Iran: New Voices
Film & Video Screenings

Mahmoud Bakhshi
Mahmoud Bakhshi was born in Tehran in 1977 and studied sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran. In 2007 he won an artist residency in Seoul, Korea where he shot his video Jesus.

Shahram Entekhabi
Born 1963, Beroujerd, Iran, he studied architecture in Reggio Calabria, Italy. He lives and works in Berlin and since 2001 has primarily concentrated on his work as a media artist, producing video art, photography and installations. Shahram Entekhabi's practice is framed within an urban setting and diffuses the idea of the urban space being a reserve for the practice and performance of the white, middle class, heterosexual male. He explores these ideas via a variety of performative practices using architecture, installation and digital media.

Shahab Fotouhi
Born 1980, Yazd, Iran, Shahab Fotouhi lives and works in Tehran. He works with video and photography. In his video works the subjects present moments of suspension, merging the playful and serious; examples of free exchanges of arguments and counter-arguments hopefully with no terminal synthesis. In his photographic works he captures unrelated moments taken in Tehran, found objects, interior design and people's portraits as sculptural forms, merging the uncanny of the everyday with that of the staged composition.

Ghazel
Ghazel was born in 1966 and studied Visual Arts at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Nimes followed by a BA in Film at the Paul Valery University. Her works are about identity, some autobiographical; directly inspired from her everyday life and observations. As part of her work, she juxtaposes eastern and western elements that form her sense of self. Dealing with feelings of being both an insider and outsider in the East and West she creates work which refers to her nomadic status; wandering from home to home.

Barbad Golshiri
Born 1982, Tehran, Iran, he studied painting at The School of Art and Architecture, Azad University, Tehran. He is both a media artist and a critic. As an artist he works with video, installation, photography and digital media. As a critic he deals with the current socio-political situation of Iran. His works are mostly exhibited outside Iran.

Abbas Kiarostami
Born in Tehran, Iran in 1940, Abbas Kiarostami is an internationally acclaimed film director, screenwriter and film producer. An active filmmaker since 1970, he has been involved in over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. He attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy, A Taste of cherry and the Wind will carry us. He is also a poet, photographer, painter, illustrator and graphic designer.

Kiarostami has a reputation for using child protagonists, for documentary style narrative films, for stories that take place in rural villages, and for conversations that unfold inside cars, using stationary mounted cameras. He is also known for his use of contemporary Iranian poetry in the dialogue, titles, and themes of his films.

Avish Khebrehzadeh
Born 1969, Tehran, Iran, she studied at the Azad University, Tehran, Accademia Di Belle Arti Di Roma Pittura, Rome and University of the District of Columbia, Washington. She draws simple figures with pencil on brown paper that she sometimes stains with olive oil. Her drawings and animations offer poignant, symbolic narratives and allude to emotions and ideas without spelling them out. In 2003 she won the Prize for Young Italian Art at the 50th Venice Biennale.

Mandana Moghaddam
Mandana Moghaddam is a Swedish-Iranian artist living in Göteborg, who in recent years has mainly worked with installations. Her art pursues questions relating to communication, isolation and exile, discussing alienation and existential conditions, cultural and gender related restrictions. In 2005 her work Chelgis was displayed in the Iranian pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Shirin Neshat
Born in 1957 in Iran, the artist and filmmaker, Shirin Neshat lives in New York City. She has exhibited widely in major European and American cities. Among her most recent solo exhibitions are the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark (2008), the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2006), The Hamburger Banhof, Berlin, Germany (2005), and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Leon, Spain (2005). She is the winner of numerous awards such as the Golden Lion Award, the First International Prize at the 48th Venice Biennial (1999). Most recently Shirin Neshat has been involved in making her first feature length film, 'Women without Men', based on a novel by the Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipur. Three videos of the five part series are shown at the film and video screenings at the Barbican

Mitra Tabrizian
Photographer and filmmaker Mitra Tabrizian was born in Tehran in 1956 and lives and works in London. She has exhibited internationally and her films have been screened worldwide. Her large-scale photographs combine techniques more commonly utilized in documentary film-making to create elaborate, staged tableaux. Focusing on everyday, real-life situations, she invites local people to take part as actors, creating apparently realistic and mundane scenes. At the same time, the version of reality she presents is shot through with surreal detail and a strong allegorical content, commenting both on contemporary Iranian society and the universal human condition.

While some of her work is set within Iran itself, other photographs and films follow the lives and struggles of those forced into exile. Recent work has become both more extreme in the situations it portrays and more highly polished in execution, and she depicts hope and determination as finally conquering despair.