Tribeca Enterprises and YouTube announced today the programming slate for We Are One: A Global Film Festival, which will feature over 100 films co-curated by 21 prolific festivals, hailing from 35 countries, in addition to talks, VR content and musical performances. The 10day digital event will celebrate global voices, elevate films that have the power to create change and bring audiences from around the world together to create meaningful connections. Assembling some of the world’s most talented artists, storytellers and curators around a central effort to provide entertainment and offer relief in the form of supporting organizations responding to the…
Author: Bijan Tehrani
Bijan Tehrani
Bijan (Hassan) Tehrani Founder and Editor in Chief of Cinema Without Borders, is a film director, writer, and a film critic, his first article appeared in a weekly film publication in Iran 45 years ago. Bijan founded Cinema Without Borders, an online publication dedicated to promotion of international cinema in the US and around the globe, eighteen years ago and still works as its editor in chief. Bijan is has also been a columnist and film critic for the Iranian monthly film related medias for 45 years and during the past 5 years he has been a permanent columnist and film reviewer for Film Emrooz (Film Today), a popular Iranian monthly print film magazine. Bijan has won several awards in international film festivals and book fairs for his short films and children's books as well as for his services to the international cinema. Bijan is a member of Iranian Film Writers Critics Society and International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI). He is also an 82nd Golden Globe Awards voter.
In January this year and at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, I had the opportunity of meeting Eline Farideh Koning , the main character in Finding Farideh, Iranian documentary film, in person. Eline Farideh was quite enthusiastic about being part of making this important documentary, representing Iran in 2020 Oscars. After a successful and full house screening of Finding Farideh, I interviewed Eline Farideh on camera: https://vimeo.com/422546627 “Finding Farideh” is a feature-length documentary about an Iranian girl named Farideh, who had been abandoned in a holy shrine in Iran when she was 6 months old in 1976, and then…
Living in quarantine has changed the way filmmakers are working and communicating with others. Mark Pellington is one of the pioneers of music videos with a long list of credits in both feature films and music videos. Mark, a legendary of his field, is a humble and wonderful artist and a great human being. In the following video Marks Pellington tells us about living and working in quarantine. https://vimeo.com/416076460 Mark Pellington was born in 1962. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1984, which he attended on an athletic scholarship, playing attack on the lacrosse team. He worked at MTV from 1984–1990, winning awards as a…
Working Man is not only one of the best American films I have seen in recent years. An honest film that deals with an ordinary life of a middle aged man that all he knows from life is working for a factory, a tragic life that Hollywood never deals with. the simple, but well thought and beautiful structure of the Working Man reminds me the good Italian New Realist films. I had the opportunity of speaking to Robert Jury, writer and director of the Working Man on camera (Bijan Tehrani): https://vimeo.com/415824445 Somewhere in the Rust Belt of America another factory is…
When I interviewed Nancy Kelly last week, it was like talking to a friend that I knew for centuries. She is full of his hearth talking to you and supper modest and generous in sharing her interesting and exciting stories about making of Thousand pieces of gold. I have watched Thousand pieces of gold a few times since last week (I can not believe that I missed it thirty years ago when it was released for the first time!) and it’s one of those movies that is like a breathtaking scenery, regardless of how many times you have seen it, it…
Did You Know? More than 1 in 6 U.S. healthcare workers are immigrants. In the states hardest hit by the coronavirus, California and New York, more than a third of all healthcare workers are immigrants. Also there are other immigrant Essential Workers on the front lines making sacrifices in order to save lives and keep the country running in the brutal battle against the Coronavirus. Essential Workers have not been able to work from home during the shutdown, but rather have continued to go to their normal jobs, bringing them into contact on a daily basis with COVID-19 patients or…
I woke up today to a powerful and beautiful short film by Iranian/Dutch filmmaker, Reza Alamezadeh, My Corona Days Days Tale. This well thought and carefully shot using the social distancing rules by guidance of the filmmaker living in isolation at quarantine at his home from his granddaughter and her family. Reza Alamezadeh’s My Corona Days Days Tale with no doubt is the best short film I have seen so far dealing with our new way of life under the threat of the Coronavirus. Rexza casts a ray of hope to our lives and shows the way to other filmmakers to start…
How could I have missed a beautiful film like Nine Lives by Rodrigo Garcia, a film about nine women, in nine episode, happening in real time. How could I have known so little about this great filmmaker? If Rodrigo Garcia was French, now his amazing films were all over the film clubs and film critics would have compete to adiring and analysing them. I am going to write about each one of Rodrigo Garcia very soon and we help you to find them and watch them. I owe this to myself for my ignorance and not knowing his body of amazing films.…
Oh, God, it should have been over a half century since the last time that I met Manuchehr Shamsaei. Manuchehr was the lighting engineer in National Iranian Radio and Television, a brilliant artist. Back then I was working as a film director at NIRT and also writing film critics for several publications. With Manucher we shared love for Italian cinema and at any opportunity we would talk for hours about films and I was always surprised by his rich knowledge of arts. Many times our favorite topic was lighting in Michelangelo Antonioni films, and I have to admit that I…
The 15th Panorama of Maghreb and Middle Eastern Cinemas, a Parisian international film festival, will review a lineup of the latest Iranian movies in a special section. Feature films “Dressage” by Puya Badkubeh, “Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness” by Masud Bakhshi, “Hendi and Hormoz” by Abbas Amini and “Esrafil” by Ida Panahandeh are among the films to go on screen in this section. Documentary films “Sonita”, a co-production from Iran, Germany and Switzerland by Iranian filmmaker Rokhsareh Qaem-Maqami and “Women According to Men” by Saeid Nuri will also be screened at the festival, which is scheduled to be held from…