Iranian Film Critic, Zaven Ghokasian Passes Away At 65

Prominent film critic Zaven Ghokasian passed away on February 20 at the age of 65 in his home in Isfahan following a long battle with stomach cancer. Ghokasian had spent five months in hospital in Austria and underwent stomach surgery in September. On January 27 he finally returned to his hometown of Isfahan. Upon return to Iran he was again where he was transferred to hospital undergoing more general exams and after about two weeks around February 10 finally he returned home where he had to finally surrender in the battle against cancer. Ghokasian was born in 1951 in Isfahan and graduated with a bachelor in chemistry from university of Isfahan. His mother, Ada Atayan, was one of the young cinema lovers that frequented the newly established Cine Club in Isfahan in the 1950s. She then became Zaven’s first introduction to cinema and film magazines.

Bottom Up History

The title of Staughton Lynd’s new book, “Doing History from the Bottom Up,” not only defines the purpose and sets the direction; it lays down a challenge. Lynd uses the present continuous form of the verb “do,” which commonly means “to perform or carry out,” and which indicates that there is really no beginning nor end. Lynd challenges us to act rather than ideate, and he demands that the action proceed from the primary source; that is, the “bottom.” “Doing History from the Bottom Up” turns standard academic method upside down, but there’s another component as well. Lynd told me, “’Doing history’ is a term I got from Edward Thompson. He didn’t think a person could ‘do history’ and ‘do politics’ at the same time. But I think we have to try to do both together.” In this sense, “doing” is the present progressive form of historical research. The subject is living, and the practitioners of this “guerrilla history,” as Lynd calls it, learn as they teach.

A Revolutionary Joy Ride Through History

Exactly four years ago, as my wife and I were in the final week of our vacation in South Beach, we were pleasantly surprised to hear a female voice with a distinctly Scottish burr piping up just behind us on the sidewalk as we were going out for breakfast. “Is that Lou?” The voice belonged to Jess MacKenzie, the long-time partner of Ernie Tate, a veteran of the Trotskyist movement who had the audacity like me to vacation in a spot that in our youth would have been regarded as a decadent bourgeois swamp. It turned out that Ernie and Jess were staying in a hotel right next to the apartment building where we had paid for a month-long sublet. I had run into Ernie and Jess at Left Forums once or twice and knew him as a Marxmail subscriber but beyond that mostly by reputation. In 1967, not long after I had joined the Socialist Workers Party in New York, members were still buzzing about how Ernie had been beaten up by Gerry Healy’s goons in London while selling a pamphlet critical of the cult leader outside one of their meetings. Since that incident loomed large in my mind even after decades had passed, I introduced my wife to him as the guy who Gerry Healy’s goons had beaten up. This prompted Ernie to remark genially but firmly that he preferred to be described as a leader of the British antiwar movement.

Sunday of Orthodoxy Celebrated in Taybeh, Palestine

Today was a glorious celebration for the Sunday of Orthodoxy commemorated in my church annually this first Sunday of the Holy Great Lent. After a beautiful Divine Liturgy, Fr. Daoud P. Khoury and the entire congregation of St. George Greek Orthodox Church with the children holding icons made a wonderful procession outside going around the church three times to remember the triumph in the ninth century in able to use icons in the church. Church history is difficult to explain to children but as bad as my Arabic might be, I simply tried to gather all of them to participate in the procession as living icons in marching the same way that St. Theodora and her son the Great Emperor Michael made a procession in Constantinople with all of the clergy and people making a public statement to restore the holy icons and allow them to adorn churches and homes. Emperor Michael was totally opposite his father, the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus (reign 829-842) who supported the iconoclasts that wanted the icons removed from churches. And sometimes they used very violent forms of persecution to punish the faithful who wanted to keep icons. Emperor Michael knew that his mother, the Empress Theodora secretly owned many icons. When his father died, Empress Theodora together with Patriarch Methodius made it possible for people to venerate icons out of love as images of the archetypes. The icons are not worshiped as if they are gods. The General Synod held in 843 A.D. finally brought an end to the one hundred years of persecution and fighting about icons. Empress Theodora is credited for asking for this historic meeting to take place. Oral history says she prayed and fasted to seek forgiveness for her husband.

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