Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
- Kak Satar Awehang
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Description area
Dates of existence
History
Born in 1955 in the village of Awehang in Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan) into a large family, Faithi spent much of his early years working the fields and farms of Kurdistan. At the age of 19, he joined the Society of Revolutionary Toilers of Iranian Kurdistan (commonly referred to as Komala), a political party which advocates for self-determination of Kurdish people.
After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Islamic regime, which gained power, did not accept the Kurdish demands for autonomy, leading to an uprising in Rojhelat. An active Komala member, Faithi, who by this time was also known by his fighter name, Satar Awehang, took to documenting life of the Peshmerga resistance fighters he served alongside, as well as their families and daily life in Rojhelat, through photography.
As the Islamic regime in Iran suppressed the resistance, Faithi fled to Istanbul in 1985, where he sought asylum. During his time there he continued to document the Kurdish people in exile. In the early 1990s, he came to Canada as a refugee, after settling in Toronto, he worked primarily in construction, but continued to work with his archive of photographs, video and audio from the Kurdish resistance, delivering “night shows on the archives of Komala in Kurdistan”, where he presents material from his archive on a certain topic. These home movie presentations were often presented on Facebook to his followers. He also continued to capture photographs of protests and other events in Canada.
In the early 2020s, Faithi decided to retire to Erbil in Kurdistan. His life, archive, and move to Kurdistan were filmed as part of a 2025 documentary by Chowra Makaremi and Sahar Salahshoori.
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Kurdistan
Canada
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Internal structures/genealogy
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Sources
"Visual Archives of Setar Faithi: Archival Activism and the Constitution of a Transnational Counter-archive" by Chowra Makaremi & Shahrzad Mojab
"Kak Satar: A mid-length documentary film project by Chowra Makaremi and Sahar Salahshoori" [synopsis]