News

BubuWeb: Four Films from Kamran Shirdel

Kamran Shirdel — Tehran is the Capital of Iran

Nedamatgah (Women’s Prison) (1965)
Tehran Is the Capital of Iran (1966)
Qaleh (The Women’s Quarter) (1966)
The Night It Rained or The Epic of Gorgan Village Boy (1967)

Bidoun and UbuWeb are pleased to present four of Shirdel’s most renowned socio-political documentaries, films that courageously and frankly revealed the darker side of Iran’s economic boom, analyzing the effects of a society flush with oil money. These films were steeped in a deep social consciousness reminiscent of the best of the Italian Neo-realist tradition, the cinema that had influenced him deeply during his studies in Italy. Shirdel’s furious documentaries and cinematic language were a bone of contention both under the Shah and following his exile, because they spoke up for the underprivileged and, in doing so, exposed and criticized the corruption of the mechanism of power. Because of the severe censorship, nearly all his films were banned and confiscated, and in the end he was expelled from The Ministry and put on the blacklist. Seven years after it was made (and censored), his The Epic of the Gorgani Village Boy (The Night It Rained!), after receiving the GRAN PRIX at The Third Tehran International Film Festival (1974), was immediately banned again and remained so (like his Nedamatgah (Women’s Prison, 1965), Qaleh (Women’s Quarter, 1966), Tehran Is the Capital of Iran (1966), and others) until after the revolution.
Visit Kamran Shirdel on UbuWeb

Bidoun Library: Call for Printed Matter!

Bidoun Library Call for Printed Matter

The Bidoun Library is seeking manifestations of the Revolution of January 25th in magazines, newspapers, books, and miscellaneous printed matter. We do not seek a complete and democratic collection of everything printed just ahead, during and after the 25th, nor of the best, most insightful, or lucid accounts in print, but printed materials which are more than anything else OBJECTS, necessitated, transformed or intervened upon by the continuing revolution.

In our experience, this approach tends to produce two types of documents: first, there are materials which are produced to meet new needs or markets among the public, or by new channels of distribution and socialization opened by an event. In general these are materials that would not have existed before these events and may not exist after. This could include newspapers and leaflets produced in, during, and for the demonstrators in Tahrir, for example, or hastily produced commemorative magazine issues or books produced directly after.

Another prime site of the material manifestation of an event often appears in the ways it is refracted in existing modes of cultural production. For example the way the revolution appears in teen and celebrity magazines, advertisements, sports papers, occult and conspiratorial pamphlets, romance novels, comic books, children’s books, auto decals and stickers, trade journals, pop-political analysis, hastily produced biographies of presidential hopefuls, yellow pages, real estate and travel guides, and so on.


The Bidoun Library is a peripatetic collection of printed materials from and about the ‘Middle East,’ as a product and producer of printed materials. It has traveled extensively throughout the region, from Abu Dhabi to Beirut to Cairo. This summer the Library will spend several months at the Serpentine Gallery in London. All materials donated to the library will be credited and all purchases on its behalf compensated, by arrangement with its librarians. Upon request, Bidoun will return materials after documentation.

Email info@bidoun.org with queries. Though this is an ongoing project, any materials sent to us by the first week of May would be helpful as potential inclusions in the summer issue of Bidoun. Materials could be dropped off at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, 1st floor.

Khordadian Mixtape

In honor of the SPORTS issue and our feature on Iranian dancercise king Mohammad Khordadian, Bidoun presents a compilation of some of our favorite early ‘90s Tehrangelesi pop songs that soundtrack Khordadian’s videos, including:

Martik — Niloofar
Fataneh — Namehraboon
Moein & Faezeh — Del Shekasteh
Bijan Mortazavi — Havaye Eshgh
Black Cats — Rhythm of Love
Moein — Tamana
Hassan Shamaizadeh — Ye Dokhtar Daram
Siavash — Gol
Fataneh — Mola Mamadjan
Bijan Mortazavi — Zendegi
Samad — Hele Dan
Shahram Shabpareh — Shabe Toye Raaheh
Jalal Hemmati — Baba Karam
Click here to download!

United States of Palestine Airlines

United States of Palestine Airlines
United States of Palestine Airlines Clock

Visit the United States of Palestine Airlines at the World Travel Expo, Kuwait.
March 29 - April 1, 2011.

Sports!

the true tale of the Naga Jolokia, the world’s hottest chili). We were more interested in the apparatus of celebrity and fandom; in the body as commodity; in the mind games and energy drinks and exercise tapes.
And so we set out to find the most improbably compelling figures in the wide world of sports. Like Mohammad Khordadian, the elusive, effusive god-king of Persian dancercise, whose thirty-year career spans Tehran and Tehrangeles and Dubai. Like Omar Sharif, smoldering star of stage and screen and roving ambassador for the not-yet-Olympic sport of Bridge. Like Nada Zeidan — archeress, spokesmodel, and road-racer by day, emergency room nurse by night. Like Shah Rukh Khan, the Muslim face of Bollywood cinema and owner of his own cricket team, the Kolkata Knight Riders. Like Stephen Cherono and other Kenyan long- and middle-distance runners who have found infamy and fortune as Arabized athletes in the Gulf.
Other features consider avian sports medicine, intramural three-legged racing, competitive Magic: The Gathering, and transcripts from Iranian state television’s #1 sports show.
In the arts section: Neil Beloufa ’s ghosts of futures past, Alvaro Perdice s’ ruined Algerian museums, and Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc’s tricontinental revolutionary séance.
Revews: Nicky Nodjoumi // Karthik Pandian // Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art // Pouran Jinchi // Decolonizing Architecture // Walid Raad // Mounira Al Solh // Wael Shawky.
Plus: Sohrab Mohebbi’s letter from an Iranian soccer pitch, Dave Tompkin’s encounter with electronic music pioneer Hashim , and red velvet cake with Yemeni-American boxer Saddam Ali.

Bidoun Projects at Art Dubai, March 16-19, 2011


Bidoun Projects returns for its fourth year as a project partner of Art Dubai. Our 2011 programming is built around the theme of Sports: competition, stardom, the parody of sports as labor or labor as sports, the art of losing, and sports per se. Our projects include the Art Park, an underground project space for film, video and talks, that features retrospectives of two pivotal Egyptian artists, Sherif El Azma and Wael Shawky, curated by Bidoun’s Kaelen Wilson-Goldie and Sarah Rifky of the Townhouse Gallery, respectively, as well as a sports-themed video programme featuring a variety of artists including Ziad Antar, Mahmoud Hojeij, Van Leo, and Marwa and Mirene Arsenios.
The Bidoun Library returns, too, featuring ‘The Natural Order,’ a new section specially curated for the fair that focuses on printed material on the Gulf from the past five decades. ‘The Natural Order’ will include corporate and state publications, as well as magazines and lay-ethnography on the Gulf published in the mid 20th century, when the region was mostly unfamiliar in the West and was becoming a source of great interest with the discovery of oil. The collective Slavs and Tatars will also make a special appearance with a new project and publication dedicated to Molla Nasreddin.
Join us at the fair on March 15th at 5 pm for a special Bidoun Show & Tell in the Art Park and on March 16th as we co-host, with The Third Line, the Sharjah Biennial After Party!
Bidoun Projects thanks the Emirates Foundation for its support in making these initiatives possible.

R.I.P. Ahmed Basiony

Bidoun is saddened to hear that the young Cairo based artist Ahmed Basiony was killed in the Egyptian protests last Friday.
To all of Bidoun’s many friends in Egypt, we salute you in your battle for justice.
With respect,
Bidoun

Adventure Persian Style

This past Sunday Bidoun screened a special hour-long montage for BLVCK AMERICA’S inaugural BLVCK EYE film night at the Ace Hotel in New York. Responding to popular demand, we’ve uploaded it for all to see along with some photos of the screening.
The montage is comprised of shorts and clips from materials which in some manner depict a relationship between Iran and the rest of the world: Farsi in American films, English in Iranian films, French directors commissioned to make films in Iran — even Princess Soraya Bakhtiari’s acting debut in a throwaway Antonioni film.
Click here to see a guide to source films.
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BLVCK AMERICA’s Saheer Umar

BLVCK AMERICA’s Saheer Umar introduces the BLVCK EYE series
Team Bidoun (Lisa Farjam and child, Babak Radboy, and Tiffany Malakooti)

Team Bidoun (Lisa Farjam and child, Babak Radboy, and Tiffany Malakooti) on deck
Bidoun Screening

Bidoun_BLVCKEYE_03

A scene from The Invincible Six directed by Jean Negulesco. Shot entirely in Iran, the film features Elke Sommer (seen here as a village vixen) along with some marginal Hollywood figures but also includes Iranian cast members (Behrouz Vossoughi) and production team (Fereydoun Hoveyda is credited as a “consultant” and Masoud Kimiai as “assistant director”).


Fielding questions

Bidoun at Art Dubai 2011

Art Dubai
March 16-19, 2011

One again Bidoun Projects has been invited to partner with Art Dubai in bringing you a series of non-profit artist projects, screenings, and miscellaneous more with the theme of “SPORTS” — also the theme of our spring issue, to be launched at the fair.
2011 Bidoun Projects include the Art Park, an underground project space for film, video and talks, that features retrospectives of the work of two pivotal Egyptian artists, Sherif El Azma and Wael Shawky, curated by Bidoun’s Kaelen Wilson-Goldie and Sarah Rifky of the Townhouse Gallery, respectively, as well as a sports-themed video programme featuring a variety of artists including Ziad Antar, Mahmoud Hojeij, Van Leo, and Marwa and Mirene Arsenios.
Limited edition Bidoun trading cards will be distributed, too, and autograph sessions will be held throughout the fair featuring leading lights of the contemporary art world. Bidoun also presents a “live mural” painted and repainted each day throughout the fair by a group of distinguished artists — Dubai-based artist Rokni Haerizadeh and Tehran-based Ali Chitsaz among them — tasked with depicting the theme of “labor.”
The peripatetic Bidoun Library is back, too, featuring “The Natural Order,” a new section specially curated for the fair that focuses on printed material on the Gulf from the past five decades.
Also look out for a special appearance by the collective Slavs and Tatars in the Bidoun Library.
Finally, Bidoun Projects will present a special “Show & Tell” evening dedicated to highlighting Bidoun’s diverse activities past and present.

The Delfina Foundation presents The Best of Sammy Clark & Sonic Grounds

Exhibition: January 11 to February 18, 2011
Video Screeening and Talk: Wednesday January 12 at 6:00pm
The Delfina Foundation
29 Catherine Place, Victoria, London

Raed Yassin Sammy Clark

The Best of Sammy Clark by Raed Yassin
The Best of Sammy Clark (2008) is a tribute to Sammy Clark, a 1980s Lebanese pop music icon and Raed Yassin’s fictive mentor. The installation suggests a contrived genealogy, which links Yassin to Clark, and explores the artist’s personal narrative, as well as the recent history of Lebanon, through the lens of consumer culture and mass production.

Sonic Grounds curated by Rayya Badran
A series of talks and performances throughout January and February 2011. Contributors include Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Mark Fisher, Raed Yassin, and Rayya Badran, the recipient of this year’s Bidoun/ Delfina New Writing Residency.
Sonic Grounds explores the intersection between popular music, radio and writing. The series of events unpacks some of the thoughts that emanate from The Best of Sammy Clark, by expanding the discussion to topics of popular culture, sampling and the politics of aurality in London and Beirut.

Video Screeening: Featuring Mahmoud Yassin
Wednesday 12 January 2011,
 18:00 - 20:00, at The Delfina Foundation.
Four video works by Raed Yassin followed by a conversation between the artist and Rayya Badran. Free event. Rsvp required at rspv@delfinafoundation.com

Visit the Delfina website for more information

BAS Istanbul Presents AA BRONSON: MY LIFE IN BOOKS

Thursday January 13, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Cezayir 2. Toplantı Salonu, Hayriye caddesi No:12, Galatasaray Beyoğlu
(Talk will be in English)

AA Bronson at BAS IStanbul

From 1969 through 1994 AA Bronson lived and worked as one of three artists who together formed the group General Idea, dividing his time between Toronto and New York. For 25 years they published a continuous stream of more than 300 low-cost multiples and publications. From 1972 through 1989 they published the artists’ magazine FILE, and in 1974 they founded Art Metropole, a distribution center and archive for artists’ books.
Since his partner’s deaths in 1994, AA Bronson has worked under his own name, focusing on themes of death, healing, transformation, and social justice. His solo exhibitions have included the Vienna Secession, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Power Plant, Toronto.
As the director of Printed Matter from 2004 to 2010, AA Bronson greatly expanded the activities of this centre for artists’ books in New York. He founded the NY Art Book Fair in 2006. He has also curated many exhibitions, especially of artists’ books and other democratic editions. His exhibition “Queer Zines” was presented at the 2008 NY Art Book Fair and traveled from there to OCA in Oslo.
At My Life in Books, AA will talk about the publications by General Idea, FILE magazine, Art Metropole and his recent experiences at Printed Matter, inc.

Read interview with BAS’s Banu Cennetoglu from Bidoun #18 Interviews.

Taqwacore Screening Tonight at NYU — Introduced by Michael C. Vazquez!

The Taqwa Tour 2007 in Chicago

Tuesday November 30, 6:30pm
20 Cooper Square
New York
Directed by Omar Majeed
2009, 80 minutes
Presented by Michael C. Vazquez

NYU’s Program for Asian/Pacific/American Studies presents a screening of Taqwacore as part of its program ‘WRONG MUSLIM: a series on infidels.’ Taqwacore is a roaring, rollicking portrait of Muhammad Knight, The Kominas, and a brown wave of riot grrl, metal, anarcho-punk and shouty-shout bands — among them Vote Hezbollah and Secret Trial Five, the latter fronted by a Pakistani lesbian from Vancouver and best known for their song ‘Middle Eastern Zombies’ — as they travel from suburban basements to Lahore. There the drugs are great, the response from locals slightly less so….