Azadeh Masihzadeh’s family owned a VCR, a rare possession in their neighborhood in Shiraz, a city in the south of Iran. Using long cables, her father connected their machine to the televisions of seven other households, so they could watch, too. At night, after her father chose a movie, Masihzadeh, the eldest of three children, rode her bike down their alley to alert the neighbors. She honked her bike horn once if it was a foreign movie. If it was an Iranian film, she honked twice.
Masihzadeh learned English by watching these movies, and, when she was eighteen, she became an English instructor, teaching her students the language through dialogue from films. To practice greetings, she told them to act out the moment in “The Matrix” when Neo says, “It’s an honor to meet you,” and Morpheus replies, “No, the honor is mine.” If her students didn’t say their lines with enough feeling, she made them do it again. “They would get so angry at me,” she said. “One student told me, ‘You are a teacher, not a director, what are you doing? We are not your actors.’” She thought the student had a point, and she began saving money to make her first short film, a silent portrait of a boxing match. She completed it in 2013, when she was thirty-four, and it was accepted by more than a dozen film festivals.
Denne historien er fra November 07, 2022-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"
ANTI HEROES
\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.
NOW YOU SEE ME
John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.
PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO
Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.
WILD SIDE
Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?
GETTING A GRIP
Robots learn to use their hands.
WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE
In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.
DEADLINE EXTENSION
Old age, reborn.