Iranian Film Festival brings culture, compassion to SMP

Brandon Krampert
In Motion Staff Writer

In mid-February the 6th Annual NOOR Iranian Film Festival came to Central Florida and showed week-long screenings at the Cinematique in Daytona Beach, the Southeast Museum of Photography’s Mardorsky Theater and Rollins College in Winter Park.

The festival is regularly held in several cities across the U.S. and shows a variety of films, including shorts, features, and documentaries about Iranian culture. On opening night at the Madorsky, there was a dinner followed by speakers at the Southeast Museum of Photography.

After introductions by Forough Hosseini and SMP Director Kevin Miller, Siamak Ghahremani, co-founder and director of NOOR, spoke of the origins of the festival saying, “In the summer of 2005, myself and a few other friends were sitting around watching CNN and there was a lot of negative stuff being said about Iran, the government and the nuclear program.”

“I told them, ‘I wish we had an organization that would go out in major media and would tell the average non-Iranian, the average American, let’s say, what Iranian culture is really about, what our heritage is about, where we’ve come from, and not everything they watch on Fox News is the truth.’ And a year later we came up with the film festival.”

He then emphasized NOOR’s purpose, “I’m not here to change anyone’s mind about what Iran is or how rich our history is or how beautiful it is, but the least I can do as an Iranian-American living here for 28 years is to give the non-Iranian community an opportunity for them to decide on their own.”

Iranian-American Navid Negahban, who has acted in television shows and movies such as “Homeland” and “The Stoning of Soraya R,” also spoke about the film festival. He talked about the significance of film as an art. “Art is the only country that has no borders. There is no prejudice in true art,” he said.

Admission to the event, which attracted a crowd of 100, included a dinner buffet catered by the college, along with a Q&A session with Negahban about his acting career. To close the night, a film screening of “The Chicken with Plums” was shown in the Mardorsky Theater, a French film with English subtitles about a violinist named Nasser Ali Khan who ends up losing his faith in life after his violin breaks.