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Roya Rastegar

@royazara

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‎ #jinjiyanazadi 🧿 💚🧿
Filmmaker, Professor, Curator - Answers to Mom-mom-mom-mom. ED @iraniandiasporacollective

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Iran belongs to its youth—especially the brave young women who continue to fight for their freedoms.

This International Women's Day, we stand with women around the world who fight for freedom, justice, and a better world.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan impose laws that systemically oppress women, denying them visibility, voice, and basic human rights. This is GENDER APARTHEID and it infects all of society, amplifying the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities, LGBTQI communities, artists, journalists, musicians, actors, students, and workers who dare to integrate women's rights into the struggle for equity, dignity, and a better life.

As civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer reminds us: “Nobody is free until everybody’s free.”

#womanlifefreedom #jinjiyanazadi #endgenderapartheid #freeiran #iranrevolution #iran #afghanistan #taliban by @royazara

We launched a new series of billboards in Times Square today!
People of Iran: We are with you. We see your fight and determination. We mourn with you. We stand with you.

We wanted to show these beautiful faces of our youth, projected large, in the middle of Times Square. So the world sees how evil the Islamic Republic of Iran is for murdering them. Raisi spoke at UN today. SHAME on the UN for welcoming him.

The billboards feature Jina #MahsaAmini, Nika Shakarami, a 16-year-old protester, Sarina Esmailzadeh, a vlogger who bravely shared about her life in Iran, and Kian Pirfalak, a 9-year-old innocent bystander. We say their constantly, a recitation, a reminder: we will never forget and we will stand by the people of Iran until this government leaves Iran once and for all.

Jina’s billboard is inspired by the epitaph on her gravestone: “Jina, dear! You will not die. Your name became a code.” A blueprint for freedom.

Iranian youth are connected to global culture. We listen to the same music, we share similar dreams, we want to create a better future. Nika, Sarina and Kian’s billboards include lyrics inspired by each of them: Taylor Swift’s “Karma,” for Nika, a #swiftie who sang karaoke to #taylorswift with her friends; Hozier’s “Nina Cried Power,” for Sarina, who sang along to #Hozier ‘s “Take Me to Church” on her YouTube vlog; #Coldplay ‘s “A Sky Full of Stars” for our sweet Kian, who loved the galaxy and dreamed of being an inventor when he grew up.

The majority of Iranians are dreaming of, and fighting for, a better future for Iran.

The revolution isn’t over. Jina’s legacy lives on. We stand with the youth of Iran who are leading this historic fight for freedom. #womanlifefreedom #jinjiyanazadi

The billboards will run in NYC at 47th St and 7th Ave through Sep. 23, 2023. Created by us at the @iraniandiasporacollective Creative directed by my brilliant sister and collaborator @nicolettemason. Built on the work of anonymous collaborators in Iran and our globally recognized campaign from 2022, and paid for with the support of our amazing #GoFundMe supporters! by @royazara

PRE-ORDER OUR CHILDREN’s BOOK! When the protests in Iran began 8 months ago, our 5 year old Neev began asking what "Azadi" ("Freedom") and Jin, Jiyan, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom) mean. This sparked family discussions about freedom, equality, and joy. We shared ideas about how to be in solidarity with the youth of Iran as they fight for their freedoms, even though we live across the world in Los Angeles. So I collaborated for SEVEN MONTHS with two brilliant Iranian women across three different countries. I conceptualized images with @parisa.pourhosseyni who then created 13 STUNNING, VIBRANT hand painted, original illustrations. To get the MODERN FRESH BRIGHT HOPEFUL vibe, @parisa.dale brought her gorgeous style and meticulous eye to the design of the book. For every 10 books sold, I will donate one to a library, community center, or school. To buy go to: AZADIBOOKS.COM (link in bio). #jinjiyanazadi #freeiran #childrenillustration #childrensbooks #womanlifefreedom by @royazara

Take a peek at the table of contents for #Seen011, this stacked issue hits stands in just a couple days on Tuesday, October 27. Pre-order your copy at blackstarprojects.org/seen. Link in the bio! by @royazara

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: We are now accepting Seminar, Workshop & Roundtable Proposals for The New Centre's upcoming programming cycle.

Our last Open Call received more than 75 proposals, of which 24 became part of our current Season. Help &TNC Programmers alongside distinguished Alumni and full Scholarship recipients on our Programming Committee to shape the future of our Programs. We invite researchers, theorists, artists, and practitioners to propose four-Session Seminars (research-based, culminating in a final essay or theoretical project), Workshops (practice-oriented, focused on weekly tasks leading to a final presentation or project) and Roundtables, a new format structured as a collective inquiry in two Sessions. Participants receive pre-circulated readings and come with prepared positions, and the second Session deepens what emerged in the first.

To apply, please submit the following items:
• Academic / Practice CV
• 300-word description of the proposed Seminar or Workshop
• Brief session breakdown and assignments
• Brief biography

Proposals will be reviewed by our Programming Committee. Selected applicants will be contacted for the following steps.

DEADLINE: November, 15

For all the details on payments and compensation, please write to programming@thenewcentre.org.

To submit your proposal, please visit our proposals platform in our bio. by @royazara

As part of our Fall/Winter 2026–27 Season, we present our Seminar “Marjane Satrapi & the Reframing of Iran,” taught by Roya Rastegar @royazara , starting on January 29, 2027.

This Seminar is an invitation to engage collectively with the work and creative practice of Marjane Satrapi (1969–2026). Across graphic memoir, film, and illustration, Satrapi produced a body of work that reshaped global conversations about Iran, diaspora and exile, culture, the West, and feminism. Participants will read her graphic works, including Persepolis (2003), Embroideries (2005), and Woman, Life, Freedom (2024), alongside screenings of her films, including the Oscar-nominated Persepolis (2007), Chicken with Plums (2011), and Gang of the Jotas (2012).

The Seminar takes seriously Satrapi’s challenge to the images and histories of Iran that have circulated both inside and outside the country, and asks how that challenge works through memoir and personal experience rather than through political argument. Her humor and grit carry the project as much as her politics do. Satrapi has been criticized from several directions at once, as too bourgeois, too left, too neo-Orientalist. Reading Clyde Taylor’s The Mask of Art: Breaking the Aesthetic Contract, Participants will ask what each of those critiques misses and what it reveals about the audiences making it. Across three decades, her career holds to the claim that personal testimony is a form of political resistance, and that pleasure, melancholia, and punk are never separate from that work.

To learn more about this Seminar, please visit the link in our bio.

IMAGE: Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (film still), 2007 by @royazara

Join me as we collectively engage with the work and creative practice of Marjane Satrapi. In January/February 2027, we will explore a body of work that reshaped global conversations about Iran, diaspora and exile, culture, the West, and feminism. We’ll take seriously Satrapi’s challenge to the images and histories of Iran that have circulated both inside and outside the country, and consider how that challenge moves through memoir and personal experience rather than political argument.

Anyone can audit with a @new_centre membership which start at $15/month and give you access to a range of courses and seminars.

Scholarship applications for the Certificate Programs have also been extended to TOMORROW!

#marjanesatrapi #freeiran #graphicnovel by @royazara

“It’s not even life and life. It’s death and death.”

@royazara on the painful, impossible reality of Iranians fighting for freedom as they go unheard by the world around them.

Full episode linked in stories and bio. by @royazara

New podcast episode is live.

Most of us who are against the war in Iran have been loudly calling it out. What we've seen less of, however, is the callouts of the regime before the war. And, more importantly, the uplifting of Iranian voices.

As opposition to the war grows, Iranian voices that don't fit the anti-war frame are getting stifled even more. This hurts solidarity. It cuts us off from the people we should be learning from.

I speak with Roya Rastegar, who runs the Iranian Diaspora Collective. Roya is in direct contact with people inside Iran right now, in the middle of a 53-day regime-imposed internet blackout.

I hope people will listen to her. And to the many diverse Iranian voices speaking up, both for and against the war.

Follow Roya: @royazara

Iranian Diaspora Collective: @iraniandiasporacollective by @royazara

‘Death to Iranian People’ has been the Islamic Republic’s governing methodology since 1979. The regime has killed an estimated 80,000–140,000 of its own civilians — a reckoning we keep deferring. Any accounting of civilian death in Iran that starts on March 1, 2026 is not an honest accounting. Iranian civilians must not be considered a sunk cost.

This is not an argument for war or not. This is not a call to "bomb Iran into the stone ages." This is a call to urgently consider what the true cost of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been - and will continue to be if it survives.

Roya Rastegar's article on our substack. Link in bio.

#iran #freeiran #iranrevolution #war #usa by @royazara

Iranians are facing an agonizing moral calculation between different forms of violence — the certainty of what the regime has already done, or the uncertainty of what this war might bring. No outcome leaves them whole. Written for @voxdotcom @royazara offers varied perspectives from people inside Iran after the first week of bombings. (We are now entering week 3 of bombings.)

Link in @royazara bio
#iran #war #listentoiranians by @royazara

People in the streets following the news that one of history's most brutal dictators has been killed. Iran will thrive again, because our people will make it so.

#freeiran #iran by @royazara