In this BBC Weekend programme Shiva Rahbaran speaks about the importance of the interplay between cinema and its presentation of women for the introduction and discourse of modernity in Iran in the past 100 years.
She also discusses the legacy of the late US president Jimmy Carter from the viewpoint of the Iranians 45 years after the American hostage crisis. Shiva points out that Carter’s foreign policy is not only seen as a ‘failure’ in that respect, but also says that most Iranians consider Carter’s backing of the Islamists in order to stop the spread of Soviet Union’s influence in the Middle East as a tragic mistake, which helped the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power.
Shiva also talks about her recent trip to Colombia, during which she witnessed the country’s difficulties to find a balance between rehabilitating the coca plant as an indigenous cultural good and fighting the drug dealing cartels.