IRAN USA

This is an Archive of a Past Event

An hour-long program comprising three works of moving image art in Farsi with English subtitles conceived and directed by Peter Freund.

Acorus Calamus- 10 mins

As an American flag waves slowly in the breeze, a poetic narrative in Farsi unfolds that turns the relationship between voice and subtitle into political metaphor.

The End of an Error- 10 mins

The end of the McCarthy Red Scare period in the U.S. is narrated as a history lesson from a fictionalized contemporary Iran. The unexpected coupling of archival footage from the 1954 Army-McCarthy Hearings and Farsi narration points an oblique finger toward a shift in political phantasms.

Erased Mossadegh- 40 mins

This “subtractive commemoration” of the 1953 coup d'état in Iran utilizes the repetition of false testimony as a medium to explore the nature of historical memory. Ousted Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, played by Nasser Rahmaninejad, alternately delivers three contradictory accounts of the coup while sitting at a desk, walking in an empty space, and lying in bed.

Followed by a Q&A session with Peter Freund and Nasser Rahmaninejad

Peter Freund is a media artist, curator, and scholar based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His artistic practice takes an experimentalist approach to exploring the fantasmatic aspect of political and historical themes. His films and video installations have been exhibited in a variety of gallery, museum, and festival venues from North and South America to Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. In the late 1990s, Freund co-founded and directed the Multimedia Arts Program at Berkeley City College, the largest public education program of its kind in the Bay Area. It was there that Freund met and began collaborating with Nasser Rahmaninejad on film/video projects. Currently Freund is associate professor and chair of the Art & Art History Department at Saint Mary’s College, where he teaches experimental media production and art theory. In August 2015, Freund looks forward to a solo exhibition of the present program at Sazmanab Center for Contemporary Art in Tehran, Iran.

Nasser Rahmaninejad, a foremost, celebrated Iranian artist started his career in theatre in 1959 Iran. In response to the authoritarian cultural policies and harsh censorship of the Shah’s regime, he founded his alternative, independent theatre group, Mehr in 1966.

His group, which later changed its name to Iran Theatre Association, became very influential in the field, competing with other well-financed, state-sponsored theatre groups until it was closed down by the SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police in 1974. All members of the group were arrested and Rahmaninejad was sentenced to twelve years in prison to be freed by the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah’s regime

Following the Islamic regime’s crack down on the opposition Rahmaninejad was forced into exile. However he continued his artistic activities writing essays, translating into Persian articles on theatre and politics, giving invited lectures in variety of academic and artistic organizations in Europe and the United States, such as the International Writing Program (University of Iowa), and the Center for Iranian Research and Analysis (CIRA). His plays, in exile include My Heart, My Homeland, produced by the Society for Creativity and sponsored by the Lilly Foundation, Office of Student Life, Liberal Education Department and Hokin Center and performed by Department of Theatre of the Columbia College of Chicago (1995); One Page of Exile, in the first festival of New Windows on Old Pasadena (1996). Rahmaninejad lives in Berkeley, California.