Program Details

Wednesday, April 26, 2023
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Curated by Jaclyn Quaresma
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Work by Parastoo Anoushahpour, Rojin Shafiei, Naghmeh Abbasi, Siavash Yazdanmehr
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Images Festival, Toronto
Co-presented by SAVAC
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This program was followed by a conversation between gallerist and curator Farnoosh Talaee and filmmaker Rojin Shafiei

Passages foregrounds the work for four Iranian filmmakers: Parastoo
Anoushapour, Naghmeh Abbasi and Siavash Yazdanmehr, and Rojin Shafiei.
The works examine the political positioning of land, body and belonging in
individual ways.

Where The Time That Separates Us considers the story of Lot’s wife in deep
time, focusing on the geographical and visceral consequences that linger today in both land and body, Landscape Suspended reflects on the Shaho Mountain—a place in Iranian Kurdistan that is home to both nomadic tribes called the Havar Nishins as well as Kurdish guerrillas. There… depicts a woman at odds with the narrative of an ideal citizen as portrayed by the state while A Flat Surface Higher than the Ground places footage of people in Tehran’s City Park, depicted as a heterotopic site within the broader socio-political context.

The films presented in Passages are a way through the traditions, myths, and contemporary frameworks that give credence to ideological whims that disfavour those they target and was created in solidarity with the people of Iran and in support of the ongoing Woman, Life, Freedom movement.

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Program Schedule

The Time That Separates Us, Parastoo Anoushahpour, JORDAN/PALESTINE/CANADA | 2022 | DIGITAL | 35 MIN | ENGLISH, ARABIC WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES.

The Time That Separates Us circles the story of Lot’s wife and its related sites of mythology, focusing on ancient saltrock formations found doubled across a contested border. In the process, the famed Pillar of Salt becomes a portal to face the contemporary Jordan Valley’s heavily militarized border and complex infrastructures of tourism. Encoded within this highly mediated political landscape are the stigmatized realms of desire, sexuality, and gender.

Landscape Suspended, Naghmeh Abbasi ONTARIO PREMIERE | CANADA/IRAN | 2022 | DIGITAL | 27 MIN | PERSIAN AND KURDISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES.

A visual interrogation of Shaho Mountain in Iran triggers many questions and explanations about its meaning. Using landscape as its approach, this film tries to uncover spatial justice by observing the living space of the nomadic people of Havar Neshins.

There, Rojin Shafiei, CANADIAN PREMIERE | CANADA | 2021 | DIGITAL | 7 MIN | PERSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES.

There refers to an unknown country which the protagonist calls home. A borderless land with no features and nothing but soil. There is no architecture in this home, neither physically nor spiritually. The soil represents an entity that embodies the potential for growth. It refers to the country, Iran: a place of multifaceted possibilities.

A Flat Surface Higher Than the Ground, Naghmeh Abbasi and Siavash Yazdanmehr, ONTARIO PREMIERE | IRAN | 2020 | DIGITAL | 22 MIN | PERSIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES.

Narrated by a fictional character who finds refuge from a demonstration ended violently by militia forces in a park, the film offers a micro image of the sociopolitical climate in Iran and visualizes politics through different spaces of City Park, Tehran’s first public park.