We invite you to join a lecture series on twentieth-century and contemporary Iranian culture. Over the course of three meetings, Iranologist, Persian translator, researcher of contemporary culture, and curator of independent Iranian theatre Yultan Sadykova will speak about Iranian cinema, theatre, and poetry, their histories, key figures, and artistic developments.

This series offers a chance to encounter Iranian culture as a complex, living, and multilayered field. Each lecture is devoted to a different artistic form, but together they open onto a broader conversation about artistic language, cultural memory, censorship, modernisation, and independent cultural scenes.

Yultan Sadykova is an Iranologist, Persian translator, researcher of contemporary culture, and curator of independent Iranian theatre. She was born in 1988 in Kazan and graduated from the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Lomonosov Moscow State University. She is the compiler and translator of an anthology of contemporary Iranian poetry, and the translator of Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men, as well as Stockholm Syndrome and Land of Mothers by Shahzoda Nazarova-Samarkandi. She has translated into Persian works by Vladimir Mayakovsky, as well as Milorad Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars, Pavel Bazhov’s tales, and Mikhail Kuzmin’s cycles Trout Breaks the Ice and Alexandrian Songs. She lives and works in Tehran.

Programme

May 24, Sunday, 5:00 pm

Iranian Cinema

The first lecture will focus on the history of cinema in Iran, pre-revolutionary documentary filmmaking, auteur cinema, and the landmark works of major Iranian filmmakers including Fereydoun Rahnema, Parviz Kimiavi, Arby Ovanessian, Ebrahim Golestan, Dariush Mehrjui, Kamran Shirdel, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohammad Reza Aslani, Bahram Beyzai, Amir Naderi, Nasser Taghvai, and Sohrab Shahid-Saless. The lecture will also address the international fascination with Iranian cinema that began in the late 1980s and continues to this day.

May 31, Sunday, 5:00 pm

Iranian Theatre

The second lecture will trace the development of Western-style theatre in Iran, the first theatre companies, Abdolhossein نوشین? Need translate. Use Abdolhossein نوشین maybe Nushin.

Theatre of Abdolhossein Nushin’s Ferdowsi Theatre, Bahram Beyzai’s national epic drama, avant-garde movements, and the key festivals of the Pahlavi era. Particular attention will be given to how Iranian artists rethought theatrical aesthetics after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and how contemporary theatre exists under religious censorship.

June 7, Sunday, 5:00 pm

Iranian Poetry

The third lecture will be devoted to New Persian Poetry, She’r-e No, and to the poets who followed Nima Yooshij. The session will speak both about internationally recognised authors and about nearly forgotten or lesser-known names. The programme will include discussion of the poetic avant-garde, the New Wave, Other Poetry, Espacementalisme, Pure Poetry, and contemporary younger poets, along with readings of translations of Ahmad Shamlou, Sohrab Sepehri, Forough Farrokhzad, and others.

The price of one lecture is 4 000 KZT. The full series costs 10 000 KZT if purchased at once. All meetings will take place at 59 Masanchi Street, Almaty, Tselinny, Atelier educational space on the second floor of the center.