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Citizen-Inmate

Hesam Eslami
Iran
15'

Electronic monitoring has transformed Tehran into a digital panopticon, turning the nightmare of constant surveillance and control into a reality. But what happens when the roles are reversed and the focus is turned on the surveillants?

It’s clear that Hesam Eslami is familiar with the theorising of surveillance systems practiced by Harun Farocki in films such as Prison Images (2000) or The Creators of Shopping Worlds (2001). What Eslami’s short film adds to this type of skeptical-materialist observation is a component of small human interactions that’s also to be found in the Iranian New Wave and the films of Abbas Kiarostami. A human-faced Panopticon, digital maps that selectively monitor a population in real-time, pixelated surveillance images, all intertwine into an imperfect whole. If for Farocki the system was a materialistic, almost Lovecraftian threat, here the “monster” is tamed by human fatigue, a weak cellular connection, or even small misunderstandings. (Emil Vasilache)

Saturday, September 27, 18:00

Cinema Elvire Popesco
Tickets

Hesam Eslami

Hesam Eslami is a Tehran-based filmmaker, who has directed and produced documentaries for international TV and cinema since 2013. He got his BFA and MA in cinema from Tehran University of Art. His works focus on the margins of Iranian society, from gangs of young delinquents, stuck in a cycle between petty theft and prison, to the rights to a love life within the confines of a Tehran psychiatric institute or to individuals risking everything in order to take their fates into their own hands.

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