Art & Design

The 25th annual Washington, DC International Film Festival (Filmfest DC) runs from April 7th, 2011 through April 17th, 2011, and once again brings the best of new international cinema to the nation’s capital including World Premieres, DC Premieres, Official Foreign Language Film Oscar® Selections and international headliners and award winners.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA) exhibition of Iranian-American mega-photographer, Firooz Zahedi‘s work featuring Elizabeth Taylor entitled: Elizabeth Taylor in Iran: 
Photographs by Firooz Zahedi, will be on display until June 12, 2011.

Asia Society Museum presents an exquisite fifteenth-century manuscript commissioned by the Timurid prince Muhammad Juki (1402–1444).

This rarely exhibited volume, now in the collection of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, features more than thirty richly painted and illuminated miniatures that illustrate scenes from the Persian national epic, the Shahnameh (Book of Kings).

Darvag Theater presents It’s not about Pomegranates!, a new play by: Sepideh Khosrowjah, directed by; Hamid Ehya, with Ana Bayat King & Richard Reinholdt–the recipient of San Francisco Bay Guardian Upstage/Downstage Award and currently nominated for the 2010 Best Male Performer Award by The San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle–at The Boxcar Playhouse in San Francisco, CA.

This year, UK-based industrial design team, Arash + Kelly are planning to take their environmental initiatives one step further by making their Genius Pads and sticky notes from non-Tree, waste pulp–collected from crop farms–turned into unbleached paper.

Busy being a mom, wife, and actress, Sarah Shahi shows off sides to her acting skills that few knew existed in her new USA Network show, Fairly Legal.

As if things couldn’t get worse for Iranian artists, world-renowned filmmaker Jafar Panahi was recently sentenced to six years in prison and banned from making films for twenty years.

Having organized an International Artist Village Residency called Sowing Seeds–which ran for most of December 2010 in Andore, India–Kaman Art Foundation’s most recent art initiative, Bhupat Dudi, successfully showcased artists from seven countries including: France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, USA, and Vietnam.

When Bebe announced their plans to mix retail and TV personalities by joining CBS Consumer Products to develop a line of clothing inspired by the “items worn by various characters on [90210]”, Bebe for 90210, it didn’t seem completely out of character for the semi-luxury brand.

The reviews are in!

Iranian-American writer and director, Maryam Keshavarz’s film Circumstance, which is about a forgotten (or perhaps unrecognized group) that exists in Iran, lesbians, makes a big splash at the Sundance Film Festival 2011.

Parviz Tanavoli: Monograph, is the most extensive catalogue raisonné on the artist to date.

The book includes over 250 color plates displaying his sculptures from the early 1960s to his most recent work.

His work is brave (as his first name, Shoja, suggests, in Persian), cleverly inquisitive, and unaffected.

And yet, these aren’t the only reasons why we find ourselves seduced by Shoja Azari’s très originale aesthetic.