At the intersection of Felestin (Palestine) Street and Talaghani Street, in the middle of a large roundabout, there is an allegorical bronze-and-cement sculpture. Depicting several figures, one with a fist raised in a gesture of defiance, the work is a monument to the Palestinian struggle and the First Intifada in particular. The First Intifada was an unceasing succession of Palestinian remonstrations against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It lasted from December 1987 until the Madrid Conference in 1991, and it was precisely during this period that construction of the monument took place, from 1989 until its inauguration in 1990. The sculpture was the first public monument ever built-in postrevolutionary Tehran.
This film is about the monument at the center of Tehran and its historical background. Here, the analysis goes beyond the physical place to address the phantasmagorias and spatiality that surround it, viewed through the lens of the contemporary history of art and politics. The monument in Tehran is a site- and context-specific example that serves as a conceptual point of departure for a diverse array of analogous political contexts and historical entanglements.
This film presents the research process through the frame of archival materials unearthed in the course of a collaborative filmmaking project, juxtaposing analysis and commentary on this footage with the materiality of the monument and Felestin Square. By elaborating on the relationship between two hyper-politicized social environments—Palestine and Iran.
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