Trip canceled to United States, a Kamran Shirdel´s protest

After a long moment of reflection, I have decided to cancel my trip to the United States for the retrospective of my works. As much as I am honored and pleased by this invitation to show my work to Iranian and American audiences at the Asia Society, there are many reasons - for the decision that I have cherished for a long time and just made and finalized - regarding my travels to the United States.

Believe me, this was not an easy nor simple decision to make, because showing one's work and being able to interact with an audience is an important part of being a filmmaker. I also believe that these films, never before screened in the U.S. within such a context, will give many of those who have come to see them, a glimpse into documentary filmmaking in Iran, and the long history that it has developed over the years PLUS my point of view regarding the American policy in Iran during the Shah's regime and of course I am referring mostly to "Tehran Is the Capital of Iran" !

After being banned for many years, under both the Shah's regime and that of the current government in Iran, these films finally had their first public screening in Iran this past month. This is of course a great feeling, no matter how long it has taken for such a screening to happen. Furthermore such films, and thus my vision, are also being welcomed for the first time in the United States. But if one takes into account the current political situation in the world, notably that of war and conflict perpetrated by the current American government, this event must take its place within the bigger picture.

Recently, tension and conflict between the American and Iranian governments has escalated. There is a push and pull happening from both sides. Caught in the middle, are ordinary people. As the American government pretends, currently, to want to help populations in the Middle East, and those of Iran, to strive for a better society, it drives the nail further into the skin of the Iranian people. With its daily threats and announcements, and its secret agendas that pretend to offer "help" to Iranian intellectuals, the American government has once again shown that it will not allow a country to grow on its own, nor to acquire its own political experience. I am referring, of course, also to the American led coup against Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, which as the American government had hoped, put an end to a vibrant political endeavor that had popular support within the country. And Iran is not the only case. Everyone is familiar with America's meddling with
South American, Middle Eastern, and Asian politics over the last century (WELL TECHNICALLY POST WW-II AS IT WAS THE BRITS BEFORE).

The illusion and lie of being a democratic society and of wanting to "export" that so-called "democracy" has cost the world a lot of innocent lives, a great part of it being young American soldiers and ordinary civilians!. Just count the daily figures coming out of Iraq -and Afghanistan – of slained INSURGENTS and people in the streets resulting from the barbaric intervention and taking over of a country with the dreamlike excuse of destroying its Weapons of Mass Destruction!? Try to see and feel the tragedy of all those innocent people living in that miserable conditions of Guantanamo prison!...... .....and the kind and democratic American welcome given to Iranians at the airports by wild Police dogs and fingerprinting them like robbers and convicts. Of course I can enumerate hundreds of other cases as well, but do I really need to bring about other facts?...........................................................

Thus, in protest to America's policies, past and present, I would like to refuse this invitation to travel to that country, with hopes that this statement will speak loud, as my films and my fellow Iranians do in their daily lives.

I am deeply grateful to you and your colleagues at Ziba Foundation for arranging such an event and hope it will be of great help to illuminate - at least partly- the darkness in the American minds about Iranian Culture and People.

Let us hope for better days in the future.....

Sincerly yours,

Kamran Shirdel
Documentarian

kamran@shirdel.com
filmgrafico@gmail.com
kamranshirdel@gmail.com