CELEBRATION OF IRANIAN CINEMA AT UCI - 2019


 Center for Persian Studies and Culture     Sep 7 2019 - Sep 8 2019 | 4:00 PM - 9:00 PM UCI Crystal Cove Auditorium




Join us for the 4th Annual CELEBRATION OF IRANIAN CINEMA in Orange County at the University of California, Irvine, September 7-8, 2019. In collaboration with the Jordan Center for Persian Studies, UCI. Special thanks to our co presenter: The UCLA Film & Televisions Archives.

GENERAL ADMISSION: $12

VIP PACKAGE: $75

SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES

VIP Package includes admission to all films + invitation to the VIP reception on opening night.
Limited packages available.

All films in Persian with English subtitles.

Hyatt Regency OC logo



SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER, 7 – 4:00 PM

Hendi and Hormoz (Hendi va Hormoz)














Rugged and delicate beauty exist side-by-side on the red sand island of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf where 13-year-old Hendi is married off to the 16-year-old Hormoz on his promise of a job at the local mine. When the job falls through, the young couple must struggle to make their way against difficult odds in a land as spellbinding as it is unforgiving.

Director: Abbas Amini
Screenwriter: Hossein Farrokhzadeh, A. Amini
Cast: Hamed Alipour, Zohreh Eslam, Asma Daneh-chin

DCP, Color, 88 min.

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER, 7 – 7:00 PM

Sheeple (Maghz-haye Koochak Zang-Zadeh)


2018












Navid Mohammadzadeh stars as the slow-witted, grasping brother of Shakur (Aslani), a meth dealer and procurer who acts as reigning patriarch for both their impoverished neighborhood and their highly dysfunctional family. When rumors about their sister are exposed, a violent, domestic power struggle breaks into the open. Writer-director Hooman Seyedi doesn’t pull any punches in this sordid tale of corruption that culminates in one of the best action set pieces in contemporary Iranian cinema.

Director/Screenwriter: Hooman Seyedi
Cast: Navid Mohammadzadeh, Farhad Aslani, Farid Sajjadi Hosseini

DCP, Color, 102 min.

Screens with

Temporary


FARHANG FOUNDATION SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2018 - SECOND PRIZE WINNER

 

Shot with a piercing frankness, Temporary confronts us with the hard choices to made by a young, single mother and the willingness of a religious establishment to condone her exploitation.

Director/Screenwriter: Behzad Azadi

DCP, Color, 16 min.

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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER, 8 – 4:00 PM

Before Summer Ends














Director Maryam Goormaghtigh weaves a most beguiling blend of fiction and non-fiction in this semi-documentary feature about a trio of Iranian ex-pat bros who take a road trip through the shimmering French countryside before one of their own returns to Iran. The expected riffs on male obsessions—women, partying, women—come finer-edged with melancholy, regret and loneliness as the friends also reflect on their lives in self-imposed exile.

Director: Maryam Goormaghtigh
Cast: Arash, Ashkan, Hossein

DCP, Color, 102 min.

Screens with

Turquoise (Firouzeh)


2018

FARHANG FOUNDATION SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2018 - THIRD PRIZE WINNER
 



The residents of a rural village are infected with greed and paranoia when rumors of a buried treasure drive them to tear up their own fields and eventually turn on each other but what seems like a case of local madness proves part of a much larger mystery.

Director: Roozbeh Misaghi
Screenwriter: Sama Raufi, Roozbeh Misaghi

DCP, Color, 15 min.

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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER, 8 – 7:00 PM

Tehran: City of Love


Iran/UK/The Netherlands 2019








Three lonely hearts—a bodybuilder, a receptionist and a religious singer—navigate the chilly waters of romance in an alienating urban landscape that puts the irony in the title of writer-director Ali Jaberansari’s second feature. Jaberansari’s deadpan humor and a wry visual style make this an offbeat romantic comedy that suggests it's the absurdity of pursuing love, not its triumphs, that really makes us human.

Director: Ali Jaberansari
Screenwriter: A. Jaberansari, Maryam Najafi
Cast: Forough Ghajabegli, Mehdi Saki, Amir Hessam Bakhtiar

DCP, Color, 102 min.

Screens with

Scent of Geranium


2018

FARHANG FOUNDATION SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 2018 - FIRST PRIZE WINNER



A young woman reflects on her mother’s gardening lessons in Tehran as a path to understanding and accepting her own experience as an immigrant in director Naghmeh Farzaneh’s wonderfully animated short.

Director: Naghmeh Farzaneh

DCP, Color, 5 min.

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General Admission Tickets: $12.00
UCI students with valid I.D.: Free Admission based on availability on the day of screening.
VIP Package: $75 (includes admission to all films + invitation to the VIP reception on opening night - limited packages available)