Women Like Us: Women in Iran

A film by Persheng Sadegh-Vaziri

Iran | 2002 | 60 minutes | Color | DVD | Subtitled | Order No. 04830

SYNOPSIS

Filmmaker Persheng Sadegh-Vaziri returns to Iran after 20 years as an expatriate to present this intimate and revealing portrait of five ordinary Iranian women: a nurse, a journalist, a rice farmer, a religious college graduate and a piano teacher. Against a backdrop of Islam, revolution and war, they share their views on the veil, the relationship of Iranian women to the West and the long-ranging impacts of the 1979 Revolution on the status of women in their country. What emerges is an image of Iran that resists easy classification, a nation in flux at a unique historical moment, still reeling from the residual effects of the Iran-Iraq war but poised for a new future. An important and timely look at contemporary Iran, WOMEN LIKE US offers surprising insights into the changing role of women in the Middle East from a perspective that rarely makes it to international headlines.

PRESS

“Provides an insightful look at the changing role of women in Iran…”

Beth A. Kattelman Educational Media Reviews Online

“An honest inclusive, sisterly, and unbiased view of women’s lives in traditional and modern Iran, A non-sensational (and demystifying)portrayal of veiled women, by choice or by force, helpful for understanding a variety of women experiences in today’s Iran.”

Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa

“In a country where religion is the domain of the state, each woman has constructed her own sense of religiosity and spirituality, forging her own relationship with her Islamic faith.”

Shiva Balaghi Associate Director of Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, NYU

"Through testimony of their students and followers we learn of the significance and impact of the women leaders’ work on peoples’ lives. The film is elegantly conceived and aesthetically pleasing."

Signs Journal of Women in Culture & Society

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

  • Montreal Int’l Festival of New Cinema & New Media
  • Tiburon Int’l Film Festival
  • Festival of the Iranian Diaspora, Gene Siskel Film Center

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Persheng Sadegh-Vaziri

Persheng Vaziri is an educator, writer, and filmmaker. In her production work she made documentaries on Iran and Iraq, produced by KCET/Link TV, the National Geographic’s All Roads Project, and Deep Dish TV. She worked as producer on Link TV’s Bridge to Iran series that showcased documentaries from Iran and Deep Dish’s award-winning Shocking and Awful television series that covered the US invasion of Iraq.

She holds an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University and a Ph.D. in media and communication from Temple University. She has taught at Penn State University and New York University. Her areas of research are documentary films, particularly Iranian documentaries, and World Cinema. Her independent documentaries are about the immigrant experience, the upheavals of revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the Kurdistan region, and years of difficult history with the US. They are distributed by Women Make Movies, Arab Films, and guidedoc.tv. (2/22)

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