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Disney's Shahnameh

Persia is one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known, so it give me a sense of its vast history, the magnificence of its architecture and design, literary heritage and imagination... "Prince of Persia" is a fantasy based upon history, so we hired an amazing team of designers who did an enormous amount of cultural research into Persia and its vast empire at that time. But at the same time, we gave them the freedom to invent a world especially designed for the film>>>

Gladiatorha

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Mano Gonjishka

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Toro Yadam Miyareh

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Hagh Koshi

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A New Year For All

Each Norooz, I journey in my mind back to the home of my childhood. There, as the shield of ice on the small pond began to disappear, clay pots of hyacinth, cinerarias and cyclamens were brought out of the greenhouse, and the flowerbeds along the driveway displayed purple and yellow pansies. But I soon realize that that was in Iran, a life that seems more and more like a distant dream. Chicago winters were colder than in Mashad, and its Norooz isolated, if not lonely. Still, overlooking the fact that only a few thousand Iranians were scattered throughout a city of seven million>>>

Hayedeh

A year after the overthrow of the Shah, the Islamic Revolutionary Court issued a subpoena with a list of singers and actors who were ordered to surrender to Evin authorities. Second on the list was Massoumeh Dadeh-Baalaa, known to the music world as Hayedeh. The ominous document, scribbled in course handwriting, can be seen in Pejman Akbarzadeh’s encyclopedic video biography of the legendary Iranian diva. Akbarzadeh chronicles Hayedeh’s life with such detail and insight that by the sad end we realize the storyteller has covered territory beyond the life of one artist; he has shed light on the world of the Iranian exile>>>

Rooftops of Villanova

As a debut novelist, the selection of my book Rooftops of Tehran for Villanova University’s One Book program was an amazing honor. In its fifth year, earlier selections of this prestigious initiative have included Khaled Hossini’s The Kite Runner in 2005, followed in successive years by Timothy Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name, Immaculee Illibagiza’s Left to Tell, and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle. I had no idea, prior to arriving at the campus, how much time and effort had gone into preparing for my visit. >>>

The Future Takes Forever

“No civilization of the past was great,” Esfandiary insisted. “They were all primitive and persecutory, founded on mass subjugation and mass murder.” Against a tide of books warning of global crisis, decline, and alienation, Esfandiary proclaimed the first Age of Optimism. Technology would universalize abundance; nations would disappear; identities would shift from cultural to personal. “The young modern is not losing his identity. He is gladly disencumbering himself of it,” he wrote. “In the 21st century, no one will say ‘I’m Egyptian, or Romanian, or American,’ but ‘I’m global,’ or ‘I’m moon-based,’ or ‘part Martian.’”>>>

It was summer of 72

It was summer of 1972. It is a memory but plays like a dream in my head. I spent a lot of time with my youngest uncle Hamid and his friends. Mostly Hadaf graduating year students who were ok with a kid my age hanging with them. I was good at Takhte, convoluted jokes & conversations, and could handle their version of Shah/Vazir that included real slaps that left finger prints on the face for a good half a day, Otooye Atashin that could take a chunk of your hair off, and Shah's takht who would literally sit on you throughout his reign that was always longer than appropriate and ended up in tyranny no matter who got to be king>>>

Society of Professional Dreamers

The 20th Celebration of Iranian Cinema kicked off this weekend at University of California, Los Angeles, featuring a collection of established and emerging talents from Iran. The goal of this greatly received show-case is, and has been, to present a diverse portrait of Iran’s variety of cultural communities, leading customs and expressions as well as ethnic minorities’ way of living. On Friday February 5th, the opening night was dedicated to Heiran (2009) Shalizeh Alizadeh’s first feature film>>>

Morghe Sahar

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