Cinema at a glance in tirgan festival
NOTE: ALL PROGRAMS ARE SUBJECTED TO CHANGE. FINAL EVENT PLANNER WILL BE PUBLISHED ON JULY 10, 2008
 |
arranged in alphabetical order
Banietemad, Rakhshan
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad is one of the leading female contemporary filmmakers in Iran. A graduate of the University of Dramatic Arts in Tehran, she started her career with making documentaries and later directed many feature films. These two forms of film making constantly intermingle in her later works to specify her outlook and point of view. She has won numerous awards both in Iran and in the international arena. She was the first woman recipient of the best director award at Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran for her feature film “Nargess” in 1991. “Blue Veiled”, “Under the Skin of City”, and “Narges” have won her various awards in Iran, Italy, India, the United States, Nethderland, and Russia. Bani-Etemad’s strong social and political consciousness and commitment along with optimism are present in all her films where she conveys the message that beauty, order, and prosperity will be realities of the future as long as there is political will and assuming responsibility and independent action by the community members.
Asghar Farhadi graduated from Tehran University with a Master's Degree in Film Direction. He started his filmmaking career with short films in Isfahan Young Cinema Society. He later had successful experiences with writing and directing in theatre, screenwriting for radio, and making TV series. He wrote the screenplay for Ebrahim Hatamikia's 2001 box office and critical success, “Low Heights." In 2003, he completed his own feature film, “Dancing in the Dust," which played at the Moscow Film Festival and won the award for Best Leading Actor, as well as the Film Critics' prize. His second feature film, “Beautiful City," took the Best Feature Film Award at the 2004 Warsaw Film Festival, the India International Film Festival, and Moscow's Faces of Love Film Festival. “Fireworks Wednesday” is his third and most recent feature film which won many international awards including the Best Picture award at Las Palmas, Golden Hugo for Best Film in Chicago Film Festival, and Best Director award in Rabat (Morroco) and Kerala (India) Festival. In 2007, Farhadi was selected as the Best Iranian Director of the Young Generation by Directors Society of Iran.
Ershadi, Homayoun
Homayoun Ershadi started acting in 1996 by playing the lead in Kiarostami's acclaimed, award-winning A Taste of Cherry (Palme d'Or, Cannes Festival, 1997). His acting career includes appearing in films such as Agora (2009), The Kite Runner (2007), Colour of Friend (2006), Portrait of a Lady Far Away (2005), Disturbant (2002), The Pear Tree (1998), and A Taste of Cherry (1997). Having studied architecture in Venice, Italy, Homayoun Ershadi is also an accomplished architect
Farahani, Golshifteh
Golshifteh Farahani started studying music and playing the piano at the age of 5. At 12, she entered a music school in Tehran. After graduation, she was accepted at the Vienna Conservatory.At the age of 14 she was cast as the lead in Dariush Mehrjui's The Pear Tree for which she won the Crystal Simorgh for Best Actress from the International Section of the 16th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran. The win contributed to her decision to stay in Iran and choose a career in film over music. She never boarded the plane to Vienna. Since then she has acted in 16 films, many of which have received international awards. For Boutique she won the Best Actress award from the 26th Nantes Three Continents Festival (France). In recent years she has acted in movies by some of Iran's best directors: Dariush Mehrjui's controversial film the Santoor Player, Bahman Ghobadi's Half Moon (winner of the Golden Shell at the 2006 San Sebastian Film Festival) and the late Rasool Mollagholipoor's M for Mother (Iran's nominee for the 2008 Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Language Film category) for which she won the special prize of the jury for the Best Actress from the 37th Roshd International Film Festival.
Kiarostami, Abbas
“I believe the films of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami are extraordinary. Words cannot relate my feelings. I suggest you see his films; and then you will see what I mean”
Akira Kurosawa
Abbas Kiarostami, one of the most influential and controversial Iranian filmmakers, is a graduate of Faculty of Fine Arts in Painting from Tehran University. He first started with painting, graphics and book illustrations and then began his film career by making credit-titles and commercials. Winner of over seventy national and international awards, Kiarostami contributed largely to the Iranian “New Wave” of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
A pioneer in Iranian cinema, Kiarostami has written or directed more than twenty films. His films Where is the Friend’s House, Close-Up and Under the Olive Trees placed him on international scene. He was the first Iranian director to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Taste of Cherry. He is also largely credited for his contributions
Concurrent with his international acclaim as a filmmaker, Kiarostami has seriously pursued his passion for photography and has sustained a remarkable practice of still photography for over twenty-five years. He has had numerous exhibitions in the world including those at MoMA (The Museum of Modern Art) in New York and Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Mehrjui, Dariush
As an Iranian New Wave cinema icon, Mehrjui is regarded to be one of the intellectual directors of Iranian cinema. A graduate of philosophy from UCLA, Mehrjui made his debut in 1966 with Diamond 33. His second feature film, Cow (1969), brought him national and international recognition. His most acclaimed film, The Cycle, won the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 1978. In 1981, he traveled to Paris and remained there for several years, during which time he made a feature-length semi-documentary for French TV, Voyage au Pays de Rimbaud (1983). In Hamoun (1989), a portrait of an intellectual whose life is falling apart, Mehrjui sought to depict his generation's post-revolutionary turn from politics to mysticism. The '90s also found Mehrjui releasing films dealing with women's issues (Banoo, Pari, and Leila). “Once Upon A Time” will feature a screening of Mehrjui’s feature film, "The Pear Tree" followed by discussion.
Mohammadi, Aref
Aref Mohammadi , a graduate in Persian Literature from Azad University in Iran, and Community Worker program in George Brown Collage. He has studied filmmaking in the Association of Iranian Youth Cinema and film editing in the Centre of Filmmaking in Tehran. A producer and director of several short movies screened in Short Film Festivals in Iran, Aref has also been an assistant director in several plays and movies. Since 1996, Aref has produced and hosted a popular TV program (Film and Cinema) in Germany and Canada. Aref regularly contributes to weekly papers such as Shahrvand and Iranian TV program such as ITC and OITN. He also founded NEW-Wave Artistic and Cultural group in 2004 which has been holding many different events in Toronto such as cinema workshop, film review, tribute to Iranian veteran actors and filmmakers.
Sinai, Khosrow
www.khosrowsinai.com
Khosrow Sinai studied Architecture in Vienna Technical University , and music composition, film directing, and script writing in Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Sinai has made about 100 short films, documentaries, and feature films. Some of his award winning feature films include: “Viva ...!”, “The Inner Beast”, and “The Bride of Fire”. He has also written and translated numerous essays about cinema and other fine arts. “The Man in White” and “The Artists of a Blood shedding Era” are examples of his numerous publications. Khosrow Sinai’s impressive profile includes being a juror in several national and foreign film festivals, working in the Ministry of Culture and Arts, teaching in various universities in the fields of screenplay writing and documentary film, as well as in the Iranian National Television as producer, screenplay writer, director, and editor.
Taghvai, Naser
Taghvai is a prominent Iranian director. His masterpiece “My Uncle Napoleon”, a TV series adaptation of a book under the same title, has turned into an inter-generational classic which is a very unique status considering temperamental mood swings of a society in the face of revolution and war. During the past thirty years of his artistic career Taghvai has collaborated with highly respected playwright The late Gholamhosein Saedi in adapting a number of his plays into movies (Such as Tranquility in the presence of others).
Some of the movies directed by Naser Taghvai are as follows:
Captain Khorshid (an adaptation of “To Have and Not Have” by Hemingway), Tranquility in the presence of others (an adaptation of “Fear and Trembling” by Saedi), Paper with no line, Ey Iran, Curse
