Pelan #63: Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy In/On Exile
- Director: Maryam Sepehri
- Screening: May 25, 2024, 11 a.m.
- /
- North Vancouver City Library
- Run time: 61
Synopsis:
Exile as a radically transformative experience is the theme of this documentary, tracing the journey of Hamid Naficy from his boyhood growing up in Iran under the Shah to the 1979 Revolution, when he was studying in the U.S., to his present as the foremost historian of Iranian cinema and renowned authority on Iranian diaspora culture. Filmmaker Maryam Sepehri explores the impact of history before and after the Islamic Revolution on the generation of those whose lives are divided between early life in the homeland and adulthood in permanent exile in the West. The film portrays Naficy’s unique role as an interpreter of the experience in all of its complexity.
About the filmmaker:
Maryam Sepehri was born in Gorgan, Iran, and her family moved to Tehran when she was 17. She began her university career by studying medicine and then worked for a few years in a medical lab. After that, she returned to school to get a B.A. in filmmaking (2010) and an M.A. in photography (2012). For many years, she has made short films and taken photographs, as well as written and published short stories and translations from English to Farsi (Persian).
Her documentary film Rain Once Again (2012) won the award for best documentary film at the Sooreh International Short Film Festival and was nominated in this category at the 28th Tehran International Short Film Festival. Her next documentary, Thicker than Paint (2013), won the Special Cream City Cinema Jury Prize at the 5th Milwaukee Film Festival. It was nominated for best direction (semi-feature length) at the 8th Cinéma Vérité, the Iran International Documentary Film Festival.
In 2017, her documentary on Hamid Naficy, Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy: In/on Exile, was nominated for Best Film and Best Editing from Cinema Verite Film Festival in Iran. Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy: In/on Exile investigates the life of one of the most well-known scholars on the mediated forms of exile, Dr. Hamid Naficy, and won the 2018 Iran Documentary Independent Award for Best Film and Best Original Music.
Her photographs have been exhibited in Iran, Italy, and Germany, and her short stories and travelogues (some with accompanying photographs) have been published in Iran in book and magazine form.
Her most recent documentary is about Alborz High School and its legendary director, Dr. Mojtahedi.
61 Minutes
Iran, 2017
Farsi with English subtitles.