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In its 250-year history, the United States has been enormously influenced by Iran's culture and history. Poets like Hafez and Sa'adi guided the words and thoughts of Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, while Americans like Howard Baskerville played a critical role in the Constitutional Revolution that marked the end of the Qajar Dynasty. KHANEVADE: Portraits of Iranian Americans examines the everyday stories of the Iranians who have rebuilt their lives in the U.S., particularly in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and contributed significantly to its civic and cultural life, while navigating questions of belonging and identity.
This program spans documentary works shaped by empathetic, quotidian portraits of Iranian American communities. Norouz: Persian Spring Festival is a revealing time capsule of the Bay Area in the 1960s, showcasing the presence of Iranian American families and communities nearly 20 years before the revolution. Maryam Kashani’s Best in the West builds upon this portrait to examine the lives of four lifelong friends who studied in the United States with humor, warmth, and bittersweetness. Armon Mahdavi’s Untitled, Jackson Heights closes the program on the present day to examine public spaces in Queens through a poignant, epistolary voiceover correspondence from a mother to her child. The in-person screening at MOMI will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Armon Mahdavi.
KHANEVADE is curated by Nick Kouhi and is co-presented by ArteEast and Museum of the Moving Image. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. Selections from KHANEVADE will be screened in-person at 12:30pm on July 12 followed by a discussion with filmmaker Armon Mahdavi moderated by the curator. For more information about the in-person screening visit https://movingimage.org/event/khanevade-portraits-of-iranian-americans/. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from July 13-23, including a recorded discussion with filmmaker Persis Karim and scholar Amy Malek.
About the curator
Nick Kouhi is a programmer and film critic who's written for Filmmaker Magazine, Reverse Shot, Screen Slate, and Documentary Magazine. His previous collaboration with ArteEast was I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile, and he has served on the screening committees of True/False and DOC NYC.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Best in the West (2006)
Best in the West chronicles multiple journeys and experiences of migration through the decades-long friendships of a group of Iranian men who left Tehran, Iran, for San Francisco in the 1960s-70s. Fleeing loss or seeking adventure, education, and opportunity abroad, these young men established lives, businesses, and loves amidst the vibrant and transformative social, political, and musical atmosphere of the Bay Area in the 60s and 70s. Best in the West locates their personal histories within a parallel history of the Iranian oil industry and its relationship to the United States and American oil companies, the Vietnam war, and the acceleration of American consumption and inequality. Best in the West was originally shot on 16mm film, Super 8, and miniDV. Archival footage, photographs, and a soundtrack of Iranian and American R&B and funk music complete the intricate tapestry that creates the sense of this particular time and place, as well as alludes to the passage of time and changing migration flows in these geographic and emotional landscapes.
About the Filmmaker
Maryam Kashani is a Chicago-based filmmaker and writer from San Francisco. Her work is engaged with the relationships between physical landscapes and the material and spiritual histories and forces that emerge with and against them. Her films and video installations have exhibited internationally, including at the Sharjah Biennial, MoMA, Hammer Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, and include “things lovely and dangerous still” (2003), “Best in the West” (2006), “las callecitas y la cañada” (2009, SVA Film Festival, Honorable Mention), and “Signs of Remarkable History” (2016). Her book Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival (Duke University Press, 2023) is an ethnocinematic examination of how multiracial Muslim communities in the San Francisco Bay Area survive within and against racial capitalist, carceral, and imperial logics.
- Year2006
- Runtime71 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryUnited States
- DirectorMaryam Kashani
- ScreenwriterMaryam Kashani
- ProducerMaryam Kashani
- FilmmakerMaryam Kashani
- CastMansour Kashani, Nasser Kashani, Saeed Ghazi, Sohrab "Robbie" Ahmadi, Farhad "Fred" Ahmadi, Abbas Barzgar, Rahman Farsi, Mohammad "Mike" Talai
In its 250-year history, the United States has been enormously influenced by Iran's culture and history. Poets like Hafez and Sa'adi guided the words and thoughts of Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, while Americans like Howard Baskerville played a critical role in the Constitutional Revolution that marked the end of the Qajar Dynasty. KHANEVADE: Portraits of Iranian Americans examines the everyday stories of the Iranians who have rebuilt their lives in the U.S., particularly in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and contributed significantly to its civic and cultural life, while navigating questions of belonging and identity.
This program spans documentary works shaped by empathetic, quotidian portraits of Iranian American communities. Norouz: Persian Spring Festival is a revealing time capsule of the Bay Area in the 1960s, showcasing the presence of Iranian American families and communities nearly 20 years before the revolution. Maryam Kashani’s Best in the West builds upon this portrait to examine the lives of four lifelong friends who studied in the United States with humor, warmth, and bittersweetness. Armon Mahdavi’s Untitled, Jackson Heights closes the program on the present day to examine public spaces in Queens through a poignant, epistolary voiceover correspondence from a mother to her child. The in-person screening at MOMI will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Armon Mahdavi.
KHANEVADE is curated by Nick Kouhi and is co-presented by ArteEast and Museum of the Moving Image. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. Selections from KHANEVADE will be screened in-person at 12:30pm on July 12 followed by a discussion with filmmaker Armon Mahdavi moderated by the curator. For more information about the in-person screening visit https://movingimage.org/event/khanevade-portraits-of-iranian-americans/. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from July 13-23, including a recorded discussion with filmmaker Persis Karim and scholar Amy Malek.
About the curator
Nick Kouhi is a programmer and film critic who's written for Filmmaker Magazine, Reverse Shot, Screen Slate, and Documentary Magazine. His previous collaboration with ArteEast was I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile, and he has served on the screening committees of True/False and DOC NYC.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Best in the West (2006)
Best in the West chronicles multiple journeys and experiences of migration through the decades-long friendships of a group of Iranian men who left Tehran, Iran, for San Francisco in the 1960s-70s. Fleeing loss or seeking adventure, education, and opportunity abroad, these young men established lives, businesses, and loves amidst the vibrant and transformative social, political, and musical atmosphere of the Bay Area in the 60s and 70s. Best in the West locates their personal histories within a parallel history of the Iranian oil industry and its relationship to the United States and American oil companies, the Vietnam war, and the acceleration of American consumption and inequality. Best in the West was originally shot on 16mm film, Super 8, and miniDV. Archival footage, photographs, and a soundtrack of Iranian and American R&B and funk music complete the intricate tapestry that creates the sense of this particular time and place, as well as alludes to the passage of time and changing migration flows in these geographic and emotional landscapes.
About the Filmmaker
Maryam Kashani is a Chicago-based filmmaker and writer from San Francisco. Her work is engaged with the relationships between physical landscapes and the material and spiritual histories and forces that emerge with and against them. Her films and video installations have exhibited internationally, including at the Sharjah Biennial, MoMA, Hammer Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, and include “things lovely and dangerous still” (2003), “Best in the West” (2006), “las callecitas y la cañada” (2009, SVA Film Festival, Honorable Mention), and “Signs of Remarkable History” (2016). Her book Medina by the Bay: Scenes of Muslim Study and Survival (Duke University Press, 2023) is an ethnocinematic examination of how multiracial Muslim communities in the San Francisco Bay Area survive within and against racial capitalist, carceral, and imperial logics.
- Year2006
- Runtime71 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryUnited States
- DirectorMaryam Kashani
- ScreenwriterMaryam Kashani
- ProducerMaryam Kashani
- FilmmakerMaryam Kashani
- CastMansour Kashani, Nasser Kashani, Saeed Ghazi, Sohrab "Robbie" Ahmadi, Farhad "Fred" Ahmadi, Abbas Barzgar, Rahman Farsi, Mohammad "Mike" Talai