{"id":34498,"date":"2011-03-01T07:10:10","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T12:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=34498"},"modified":"2011-03-01T08:34:06","modified_gmt":"2011-03-01T13:34:06","slug":"iranian-film-blogathon-a-brief-post-mortem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=34498","title":{"rendered":"Iranian Film Blogathon: A Brief Post-Mortem"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I am blown away by the response to my last-minute Iranian Film Blogathon<\/a>. 41 pieces written, all in all. A diversity of talent represented, with heavy-hitters such as Kiarostami and Panahi dominating, as is to be expected, but with a lot of love shown other film-makers (including a couple of pieces on the Iranian directors who happen to be women – Jason Bellamy<\/a> wrote one, I wrote two – Perhaps I’ll do more in the future – we need to give these women the props, too!). I am so thankful to those of you who promoted, who kept checking in here, who read other people’s reviews and commented – showing your support of the other participants – It was a really vibrant week. I will definitely be hosting one again, now that I know all you have to do is spread the word as hard as you can, and then sit back and watch the links from all of the generous passionate intelligent souls out there come pouring in. <\/p>\n

I will go back and read everyone’s contributions again and again. I have also added a good 20 films to my Netflix queue, and I hope the same is true for you out there. <\/p>\n

There has been a surreal edge to all of this due to the death of my friend, but by the time I got that horrible news on Wednesday afternoon, the Blogathon had taken on a life of its own, and I didn’t have to do much but sit back and compile the links that came in. It was quite amazing. Thank you, Jake Cole, for helping me out on that last day. I came back from the funeral on Monday night, wrung dry, so exhausted I was actually nervous to be driving, and checked in with the site – and saw the additions to the list, added by you, and felt very emotional about it. I was feeling emotional about everything, but there is a truth that comes in the exhaustion of such moments. If you ask people for help – whether it be “could you please promote this?” or “won’t you please participate? I would love to hear a review from you!” or “could you please handle the Blogathon for me for one day?” – there are people out there who will say “Yes” with no hesitation. <\/p>\n

That has been my experience of this week. <\/p>\n

This began as a helpless-feeling response to Jafar Panahi’s situation, and it exploded into so much more. Some of the pieces have received comments that because of this or that review, a person out there is going to see their first film from Iran. This was another goal of this Blogathon and I am very happy about it. <\/p>\n

I am exhausted and really don’t feel like writing right now. I am grieving the loss of my friend. So I’ll sign off for now. A more formal post-mortem will follow later this week, when I can get my thoughts together. <\/p>\n

But wanted to thank everyone for participating, promoting, reading, and commenting.<\/p>\n

You all ROCK. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am blown away by the response to my last-minute Iranian Film Blogathon. 41 pieces written, all in all. A diversity of talent represented, with heavy-hitters such as Kiarostami and Panahi dominating, as is to be expected, but with a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[1255],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34498"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34525,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34498\/revisions\/34525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}