 |
|
   
   
  
2010 Press Release
LIFF is Proud to Announce a Special Screening of the Film Offside
Long Beach Island, New Jersey
May 22, 2010
The Lighthouse International Film Festival is proud to announce a Special Screening of the film Offside by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. The Tehran soccer stadium roars with 100,000 cheering men- only men. According to Islamic custom, women are not allowed, and the ambitious girls who manage to sneak in are caught and sent to a holding pen, guarded by male soldiers their own age. Duty makes the young men and women adversaries, but duty can't overcome their shared dreams, their mutual attraction and untimately their overriding sense of national pride and humanity.
The screening is Satruday, June 5 at 2 pm at the Beach Haven School, one of four venues for the Festival which runs June 4-6 on Long Beach Island.
Vital to the viewing of the film is the following information:
The internationally acclaimed filmmaker Jafar Panahi has begun a hunger strike to protest at his imprisonment in Iran, opposition
websites say.
The writer and director was arrested in March along with members of his family.
The Iranian authorities have clamped down on dissenting voices since protests flared over the disputed elections last June.
The director, known for his social realism, has made several films critical of Iran's regime.
He has won awards at the Venice and Berlin Film Festivals, and was due to be acting as a judge at the ongoing Cannes film festival in
the south of France.
Mr Panahi's family were released shortly after their arrest, but he was taken to Evin prison in Tehran.
Demands
His wife, Tahereh Saeidi, told the opposition Rahesabz website the director had informed her by phone that he had stopped eating and
drinking until he was allowed to see his family and a lawyer.
"I have not eaten or drunk since Sunday morning and will continue... until these demands are met" - Jafar Panahi, Film director
The Opposition Jaras website also said Mr Panahi went on hunger strike following an interrogation where he was accused of filming
his cell.
"I have not eaten or drunk since Sunday morning and will continue... until these demands are met," The Jaras website quoted him as
saying.
Last year a travel ban was imposed on Mr Panahi by the authorities after he appeared wearing green - the colour of opposition
supporters - at the Montreal film festival.
He was also briefly arrested after attending a memorial to student Neda Agha Soltan, killed at an opposition rally last June.
His most recent film is Offside, which won the 2006 Berlin Film Festival's Silver Bear award.
Return to main press page
|
|
|
|
