Shirin) is barren and incapable of producing a heir for the Divan-Salar (crime) family dynasty. However, Farhad’s release and rescue from execution comes with a heavy price for his family and his fiancé Shahrzad, as one of the conditions set by Bozorg Agha for intervening to save Farhad’s life is that Shahrzad relinquish her engagement to Farhad and instead become a second (simultaneous) wife to his nephew and son-in-law Qobad whose own wife, daughter and only child to Bozorg Agha (i.e. ![]() A post-coup military court then sentences Farhad to death by firing-squad but at the last minute he is saved through the intervention of –- and with the implied bribery of officials by - Bozorg Agha and so is released. On the day of the August 1953 coup d’etat (28 Mordad 1332) Farhad is arrested by military authorities following the storming of the offices of his newspaper by hired thugs associated with the pro-royalist coup plotters (presumably of the CIA connected Rashidian brothers) when one of these hired thugs accidentally falls off the office balcony and is killed as he is about to attack Farhad. Iranian goodfellas) to a leading Tehran mafia figure known as Bozorg Agha (Mister Big), the chief patriarchal figure of the Divan-Salar (crime) family, to whom they owe their livelihoods. Both fathers of Shahrzad and Farhad are also intimate cronies (i.e. The families of Shahrzad and Farhad are close, with the fathers of the two being best friends. Together they frequent Tehran’s famous Cafe Naderi, which during the 1950s served as a meeting hub for nationalist and leftwing intellectuals and university students opposed to the Pahlavi regime. Her fiancé is Farhad who is a student of Persian literature as well as being a leftwing nationalist journalist and activist who works for a newspaper with openly pro-Mossadegh sympathies. The plot follows the storyline of Shahrzad who is a medical student at the University of Tehran. Twenty-six episodes have aired as of the week ending on 22 April 2016 and more are on the way. ![]() Other stars include Shahab Hosseini (playing the character “Qobad”), Ali Nassirian (“Bozorg Agha”), Mostafa Zamani (“Farhad”) and Parinaz Izadyar (“Shirin”). The series is directed by Hasan Fathi with its screenplay written by both Hasan Fathi and Naghmeh Samini. The setting is 1950s Iran during the immediate period of the consolidation of the Pahlavi dictatorship following the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh and his democratic nationalist government. Our own main character in this story (played by Taraneh Alidousti) is also named Shahrzad, through whose eyes and experience an entire tumultuous narrative of love and betrayal, marriage and divorce, birth and death, crime and punishment, justice and injustice, and especially ‘class struggle’ unfold. ![]() First, though, note the name connected to the title of the story here which is a direct reference to the chief female protagonist of the 1001 Arabian Nights which this series - in veiled terms as well as openly - often refers to. With that said, I have lately been watching the ongoing Iranian series ‘Shahrzad’ which so far has me spellbound because it resonates with so much that Al-e Ahmad was talking about. 1969) momentous essay entitled Westoxication/Occidentosis ( gharbzadegi): an essay that literally set the tone for a whole generation of post-1953 activists leading up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This specific question was also one of the main themes covered in the late Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s (d. This industry has also fine tuned over the past thirty-seven years a uniquely Iranian form of film noir that is capable of tackling a wide range of topics simultaneously while offering multifaceted commentary (whether by symbolism and metaphor or even openly without such devices) on a range of issues and questions, such as the class conflict endemic during the Pahlavi era’s modernization efforts where modernism and europeanity were synonymous together with a toxic and abusive elitism while, in contrast, traditionalism and cultural authenticity stood at the opposite pole. ![]() With each passing year, Iranian film and cinema appears to be going from strength to strength, with producers, directors and screenwriters alike offering better and better content to their audiences and in so doing delving deeper and deeper into germane topics once deemed verboten for open consumption on the screen.
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