Bahman ghobadi biography template

  • PERSONAL HISTORY.
  • Is an Iranian-Kurdish film director, producer and writer.
  • Iranian-Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi directed the first Kurdish language feature film to be made in the world (A Time for Drunken Horses, 2000).

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    Ghobadi, Bahman (1969–)

    Kurdish Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (Qobadi) is the most prominent Kurdish artist working today, and one of a new breed of young Iranian filmmakers who have grown up since the revolution of 1979. His four feature films since 2000 have established him as one of the most respected young filmmakers in the world.

    PERSONAL HISTORY

    Ghobadi, much the best-known of contemporary Kurdish filmmakers, was born in Baneh in Iranian Kurdistan on 1 February 1969, and moved with his family to the provincial capital of Sanandaj in 1983, during the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq war. An early interest in photography led him eventually to the study of film in Tehran, where he completed several short 8 millimetre films before approaching Iran's most distinguished art film director, abbas kiarostami, who was planning to shoot his next film in Kurdistan. Ghobadi worked as second unit director on this film, The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and also appeared in a small role. He was als

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    Interview by Zoya Honarmand and Gilda Boffa
    Interview translator Zoya Honarmand
    Text translated by Zoya Honarmand

    Iranian-Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi directed the first Kurdish language feature film to be made in the world (A Time for Drunken Horses, 2000). Ever since, it has been of capital importance to him to represent Kurds in his films. In July of 2008, we met with the director in his Tehran office to conduct the following interview in which he shared his ideas about the Kurdish audience, the affect cinema can have on culture and society, the current state of Iranian cinema and the meaning of borders and children in his films.

    Bahman Ghobadi. Photo by Gilda Boffa*

    Offscreen: In the “Behind the Scenes” for Halfmoon, you said that it was very important for your films to be screened in Iran. You’re also currently involved in building a movie theatre in Kurdestan. Can you speak a bit about why it’s so important for Iranians and Kurds to

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    Bahman Ghobadi,
    Cinema in Extremis

    Bahman Ghobadi’s five feature films are impassioned cries for justice on the part of the dispossessed and those whose lives remain unseen. While the first kvartet films all take place in Ghobadi’s native Kurdistan, his latest work brings the same passion to present-day Tehran. Ghobadi’s ouevre to date is an extraordinary example of cinema dancing on the abyss.

    Born in 1969 in Iranian Kurdistan, Ghobadi moved to Tehran in 1992 and started a career as an industrial photographer. After studying film at the Iranian Broadcasting College, he began shooting short documentaries on 8mm, an experience that led directly to the creation of his first feature bio, A Time for Drunken Horses. The film’s immediate international success not only made Ghobadi a prominent name in Iranian filmmaking – alongside jafar Panahi and Samira Makhmalbaf – but also marked him as a pioneer of Kurdish cinema.

    Ghobad’s su