Filming of any of the proceedings is prohibited.
Film Screening Schedule
Day 1: Thursday, February 16, 2023
10:50AM – 12:21PM
Extreme Vetting (1:31:00)
12:45PM – 1:50PM
O, CYRUS (7:29)
Type-Face (9:45)
The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian American Life (3:58)
Becoming Zoroastrian (13:18)
Architect (28:43)
2:00PM – 3:31PM
Extreme Vetting (1:31:00)
3:35PM – 4:40PM
O, CYRUS (7:29)
Type-Face (9:45)
The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian American Life (3:58)
Becoming Zoroastrian (13:18)
Architect (28:43)
Day 2: Friday, February 17, 2023
11:00AM – 12:03PM
O, CYRUS (7:29)
Type-Face (9:45)
The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian American Life (3:58)
Becoming Zoroastrian (13:18)
Architect (28:43)
12:30PM – 2:01PM
Extreme Vetting (1:31:00)
2:05PM – 3:08PM
O, CYRUS (7:29)
Type-Face (9:45)
The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian American Life (3:58)
Becoming Zoroastrian (13:18)
Architect (28:43)
3:10PM – 4:40PM
Extreme Vetting (1:31:00)
Film Details
Architect (formerly Searching for Aramsayesh Gah)
Director: Elahe Zivardar
Duration: 28:43* This screening comprises of two trailers followed by two film sequences
(film still in production)
The documentary film Architect exposes and critically examines the illegal imprisonment and systematic torture of people in an Australian-run offshore immigration detention centre located within a small and isolated Micronesian island nation, the Republic of Nauru (a former protectorate of Australia). The film is an act of resistance, it reveals the horrific and surreal aspects of Australian’s border regime; identifies the techniques of torture implemented to dehumanise and destroy lives; and it investigates the nuances of the detention industry by using never-seen-before footage from inside the prison shot over a six-year period.
Directed by Elahe Zivardar (aka Ellie Shakiba) – who was illegally incarcerated in Nauru for over six years (2013-2019) – Architect interweaves different genres and elements: 1) a first-person narrative combined with rare interviews with former detainees who fled Iran and other countries (women travelling alone, unaccompanied minors and families), activists and former staff members; 2) a historical document that centres the lived experiences of refugees; 3) a form of creative resistance; 4) an exposé of secrets, trauma, pain, domination and subjugation; and 5) involves a close look at the unique 3D interactive model of the detention centre created by Zivardar after her release and arrival in the US.
The creative team for Architect includes Mehran Ghadirian – a political scientist and international relations analyst who left his economic development role in Nauru after several years of witnessing the realities of Australia’s offshore border regime – and Omid Tofighian – an academic and activist who has been supporting and collaborating with people in immigration detention for over two decades. By focusing on the architecture of torture and its role in the border-industrial complex the team presents a scathing and original critique of the disturbingly specific design choices that helped form the prison and its physical dimensions.
The film also addresses the harmful and morally abhorrent bureaucracy at the core of Australia’s border regime and the colonial mentality that inspires it. Another central aim of Architect is to galvanize more international support to help dismantle Australia’s immigration detention regime and raise awareness about the ways it is connected to the global border-industrial complex. The team behind the film are also working to connect this terrible chapter in Australia’s migration history to colonial legacies, hold the relevant people accountable, and to push for systemic change.
Becoming Zoroastrian
Producers: Ruzbeh Vistasp Hodiwala and Leah Rustomjee
Duration: 13:18
Becoming Zoroastrian is a short documentary jointly produced by Ruzbeh Hodiwala, a doctoral researcher at SOAS, University of London and Leah Rustomjee, a London based filmmaker. The documentary features new adherents from diverse ethnic backgrounds and nationalities sharing their experiences of accepting Zoroastrianism in different parts of Europe. The film, which combines participatory and interview-based genres, gives a first-hand account of the new adherents' appeal to accept the Zoroastrian identity and their life as Zoroastrians.
Extreme Vetting
Director: Sam Ghazi
Assistant Director: Payam Rowghanian
Producers: Cheryl Compton and Payam Rowghanian
Writer: Alireza Pourmoslemi
Animation and Graphic Design: Majid Bita
Duration: 1:31:00
Extreme Vetting is an independent feature documentary-drama film which focuses on the Trump administration's travel ban, also known as Muslim ban. Following primarily the stories of multiple Iranian families and individuals living in the US, the film depicts the challenges faced by the Iranian immigrant community who face restrictions because of their country of origin, resulting in limited freedom of movement and family separation. The latter is an issue also faced by other immigrant and refugee communities. Notably, in the past decade, Latin American immigrants and asylum-seekers at the southern US border have faced increasingly inhumane cases of family separation. The film explores these experiences through interviews with individuals who immigrated to the US as children to unite with their parents. As for facing restrictions and discriminations because of one’s country of origin, a historical perspective is provided by two survivors of the Japanese-American internment camps during WWII. Comparison of the travel ban with this fundamentally similar but experientially more severe case of discrimination allows us to examine the persistence of trends and failures in immigration policy over time. It also sheds light on the expressed empathy of the interviewed survivors of those camps for the victims of today’s discrimination which frequently target the nationals of Muslim-majority countries such as Iran. Finally, all these elements are cemented together by an array of expert facts and opinions that provide legal, historical, and political information and context for all the interviews. Artistically, the film is constructed around a reenactment of the true story of one of the families which appear in the film, and as a result, is categorized as a documentary-drama film.
O, CYRUS
Director: Arash Saedinia
Duration: 7:29
Addressed to the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, “O, Cyrus” plays upon epistle and essay. A meditation on the king’s famous cylinder on the occasion of its visit to the Getty Villa, the film includes glimpses of several Cyruses in Los Angeles.
The Dawn Is Too Far: Stories of Iranian American Life (Trailer)
Directors: Soumyaa Behrens and Persis Karim
Duration: 3:57
This is a trailer for a 60-minute documentary that explores the history, struggles, and impact of four generations of Iranian immigrants to the Bay Area, despite having been continuously "othered" by the tense relationship between the US and Iranian governments and negative media headlines since 1979. The Dawn Is Too Far captures the resilient and complex character of this immigrant community, its challenges and successes, as well as the ways it has contributed to the Bay Area's culture and communities.
Type-Face
Directors: Amir Arzanian and Koroush Beigpour
Duration: 9:45
This is a clip from a documentary film that surveys the Farsi signs in multiple Persian communities in Los Angeles. By adding portraits of the business owners or their employees, it aims to develop a dialectical relation between typefaces and human faces as two significant forms of representations in the city of Los Angeles. The encounter with human faces as an ethical phenomenon postpones the meaning of the writings as semiotic systems that are subverted in the regime of a sign.
E-mail Contact: CNES@international.ucla.edu Click
here for event website.
Sponsor(s): Center for Near Eastern Studies, This program is made possible by a generous gift from the Ebrahimi Family Foundation and is co-organized by Kevan Harris (UCLA), Persis Karim (SFSU), and Amy Malek (OSU) with the support of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University and the Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies program in the School of Global Studies at Oklahoma State University.