Iranian Films
Baran
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 B2251
The film chronicles the story of illegal Afghan immigrants living and working at a construction site in Tehran, Iran. When one of the workers is injured, his daughter, posing as a man, becomes the breadwinner. But a hot-headed 17 year-old local youth also working at the site discovers the secret.
Café Setareh
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 C1297
Three women who live in a poor neighborhood in Tehran actively seek a better life in this contemporary slice of Iranian life.
Children of Heaven (Iran)
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 C53675
A young boy, Ali, loses his sister Zahra's school shoes. In order to stay out of trouble, the two come up with a plan to share Ali's shoes, but they must keep it a secret from their parents.
Daughters of the Sun
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 D2384
Amanagol, the daughter of a poor rural family in Iran, becomes Aman when her father shaves her head, disguises her as a boy, and dispatches her to another village to work weaving carpets. Her secret is jeopardized when a co-worker falls in love with her.
Hamoun
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 H2286
This is the story of Hamid Hamoun, an executive in a large import-export business, who also works as a part-time English instructor. He feels alienated from Iranian society, bound by its conventions yet unwilling to abide by its rigid laws. His wife wants to divorce him but is unable to do so under Islamic law. In this film, husband and wife struggle to find their own solid ground.
Hidden Half
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 H6323
Khosro is sent from the president's office on a fact-finding mission to Shiraz, to investigate the complaints of a female political prisoner awaiting execution. Khosro's wife, Fereshteh, being of the same generation as the prisoner, decides to do something about her situation. Fereshteh writes of her own participation in the revolution, of which her husband is unaware. In his hotel room in Shiraz, Khosro begins to read his wife�s memoirs the night before he is to visit the prisoner.
Iron Island
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 I713
A derelict oil tanker is home to cast-off members of the Sunni-Arab minority of Iran. When the owner decides to sell it, it is up to the self-proclaimed patriarch of the ship to provide a future for the people of his floating city, no matter the cost.
Leila
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 L5295
Reza and Leila, an attractive and affluent young couple deeply in love and recently married, discover that Leila is unable to conceive. Although Reza steadfastly insists that it matters not in the least, his mother feels otherwise: she is determined that her son have children and continue the family line. Invoking traditions, she convinces her daughter-in-law that Reza must, out of necessity, take a second wife to produce an heir.
Persepolis (in French, not Farsi)
Call Number: [DVD] 791.433 P4663
In 1970s Iran, Marjane ’Marji’ Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family. Their long dream is realized when the hated Shah is defeated in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, Marji grows up to witness firsthand how the new Iran has become a repressive tyranny on its own. With Marji dangerously refusing to remain silent at this injustice, her parents send her abroad to Vienna to study. This change proves an equally difficult trial for Marji and finds herself in a different culture loaded with abrasive characters and profound disappointments that deeply trouble her. Even when she returns home, Marji finds that both she and her homeland have changed too much and the young woman and her loving family must decide where she truly belongs.
Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 S6384
Baham Farjami, a filmmaker who has not directed for 20 years due to censorship, experiences a strange set of coincidences that convince him that the Angel of Death is near.
Taste of Cherry
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 T2155
Mr. Badii, ceaselessly driving through the red-brown hills around Tehran in search of assistance in his suicide, receives from each of the men he asks for help a viewpoint on life.
The Circle
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 C5782
This film offers insights into the lives of women in Iran. As the narrative dynamically shifts from woman to woman, their stories culminate with tremendous potency, transforming a shared sense of despair and injustice into one of kinship and even hope.
The Color of Paradise
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 C7192
Mohammad joyfully returns to his tiny village on summer vacation from the Institute for the Blind, unaware of his father's intentions to disown him. Engaged to be married, the widowed man has kept Mohammad a secret from his fiancee, certain the boy's disability will destroy his only chance for happiness. With the wedding swiftly approaching Mohammad's future hangs precariously in the balance as his father struggles against his destiny, unable to see the wonder of life and love that's so clear to his son.
Turtles Can Fly
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 T9625
Soran is a 13-year-old boy who orders other children around as he installs an antennae for villagers keen to hear of Saddam's fall. Eventually, he falls for Agrin but is disturbed by her brother, Henkov, who can seemingly predict the future.
Two Women
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 T9746
The film chronicles the lives of two women attending architectural school at Tehran University during the first years of the Islamic Republic.
Women's Prison
Call Number: [DVD] 749.43 W8728
Mitra, in prison for killing her violent stepfather, confronts new warden Tahereh on the eve of a riot, fearlessly challenging her dogmatic views - which, over time, begin to change. This movie has been banned in Iran.
Kurdish Films
Blackboards
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 B6283
A group of male teachers crosses the mountainous paths of the remote Iranian Kurdish region. The men wander from village to village in search of students, carrying large blackboards on their backs. The boards are sometime used as shelter, camouflage, and shields instead of for teaching purposes. One by one the men venture away from the group in search of students to teach. Along their way they must face other hardships and obstacles, including unseen enemy helicopters and gunfire. This film is in Kurdish.
Marooned in Iraq
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 M3545
During the Iran-Iraq war, an aging Iranian-Kurd musician hears that his wife, a singer with a magical voice, who deserted him for his best friend and fled to Iraq, is in trouble. He cons his two sons into accompanying him on the search and they embark on an adventure filled with music, romance and danger.
Films in Arabic
Daughter of Keltoum
Call Number: [DVD] 749.43 D2382
A young Swiss woman travels to her birthplace - an isolated settlement in the mountainous desert of Algeria - to find her biological mother. The perilous journey immerses her in a world virtually untouched by contemporary society.
Kite
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 K622
Set in the Druze area of the Golan Heights known as the Valley of Laments and Tears, the story is a combination coming of age struggle for freedom and amplified "Romeo and Juliet." The scenario matching 15-year old Lamia with 17-year old Israeli soldier Youssef fits well with Sabbag’s tale of lovers living in limbo on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Both are Druze, separated by arbitrary physical boundaries and long-standing religious and cultural traditions.
Paradise Now
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 P2224
This is the story of what may be the last 48 hours in the lives of two Palestinian men who have been recruited as suicide bombers. When they are intercepted at the Israeli border, a young woman who discovers their plan causes them to reconsider their actions.
Rachida
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 R1192
Rachida lives and teaches in an old neighborhood in Algeria. Like most Algerians, she thinks she is far removed from the bloody conflict the country is in, until one day she is attacked by a terrorist group. The terrorists ask her to plant a bomb in her school. After refusing, they shoot her in cold blood. Miraculously, she lives and seeks refuge in a neighboring village.
The Syrian Bride
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 S9953
Mona's wedding day is the saddest day of her life. Once she crosses the border between Israel and Syria to get married, she will never be allowed back to her family in the Golan Heights.
Wedding in Galilee
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 W3885
The elder of a Palestinian village under Israeli military rule, wants permission to hold a traditional wedding for his son that will go past the imposed curfew. The Army commander agrees on the condition that he and his officers be invited as guests of honor at the ceremony.
Zaman: the Man from the Reeds
Call Number: [DVD]791.43 Z235
Zaman and his wife Najma have built their happy life together in a house of reeds. When Najma falls ill, the doctor tells them she needs surgery or some medicine he does not have. Zaman sets off in his boat and journeys to Baghdad for the cure.
Films from Afghanistan
Kandahar Journey into the Heart of Afghanistan
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 K163
Nafas, an Afghan-born Canadian journalist, returns to her homeland in a desperate attempt to reach her sister, who, overcome with grief after being injured by a landmine and her despair over the Taliban's oppression of women, has vowed that she will commit suicide at the time of the next solar eclipse, only three days away.
Osama
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 O812
This is the first feature film made in Afghanistan in the post-Taliban era. It chronicles the true story of a young girl in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan who must disguise herself as a boy to save her family from starvation.
Films About Muslims in the West
Malcolm X
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 M2435
This is the screen version of the life of Malcolm X, who through his religious conversion to Islam, found the strength to rise up from a criminal past to become an influential civil rights leader.
My Son the Fanatic
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 M9958
Parvez, a cab driver who left Pakistan in search of a better life, must choose between his friendship with a woman not his wife, and his son, who has adopted increasingly traditional beliefs.
Monsieur Ibrahim
Call Number: [DVD] 791.43 M7544
An elderly Turkish Muslim grocer befriends a lonely teenage Jewish boy in a working class section of Paris.
Subject Guide |
Andrea KempfContact Info:
Johnson County Community College
Billington Library 229
913-469-3286
fax 913-469-4417
Send Email
Subjects:
Humanities, Literature, Art, Music, Cooking, International Fiction
Johnson County Community College
Billington Library 229
913-469-3286
fax 913-469-4417
Send Email
Subjects:
Humanities, Literature, Art, Music, Cooking, International Fiction
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