Culture

Iran-HRM – Toomaj Salehi, a dissident rap artist said that a court has handed down a fine and six months suspended imprisonment for him on charges of “insulting the leadership and propaganda against the regime.” He did not elaborate on his sentence in a tweet he posted on January 24, but wrote that his prison sentence is suspended for a …

Iranwire – “We are allowed to kill every Iranian who is our enemy because it’s our people. And nobody should care about it. It’s our business.” On August 6, 1992, the body of Iranian entertainer, poet and anti-regime firebrand Fereydoun Farrokhzad was found on the floor of his flat in Bonn, stabbed multiple times and half-melted by the heat of …

Iranwire – Kazem Mousavi, deputy chairman of the Iranian parliament’s Economic Committee, has said people trying to buy musical instruments in defiance of a ban on imports “can leave Iran”. Earlier this month Mehdi Mirasharfi, the head of Iran’s customs, musical instruments would no longer be imported into the country. Shortly afterward Gholam-Ali Ahankoob-Nejad, head of the Ahvaz Spectacle Manufacturers …

Iranwire – Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has lashed out at the head of a state-run documentary-making group who suggested he had “both the [Iranian] government and those outside the government” on his side. The comment had come from Davood Mouradian, director of the government-run Fath (Victory) Narrative Cultural Foundation. In an Instagram post on Tuesday, Farhadi, whose film A Hero is currently being screened in …

Iranwire – Some Iranian films currently waiting to be licensed for screening in Iran are “inappropriate and un-Islamic”, the new Minister of Culture has said. Speaking in an interview for Iranian state television on Saturday, Mohammad Mehdi Esmaili, wondered aloud: “Is our cinema situation acceptable, in terms of issues and priorities? I’m in charge of overseeing movies, and I can’t do …

Iranwire – The latest round of censorship imposed by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) last month aimed to protect the Iranian public from the distressing sight of women eating pizza or having tea poured for them by men. It came as part of a series of insane directives in the past few years that blocked the broadcasting of cucumbers, women’s ears, wolves’ nipples and buffalo …

Iranwire – A group of young people in Dezful, Khuzestan are being prosecuted for taking part in a music video. The Sol-la music group, which includes children, released a video several days ago in which they played and sang songs together at the historic Saniei Residence, a local history museum in Dezful. This minor artistic activity was apparently not to …

Iranwire – In the eyes of Iran’s ruling clerics, music, the arts and youth culture are among the permanent prime suspects in fostering what they perceive to be “deviance” in society, and what might elsewhere be classed as progress. The essence of these suspicions is rooted in tradition, and their reading of Shia Islam, which takes a hostile approach toward …

Iranwire – Wherever power or wealth accumulates without adequate checks or accountability, corruption becomes a near-inevitable outcome. In Iran almost every official institution, from municipalities to courts to the police, are affected by this destructive tendency. The most common face of corruption in Iran is bribery: so much so that between six and 13 percent of all respondents in a survey …

Iranwire – On Wednesday, September 1, Arsalan Yazdani, a Baha’i citizen living in Tehran, was arrested by security agents and taken to an unknown location. His wife Samira Ebrahimi has told IranWire about the shocking violation of their rights as Baha’i citizens in the course of the arrest, which also led her to suspect security agents had previously burgled their …