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Shahin Parhami

Arts & Expression, South Asian, Film

Portriat of Shahin Parhami

Iranian-Canadian writer, director and filmmaker Shahin Parhami was born in Shiraz, the cultural capital of Iran. After his arrival to Canada in 1988, he quickly became an active writer of poetry and essays for local Iranian-Canadian publications on arts and culture. His insatiable appetite for cinema later inspired him to pursue film studies and production first at Ottawa's Carleton University, and later at Concordia University in Montréal.

Shahin directed his first film "Nasoot" in 1997, which was screened in many film festivals. This poetic meditation on the death of three Iranian refugees constituted the first part of a trilogy on Iran and diaspora, which he later completed with "Lahoot" (1998) and "Jabaroot" (2003).

Shahin Parhami is the mastermind behind all his work, producing his own films and being responsible for all creative elements. An ardent lover of poetry, Shahin develops his projects with a style that borrows from traditional and modern poetics of Persian visual culture and literature to reveal a rich and fascinating expression.

In his most recent production, "Faces" (Chehreh-ha, 2007) , an experimental and multi-layered documentary on 10 Iranian artists living in Canada, Shahin dives into questions that are tied to exile, identity, and maintaining one's culture in a context of immigration.

"Faces" premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival and won the best feature film award at the Experimental Film Festival (FLEXIFF) 2007 (Sydney, Australia).

Links for Shahin Parhami's film excerpts: