A conference organised by the Centre for Media and Film Studies at SOAS with the support of the Iran Heritage Foundation, the London Middle East Institute and others The revolution of 1979 that brought the Islamic Republic into being has produced profound yet contradictory changes in the social and cultural spheres of Iranian life. While religious ideology and revolutionary fervour remain the credo of the state, the younger generation that makes up seventy percent of the population appear neither very revolutionary nor very ideological in any classic sense, while at the same time they seem to be inventing a new politics for the 21st century. The encounters between religious tradition and secular modernity, between new technologies and old ways of seeing, have a long history in Iran but have become more pronounced over the past thirty years as a religious state attempts to reconfigure public life at the very moment that globalizing trends in ideas and images are felt inside Iran. As formal politics remains highly constrained, new forms are being invented. This produces the ironic consequence that despite a state that discourages many forms of modern entertainment and what it deems as non-Islamic culture, the Internet, music, arts, photography and film have become potent means of communication in Iran. While issues of nuclear weapons and international insecurity dominate the mainstream media inside and outside Iran, issues around women?s rights, personal freedoms and new cultural practices have taken centre stage amongst Iranians themselves. Young men and women activists, lawyers, journalists and workers use the Internet as an effective space for gathering, organizing and communicating their latest messages. Young rap singers invite their contemporaries to ?stand up? and ?persevere?. While women are required to maintain Islamic modesty, they are using film and photography to illustrate their widening horizons and open vision. Rates of transgender surgery and heroin addiction are high. Unemployment and poverty are growing and inflation seems out of control. The family is under pressure when the state does not provide. The international cultural market welcomes contemporary forms of Iranian expression even as they are find limited distribution inside Iran. This conference proposes to focus on these contradictory developments in the social and cultural lives of Iranians since the revolution. It aims to bring some of the best-known practitioners in the media and contemporary arts inside Iran together with academicians and theoreticians of these developments in a unique encounter.
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