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An In-Person Screening Event
BILLY WILDER THEATER - HAMMER MUSEUM
Los Angeles

Women without men & Looking for Oum Kulthum 

September 23, 2022

Born in Iran and based in New York, visual artist Shirin Neshat has explored the dualities of diasporic identity as an Iranian woman living in the West across multiple disciplines, including photography, video, theater and film for over 30 years. The focus of a recent career retrospective at The Broad (Shirin Neshat: I Will Greet the Sun Again), Neshat has been featured in solo exhibitions at museums and galleries around the world with her works included in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, to name a few.

Intimately linked to her photography and video work is Neshat’s work as a filmmaker. In each of her three feature films to date, directed with her regular collaborator Shoja Azari, Neshat employs the big screen canvas to extend and deeply narrativize her representations of women contesting systems of oppression and control in a variety of spheres.

The Archive is thrilled to present two Shirin Neshat feature films Women without Men (2009) and Looking for Oum Kulthum (2017), both of which premiered at the Venice Film Festival at the Billy Wilder Theater.

This screening is part of Looking Within, Not Without: The Films of Shirin Neshat at the Hammer.

Farhang Foundation is a proud community partner.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 - 7:30 PM

WOMEN WITHOUT MEN

Germany/Austria/France/Italy/Ukraine/Morocco/Iran 2009

Women without Men follows the lives of four women over the course of the turbulent, American-backed overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. Though they each inhabit different strata of Iranian society—a general’s wife, a prostitute, a religious adherent and a rebellious sister—they each experience the personal trauma of patriarchal domination against a backdrop of sweeping historical change. Much more than an account of suffering, the film depicts the power of refuge and dignity in their lives, as it shifts elegiacally between historical reality and metaphoric vision. For bringing her sharp and striking visual sensibilities to this adaptation of Shahrnoush Parsipour’s novella, Shirin Neshat won the Venice Film Festival Silver Lion for best directing in 2009 for this, her feature film debut.

DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 89 min.
Directors: Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari
Screenwriter: Shoja Azari, Shirin Neshat
Featuring: Shabnam Toloui, Pegah Ferydoni, Arita Shahrzad

LOOKING FOR OUM KULTHUM

Germany/Austria/Italy/Morocco/Qatar/Lebanon/France 2017

Legendary singer and Egyptian national hero Oum Kulthum, whose impassioned voice was a beacon of hope for the Arab world for generations, is at the center of Shirin Neshat’s exploration of artistic interpretation and who gets to tell who’s story. Neda Rahmanian plays Mitra, an Iranian-born filmmaker shooting a biopic on Kulthum whose credentials to interpret her life are challenged at every turn on cultural and political grounds—attacks frequently fueled by straight up misogyny. Mitra’s struggle to define her art on her own terms—while managing her fracturing personal life—mirrors Kulthum’s own journey to stardom, depicted in sumptuously produced, film-within-a-film scenes with the captivating Yasmin Raeis as the iconic singer. Recreating a number of Kulthum’s major live performances, the film brims with music and ideas, passionately lived.

DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 90 min.
Directors: Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari
Screenwriters: Shoja Azari, Ahmad Diba, Shirin Neshat
Featuring: Neda Rahmanian, Yasmin Raeis, Mehdi Moinzadeh