whatever the Irani government does or doesn't do, Iranis are like folks, only smoetimes more so. I wish my gov't and their would knock off all the saber-rattling so I can go for a visit.
posted by pax digita at 5:24 AM on August 9, 2006

This is great. She inspires me to go back and visit my family, too.
posted by Menomena at 6:22 AM on August 9, 2006

Remember the uproar when an Iranian-Canadian was killed? ... If you get caught, the worst that is likely to happen to you is you will get deported, because even the Mullahs know better than to use corporal or capital punishment on a citizen of a western country.

Are you being sarcastic, because both those statements contradict each other.
posted by chunking express at 7:32 AM on August 9, 2006

Sorry, I think I missed a key sentence. If they KNEW she was Canadian, they would never have killed her, only sent her home.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 5:18 PM on August 9, 2006

That's actually not true. They knew she was a citizen. She was actually visited three times by Canadian officials before she was killed. (You can see a whole time-line of events at the CBC's web site.) Anyway, this is all off topic.
posted by chunking express at 10:26 AM on August 10, 2006

chunking express: color me corrected. Thanks for the information.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 9:23 PM on August 10, 2006