The Silent Majority Speaks

“Every face could be a political prisoner’s or a martyr’s,” explains Bani Khoshnoudi in her masterful work The Silent Majority Speaks, filmed in Tehran in 2009 during the Green Movement and subsequently secretly broadcast under the pseudonym “The Silent Collective” until 2013. Capturing a popular uprising against the dictatorship while making sure not to endanger those being filmed, recapitulating a century of political and more or less insurrectional and always bloodily oppressed uprisings, reflecting upon the lethal, toxic or, quite the opposite, emancipatory images: all these tasks fulfilled by The Silent Majority Speaks immediately highlight the expectations Bani Khoshnoudi, the plastic artist, filmmaker and producer, has for herself. Faced with political/religious censorship as well as with self-censorship strategies, the work of Bani Khoshnoudi ultimately develops a deep understanding of revolutionary skills. (Viennale)