Organised by
Iran Heritage Foundation
Date
Thursday 28th May 2015, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
Location
Review
The trailer for 7 Sides of a Cylinder is now available to view here
Download Dr Pamela Karimi’s review of the film here
Download Dr Pamela Karimi’s review of the film here
Description
The Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient artefact associated with the first Persian king, was the centerpiece of a British Museum exhibition that toured the United States in 2013. Believed by some to be the first declaration of human rights, the cylinder was exhibited in five major museums in five cities where the Iranian diaspora have established communities. Seven young Iranian filmmakers were invited to respond to this exercise in cultural diplomacy and explain what this object from their ancient history means to them and their communities today.
7 Sides of a Cylinder is a multivocal experimental film, comprised of 7 short, contemplative films made by filmmakers along the route of this historic tour, in Washington DC, Houston, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles with the addition of London, the physical home of the cylinder and Tehran, its spiritual home.
Straddling historical and cultural spaces, each filmmaker examines the Cylinder’s significance to the construction of Iranian identity across three continents. The result is an original and thoughtful film that says as much about the concerns and anxieties of contemporary Iranians, as it does about the Cylinder itself.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion examining the value of such experimental projects where ancient heritage is approached from outside the normal historical context and instead is used to contextualise the contemporary.
7 Sides of a Cylinder is a multivocal experimental film, comprised of 7 short, contemplative films made by filmmakers along the route of this historic tour, in Washington DC, Houston, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles with the addition of London, the physical home of the cylinder and Tehran, its spiritual home.
Straddling historical and cultural spaces, each filmmaker examines the Cylinder’s significance to the construction of Iranian identity across three continents. The result is an original and thoughtful film that says as much about the concerns and anxieties of contemporary Iranians, as it does about the Cylinder itself.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion examining the value of such experimental projects where ancient heritage is approached from outside the normal historical context and instead is used to contextualise the contemporary.
Biographies
Iradj Bagherzade (Chair)
Iradj Bagherzade is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, established in 1983. His firm publishes extensively on politics, history, international affairs and the contemporary world, and is regarded as a market leader in academic and non-academic publications on the Middle East and Iran Studies. He was educated in France, Germany and England, and studied at Oxford University.
Haleh Anvari
Haleh Anvari is an independent artist and writer and was formerly Executive Director of the Iran Heritage Foundation. She has exhibited internationally and her lecture performance, ‘Power of Cliché’ is regularly used as a teaching aid in art and cultural studies programmes. She has written for various publications, most recently Tehran Bureau, the Guardian and the New York Times.
Anvari’s art and writing share a common thread: to question the prevalent representations of Iran. Her digital installation, the website AKSbazi.com created a platform for ordinary Iranians to show their country through an indigenous viewfinder disrupting the common visual tropes representing Iran. She is at present working on a book based on the material from her 2013 exhibition Zibadasht [Beautiful Plateau] about the various modes of utilizing the walls in Iran to disseminate information and ideology, and the nuanced changes in this usage since the 1979 revolution.
Pamela Karimi
Dr Pamela Karimi received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009. Her primary field of research is art, architecture, and visual culture of the modern Middle East and she is currently part of the Art History faculty at UMass Dartmouth. Karimi is the author of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era (Routledge, 2013) and co-editor of Images of the Child and Childhood in Modern Muslim Contexts (Duke, 2012), and Reinventing the American Post-Industrial City (Sage, 2015). Her essays and reviews have appeared in ArtMargins, Jadaliyya, Art Journal, Bidoun, Honar-e Farda, and the Arab Studies Journal, among others. She has held fellowships from the Iran Heritage Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the American Association of University Women, and the Society of Architectural Historians. In 2012 she was the co-recipient of the University of Massachusetts Creative Economy Fund for Urban Renewal in Massachusetts Gateway Cities and in 2014 she was awarded the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Green Award. Co-founder of Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative and a former member of the editorial team of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Karimi currently serves on the board of the Association of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA).
Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad
Dr Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad has been a lecturer in the Institute of Ismaili Studies and has also been teaching at the Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS, University of London since 2004. He is the author of a book entitled The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Films and Society in the Islamic Republic (Routledge, 2010). Based on groundbreaking ethnographic research in Iran on practices of regulation and reception of films, the book explores major aspects of Iranian cultural politics. He has authored several book chapters and articles in publications including Laachir, K. and S. Talajooy’s (eds.) Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures: Literature, Cinema and Music (Routledge, 2013) and Sreberny, A, and M. Torfeh’s (eds.) Cultural Revolution in Iran: Contemporary Popular Culture in the Islamic Republic (I.B.Tauris, 2013). He has regularly reviewed articles and books for Iranian Studies Journal and Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. His media appearances include an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and panel discussion on BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves. He has been interviewed on BBC’s Persian TV multiple times.
Iradj Bagherzade is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, established in 1983. His firm publishes extensively on politics, history, international affairs and the contemporary world, and is regarded as a market leader in academic and non-academic publications on the Middle East and Iran Studies. He was educated in France, Germany and England, and studied at Oxford University.
Haleh Anvari
Haleh Anvari is an independent artist and writer and was formerly Executive Director of the Iran Heritage Foundation. She has exhibited internationally and her lecture performance, ‘Power of Cliché’ is regularly used as a teaching aid in art and cultural studies programmes. She has written for various publications, most recently Tehran Bureau, the Guardian and the New York Times.
Anvari’s art and writing share a common thread: to question the prevalent representations of Iran. Her digital installation, the website AKSbazi.com created a platform for ordinary Iranians to show their country through an indigenous viewfinder disrupting the common visual tropes representing Iran. She is at present working on a book based on the material from her 2013 exhibition Zibadasht [Beautiful Plateau] about the various modes of utilizing the walls in Iran to disseminate information and ideology, and the nuanced changes in this usage since the 1979 revolution.
Pamela Karimi
Dr Pamela Karimi received her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009. Her primary field of research is art, architecture, and visual culture of the modern Middle East and she is currently part of the Art History faculty at UMass Dartmouth. Karimi is the author of Domesticity and Consumer Culture in Iran: Interior Revolutions of the Modern Era (Routledge, 2013) and co-editor of Images of the Child and Childhood in Modern Muslim Contexts (Duke, 2012), and Reinventing the American Post-Industrial City (Sage, 2015). Her essays and reviews have appeared in ArtMargins, Jadaliyya, Art Journal, Bidoun, Honar-e Farda, and the Arab Studies Journal, among others. She has held fellowships from the Iran Heritage Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the American Association of University Women, and the Society of Architectural Historians. In 2012 she was the co-recipient of the University of Massachusetts Creative Economy Fund for Urban Renewal in Massachusetts Gateway Cities and in 2014 she was awarded the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Green Award. Co-founder of Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative and a former member of the editorial team of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Karimi currently serves on the board of the Association of Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran, and Turkey (AMCA).
Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad
Dr Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad has been a lecturer in the Institute of Ismaili Studies and has also been teaching at the Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS, University of London since 2004. He is the author of a book entitled The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Films and Society in the Islamic Republic (Routledge, 2010). Based on groundbreaking ethnographic research in Iran on practices of regulation and reception of films, the book explores major aspects of Iranian cultural politics. He has authored several book chapters and articles in publications including Laachir, K. and S. Talajooy’s (eds.) Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures: Literature, Cinema and Music (Routledge, 2013) and Sreberny, A, and M. Torfeh’s (eds.) Cultural Revolution in Iran: Contemporary Popular Culture in the Islamic Republic (I.B.Tauris, 2013). He has regularly reviewed articles and books for Iranian Studies Journal and Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. His media appearances include an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and panel discussion on BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves. He has been interviewed on BBC’s Persian TV multiple times.
