Remarkable people with Iranian roots

Rakhshān Bani-E’temād , born 3 April 1954 in Tehran ) is an internationally and critically acclaimed Iranian film director and screenwriter . She is widely considered Iran’s premier female director, and her films have been praised at international festivals as well as being remarkably popular with Iranian critics and audiences. Her title as “First Lady of Iranian Cinema” is not only a reference to her prominence as a filmmaker, but it also connotes her social role of merging politics and family in her work.

• Bronze Leopard, 48th Locarno Film Festival (for The Blue-Veiled)
• The Prince Claus Award, 1998
• Best Achievement in Directing, Asia Pacific Screen Awards (for Mainline, with Mohsen Abdolvahab)
• Honorary doctorate, University of London (2008)

wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakhshan_Bani-E’temad

A couple of weeks ago I was in London with a great Persian singer and multi-instrumentalist called Hamed Nikpay to play a show and do a live in-studio recording for the BBC Persia channel. The show was at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, and the recording session was at one of London’s famous rehearsal and recording studios, Premises Studios and was for the BBC’s Persian channel.

I had never played with Hamed before (or with any Persian musicians – except for a few rehearsals and a little warm-up gig we did in L.A. before we left), but he always has a flamenco guitarist with him (usually my good friend Alfredo Cáceres, who couldn’t make these dates), as he likes the vibe that gives. I don’t know much about Persian music, but apparently this is fusion and that’s the sound he likes, and it certainly sounds right. The musical director was sax player

The Statues of Tehran, a documentary by director Bahman Kiarostami, will be showing at Roxie Theatre in San Francisco on Tuesday, February 25.

Kiarostami’s materful film explores how a revolution and autocratic regime attempt to redefine public space, national symbols and monuments, but more interestingly, it also engages with the experience of artists negotiating with official bodies, public commission, popular aspirations, official discourse and creative freedom.

“Docunights” are hosted by National Iranian American Council (NIAC)‘s Arts & Culture Executive Team Chairman, Ahmad Kiarostami

Tuesday, February 25, 7:00 pm
Roxie Theatre
3117 16th Street, San Francisco

Buy Tickets

The Statues of Tehran – Iran, 2008, 60 min, Persian with English subtitles

http://www.payvand.com/news/14/feb/1155.html

About Bahman Kiarostami:

Bahman Kiarostami (Persian: بهمن کیارستمی‎) (b. 11 August 1978- in Tehran) is an Iranianfilm director, cinematographer, film editor, film producer and translator, son of the…

Iran’s Vice President and Head of the Department of Environment Masoumeh Ebtekar has won the Energy Globe Foundation award for her long-term efforts in the field of environment protection.

Wolfgang Neumann, the Austrian founder of the Energy Globe Foundation, took a trip to Iran to present the prize to Ebtekar, who is the first women ever receiving the award.

Some more info about Masoumeh Ebtekar from Wikipedia:
Ebtekar was born in Tehran as Niloufar Ebtekar in a middle-class family. Her first name translates to “Innocent Water Lily” in English. Ebtekar’s father studied at the University of Pennsylvania, and she lived with her parents in Upper Darby of Philadelphia. During her six years in Philadelphia, she developed “near-perfect, American-accented English.”

[…]

Ebtekar has served as faculty member at Tarbiat Modares University, which is a post graduate academic center located in Tehran. As an Associate Professor in Immunology, she has taught, supervised…

http://www.taraartemis.com/#!/biography

“Pianist Tara Kamangar has been praised as a “huge talent” (London Evening Standard) and a “world-class musician who excels at blending the best of Western and Middle-Eastern compositions”

Playing a fine piece:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmH6JxEiIu8

When Iranian schoolteacher Ali Mohammadian noticed that one of his students was being bullied after going bald as a result of a mysterious illness, he decided to show solidarity and shave his own hair. In no time, his entire class shaved their heads and the bullying stopped.

Now, Mohammadian, who teaches at Sheikh Shaltoot’s elementary school in Marivan, a Kurdish city in the west of Iran, has become a national hero.

Read more:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2014/jan/28/iranian-teacher-hero-shaving-head-solidarity-bullied-pupil