Please join us for a zoom conversation with four Iranian Female Filmmakers, Negar Azarbaijani, Zeinab Tabrizy, Rojin Shafiei, and Sahar Mosayebi Around the topic of the Female Body in Iran's Cinema and their observation and experience around the issue. This conversation is facilitated by Iranian film critic Nozhat Badi and curated in collaboration with Garineh Nazarian.
Negar Azarbaijani (FACING MIRRORS, the story of an Iranian trans woman)
Director, Script Writer was born in February 1974. She has a BA degree in cinema from the Art University of Tehran-Iran. She also has an MA degree in visual media arts from Emerson College in Boston-US.
She started her career in pictures by acting in a few television series and also worked as the assistant editor on the movie "Sheyda" (directed by Kamal Tabrizi). In 2000 and after acting in "Afflicted Generation" (directed by Rasool Molagholipour), she moved to the United States to continue her studies. She was involved in writing and translating scripts and trade articles during and after her graduate program in the United states. She also directed a number of Shorts and Animations in the US as well as in Iran. Among her short subjects are "Safe Corner", "Roya" and also "Virtual Truth" which won the critic's special award from Tehran film festival in 2007. She started writing scripts for feature films in 2007 and directed her first feature in 2011. Her first feature "Facing Mirrors" won several awards in the International Fajr Film Festival, Iranian Critics Film Festival, International Urban (Shahr) film festival & KHNEH CINEMA ( the alliance of professional guilds of cinema). It also has attended in more than 150 international film festivals around the world and has won more than 50 awards including Circle Award from Washington DC, International Film Festival – 2012. “Season of Narges” is her second feature.
Sahar Mosayebi (PLATFORM, the story of three Iranian Wushu female fighters)
Sahar Mosayebi was born in Iran in 1975. She studied Theater Arts at School of Art in Tehran and received her bachelor’s degree in 1998. Very soon after her graduation, Sahar started working as Script Supervisor in the Iranian film industry, and soon she became one of the busiest script supervisors of the Iranian cinema. She stayed in this role for over a decade, and she worked closely with some of the most famous directors, including Alireza Davoodnejad, Kiumars Pourahmad, Alireza Reisian, Mani Haghighi, Maziar Miri, and Manijeh Hekmat.
During her time working in the Iranian mainstream cinema, Sahar also worked as first assistant director and production manager, two very hard-hitting positions to be taken by Iranian women in a male-dominated industry.
Before turning completely to directing and working on feature films, Sahar directed numbers of shorts and documentaries. PLATFORM (Farsi: AZ SAKOO TA SEFR) is Sahar’s first feature film, co-produced by award winning actress Mahtab Keramati and longtime producer and production manager Tahoora Abolghasemi. A ROCKY-esque tale of determination and grit, PLATFOMR follows of three Iranian sisters as they compete to become international champions of Wushu, a Chinese martial art. The sisters thrilling underdog story explores not only their dedicated training, but also their surprising place in society as they challenge traditional gender roles on the path to success.
PLATFORM went on to play on numbers of film festivals around the world and it won the best Discovery Award at Raindance Film Festival in London in 2019. PLATFORM was the first feature documentary that was released theatrically nationwide in Iran and became the number one selling documentary of all time in the country.
After the success of PLATFORM, Sahar directed another documentary focusing on female sports, this time football, in Iran. Her feature fiction, in post-production, is also portraying another female athlete, who has marked the Guinness record for swimming the longest distance with her hands tied. ORCA is also co-produced by Mahtab Keramti and Tahoora Abolghasemi, in which internationally known Taraneh Alidoosti (THE SALESMAN) plays Elham.
Rojin Shafiei (visual arts and filmmaker worked on the female body in various aspects)
(b.1993) is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist/filmmaker living and working in Toronto. In her works, art is a vehicle for the translation of cultural messages and is used to present diverse feminine subjectivities. She presents these themes both through a literal documentary style and as symbols. Rojin received her BFA in Intermedia from Concordia University in 2017 and currently, she is an MFA candidate in Film Production at York University. She has screened her work internationally in various festivals such as les Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois (Canada), Festival International de Vidéo de Casablanca (Morocco), Limited Access Video Festival (Tehran) and Instant Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques (France). In 2019 she was the Venice Lands Art Prize candidate in Treviso, Italy and she won the grand prize of Startupfest/Artupfest section in July 2018 for her piece "I wait for the time."
Zeinab Tabrizy (ALL THAT’S MISSING, the story of a woman battling with breast cancer)