Creating a soundscape for one Bad City

Ana Lily Amirpour's Iranian Vampire Western really captured my imagination. It wasn't just the music, but also the industrial landscape of electrical plants and the fields of oil drills "like galumphing prehistoric beasts, going up and down and up and down" that got me. 

The soundtrack which includes three original fusion beats by Bei Ru is due out in February 2015. That's a long wait for an amazing soundscape for a vampire movie, so I thought I'd hunt down what I knew I could find. 

I put my recipe for the soundscape of the movie's Bad City up amongst the thousands of Christmas recipes on Snapguide:

Check out How to Make the Soundscape to One Bad City by Negar Mottahedeh on Snapguide.

Farah's Dancing Girls which is one of the many fusion tunes that is on the track, is already up on Soundcloud and it really is fantastic.

If you love things Persian, try out the recipes that Davar Ardalan has been posting on Snapguide too! I recommend her #tadig cupcakes:

Check out How to Make #Tadig Cupcakes (Crispy Rice) by Davar Ardalan on Snapguide.

             

Mobile Memories.

                     

The academic school year 2012-13 is over! I'm thrilled to have taught two really awesome seminars with projects designed by students on the topic social movements and their uses of social media...research projects on everything from KONY 2012 to The Harlem Shake as a battle cry for Arab youth.

My M.A. student Jing Niu has also completed a fabulous web project on cellphones, our mobile addictions and our memories of their first appearance in our lives.

I really love the project!

The memories project recalls the early versions of the Nokia smart phone, the bag phones, the handys, and the first one-way lover's quarrels we heard in urban landscapes around the world, from Tokyo to New York City.


(I come in with one of my own first memories around 1:06)

Asghar Farhadi's Oscar win by Duke University Press.

Duke University Press published this little post on Displaced Allegories and on Asghar Farhadi's Oscar win. So honored.



For a review of Displaced Allegories check out Michelle Langford's in Senses of Cinema

Women and Iranian Cinema

My first Persian language interview for television: A bit bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I'd say, but here's my hopeful take on Iranian cinema and its representation of women under the rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran... I take a little peek in the crystal ball and talk about what I see as the future of Iranian cinema as well. (Persian only. No subtitles.)

negar mottahedeh

Transforming consciousness: "When I move you move...just like that"

The post-election crisis in Iran in 2009 ( #iranelection ) inspired many around the world in support of the Green Movement. A symbol of that uprising is now in Liberty Square as Occupy Wall Street ( #OWS ) gathers steam and people move onto the streets in protest all over the world...from Madrid to Sydney.

G. I. Gurdjieff once wrote that: "The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness, and "consciousness" cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and "will" cannot evolve involuntarily. The evolution of man is the evolution of his power of doing, and "doing" cannot be the result of things which "happen.""

Revolution is always first a creative transformation of consciousness and this transformation is always incremental. Each instance of transformation inspires the next with creativity and will.

The video presentation below reflects on the uprising in Iran in 2009 and the waves of uprising that have followed on its heels ever since. Once again I draw on the commanding words of Ludacris which presaged the movement toward social transformation when he said: "When I move you move...just like that!"

Here's to the 99% that have risen tonight to Occupy Together

TechPowerTalk from Melanie Plageman on Vimeo.

(My gratitude to Melanie Plageman for organizing an excellent conference on technology and social movements from which this video derives.)

Video traces of our tribute to the silenced filmmaker Jafar Panahi at Asia Society

My colleague Hamid Dabashi and I had the idea early this year to create, with the exquisite La Frances Hui of Asia Society in New York, a tribute at Asia Society to the silenced Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi.

I am only just now getting to the task of collecting the videos that were produced during the course of the month long tribute, thanks to the very capable staff of Asia Society.

These are mostly introductions to the films, but there is also a final panel discussion which includes remarks by Hamid Dabashi (Columbia University-Moderator), Hadi Ghaemi (International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran), Negar Mottahedeh (Duke University), Richard Peña (Film Society of Lincoln Center/Columbia University).




Hamid Dabashi on Crimson Gold.



Negar Mottahedeh on Offside


Negar Mottahedeh on The Circle



Reflections on Jafar Panahi's life, work and sentence by Hamid Dabashi (Columbia University-Moderator), Hadi Ghaemi (International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran), Negar Mottahedeh (Duke University), Richard Peña (Film Society of Lincoln Center/Columbia University).

The Wind in Film: Kiarostami's Five (for the Iranian film Blogathon)

I am reposting this short piece on Kiarostami and movement for the Iranian Blogathon Feb 21-27, 2011:

I never tire of watching Abbas Kiarostami's Five. The combination of natural, elemental forces, and the human and technologically mediated incident simply bring me to life and charge me with wonderment and delight.

I have for some time now enjoyed my exchanges around art, books, photography, music, philosophy, literature, technology and the wonders of our age with my friend Darius Himes. And we have, off and on, both remarked on our love for Kiarostami's work. Then suddenly yesterday, amidst the hustle of the Duke-at-work-Saturday, I discovered that Darius had used one of our favorite Social Media tools Qik.com to make a short film about the book and the wind. I love it. It reminds me of passages in Kiarostami's Five. Elegant and elemental. Wind and paper ... then, movement, the essence and object of cinematic fascination from the start. (Remember the rustling of the leaves in Lumiere's The Baby's Meal [Repas de bebe, no. 88, 1895]?**)

** In Lumière’s Repas de bébé, of 1895, it was not the relatively repetitive activity of feeding the baby that captured the attention of the audience, but the small matter of leaves rustling in the background, moving discontinuously in an otherwise imperceptible breeze. A small matter perhaps, but for an audience familiar with the closed circuit of mechanical illusions of motion (via such devices as thaumatropes, zooetropes, phenakistascopes) the discontinuous demarcated the territory of the real, and confirmed the verisimilitude ceded to the camera. --Thomas Zummer "Arrestments: Corporeality and Mediation"