Filmmaker's story of Iran, Saberi and our small world

Steve Spencer is one of many Minnesotans monitoring the unfolding story of Roxana Saberi, the journalist from North Dakota sentenced in Iran to eight years in prison on spy charges. But Spencer's connection is more personal than most.

After securing a rare tourist visa in 2006, Spencer, a 44-year-old documentary filmmaker, spent a month in Iran, shooting 26 hours of video he is editing into a feature-length film. A few hours before heading home, he met Saberi for tea, courtesy of mutual friends.

"When I met Roxana," Spencer said, "I got the feeling she was someone who was connecting with her inner-Persian."

He understands the powerful pull that Iran, a country of 70 million people, with 10,000-year-old villages, exerted on Saberi, a dual Iranian-American citizen. His Iranian footage includes a few seconds of Saberi, smiling and seemingly comfortable as she stands on a Tehran street, her head covered by a traditional hijab.

The blog entry that Spencer made at the time noted that Saberi had seen both good and bad in how women were treated in Iran.

"She says she doesn't exactly feel oppressed, but clearly there are different laws for women,'' the blog noted. "Despite having a press card, which should give her carte blanche, she still has problems getting a hotel room as a single woman. She admits a sizable number of women like the feeling of protection under which they are cloaked."

Saberi had been living in Iran since 2003, freelancing for several news organizations. Her press credentials were revoked in 2006; the spy charges followed this year.

She is said to have been on a hunger strike since shortly after her sentencing, and her situation is gaining urgency. On Tuesday, about a dozen French supporters, many of them journalists, launched a hunger strike of their own in front of the Paris offices of Iran Air, the national airline. On Wednesday, Saberi's father, Reza, said he was questioned by a Tehran judge about his daughter's well-being. More than a week into her hunger strike, she is growing dangerously weak, said her father, who contends that Roxana was coerced into making damaging statements. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman denies that she is on a hunger strike and said that her supporters would be surprised if they saw the evidence against her.

Spencer shakes his head at that statement.

"Then show us the evidence. The timing of it is what becomes suspicious," he said. "She was arrested shortly after President Obama's inauguration and, what's her sentence? Eight years? Think about it."

Since their brief meeting, Spencer has exchanged a few e-mails with Saberi, mostly about friends interested in visiting Iran, but he has had no contact with her since she has been jailed. His hope is that she will be released after Iran's presidential elections in June.

"I don't have any illusions about the nature of Iranian bureaucracy, or its human rights issues," said Spencer, drinking coffee near the Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) studios in St. Paul where he works. "But most [Iranians] have no problem with us."

Spencer's road to Iran was a long time unfolding. Born in tiny Madelia, Minn., the youngest of six children, he was one of 49 students in his high school graduating class. He studied film at the University of Minnesota and worked at the Minnesota Daily before taking an internship at TPT, where he has worked for nearly 20 years.

He didn't get on a plane for the first time until he was 30 when he traveled to West Africa. In the past four years, he has traveled mostly in the Middle East.

"I wanted to go to Iran for a long time," said Spencer, who traveled on his own, and not as a TPT employee. "I wanted to see an ancient civilization at a crossroads." In February 2006, with an Iranian guide (a requirement for American visitors), he chose a "classic Persian trip:" Tehran, Kashan, Isfahan with its "spectacular architecture," Shiraz, "city of roses and poetry," and Yazd, "the second-oldest mud brick village in the world."

Still, Spencer saw Westernization everywhere.

"I've occasionally seen sports fans adorned in FUBU,'' he blogged. "I ask [guide] Hossein if those consumers know that it's a popular, successful black-owned fashion line in America, whose slogan is 'for us, by us'"

"Yeah, they know," he answers. "That's why they buy it."

Today, it's harder for Spencer to enjoy those memories. "I'm very worried for Roxana," he said. "I've tried to stay out of it because I'm not sure my participation helps or makes things worse. She was very down-to-earth, sweet.

"From what I could tell, she was really enjoying living there."

Gail Rosenblum • 612-673-7350 • gail.rosenblum@startribune.com