Woman. Life. Freedom.  

زن زندگی آزادی 

Zan Zendegi Azadi

Since the violent death of the 22-year-old Kurdish woman Jina Mahsa Amini on September 16 of this year after her arrest by the so-called morality police in Tehran, people in Iran have been protesting against the oppression of women. Young people in particular – especially young women – are taking to the streets to demand freedom. The regime is reacting to the nationwide protests with brutality. Despite massive throttling of the Internet and the great danger of being imprisoned for spreading information, many photographs, film snippets and voice and text messages reach us via social media. They are touching and dramatic snapshots that speak of courage and despair.

In the module “Discovering the West,” we will give a voice to women from Iran in a reading and make their voices audible. The event brings the present into an exhibition space dedicated to the struggles over traditional values and influences coming from Europe in Muslim societies of the 19th century.

The collective Feminista Berlin – a group of committed exiled Iranians* who make the voices of the protesting people in Iran audible and the events visible for us in Berlin, will tell about the current events in Iran. We will hear from them how the remarkable protest slogan “Woman Life Freedom” came about and how it spread. We will read from text messages the thoughts of Iranian women that they have shared with us via social media channels in recent weeks. We will also hear poetry and prose by contemporary Iranian women writers and text excerpts from conversations that filmmaker Bettina Renner had in 2018 during a trip with women of different generations in different regions of the country.

Participants are German filmmaker Bettina Renner and the collective Feminista Berlin, including Mahsa Behroozian and Armin Sarvghad Moghaddam.

We will read in German and in Farsi.