„Final Moments” is an official selection of the 2014 WVN Online Film Festival. Women’s Voices Now amplifies the voices of all women by promoting the free expression of women’s struggles for civil, economic, political, and gender rights worldwide. By providing free online platforms for film, art, writing, and social-media activism, we connect people and resources striving for global women’s rights.
A film by Shadi Amin (UK | 2013 | 25 mins).
This groundbreaking documentary production shares proof, provided by more than 200 victims and witnesses, of the sexual torture of virgin girls prior to their execution at the hands of Islamic Republic prison authorities since 1979.
About Shadi Amin
Shadi Amin (شادی امین) is an Iranian feminist, writer and activist. When she was only 14 years old, she protested against Khomeini’s rule in 1979. She was forced to flee to Pakistan in 1983 and later settled in exile in Frankfurt, Germany. As a member of the Berlin Exiled Women of Iran Against Fundamentalism (BEWIAF), she organized a controversial protest against the conservative backlash occurring in Iran during 2000.
Shadi published Gender X, which is about gender discrimination, systematic oppression against women and the state of lesbian and transgender people in Iran. She published the English version as Diagnosing Identities, Wounding Bodies with Raha Bahreini. She is a founding member of the Iranian Women’s Network Association (SHABAKEH) and as a coordinator for the Iranian Lesbian Network (6Rang), she comments on United Nations recommendations for human rights in Iran. She is also a co-founder of the organization Justice for Iran.
Amin won the 2009 Hammed Shahidian Critical Feminist Paper Award jointly with Golrokh Jahangiri. Amin used her award to research political prisoners in Iran in the 1980s and study the rape and sexual abuse that occurred. She presented her findings in Toronto in 2011. She is the co-writer of Crime and Impunity; Sexual Torture of Women in Islamic Prisons.
Prior to leaving Iran, Amin hid her sexuality in public. In 2013, she participated in Turkey’s Gay Pride. In 2014, she participated in a panel with 6Rang at Istanbul Pride, where she discussed forced sex changes that occur in Iran. She is quoted by The Guardian as saying, “In democratic society, a sex-change operation is an option of transsexuals, but in Iran it’s an obligation for their survival.” She has translated Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde writings for Ghodrat va Lezzat (Power and Joy), which is one of the few Farsi resources on heteronormativity and lesbian existence. Amin also contributed research and literature review for Patholigizing Identities, Paralyzing Bodies: Human rights Violations Against Gay Lesbian and Transgender People in Iran (2014).
Shadi Amin has also worked on the following films: The Beijing Conference and Exiled Women (1995), Exiled Opposition and the Berlin Conference (2000) and The Endless Nights of Female Prisoners (2012).
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