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| FILMMAKEKRS' BIOS &
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Dancing
in the Dust (Raghs Dar Ghobar) by Asghar
Farhadi (Iran, 2003, 95 min., 35 mm)
Born in 1972, Asghar Farhadi received degrees in theater from Tehran
University (BA) and Tarbiat Modarres (MA). After graduation, Farhadi
made some 8mm and 16mm films at the Isfahan branch of Iranian Young
Cinema Society. Subsequently, he wrote plays and screenplays for
IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting). He has also directed
a number of TV series, including A Tale of a City, and he co-wrote
the script for Ebrahim Hatamikia’s Low Heights. Dancing in
the Dust is Farhadi’s debut feature film.
Festivals and Awards:
Moscow International Film Festival, 2003
Pusan International Film Festival, 2003
14th Annual Festival of Films from Iran, Chicago, 2003
Reviews:
Eye-catching... Farhadi tells the tale engrossingly and with a lot
of physicality.
- Variety, June 9, 2003
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Diary
of an Art Competition (Under
Curfew) (Yawmyat Musabaqa Fanniya (tahta al-hisar) by Omar
Al-Qattan (Palestine/U.K., 2003, 16 min., DVD)
Omar Al-Qattan is a Palestinian-British director, producer and
writer. His film credits include, among others, the award winning
documentary Dreams and Silence (1990), portraying a Palestinian
woman refugee in Jordan and her struggles with the religious and
social constraints around her during the first Gulf War. He has
collaborated with Palestinian-Belgian filmmaker Michel Kheleifi
since 1988 and has produced all of films since then. In 1998, Mr
Al-Qattan co-founded the A.M. Qattan Foundation and is director
of the organization’s Culture and Science Programme. Recently,
he functioned as series director of the highly successful two-part
series for American Television (PBS), Muhammad, Legacy of a Prophet.
Mr. Al-Qattan regularly contributes articles in English to The New
Statesman, Sight & Sound, and, in Arabic, to Al-Hayat and Al-Quds
Newspapers in London.
Festivals and Awards:
ICA, London, 2003
San Francisco Arab Film Festival, 2003
Palestinian Film Festival, Jerusalem, 2004
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The
Fifth Reaction (Vakonesh-e Panjom) by Tahmineh Milani
(Iran, 2003, 106 min., 35 mm)
Born in Tabriz in 1960, Tahmineh Milani is one of the most successful
Iranian woman filmmakers on the international scene. Milani began
her film career in 1979 as a researcher for screenplays at the Free
Film Workshop. Going on to work as a script girl and an assistant
director, she graduated from Iran University of Science & Technology
in 1986 with a degree in architecture. Her debut feature, Children
of Divorce, was co-winner of the Best First Film Prize at the 8th
Fajr Film Festival, but her international breakthrough came with
The Legend of Ah (1990) and Two Women (1999). Milani is the winner
of four prestigious awards at the American Film Institute Film Festival
for her Two Women and The Hidden Half.
Festivals and Awards:
Grand Prix for Best Film, Geneva Film Festival, 2003
Audience Award, 14th Annual Festival of Films from Iran, Chicago,
2003
Cairo International Film Festival, 2003
Festival of Films from Iran, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 2003
Reviews:
With the similarly themed Two Women (1999) and The Hidden Half (2001),
and now The Fifth Reaction, Tahmineh Milani continues to be no less
than implacable in her fight for the rights of Iranian women.
-Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
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Jagadakeer…Between
the Near and East by Tina Bastajian (USA,
2001, 19 min., Beta SP)
Tina Bastajian is a Los Angeles based film/video artist whose work
shapes sound and image to deconstruct narrative forms and elements
of the documentary. She uses layered and stylized tableaus with
(re)found images often juxtaposed with multiple languages, translation
and silence to explore memory, identity, erasure, displacement and
desire. Her award winning works include Yellow Aria (1988), Pinched
Cheeks and Slurs in a Language that Avoids Her (1995) and Remembering
Fatima: A Study on Duration (2000)
Festivals and Awards:
Utopiana Project (Migration des Images) a collaboration with Centre
pour l'Image , Contemporaine de Geneve and the Cinemathque Armenienne,
Yerevan , 2002
The San Francisco International Film Festival-Certificate of Merit/First
Person Documentary, 2001
Women In The Director’s Chair Film Festival, Chicago 2002
The First World Congress of Middle Eastern Studies Film Festival,
Mainz, Germany, 2002
Inheritance: Art and Images Beyond a Silenced Genocide, Beacon Street
Gallery, Chicago, 2002
Black Maria Film/Video Festival and tour-Juror’s Citation
Award, 2002
The Denver International Film Festival 2001
The Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley 2002
The Blinding Light Cinema, Vancouver, 2003
Retrospective of Armenian Cinema at the Beirut International Film
Festival, 2001
Havana Biennale, 2003
Reviews:
A multitude of cultural images and sounds that thread themes of
memory, time, and homeland into a beautifully intricate work. -Ariana
Proehl-Co-Curator
Women of Color Film Festival-Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
This elegiac film poem views the Armenian genocide of nearly a century
ago
through an intentionally murky lens as an event just out of our
reach, poignantly illustrating the impermanence of memory.
-Mark Fox-SF Intl. Film Festival
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Kasaba
(The Small Town) by Nuri Bilge Ceylan
(Turkey, 1997, 82 min., 35 mm)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan was born in Istanbul in 1959. After
graduating with a degree in electrical engineering from Bogaziçi
University, he studied filmmaking for two years at Mimar Sinar University.
His first short film, Cocoon (Koza, 1995), was screened at Cannes.
He has also received many national and international awards for
his debut feature, Kasaba (The Small Town), and for Clouds of May
(Mayis Sikintisi), which was shown at Cinefan and the New Directors,
New Films series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Distant
(Uzak), his third feature film, was the recipient of the Grand Jury
Prize at Cannes in 2003.
Festivals & Awards:
Caligari Prize, Berlin Film Festival, 1998
Taipei Film Festival, 1998
Silver Prize, Tokyo International Film Festival, 1998
Special Jury Prize, Festival of Three Continents, Nantes, France,
1998
FIPRESCI Special Jury Prize, Istanbul Film Festival, 1998
Special Jury Prize, Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers, France, 1999
Best Film and Best Cinematography Prizes, Cologne Film Festival,
1999
Filmfest DC, Washington, D.C., 2000
Reviews:
Produced with such outstanding intelligence and noble ideas the
modesty of Kasaba has opened up a new vein of cinematic production.
-Ahmet Ulucay, Radikal Gazetesi
Kasaba stands opposite us, revealing misty scenes from a small town
surrounded by snow-covered mountains and muddy roads. . . . It is
about a natural life in the woods, children, a teacher, and an untidy
school…The memories that are the last to be forgotten come
in cloudy and misty images…death and life together. Nuri Bilge
Ceylan achieves a complete aesthetic that is effective, dialectical,
complex, natural and human.
-Tunca Arslan, Radikal Gazetesi
Kasaba is understood from the beginning as being a different kind
of film. There are school and classroom images that conjure up feelings
of nostalgia from bygone years that evoke replies of '…my
existence is a present to Turkish existence,' and rantings that
are repeated as a group at school and in every phase of life.
-Sungu Capan, Cumhuriyet Gazetesi
A strikingly original, vibrantly sensitive look at an extended family
living in a remote Turkish village.... Shoestring shooting (the
director did his own cinematography) in no way detracts from what
the film wants to say and lends it great intimacy.
-Deborah Young, Variety
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Ouarzazate
Movie by
Ali Essafi (Morocco/France, 2001, 57 min., Beta SP)
Ali Essafi was born in Morocco in 1963. His works
as a director include Général, nous voilà (General,
here we come,1997), a documentary about Moroccan veterans of World
War II. It was awarded the Special Jury Award at the Namur Film
Festival in Belgium, and shown in Carthage and at the Paris Arab
film biennal. Le Silence des champs de betteraves (The silence of
the root fields, 1998), another documentary by Essafi, was awarded
the Grand Prix at the International Festival of Environmental Film
& Video in Paris, and was also included in the Cinéma
du Réel documentary festival.
Festivals and Awards:
Best Mediterranean Documentary, Syracuse International Film and
Video Festival, 2003
Festival International du Film Francophone de Namur, Belgium, 2002
Festival International Nouveau Cinéma Nouveaux Médias
de Montréal, 2002
Les Ecrans documentaires de Gentilly, France, 2002
Milano Film Festival, 2002
Vues d’Afrique, Montréal, 2002
Biennale des Cinémas Arabes, Paris, 2002
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Paint!
No Matter What
(Naghashi Kon!) by Maziar Bahari (Iran, 2001, 26
min., Beta SP)
Maziar Bahari was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1967.
In 1993, he graduated with a degree in communications from Concordia
University in Montreal. He has since been active as a filmmaker
and journalist. His first play A Fairly Justified Revenge opened
in Copenhagen in January 2003 and his documentary film And Along
Came a Spider will be broadcasted on HBO in 2004. Since 1998, Mr.
Bahari has been NEWSWEEK magazine's Iran correspondent.
Festivals & Awards:
Golden Plaque, The Documentary Film Festival, Kish, Iran, 2002
Press Reviews:
The film not only is a testament to the intelligence of its director
but also shows his honesty and willingness to understand his character.
Maziar Bahari’s success in portraying Khosrow Hassanzadeh
also results in a new way of documenting the 8-year war with Iraq
as the most important event in Iran in the past fifty years.
- Film Magazine, Tehran
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Sacrifices
(Sunduq al-Dunya) by Ossama Mohammad (Syria/France,
2002, 113 min., 35 mm)
Born in Latakia, Syria, in 1954, Oussama Mohammad
is one of his country's leading filmmakers. He graduated from Institut
des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques in Moscow in 1979 and
since then has been the director of the National Cinema Organization
in Damascus. He co-wrote the film The Night with Muhammad Malas
(1992) and directed the acclaimed classic of Arab cinema, Etoiles
du Jour (Stars in broad daylight, 1988).
Festivals and Awards:
Official Selection, Un Certain Regard, Cannes, 2002
Special Jury Award, Bienniale des Cinémas Arabes, Paris,
2002
Grand Prize, Festival Internacional de Cinema da Figueira da Foz,
Portugal, 2002
Best Photography Award, Grand Jury Prize, Alexandria International
Film Festival, 2002
Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage, 2002
London Film Festival, 2002
International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2003
Reviews:
Few films bring Arab cinema to a whole new level like Syrian director
Oussama Mohammad’s Sunduq al-Dunya (Sacrifices). Sacrifices
is a highly stylized film concerned with themes of possession, righteousness,
innocence and the afterlife....Carefully shot and framed in continuous,
dreamlike sequences, the film is...a feast for the eyes...and shouldn’t
be missed.
-Calgary’s News & Entertainment Weekly
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Sleepless
Nights (Sahar al-Layali) by
Hani Khalifa (Egypt, 2003, 130 min., Beta SP)
Hani Khalifa graduated from the High Institute of Cinema in Cairo
in 1993. His short feature film Ladies Only received a special mention
from the jury at the Claremont Ferrant International Film Festival
in 1995. He has also directed a number of short documentaries, including
Awlad Al -Nodour and Alfeyet Fakhry, and worked as an assistant
director on many Egyptian features. Sleepless Nights is his debut
feature film.
Festivals and Awards:
Damascus International Film Festival, 2003
Soussa International Film Festival, Tunisia, 2003
Palm Springs International Film Festival, California, 2004 Press
Reviews:
[A] cohesive product where everything from the acting to the decor,
costumes and music is addressed with meticulous detail....[M]ost
outstanding of all is the dialogue and subtle touch of the camera,
which leave audiences feeling they are not watching a movie, but
rather peeking into the lives of real people who have real conversations
and act the way we do..
-Egypt Today
Sexually unfulfilled, but trapped by both love for her kind, repressed
husband and fear of the stigma of divorce, Moushira indulges in
lurid sexual fantasies on her analyst's couch and the brief attentions
of a rival suitor.... The shot of her vacant eyes over her husband's
shoulder is more haunting than racy.
-Ashraf Khalil, Women's eNews
Khalifa's image of contemporary life in Cairo...is daringly realistic.
Cars, mobile phones, computers, camcorders, beer and hashish are
present in abundance. Perhaps to a greater extent than any other
contemporary Egyptian movie, Sahar Al-Layali [Sleepless Nights]
affords a prospect that is visually true to life.
-Youssef Rakha, Al-Ahram Weekly
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Universal
Games by Mariam Ghani
(USA, 2000, 2:20 min., Beta SP)
Mariam Ghani was born in New York in 1978 to an Afghan father and
Lebanese mother. In her practice as a media artist, she uses these
multiple identities to position herself as a translator, revealing
channels of communication between cultures that consider themselves
foreign to each other. She received a B.A. with honors in Comparative
Literature from NYU in 2000, where she was an Acton Scholar, and
an MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media from SVA in 2002,
where she received the Aaron Siskind Memorial Scholarship. She was
a Soros New Americans Fellow from 2001-02, a Bronx Museum Artist
in the Marketplace from 2002-03, and is currently a Lower Manhattan
Cultural Council Artist in
Residence in the Woolworth Building. Ghani has exhibited her work
in video, installation and new media nationally and internationally
since 1999, including recent screenings at the New York Video Festival,
the Asia Society, and the Curtacinema Festival in Rio de Janeiro.
Her ongoing web-based public dialogue and interactive documentary
project about the reconstruction of Kabul can be seen online at
www.kabul-reconstructions.net and has been covered in The New York
Times, the BBC World Service, ArteNews and Falter.
Festivals and Awards:
Installation at Talwar Gallery, NYC, 2002
Installation at Judson Church, NYC, 2003)
Middle East Film Series of the Kevorkian Center & Center for
Media, Culture and
History at NYU, 2001
Fletcher School of International Diplomacy at Tufts University,
2002
The Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art in Yerevan,
Republic of Armenia, 2001
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Viewpoints
by Farshid Mesghali (Iran, 1978, 11 min., 35 mm) |
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