The spark, we know it. One death too many, and the Islamic Republic trembles on its foundations in the face of a popular revolt which suddenly threatens to turn into a revolution and ignite the four corners of the country, even in the basements of the university in Tehran. In these weeks then these months of effervescence, videos ensure a direct testimony. If these documents have so much meaning for those who courageously disseminate them, they are sometimes relatively opaque when taken out of context.
Outside the country, two Iranian experts, Farzad Seifikaran and Payam Elhami, have undertaken to bring together the scattered pieces of this mosaic of testimonies. The first is an investigative journalist, and the second a data specialist. Together, they work hard to browse the Internet, social networks, in search of all the video documents in circulation. They store them, sift them, determine their origin, cross-reference their information with other images to geolocate them. They are not staged masterpieces. Their quality is that of immediacy and danger. Their strength lies in the imperative need of their anonymous authors to show, to transmit. It took collective work to grasp the meaning, the scope of this great ensemble.
In the vast picture thus constituted, it is not only a question of violence and repression. The images are also those of celebrations, moments of collective liberation. Men and women dance in the streets around a fire. When protesters start the song Hello beautiful at a funeral, how not to be seized? How not to understand the message, its universal nature, its references that come out of Iran and tell the great song of freedom that crosses eras and continents?
Share a piece of history
The world decided to take part in a project whose objective is to keep open a window on a movement in danger of obliteration. We publish the videos with their elements of verification and contextualization, so that a wide audience can grasp the momentum, the flashes and the revealing moments. This work does not claim to give an exhaustive account of the situation. How could he? Free media that would work in Iran calmly, or would go to the country to operate there without hindrance, would render obsolete this platform in which, by definition, a plurality of points of view does not appear. This document is intended to share a part of history which is also a form of resistance to the fear of seeing the current movement discredited by the authorities.
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