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Festival Poster
1st Edition
The 1st Persian International Film Festival was inaugurated in Sydney in February 2012 at Dendy Opera Quays. Over four days thousands of audiences with diverse backgrounds attended the festival. The opening and closing nights of the festival included an artistic performance curated by Dr Nasser Palangi. The program lit up Sydney’s most prominent promenade with cultural flair and was welcomed by audiences and onlookers at Circular Quay.
Poster of the 1st Persian Film Festival
Designed by Nasim Harandi
Festival Jury
Nasser Palangi
Born in Hamadan, Iran, 1957. Graduated in Visual Arts from the Tehran University in 1984; pursued painting and art education in Tehran until 1989, while lecturing at different universities until 1998. Spent three years working as a war artist creating drawings, paintings and photographs at the beginning of the first Iran-Iraq war (1980- 1988). He also created a series of mural paintings entitled "My Memory of the War" for the congregational mosque of Khorramshahr in Iran in 1981. He received many commissions throughout his career, including installations and two mural reliefs for the War Memorial Museum in Khorramshahr, 1997/98; a mural painting for the Treasure Gallery, Seattle, USA, 2000; a painting for the 'Medicines without Border Project', Dubai, and ten sculptures, 'Migrants in Australia', for the National Multicultural Festival, Canberra, Australia in 2004. Exhibited widely including at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (2000) and the Seyhoun Gallery, Tehran (2001). A selection of his works dating from 1999 to 2005 are at the East & West gallery, Victoria, Australia. Based in Australia.
Maani Petgar
Born in Tehran, Iran, November, 1959. After running a Photography Studio, (1980-82), he started working in the film industry with Amir NADERI, in The Runner (1982-83) and Water, Wind, Dust (1985) as stills photographer, assistant director and assistant editor. After working in The Key (Dir. Ebrahim Forouzesh), he migrated to Australia and between 1988 to 1990 worked in the Australian Film Industry in various positions, until he made his first experimental short, Reverse Angle in 1991. In 1994, he returned to Iran to make a documentary on Iranian cinema for SBS TV in Australia and Farabi Cinema Foundation in Iran, but for some reasons, that project was never executed, and instead Cinema Cin- ema was made and Film Lovers, were initiated. He has returned to live and work in Iran since 1997 and planned two feature films in Iran. The first project: Looking Through, is recently completed. He has established his own production houses; Reverse Angle Productions, between 1996-2002 in Australia and Unexposed Films in Iran- since 2004. He is also a part time film critic and collaborator on Film Monthly magazine (in Farsi), and Film International (Quarterly in English, published in Iran), since 1986.
Yalda Hakim
Yalda Hakim is a well-known presenter of the BBC World News’ flagship program Impact. She joined BBC World News in 2012 as a presenter and correspondent delivering hard-hitting journalism on many global issues. Yalda has reported extensively on the rise and fall of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq. Most recently she travelled to the world’s youngest nation South Sudan which is embroiled in brutal civil war. She reported that more than 4 million people are now on the brink of famine in the devastated country. In 2013 Yalda and her team won a UN Association of Australia Media Award in the category of Best Television Documentary for her two investigations in Yemen. Before joining BBC World News, Yalda was the presenter of SBS Dateline in Australia. From a headline-making investigation in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province to her reporting from Libya during the Arab Spring, Yalda has built up a wealth of journalistic experience around the world.
Michelle Langford
Dr Michelle Langford is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Her research spans the cinemas of Iran and Germany. Her research on Iranian cinema has focussed on gender, allegory and aesthetics and had appeared in leading film studies journals including Camera Obscura, Screenand Screening the Past. Her forthcoming book is entitled Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance(Bloomsbury). Her current research project looks at the German films of Iranian filmmaker Sohrab Shahid Saless.
Seifollah Samadian
Born in Tehran in 1954, Seifollah Samadian is an accomplished Iranian artist, photographer and cinematographer. Highly-regarded internationally as an art director with experience working with directors like Martin Scorsese and Abbas Kiarostami, Samadian came to the forefront of critical attention in a wave of Iranian photography that gained momentum in Iranian the arts scene in the years following the 1988 end of the Iran-Iraq war. Samadian later became Professor of Photojournalism at the University of Tehran and is today Publisher and Editor-in-chief of the Iranian cultural magazine Tassvir (Photography).
Golden Gazelle Award
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Academic Program
Asghar Farhadi
Asghar Farhadi was born in Iran. He made his directorial debut with Dance in the Dust (2003) and Beautiful City (2004). About Elly (2009) won the Silver Bear for Best Director in Berlin. His film A Separation (2011) became a sensation. It got critical acclaim inside and outside of Iran; it was awarded many prizes, among them the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, making him the first Iranian filmmaker ever to win an Oscar. Farhadi’s sixth movie, The Past, selected in competition at the Festival de Cannes, brought the Best Actress Prize for Bérénice Bejo (2013). Back in Iran, Farhadi made The Salesman, awarded Best Screenplay and Best Actor for Shahab Hosseini in Cannes (2016). The film also brought the second Oscar for Iran in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Farhadi’s last film, A Hero, in Competition at the Festival de Cannes last year, was awarded Grand Prix.
Asghar Farhadi: A Tribute
Following Asghar Farhadi’s success at the Academy Awards, the festival dedicated a special tribute to his cinema. In partnership with the University of Sydney, monthly screenings of Farhadi films were held. The screenings were followed by a panel discussion about his art and the cinema of the region. The tribute commenced with a screening of Farhadi’s Oscar winning film A Separation. In addition, at the State Library of New South Wales a documentary about the making of the film was screened and discussed by Dr Amin Palangi, Dr Michelle Langford, Dr Omid Tofighian chaired by Lynden Barber.
