In the early 1970s I was a North Carolinian, white boy from the South attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and working in East Harlem as part of a program. In my senior year, I visited men at the Bronx House of Detention. I had never been in a prison or jail, but people in East Harlem were dealing with these places and the police all the time. This experience truly turned my life around.
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Banned Iranian director wins Berlin Golden Bear for death penalty film
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Mohammad Rasoulof was prevented from attending the festival but won top award for his film There Is No Evil, about capital punishment in Iran
Dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof won the top prize at the Berlin film festival for There Is No Evil, a searingly critical work about the death penalty in Iran.
Rasoulof, 48, is currently banned from leaving Iran and was unable to accept the Golden Bear in person.
Accepting the award on his behalf, producer Farzad Pak thanked “the amazing cast and crew who, put their lives in danger to be on this film”.
The film tells four loosely related individual stories about the death penalty in Iran, from the executioner to the families of the victims.
Industry magazine Variety called it Rasoulof’s “most openly critical statement yet”.
Rasoulof was sentenced to a year in prison last year for “attacking the security of the state”, and banned from making films for life.
Speaking to a news conference via mobile phone, the director said his latest film was about “taking responsibility” under despotism. “You can try to put aside your own responsibility and pass the buck to the government... but [people] can say no,” he said.
Source:theguardian.com, Agence France-Presse, February 29, 2020
Dissident Iranian director wins Berlin fest top prize for film on death penalty
Mohammad Rasoulof, persecuted over movie criticizing the regime and banned from leaving Iran, says steps show the ‘intolerant and despotic nature of the Iranian government’
BERLIN, Germany — Dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof on Saturday won the top prize at the Berlin film festival for “There Is No Evil,” a searingly critical work about the death penalty in his country.
Rasoulof, 48, is currently banned from leaving Iran and was unable to accept the Golden Bear in person.
“I wish Mohammad could be here himself, but unfortunately he is not allowed to leave the country,” said producer Farzad Pak, accepting the award on his behalf.
Rasoulof was sentenced to a year in prison last year for “attacking the security of the state,” and banned from making films for life.
He is yet to be imprisoned. His passport was confiscated in 2017 after his anti-corruption film “A Man of Integrity” premiered at Cannes.
Industry magazine “Variety” said his Golden Bear-winning film was Rasoulof’s “most openly critical statement yet.”
It said the film was “a series of Kafkaesque moral parables about Iran’s death penalty and its perpetrators, made in open defiance of the restrictions the government put on him.”
The film tells four loosely related individual stories about the death penalty in Iran, from the executioner to the families of the victims.
“I am sorry that I will not be able to come to Berlin to watch the film alongside the audience; however, the right to choose between being present or absent at the festival is simply not mine,” said Rasoulof in a statement.
“Imposing such restrictions very clearly exposes the intolerant and despotic nature of the Iranian government.”
Picking up the award alongside Pak, fellow producer Kaveh Farnam addressed the Golden Bear directly.
“I want to ask you to hug Mohammad… my teacher, my friend, and tell him: Mohammad, you are not alone,” said Farnam.
Iranian filmmakers are regularly targeted and subjected to bans, restrictions and the threat of prison sentences.
Source: Agence France-Presse, Staff, February 29, 2020
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
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