Persian Cinema: Poetry and Protest

In this online talk, curator of film Tom Vick presents an insider’s view of the annual Festival of Films from Iran at the National Museum of Asian Art, which just concluded its thirtieth year. The festival showcases a selection of the best Iranian and diasporic films of the year. Vick will discuss Iranian cinema’s preservation of cultural traditions, its central role in contemporary Iran, and its commitment to exposing social injustices.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A and discussion moderated by Massumeh Farhad, The Ebrahimi Family Curator of Persian, Arab, and Turkish Art, Director of the Freer Research Center, and the Senior Associate Director for Research.

Tom Vick has served as curator of film at NMAA since 2001. Formerly, Vick was the coordinator of film programs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has worked as a consultant for the International Film Festival Rotterdam and served on the juries of the Korean Film Festival in Los Angeles, the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Filmfest DC, and the Smithsonian African American Film Festival. He has contributed essays to Directory of World Cinema: Japan, Film Festival Yearbook, Asian Geographic, and other publications. He is the author of Asian Cinema: A Field Guide (2007) and Time and Place Are Nonsense: The Films of Seijun Suzuki (2015). He is the executive producer on Tsai Ming-liang’s film Abiding Nowhere (2024) and contributed a video essay to the Blu-ray release of Shōhei Imamura’s film Warm Water Under a Red Bridge in 2023.
Image courtesy of Neon Rated