Today, we continue the conversation with an Iranian writer/filmmaker who traveled to Afghanistan in 2006 to uncover why women at alarming rates were self-burning as a form of suicide!
Sanaz Fotouhi obtained her Masters at the University of HK and later her PhD at the University of NSW in Australia. Exploring the meaning and identity of the mass dispersion of Iranians since the Islamic Revolution, she brings her own life experience to the books she writes and the movies she makes.
As one of the founding members of the Persian Film Festival in Australia, you might assume that she creates documentaries and writes books and everyone laps them up. Her story is much more real than that. This conversation is about the resilience and journey of a woman who believes that a book needs to be read so much that she persisted with publishers for 14 years!!
It is with celebration of that determination to “stay in the game” that we speak on the precipice of her launch of Love Marriage in Kabul…14 years in the making J
The Goods on Sanaz:
Sanaz Fotouhi was born in Iran soon after the revolution, during the Iran-Iraq war. Her father’s job as a banker took her and her family to many countries.
Sanaz holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Hong Kong. The thesis of her PhD at the University of New South Wales was published as The Literature of the Iranian Diaspora: Meaning and Identity since the Islamic Revolution (I.B. Tauris, 2015).
As a creative writer, Sanaz has been published in anthologies and journals across Australia and Asia. She is also the co-producer of two documentary films – Hidden Generation, a short documentary examining the reasons for the increase of women’s self-burning as a form of suicide in Afghanistan, and Love Marriage in Kabul, a multi-award feature documentary following a young couple as they try to get married against all odds.
Sanaz is one of the founding members of the Persian Film Festival in Australia, and is the former director of Asia Pacific Writers and Translators Inc., a literary networking organisation that brings together people from the creative writing and publishing industries.
Contact Sanaz:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SanazFotouhi
Twitter: @sanazfotouhi
Buy ‘Love Marriage in Kabul’: www.amazon.com
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