Name Aryana Farshad | Role Director | |
Movies Mystic Iran: The Unseen World People also search for Shohreh Aghdashloo, Janelle Balnicke, Beth Spiegel | ||
Scene from "Mystic Iran: The Unseen World"
Aryana Farshad is a writer, director, and film producer born in Tehran, Iran.
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Known for her documentary films on spirituality and mysticism, Aryana Farshad is an award-winning international film maker. Over the past decade she has been commissioned to make several films for different non-profit foundations in US, Iran, London, Turkey and India. Fluent in English, French & Persian, Aryana is the recipient of “Audience Favorite Award”, “Telly Award”, and “Davey Award”. In addition, she received the prestigious ABU Award for editing a documentary film entitled “Immigrant Birds.” Aryana is a still photographer and her work was exhibited at LACMA, and Einsen Gallery. She also has the distinction of being the first Iranian/American interviewed on KCET (PBS Los Angeles) BY VAL ZAVALA. Previously, Aryana worked at COLUMBIA and MGM (see IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0268583)
Currently, Aryana lectures at major universities, museums, and various non-profit organizations. She has lectured at: The British Museum of Arts, LA County Museum of Arts, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Fes Sacred Music Festival in Morocco, Parliament of the World Religions in Barcelona, and the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. For her latest project “Longing for the Soul; A Quest for Rumi”, she received a “Bijan & Soraya” Grant. Filmed entirely in US, Iran, Turkey & Afghanistan will be available for distribution by October 2015.
Education and career
She moved to Paris, France and studied French language and literature at The Sorbonne, prior to receiving her degree from the Institut Des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques in film production and editing. She returned to her native country of Iran for a few years where she worked with major Iranian and western film makers. She moved to Los Angeles, attending USC film department and later joined the Editor's Guild and worked for major Hollywood studios, including MGM Studios and Columbia Pictures in television post-production. In 2000, she travelled back to her native country Iran and returned footage which was used in creating the award-winning documentary film Mystic Iran, the Unseen World. Her second documentary film on Iran, Age of Awakening, is narrated by Omid Djalili. Mystic Iran went on to be acknowledged and awarded at many film festivals and won the "Audience Favorite Award" at the 2008 Noor Film Festival. Her current project, Longing for the Soul is about Rumi and in production.
Filmography
Cesar winning French actress Fanny Ardent.