Sending Neda Viral

Today I make my blog available for a very important documentary, created at great peril for all involved.  The subject, if you haven't guessed from the visual, is Neda Aghad-Soltan, the young woman martyred in Iran during post-election protests just about a year ago.  I especially want to single out the courageous 24 year old journalist in Iran, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, who knowingly risks his life to interview Neda's family when many others understandably refused.  Below is an hour-long video, worth every moment I spent watching it for its intimate look inside today's Iranian culture, and inside Neda's life before a bullet took it from her in one tragic moment.  For its ability to carry Neda's message on into the future.

As an aside, it was difficult for me to choose a picture of Neda.  Do we prefer to remember her as her family and friends will, in life?  Beautiful smile on a lovely face?  Or in death, the powerful picture of her dying, eyes open to her own fate?  I finally found this montage. I do not know whom to credit, as it appeared on many webpages.  What visual would you have chosen?

The second picture, by the way, I created by taking a screen shot from the video.  The woman is not Neda, but she could have been.  I captured this moment because she was so obviously afraid, and yet, determined - not hiding in the car below, not running, arm raised in defiant gesture.  What you cannot see from a still shot:  she was in the process of scanning from right to left, fearfully looking and looking around, afraid of what might come.  Fear, courage, determination.  The makings of change.

I will also make this observation:   the face of this revolution is as female as it is male.  Women in Iran are so oppressed, and have so much to gain by a regime change.  I am so proud of these women. 

Please help send Neda's story viral by reposting this blog or reposting the video itself on whatever social networks you use.