Lola Lieven
Sunday 12.07.2026
15:00-20:00
Chapter Five
Living in the Extraction Zone
15:00 - 15:15 Introduction and Recap
15:15 - 16:00 Film Screening
Gas, Fire, Wind by Kamran Shirdel
16:00 - 16:15 Break
16:15 - 17:30 Film Screening
Meezan by Shahab Mihandoost
17:30 - 18:15 Discussion with filmmaker
18:15 - 19:00 Dinner
19:00 - 20:00 Film Screening
Siege Your Besiege with Madness by Sina Khanahmadi
Each small candle lights a corner of the dark.
TICKETS Each ticket will go to the fundraiser. This gathering is about (un)learning together. If you cannot afford the ticket, please come by, and we will figure it out together.
FUNDRAISER LINK
or
HERE
If you cannot attend the event, but would like to donate, you can use the link above.
Gas, Fire, Wind
dir.
Kamran Shirdel
/ 1986 / IR / 42’ / Persian w/ EN subs
The film investigates the enormous quantities of natural gas burned off at Iranian oil fields. Through interviews with workers and local residents, together with Shirdel's essayistic narration, the film examines oil extraction, gas flaring, waste, development, and the relationship between natural resources and foreign economic interests in Khuzestan.
Gas, Fire, Wind is one of the two "oil films" made by Shirdel for the Iranian oil industry after the Revolution.
Meezan
dir.
Shahab Mihandoost
/ 2023 / IR / 72’ / Ara
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Set in south-western Iran, in the province of Khuzestan and bordering Iraq, Meezan (Scale) is an observational and immersive experience, a journey from the sea to the land, about labour at the margins of petro-capitalism in three chapters.
Departing from the shore of Abadan, the first oil company-town in the Middle East, it follows a group of Arab fishermen who exemplify the realities of maintaining intergenerational ways of living and working on the sea. The men lead us to Bahrakan harbour where they barter for their share of the catch. What is contemporaneously a meeting place for fishmongering was a site of arduous migration for refugees fleeing Abadan after the mass destructions of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Meezan concludes in a secluded shrimp processing plant on the outskirts of Abadan where women who are shuttled in from surrounding villages furiously peel and devein shrimps in their own race for wages.
Despite the massive industrialization of the region, waterways of Khuzestan remain a significant source of income for the native communities who are most intimately connected to these embattled landscapes, and Meezan is a reflection on the relation between bodies and scales to acknowledge the weight of the past and its consequences in the present.
Siege Your Besiege with Madness
dir.
Sina Khanahmadi
/ 2024 / IR / 56’ / Arabic w/ EN subs![]()
The new generation of Arabs in the city of Ahvaz has turned to rap music. Ahvaz is the capital of Khuzestan Province in the south of Iran, A strategic region where conflicts began after oil was discovered there around 1908. with diverse ethnic people including Arabs, Bakhtiyari, Persians etc.)
Arabic rap in Ahvaz doesn’t have a long history, but a group called "Emad Records" has been working in recent years to bring Arabic rap from Ahvaz into the spotlight.
In Iran, the official language is Persian, and other ethnic groups living in the country are not allowed to study in their native languages, which creates numerous challenges and difficulties for them.
Despite not being able to study or formally learn the rules of their native language in school, Arab rappers in Ahvaz strive to compose poetry and perform rap in their own language. Through their lyrics, they reflect on their issues and challenges.
