City Hall Arts Center
From the Margaret Mead Traveling Film and Video Festival: Issues of sexuality remain bound to tradition in modern Iran, and yet within this rigid structure, transsexuals find a government supportive of their desire to be reborn through surgery. This sensitive portrait offers a window into the complex issue of sexuality in an Islamic society. In 1976, Ayatollah Khomeini, imposed a fatwa to allow people with hormonal disorders to change sex if they wished, because the Koran doesn’t say anything on the subject. Transsexuals don’t have to fear prosecution and they even can change their birth certificates, but the challenge is the traditional, religious Iranian society in which transsexuality is still treated as a disease. Negin Kianfar and Daisy Mohr’s film follows a young man who decides to become a woman; his conservative parents try to come to terms with their son’s decision. Supported in part by the Vermont Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Community Partners: RU12?, Samara Foundation. Post-film events: Steve Zind and Anousha Shahsavari will discuss the film after the Sunday, March 23 show; three members of the RU12? Trans Support Group will speak after the Thursday, March 27, show. No rating, 65 minutes, in Farsi with subtitles. Film review
- Sunday, March 23 2:00 pm
- Thursday, March 27 2:00 pm
Comments on this entry are closed.