Nazarbazi (2022)
Maryam Tafakory
Nazarbazi, Maryam Tafakory, Iran/England, digital, 19 min, 2022
Nazarbazi (“the play of glances”) is a film about love and desire in Iranian cinema, where depictions of intimacy and touch between women and men are prohibited. The film focuses primarily on images of women whose bodies have been erased and victimized in postrevolutionary cinema, alluding to discreet forms of communication that operate within the medium yet circumnavigate the censors. The montage attempts to touch the spaces we cannot touch: inner feelings, untouchability beyond bodily experience, and the unwritten/unspoken prohibitions inside us. The film uses poetry and silence as the only languages with which we can touch these spaces of sociopolitical ambiguities.
Streaming Details
This film is available to stream globally.
Program Partners
This film is co-presented with Artcite Inc. and Open City Documentary Festival.
Image credits: all artworks, portraits, and stills courtesy of the artist © Maryam Tafakory.
About the artist
Maryam Tafakory (Iran/England) is a filmmaker and visual artist born in Shiraz, Iran, in 1987. Her research-based practice is an ongoing dialogue with the postrevolutionary Iranian cinema, creating cinematic essay-collages that bring together poetry, speculative nonfiction, and archival material, exploring the different registers through which images speak or refuse to speak. She received an MFA from Oxford University and a PhD in Fine Art from Kingston University. Her films, including Irani Bag (2020), Mast-del (2023), and Razeh-del (2024), have been screened at venues worldwide including Tate Modern, Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, New York Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Toronto International Film Festival, and Villa Medici, with solo presentations at The Museum of Modern Art, BOZAR, National Gallery of Art (Washington), Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and Museum of the Moving Image. She has won awards from Chicago International Film Festival, 25FPS, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Locarno Film Festival, among others. She was a Flaherty/Colgate Distinguished Global Filmmaker in Residence (2019), a MacDowell Fellow (2023), and received the Aesthetica Art Prize (2024) and the Film London Jarman Award (2024). She lives and works between London, England, and Shiraz, Iran.