Original Photo: AP/Hossein Salehi Ara

Watch Iranian writer (and much more), Maziar Bahari, talk to 60 Minutes‘ Bob Simon about his imprisonment and recent release from Tehran’s uber-jail Evin, in an interview that aired on Sunday November 22nd.

We’re just grateful that Bahari was able to make it out alive, despite the torture and interrogation (Basiji/Sepahi style) he says he experienced while in detainment at Evin prison in Iran.

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After years of quietly and elusively adding his mark to LA’s concrete landscape, Iranian-born artist ABCNT started to gain rising recognition in the Iranian-American community with his iconic political posters of Neda, Taraneh and Mossadeq in the wake of this summer’s stolen elections in Iran.

Shot and directed by Nima Nabavi, this short video reveals some of the mechanics that drive this hidden artist to create.

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You must watch this video of one of the most clever protest platforms we’ve seen thus far, used to voice distaste against Ahmadinejad yesterday in New York.

The art installation consists of people dressed in all white clothing to double as a “human screen” while a compilation of videos and images from this summer’s protests in Iran are projected on them.

Sad but powerful.

The 66th Venice Film Festival’s list of participating films has already been announced, yet festival director Marco Muller has decided to add a new film Green Days, made by Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s daughter: Hana Makhmalbaf, to the festival’s exciting lineup of movies.

Shot on the streets of Tehran during the days prior to the Iranian presidential election, Green Days’ main characters are “the ordinary green wearing Iranian public.”

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Check out our beloved Persian rap superstars, the super-duper talented, Zed Bazi’s nostalgia-inducing song: Koocheh (street).

We just can’t get enough of these guys!

Click here for another one of our Zed Bazi favorites: Zendegiye Mane (It’s My Life).

Photo: Oliver Laban-Mattei for AFP/Getty

BY MAHBOD SERAJI

As the 40th day of Neda’s death was commemorated in Iran a few days ago, and [I learned] that a staggering number of 4,000 people were detained in protests that followed June’s disputed presidential election, I was reminded of my years there as a high school student just before the Islamic Revolution subdued the country and cast it into a nightmare from which it is still trying to awaken 30 years later.

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Yesterday, AFP reported that Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel (and 44 other Nobel prize winners) showed support for Iranians and their efforts, telling them: “Do not lose hope.”

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Not surprisingly, the phrase “the dog days of summer” never translates well into Farsi. June 12, 2009 jolted the passions of [the] Iranian community and others like no other in recent memory. Across the spectrum, the election and its aftermath took the political experts by surprise, though no clear consensus [has] emerged about what the images exposed through Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook signified.

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Philanthro-artists, the legendary musicians known as U2 show their support for the Iranian people at a concert on July 2nd, 2009 in Barcelona, Spain while singing their song: Sunday Bloody Sunday.

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Translated by Soraya Cochran.

It’s Friday 29th of Khordaad 1388 (June 19, 2009), tomorrow is Saturday – tomorrow is a destiny-building day.

Tonight the sounds of Allah-o-Akbar (God is great) are being heard louder than the previous nights

Where is this?

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Hundreds of thousands of Iranians gather @ Azadi Square in Tehran -- Image via AFP

Finally reacting to the Iranian election aftermath, President Obama said, “obviously all of us have been watching the news from Iran and I want to start off by being very clear that it’s up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be… we respect Iranian sovereignty and want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran – which sometimes the US can be a handy political football – having said all that, I’m deeply troubled by the violence that I’m seeing on television.“

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“[If] an Iranian dies, the public will not accept it,” and “I will kill, who kills my brother,” are just a couple of examples of chants during protests in Tehran on Saturday June 13th, 2009 aimed at Iran’s election results.

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