Maryam Tafakory
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Dreams Deferred: How Iranian Filmmakers Pursue Liberation Under Unbearable Constraints
The people of Iran find themselves suspended in a historical moment of great uncertainty. On December 28, 2025, in the midst of a major economic crisis exacerbated in part by U.S. sanctions, shopkeepers and vendors in several commercial centers throughout the country went on strike. The protests grew larger in number, culminating in early January as Iran’s largest uprising since the 1979 Revolution. The Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) responded by imposing an internet blackout to facilitate the indiscriminate murder of protesters and civilians alike. Thousands were killed in the largest massacre in the nation’s history, and the periodic protests […]
by Nick Kouhi on Apr 2, 2026 -
The Longhand Film
For the past six years, I sought out amateur travel films made by women in the first half of the 20th century, which I collected in an all-archival essay film, Terra Femme. In the process, I watched dozens of hours of footage of everything under the sun: biblical gardens, women doing laundry, ice fields, a tapir, mounds in a cemetery. Occasionally, there is a handwritten intertitle. “Crossing the Equator” reads one, and the filmmaker has added little serif marks to the letters in “Equator.” What follows is footage shot onboard a boat during a line-crossing ceremony, in which Poseidon and […]
by Courtney Stephens on Jul 12, 2021
