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		<description><![CDATA[The Travel Club is an association of independent, explorative and creative travelers from all over the world. We are dedicated to building and promoting travel culture on a global level.]]></description>
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			<title>Forough Farrokhzad: The House Is Black</title>
			<link>https://www.thetravelclub.org/articles/traveloscope/633-forough-farrokhzad-the-house-is-black</link>
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			<description><![CDATA[<p>In 1950's Tehran, in Iran, Forough Farrokhzad is 16 years old and has just gotten married to her cousin Parviz Shapour, against her family's will. A year later she gives a birth to her son, Kamyar.</p>
<p>Four years later, in order to regain her freedom to be an artist, she divorces from Parviz leaving their son with him. She becomes one of the most important contemporary poets, directors and independent Iranian women.</p>
<p>In her lifetime she published four books of poetry and directed an internationally awarded documentary about a lepers colony – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_Is_Black" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>The House Is Black</em></a>. In the meantime she suffered from a breakdown, went to a mental hospital and, later on, traveled across Europe where she fell in love again.</p>
<p>Famous Italian director&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thetravelclub.org/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_Bertolucci" target="_blank">Bernardo Bertolucci</a>&nbsp;visited Iran only to do an interview with Forough.&nbsp;One minute of the interview:&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/L_DVYmrm7Do" width="640" height="480" seamless="seamless" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>On her way back from lunch, after the best conversation she had ever had with her mother, Forough Farrokhzad died in a car accident at the age of 32.</p>
<p>This is one of her poems:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>The Wind-Up Doll</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">More than this, yes<br />more than this one can stay silent.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">With a fixed gaze<br />like that of the dead<br />one can stare for long hours<br />at the smoke rising from a cigarette<br />at the shape of a cup<br />at a faded flower on the rug<br />at a fading slogan on the wall.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">One can draw back the drapes<br />with wrinkled fingers and watch<br />rain falling heavy in the alley<br />a child standing in a doorway<br />holding colorful kites<br />a rickety cart leaving the deserted square<br />in a noisy rush</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">One can stand motionless<br />by the drapes—blind, deaf.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">One can cry out<br />with a voice quite false, quite remote<br />"I love..."<br />in a man's domineering arms<br />one can be a healthy, beautiful female</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">With a body like a leather tablecloth<br />with two large and hard breasts,<br />in bed with a drunk, a madman, a tramp<br />one can stain the innocence of love.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">One can degrade with guile<br />all the deep mysteries<br />one can keep on figuring out crossword puzzles<br />happily discover the inane answers<br />inane answers, yes—of five or six letters.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">With bent head, one can<br />kneel a lifetime before the cold gilded grill of a tomb<br />one can find God in a nameless grave<br />one can trade one's faith for a worthless coin<br />one can mold in the corner of a mosque<br />like an ancient reciter of pilgrim's prayers.<br />one can be constant, like zero<br />whether adding, subtracting, or multiplying.<br />one can think of your --even your—eyes<br />in their cocoon of anger<br />as lusterless holes in a time-worn shoe.<br />one can dry up in one's basin, like water.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">With shame one can hide the beauty of a moment's togetherness<br />at the bottom of a chest<br />like an old, funny looking snapshot,<br />in a day's empty frame one can display<br />the picture of an execution, a crucifixion, or a martyrdom,<br />One can cover the crake in the wall with a mask<br />one can cope with images more hollow than these.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">One can be like a wind-up doll<br />and look at the world with eyes of glass,<br />one can lie for years in lace and tinsel<br />a body stuffed with straw<br />inside a felt-lined box,<br />at every lustful touch<br />for no reason at all<br />one can give out a cry<br />"Ah, so happy am I!"'</p>
<p><img src="https://www.thetravelclub.org/images/traveloscope/Forough-Farrokhzad/FF-shooting-The-House-is-Black.jpg" alt="FF-shooting-The-House-is-Black" /></p>]]></description>
			<category>Traveloscope</category>
			<pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 20:24:00 +0200</pubDate>
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			<title>No life: a short documentary</title>
			<link>https://www.thetravelclub.org/articles/traveloscope/728-no-life</link>
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			<description><![CDATA[<p><em>Travelers: Inesa, Uroš, Lazar</em></p>
<p>In September 2013, using the <a href="https://www.thetravelclub.org/travel-house/granada">Travel House in Granada</a> as the starting point, we got on a ferry and crossed into Africa, to travel around Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Senegal. The trip lasted for three weeks and was very exhausting, partly for the heat, partly due to the bad and, as we ventured deeper into the Sahara, non-existent roads. Using a small pocket camera we recorded a lot of video-materials, most of which turned out to be completely useless: random, unrelated shots, coincidental conversations, eye-catching sights without any potential to combine into a coherent story.</p>
<p>We then chose one conversation and tried to make it into a short documentary, but we soon parted ways and the project was forgotten. It was completed almost five years later.</p>
<p>The context is deliberately omitted. A desert and an ocean, the Spanish language and Islam, a ship cemetery, together form a confusing, disorientating little window into a life that takes place on the landfill of civilization, which could be located anywhere. There is a lot more that is missing: the smells of &nbsp;the ocean, corrosion and rot, large putrefied sea creatures scattered on the sand, Bible and Quran on a bedside table, our host's sincere anger at our offer to pay for his fuel for giving us a ride back to town, a memory card with music (which?) that we left him as a gift, our excitement and the feeling of being immersed in life.</p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KGsZrtQYOmg?rel=0" width="674" height="379" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p>The film is available in full HD.</p>
<p>---<br />More info: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Sahara<br /></a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouadhibou">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouadhibou</a></p>]]></description>
			<category>Traveloscope</category>
			<pubDate>Sun, 01 Jul 2018 13:58:34 +0200</pubDate>
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