The Tree That Remembers
(documentary, dir. Masoud Raouf, 50 min., Canada, 2002)
screening and discussion with Babak Salari
In 1992 a young Iranian student hanged himself from a tree on
the outskirts of a small Ontario town. He had escaped the Ayatollahs'
regime, but he could not escape his past. Filmmaker Masoud Raouf
is also a part of the generation of Iranians who rose up against
the Shah's despotic rule - only to be cruelly persecuted by
an equally murderous new regime. The Tree that Remembers is
his compassionate reflection on the betrayal of the 1979 Iranian
revolution and the tenacity of the human spirit. Raouf assembles
a group of Iranians - all former political prisoners like himself
who were active in the democratic movement. All of them live
now in Canada. The exceptional archive footage is blended with
Raouf animated artwork to raise the emotional impact of the
film.
Prizes and Festivals: Bronze Plaque Award - Category: Social
Issues - International Film and Video Festival 2003, Columbus
– USA; Golden Sheaf Award - Category: Best Documentary Social
- Golden Sheaf Awards /Short Film and Video Festival 2002, Yorkton
– Canada; Silver Award for Best Canadian Documentary - Hot Docs
2002, Toronto - Canada
The screening will be followed by a meeting and discussion with
BABAK SALARI, a famous Iranian photographer and political emigrant
who has been living in Canada for the last 22 years.
More information about Babak Salari:
He is a documentary photographer and cultural activist. Originally
from Iran, he has been living in exile in Canada for the past
22 years. He has created several bodies of work exploring
the double consciousness of otherness, marginality and diasporic
identity. His work is sensitive and probing. Because of his
own experience as an outsider, he strongly identifies with
his subjects. Their trust and acceptance allows him access
to parts of their lives normally hidden to outsiders.
His work ranges from social tableaux to portraits of individuals
and has taken him to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq,
Kurdistan, Palestine, Israel, Mexico and Cuba. He has worked
with Medicines du Monde using photography as a tool to bear
witness to the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan and the
occupation of Iraq and its daily effects in people's lives
particularly the environment, children and women.
Babak's many diverse photo documentary projects include: portraits
of Iranian exiles living in Canada, a series on the power
of women and gay men in a matriarchal community in Mexico
and a project on the lived experience of women wearing the
hijab (Islamic practice of veiling).
His photo documentary of the public practice of queer eroticism
in Cuba was described by Tom Waugh, curator, critic and Chairman
of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University
as an "unprecedented glimpse of a marginal sexual community
in a society about which we probably have many misconceptions-in
all its dignity, tenderness, humour, style and diversity as
well as the more mundane texture of its everyday life."
Educated at Concordia University and Dawson Institute of Photography,
Babak has been acclaimed for his high degree of technical
and artistic accomplishment. He has worked as an instructor
of black and white and documentary photography at Dawson College
and his work has been published in magazines and journals,
privately collected and exhibited in Canada, USA, Europe and
Mexico.
More information about the film: www.nfb.ca/thetreethatremembers
è íà http://www.nfb.ca/collection/films/fiche/?id=50993
More information about Masoud Raouf: www.masoudraouf.com
June 10 (Tuesday) 2008, 6.00 p.m.
Gulliver hall, Red hall
In English, no translation in Bulgarian provided.
Tickets: 3/2 BGN (for the screening and the discussion)
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