Passages

Co-presenting with Images Film Festival

Parastoo Anoushahpour, Rojin Shafiei, Naghmeh Abbasi,
Siavash Yazdanmehr

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 of Iran which is home to both nomadic tribes called the Havar Nishins as well as Kurdish guerrillas.— آنجا . . . / . . . 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 works presented in Passages are a way through the traditions, myths,
and contemporary frameworks that give credence to the ideological whims
that disfavour those they target.

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

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

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.

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.