REBEL FLESH
Featuring: Rahmaneh Rabani, Yasman Baghban, Nazanin Noroozi, Maaman Rezai, Elahe Esmaeili and Jocelyne Saab
Curated by Homa Sarabi
Screening Online: February 14 – 23, 2025
RSVP: artearchive.org
Available worldwide
FREE / $5 suggested donation
Screening In-person:
Impasse, by Rahmaneh Rabani
A Feast in a Mirror, by Yasman Baghban
This Bitter Earth, by Nazanin Noroozi
Followed by a Q&A with Yasman Baghban and Nazanin Noroozi
Date: 19 February, 7pm
Buy Tickets: Here
Price: $10
Address:
UnionDocs
352 Onderdonk Ave, Ridgewood, NY
REBEL FLESH presents films made by women filmmakers that examine the impact of revolutionary upheavals on families and the relationships that are shaped—and often shattered—by the brutal demands of ideological regimes. Focused on experiences in Iran or in the Iranian diaspora, these works reveal the impossibility of selfhood within systems that demand absolute obedience, highlighting how defining oneself becomes an act of revolt. In this context, the simplest acts of self-expression become revolutionary. These films capture the fleeting moments of freedom where individuals assert their identities, fight for their memories, and strive to memorialize themselves in ways that reflect their true selves, not the versions dictated by authoritarian forces. The program also considers the paradoxical relationship between religious authority and bodily control. It explores how regimes that define themselves through the regulation of bodies inadvertently provoke resistance through the very expressions they seek to suppress. Through intimate stories and diverse cinematic expressions, these films offer a powerful exploration of sovereignty, rebellion, and the enduring struggle to reclaim one’s body as a site of personal and political autonomy.
REBEL FLESH is curated by Homa Sarabi and is co-presented by ArteEast and UnionDocs. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. Selections from REBEL FLESH will be screened in-person at UnionDocs on February 19 followed by a discussion with Yasman Baghban and Nazanin Norouzi moderated by the curator. For more information about the in-person screening uniondocs.org.
Impasse, Rahmaneh Rabani, Iran, 2024, 89 mins.
Documentary, Persian with English subtitles
Rahmaneh Rabani is a 37-year-old Iranian woman, born and raised in an observant Muslim household. After the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iranian authorities in the autumn of 2022, mass protests ignited one of the largest women’s rights movements in recent Iranian history. With the protests raging outside of her window, Rabani picks up her camera to document honest, direct, often emotional conversations with her family members as she attempts to understand the women and men around her who remain steadfastly opposed to equal rights for women. An energizing, courageous act of art as direct action, Rabani and Bahman Kiarostami’s Impasse turns into a microcosm of Iranian society as the walls of patriarchy and deep cultural and religious pressures spark a generation of women who demand basic human rights. But will Rabani’s struggle to maintain the family bond across three generations crack under the pressure of politics?
A Feast in a Mirror, Yasaman Baghban, 2023, Iran, 18 mins.
“A Feast in a Mirror” is a film about the eternal feeling of otherness experienced by women, whether they are citizens or foreigners in any country, be it East or West. Years of oppression and the denial of basic rights in Iran have elicited rage and shame but, paradoxically, have also given rise to courage and power. Thus, as an Iranian woman, my character becomes a dichotomy. Although I often shouted silently as a woman by breaking the rules and taboos, I never gave up. Like many of my friends, I crossed borders to pursue independence. We are all aware that the wounds inflicted on this path will never fully heal.
As I grew older, I realized that the feeling of incarceration grew with me. Imagine a fidgeting woman in a cell, constantly asking herself, “Why don’t I deserve genuine freedom?” And the moment she feels freedom, other inhumane rules in a Western country put her in shackles. Is it fate that my body is not my own choice?
In the journey from East to West, from imprisonment to freedom and back to imprisonment, memories have always acted as a double-edged sword. Not only memories but also dreams and myths continually transport me between parallel universes. This experimental documentary film portrays my perception of those universes while my body floats in different spaces.
This film explores the concept of heterotopia, focusing on women’s bodies, and captures the feeling of imprisonment experienced through immigration as well as the protests against unfair laws. Whether in countries like the US or Iran, where dictators subvert the meaning of humanity, it examines the struggle for justice.
This Bitter Earth, Nazanin Noroozi, USA, 2023, 5 mins.
This Bitter Earth is an experimental stop-motion film centered around found footage and archival images from viral news stories juxtaposed with hand painted Super 8 family movie frames. The film encompasses four main image series reconsidered and revisited in multiple: the 2020 downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 by the Iranian government; the devastating explosion at the Port of Beirut, Lebanon in 2020; the last U.S. airplane leaving Afghanistan in 2021 after the military’s withdrawal; and home footage of a childhood birthday party in Iran. Imagery from Super 8 home videos serves as a foil to the political permutations of instability and insecurity. Punctuating the historical horrors around them, the birthday party Noroozi depicts in print and paper pulp becomes tinged with tension, as though the celebrants are anticipating a disruption to their joy. By blurring and distorting the home videos and news footage alike, Noroozi removes the individuality of her subjects to allow viewers to insert themselves and their own stories into the found images. She universalizes otherwise personal feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and despondence: a sense of sadness at the loss of life, despair at betrayal of principle, and the helplessness of losing control of one’s destiny ripple out globally. (Text by Eliana Blechman)
Minute for a Disappearance, Maaman Rezaei, Iran, 2019, 5 mins.
Experimental documentary, silent
Minute for A Disappearance is an experimental film by Maaman Rezaee to bring to life the memories of her father, a political prisoner in Iran, through fragmentation of childhood violin practices, drawings on 16mm film, and documentation of letters, gifts and a video clip sent from prison.
Can I Hug You?, Elahe Esmaili, 2023, Iran, 35 mins.
In the city of Qom, the most restricted city in Iran, there are many restrictions on human rights such as mandatory hijab to assure sexual safety; Hossein (M, 30) grew up in this environment and experienced multiple sexual assaults by men, despite these measures. Due to stereotypes around masculinity, he never talked about it. With the support of his wife, Elahe, he now confronts the trauma.
Iran Utopia in the Making, Jocelyne Saab and Rafic Boustani, Lebanon, 1980, 56 mins.
The Iranian revolution leads to the Shah’s downfall and installation of the Islamic Republic. Avoiding the more sensational elements of the news, this film questions Iranian society as a whole to try to understand what this wave of change means for the Muslim world.