Iran

Latest Articles

Review: A Separation

Family drama
Somehow, despite an increasingly repressive regime that has jailed many prominent filmmakers, including the world renowned auteur Jafar Panahi, Iranian cinema continues to produce some of the world's subtlest and most illuminating films about the relationships between men and women, and the conflicts inherent in all social units, starting with the family.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 26, 2012

Review: Circumstance

Schoolgirls in hijabs
Circumstance begins like an early Kiarostami film, but with schoolgirls in hijabs instead of schoolboys in sweaters.
By ANN LEWINSON | September 06, 2011

The Year in Monkey News

Primate dispatches from around the globe
Simian news items, compiled for your reading pleasure.
By DAVID EISENBERG, JAMES P. FITZPATRICK, NATE HOMAN, AND KATIE LANNAN | August 04, 2011

Azerbaijani meat with chestnuts and sour plums

A Valentine's Day invitation
If the Committee of Basic World Knowledge had given me a surprise test, a world map with directions to fill in all the country names, I would have missed Azerbaijan.
By LINDSAY STERLING | February 09, 2011

What's gotten into Egypt?

Plus, Republicans for same-sex marriage, and trying to kill health-care reform
Being a dictator is a tough business. Just ask Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
By EDITORIAL | February 03, 2011

Marwencol and Jafar Panahi star at Boston Society of Film Critics awards

Critical Acclaim Dept.
From Boston to Oscar.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 27, 2011

Panahi is silenced, but the Festival of Films from Iran goes on

Persian Gulf
In an episode in Mohammad Rasoulof's weird and wonderful The White Meadows - one of the best entries in this year's Boston Festival of Films from Iran, at the Museum of Fine Arts - an artist is buried up to his neck in salt for painting the sea red.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 11, 2011

By | January 01, 0001

Review: Countdown to Zero

Bomb doc doesn't offer much hope
A great message, a not-so-great movie.
By GERALD PEARY | July 28, 2010

Holy war

How an unholy alliance of Catholics, Mormons, and evangelicals seeks to control our lives
And so it came to pass, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and evangelical Protestants have banded together to battle, well, the rest of us — the heathens, the godless liberals, the Hitchens-reading progressives.
By JEFF INGLIS | June 28, 2010

Summer treats

Whether classical, jazz, pop, or folk, 'tis the season to get out and enjoy the music
From Andean to zydeco, pick your flavor and there's a summer music festival ready to serve it up.
By CLEA SIMON | June 18, 2010

Say what?

Obama should forget the feel-good and seize the opportunity in the Gulf
Barack Obama is much more of an establishment-style president than the public generally realizes.
By EDITORIAL | June 22, 2010

Teach the controversy

Idiot Box
An Iranian cleric says immodest women are the cause of earthquakes
By MATT BORS | June 16, 2010

Sweaty Palmes

The Cannes 2010 jury picks some winners, but some head-scratchers, too
Apichatpong Weerasethakul must have done something right in one or more of his previous incarnations.
By LISA NESSELSON | May 28, 2010

Review: No One Knows About Persian Cats

Litter of the law: Bahman Ghobadi’s Persian Cats is up to scratch
The options for filmmakers, musicians, and other artists in Iran have dwindled to about two: arrest or exile.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 12, 2010

Radical night out in Portland

Activism Optimism
“People are upset about Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib,” Noam Chomsky told 750 people packed into the Woodfords Congregational Church last Saturday night, “but if you’re concerned about human rights, take a walk into a maximum-security prison.”
By LANCE TAPLEY | April 28, 2010

High ideals and crazy dreams

Truthers hurt
I have nothing against conspiracy theories.
By AL DIAMON | April 28, 2010

The question of Iran

Plus, Tim Flaherty for State Senator
Once again, Washington’s gunslingers are agitating for a war with Iran. Cheered on by Fox News and enabled by uncritical talking heads such as NBC’s David Gregory and PBS’s Charlie Rose, the let’s-bomb-or-invade-or-maybe-do-both-to-Iran brigade is busy softening up public opinion for a war they seem to think is inevitable.
By EDITORIAL | April 07, 2010

Fess Elisha Parker, 1924–2010

In memoriam
The King of the Wild Frontier is dead.
By CLIF GARBODEN | March 24, 2010

Boston film group protests arrest of Iranian director

Power of cinema?
At the Montreal Film Festival last summer, I had the pleasure of interviewing the Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who was serving as president of the international jury.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 24, 2010

Tall stories

Puppets, painted poetry, and the Kennedys
The Institute of Contemporary Art gets down and dirty this spring with Mexican artist Jerónimo López Ramírez, who's better known as DR. LAKRA — or, as they might say in his home of Oaxaca, "Dr. Delinquent."
By GREG COOK | March 11, 2010

By | January 01, 0001

Persian miniatures

Films from Iran choose indirect confrontation
You can see what is probably the most significant filmmaking right now in Iran by going to YouTube and viewing the artless images of brutality in the streets of Tehran captured by scores of average Iranian citizens armed with cell-phone cameras.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 06, 2010

The ‘business’ of art

Carey Young’s ‘Uncertain Contracts’ at the RISD Museum
You could be forgiven if you sometimes thought that corporations are the root of what's wrong with the United States.
By GREG COOK | December 30, 2009

Settling for half a loaf

Backing Barack. Plus, the utilities’ power play, and shoveling some snow musings.
I’m sure you will recall that your superior correspondents were early and ardent supporters of our president, Barack Obama.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | December 22, 2009

Two sides of life

Photographs by Andy Warhol and Stewart Martin
"I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist," the Pop artist Andy Warhol wrote in 1975. "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."
By GREG COOK | December 17, 2009

Governor Ghoul

Sinking to new lows
Phillipe and Jorge are coming late to this fight, as last week’s column was already filed when the announcement was made that Governor Donald Carcieri — Governor Ghoul to you — had vetoed a bill giving domestic partners the right to claim the bodies of and make funeral arrangements for the people with whom they shared their lives.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | November 18, 2009

No alternative

Authentic Journalism Dept.
“I got very tired of being called an ‘alternative journalist’ for so many years,” says former Phoenix reporter Al Giordano. “Alternative to what?"
By MIKE MILIARD | October 14, 2009

Comic writers go nuclear — they think Amazon's the bomb

Gone Fission Dept.
It was reported last week that "Iran has agreed 'in principle' to an international proposal that could significantly reduce its stocks of uranium."
By MIKE MILIARD | October 07, 2009