8/11 Film Screening of Plastic Flowers Never Die

Plastic Flowers Never Die, by Roxanne Varzi

Persian Arts Festival supports filmmaker Roxanne Varzi on her debut film.

New York City
August 11th, 8pm
Anthology Film Archives
32 2nd Avenue @ 2nd Street)

Trailer http://www.der.org/films/plastic-flowers-never-die.html

Plastic Flowers Never Die, Iran, 2008, 34 min; video, Roxanne Varzi

The film is an experimental documentary and meditation on the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war, and especially the mourning after.  The war with Iraq was the largest mobilization of the Iranian population, achieved primarily by producing and promoting a culture of martyrdom based on religious themes found in Shii Islam. Martyrdom became state policy. Khomeini made it clear the war was a spiritual one that the people, and not a professional army, would fight.  It would be a sacred defense; a war of good against evil, of spirit against military might, where a human wave of believers would form a wall of defense against the Iraqis. Over 800,000
people died.

Dr. Roxanne Varzi has spent twelve years researching and writing about post-Revolution public culture in Iran which culminated in her ethnography Warring Souls, Media, Martyrdom and Youth in post-Revolution Iran, Duke University Press and various articles and stories in the London Review of Books, The New York Press and anthologies of fiction.  She is currently an associate professor of anthropology and film and media studies at the University of California, Irvine.  Plastic Flowers Never Die is Varzi’s first film.

Plastic Flowers Never Die has been shown in:

New Filmmakers Series, Museum of Architecture and Design, Los Angeles,
January 2008
The Boston International Film Festival, Spring 2008
Uqbar Project Space, Berlin, Germany summer 2008
Middle East Studies Association, Fall 2008
Society for Visual Anthropology Film Fest, at the American Anthropological
Meetings, Fall 2008
NewFilmaker’s @ Anthology Film Archives, New York, NY
Third Women’s Film Festival, Chennai, India
5th Annual Women’s International Film   & Arts Festival, Miami
International Festival of Ethnological Film, Belgrade, Serbia
Days of Ethnographic Film, Moscow, Russia
DocuDays, Beirut International Documentary Festival, Beirut, Lebanon
DOCSDF, Mexico City, Mexico
Society for Visual Anthropology
And at Various Universities

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