Kenaf (Rope) Raha fard

Kenaf (Rope) (2020-2021) Director, Screenplay, and Cast: Raha Alipourfard (Raha Fard)

Kenaf (Rope) is a 5 minutes and 30 seconds short film displaying how people are interconnected through their identity, and through the land. It is not about the geographical area, wherever we live, we are always connected to the land of our origin. Kenaf conveys a duality in life that a Persian diasporic person, experiences regarding the human rights issues and social and political disasters which is happening in the Middle East, while she lives in Canada. Distance will never separate her from what other people experience in that part of the world, which is connected to her identity. She lives another life in the nights, affected by the daily news about the executions and murders in the Middle East. For the mothers, spouses, and children does not make any difference, why their loved ones have been killed; all of them experience the same spiritual and material issues. Ropes were used for execution in the past. Unraveling the rope and changing it to the single filaments as a metaphorical object, represents the annihilation of the injustice and cruelty in the world. Kenaf is Raha Alipourfard’s lived experience witnessing people in social and political disasters in the Middle East.

The short film Abaca-Kenaf was produced in Collaborative Online International Learning Residency (Narrative through Global Space) between OCAD University, and Mapua University in the Philippines by Raha Alipourfard and her Filipino partner. It won OCAD U President’s Award for best cinematography and was nominated for 4 other categories: best film project, best screenplay, best sound editing, and best fiction in film. Also, Kenaf, the Persian part of AbacaKenaf, was accepted in Farhang Short Film Festival.