A map showing the topics being discussed in Iranian blogs. No conservative poetry is being written.

Following our reports about the plight of SOAS (ex-)student Hossein Derakshan HERE, the plot around his imprisonment now thickens even more. Now Newsweek is accusing him being a spy behind the current Iran trials aimed at arresting many of the opposition figures.

For seven years, I used to read Editor: Myself, while sipping on my morning coffee. Hossein, had chosen this name for his blog to reflect his protest to the censorship he had known in Iran. Once landed in Canada, he had started his blog in Persian and English, opening the way for an impressive wave of socio-political movements in Iranian recent history. Iran is one of the rare countries where blogging is the most influential way of communicating among its youth. Through blogs, otherwise imprisoned minds are set free and ideas flow with no constraints.

One of the first times I noticed Hossein was during our weekly seminars put on by the Media and Film studies department. I don’t remember the details of the presentation, but I do remember a smarmy smooth talking woman presenting ways in which to frame the Israel/Palestinian conflict on news programs … Again, my memory is fuzzy on the details, but I remember that when the floor was opened for questions, and Hossein posed his, it made the woman so angry that she demanded he leave the room and refused to continue the Q & A.

In an ongoing effort to reinvent itself, Project: Carousel is launching a new monthly feature to acquaint its readers with interesting and important people/organizations working in the field of global media and cultural studies. These people/organizations have, through their work, made some kind of a difference to the lives of people around the world – a difference that has made a difference.

A talk between filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, artist-turned-filmmaker Shirin Neshat, and Sina Motalebi from BBC Persian discussed the current and future state of Iranian filmmaking. I suppose we all know that making films in Iran wasn’t the easiest, but I had never realized how difficult it actually is. Furthermore, under Ahmedinejad’s regime, obstacles have gotten harder to get through. The talk was an hour long, but brought up a number of issues faced by filmmakers in terms of censorship and the basics of obtaining filmmaking permits.

The recent situation in Iran has caused quite a lot of debate amongst intellectuals, academics and philosophers in the West about how they should respond to it and what the role of the public intellectual should be when faced with such “events.” The revolution in Iran has a long history of fascination amongst Western intellectual and commentators; Foucault’s infamous writings some 30 years ago come to mind. Below is a selection of some of the writings – including Zizek’s piece that had been making the rounds. How do they compare?

As some of you may recall a few months back when we set up the website, I said that at least a familiarity of new social media such as Twitter should be mandatory for all …

I visited this exhibition with fellow Global Media students Rounwah, Osama and Fazilet. I went with a completely open mind, intrigued as to what art from the Middle East actually looked like. I whole heartedly accept that it is not possible all the art that originates from the Middle East come under one label. Geographically, the Middle East is a diverse terrain and the same analogy can be applied to the art produced by Middle Eastern artists. So it would be redundant of me to use terms such as “Arabic”, “Islamic” or even “Middle East” to a certain extent.

Nevertheless, I entered the exhibition filled with trepidation. While touring the exhibition, I felt a mixture of emotions.

A commentary by Financial Times on religious TV series compares the prophet to President Ahmadinejad.
TV’s prophet viewed as political messenger
By Najmeh Bozorgmehr
Published: January 29 2009 02:00 | Last updated: January 29 2009 02:00

The latest television …