Short Film News (SFN)- The 30th Minimalen Short Film Festival has dedicated two programmes to Iranian cinema with a panel of thirteen shorts (fiction, animation and documentary).

“Iran Now” aims to draw attention to women filmmakers in Iran, and to the relative gender equality found in Iranian film production. While male filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi or Asghar Farhadi readily come to mind when thinking about Iranian Cinema from a Western point of view, prominent female filmmakers like Rakshan Bani-Etemad, Tahmineh Milani, Samira Makhmalbaf have been successful in the International festival circuit. Among the thirteen films in this selection, seven are directed by women, and women hold creative roles in several of the remaining films.

"Iran Now" draws attention to short films that engage in discussions on social issues - discussions that are not limited to Iran, but find powerful resonance in Norway and in the rest of the world.

The films in the programme provide different perspectives on gender, identity and aim to reflect the diversity of genres and aesthetic traditions that can be found in Iranian Cinema.

The programme is curated by Minimalen in collaboration with Marziyeh Riahi, editor in chief of Short Film News. “Iran Now” will be presented in two parts on 26th and 27th of January in Trondheim.

Marziyeh Riahi has curated and chosen the movies of “Iran Now 1”. The films in this programme are fiction, documentary and animation. They explore the confining function of social and cultural norms, and points towards expressions of identity and women issues on the very edge of what has been defined as acceptable.

 

The films of programme 1 are:

Highlight by Shahrzad Dadgar
Icky by Parastoo Kardgar
Numbness by Milad Jarmooz
Bystanders by Mohsen Bagheri
Third Sex by Forough Rezaie
Animal by Bahram & Bahman Ark

Minimalen has curated “Iran Now 2”. The films in this programme are mainly fiction films that together provide short glimpses of the lives of women who find themselves in situations where their opportunities are limited through harassment, objectification and other more or less subtle forms of social control.

 

The films of programme 2 are:

Gaze by Farnoosh Samadi
Not Yet by Arian Vazirdaftair
Lunch Time by Alireza Ghasmei
The Dérive by Tanin Torabi
Personal by Sonia K. Hadad
Online Shopping by Ghasideh Golmakani

Also, three Iranian films will compete in the international section of the festival; Gaze by Farnoosh Samadi, Animal by Bahman and Bahram Ark and Retouch by Kaveh Mazaheri. The Dérive by Tanin Torabi will be in the Multiplié Dance Film competition.

Minimalen, the annual and independent short film event came to life in 1988 in the attractive old town of Trondheim, Norway.
Over the years Minimalen has refined its main objective into finding new ways to use the film as a medium. This often means independent productions with a free spirit attitude to filmmaking and an emphasis on images and film language more than words. The ideal filmmaker should be on a constant quest to find the right form for each story.

Not that they necessarily need to tell a story, but basically, each film should have its own fingerprint, a uniqueness which goes far beyond the constant re-telling of the same storyline as in the contemporary film industry. The small gems of short fiction, documentary or animation told by experimental means. Not always artistically ground breaking or technically perfect, but with a consistency of form and contents. These are the films that Minimalen are looking for, and this is what sets us a apart from many festivals.
This time, Minimalen focus on the complexity and many-layered Iranian society and with this focus on contemporary Iranian short film, audience is invited into a contradictory landscape between what can and cannot be expressed in Iranian society.

The 30th Minimalen Short Film Festival to be held between 23-28 January 2018 in Trondheim Norway.
More information are available in festival's website: www.minimalen.com