Title of Event: The Portrayal of Iranians in Cinema: Hollywood’s Hostagetakers or Tehran’s Working Every day people: A Screening of Iranian Cinema and A Lecture on The Dichotomy of Representations of Iranians in in Hollywood’s Argo and Tehran’s festival nominated Neorealist Cinema.
Screening of Iranian Neorealist Short Film Jayezeh (The Reward, runtime 35 minutes, with English Subtitles) with post-screening Q+A with the award-winning director of the film, Esmaeil Mihandoust. And also there would be a 30
min.talk and discussion with Iranian-American graduate student Nima Rassooli analyzing Ben Affleck’s Argo, a strong contender for the Oscars that depicts Iran. The lecture will be a 30 min. comparative analysis of visual representations of Iranians and Iran and the politics behind it in Hollywood and Tehran. The event will be held at the Persian Center in Berkeley on January 3rd from 5 to 7pm. Persian Center's address is 2029 Durant Avenue Berkeley, CA 94704
Short Synopsis of Jayizeh by Director Esmael Mihandoust: A neorealist short film made in the 1996 in Iran. Reza, the protagonist, is a boy from a struggling working-class family in Tehran. He yearns for a bicycle at a bike shop but can’t afford to get one. His father wants him to succeed at school. In order to encourage him, he promises 200 tomans for each 20(in the Iranian school system a 20 is a 100%). But his father cannot afford to give that much money to his son as the family will face extra financial hardships. The protagonist faces a dilemma of fulfilling the desire of getting a bicycle and his father’s desire of him getting As and its consequence of putting his family into harder financial straits. Like all neo realist cinema the film explores the moral dilemmas of poverty and desperation and the power of hope and empathy in everyday life. The film was in competition at the Australia Cine Kid, Mediterranean, France, Tehran Fajr and Roshd festivals.The director Esmaeil Mihandoust will be present and will answer questions at the event after the lecture.
Brief overview of the lecture by Nima Rassooli
In fall 2012, Warner Brothers produced a film on the 1979-1980 hostage crisis titled Argo. The film is on the short-list nomination for Best Picture at the coming Academy Awards. As the film’s director, Ben Affleck explained, at the premiere of the film in the Toronto International Film Festival, Argo is a reflection of current realities between US and Iran as much it is about 1979-1980. As of the moment, the United States and Iran are in a crisis paralleling to the 1979-1980 hostage crisis where the US diplomats where held hostage under 444 days. As President Carter did when facing the Islamic regime in 1979, President Obama is using all options short to war. In this “no war, no peace” environment between Iran and the US, The American public at large is much more influenced by media and the film industry in shaping of public opinion on Iran. To analyze Argo, the lecture will discuss Argo using a comparative and interdisciplinary approach utilizing paradigms from communications theory, film theory, and international relations theory to make sense of the visualization Hollywood in Argo makes of the characters and landscapes of Washington and Tehran to create projections and representations that as film theorist Hamid Naficy puts “veil and unveil, that confuse and clarify, the dangerous and enigmatic internal and external worlds that we inhabit.” Argo will also be compared to image of Iranians represented in Iranian films running in international films such as Mihandoust’s Jayizeh which presents a binary opposite of Iranians compared to Hollywood.
Bio of Esmaeil Mihandoust: Esmaeil Mihandoust is a filmmaker based in Tehran. He has directed numerous TV shows, commercials and short films in Tehran. He is also the managing director of the Nouran Film Arya Cultural and Artisitc Institute, a film making academy in Tehran. Esmaiel Mihandoust won "Best Feature Film Director'" for his first feature Barkhod Nazdeek ( A Very Close Encounter) this year's 5th Noor Film Festival in Los Angeles. DVD Copies of Barkhood Nazdeek with English subtitles will be sold at the event for a discounted rate of $10. To know more about filmmaker Esmaeil Mihandoust visit his IMDB page. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3441853/resume
Bio of Nima Rassooli: Nima Rassooli is a graduate student who will get his M.A. in political science in May at San Francisco State University. He is currently working on a chapter he is coauthoring a chapter with Professor Babak Rahimi at UC San Diego on Persian social networking sites that will be in an edited volume titled Iran and Social Media, which will be published by SUNY Press in 2014
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