Shirin Neshat

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.

On the eve of losing her family estate, actress Homa is blackmailed by a government agent with a compromising tape. Forced into a real-time video call with her estranged family, which has been exiled since the 1979 Revolution, decades of silence explode into raw confrontation. As old wounds resurface and accusations fly, the line between past and present blurs. Secrets unravel, betrayals are laid bare, and the long-buried fate of two sons lost to history comes roaring back.

Simin is an Iranian woman on a journey to discover what it means to be a free American. She works for the Census Bureau which, in an effort to control its citizens, has begun a program to record their dreams. Unaware of this devious plot, Simin is torn between her compassion for those whose dreams she is recording and a truth she must find within.

Two-channel video installation by Shirin Neshat

A film within a film, "Looking for Oum Kulthum" is the plight of an Iranian woman artist/filmmaker living in exile, as she embarks on capturing the life and art of the legendary female singer of the Arab world, Oum Kulthum. Through her difficult journey, not unlike her heroine's, she has to face the struggles, sacrifices and the price that a woman has to pay if she dares to cross the lines of a conservative male dominated society.

Seen through the work of eight leading artists from the Middle East, Axis of Light is a poignant and absorbing observation of the influences of conflict.

Passionate and unconditionally dedicated, Anna Netrebko makes her Salzburg Festival debut as Aida, alongside Francesco Meli as Radamès and Ekaterina Semenchuk as her rival Amneris. Conducted by none other than Verdi expert Riccardo Muti. This performance of Aida is the first operatic staging by award-winning Iranian filmmaker, photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat, known for her critical explorations of gender roles and religious fundamentalism.

Roja is drawn from Neshat’s own recurring dreams, memories and desires. The work traces a young woman’s disquieting attempts to connect with American culture while reconciling her identification with her home country of Iran.

The story of a young woman who has been working as a prostitute since childhood. The film traces her slow disintegration into psychic delirium. Wracked by both guilt for her actions and a strong desire for salvation, her madness manifests itself in her perception of the world around her. Chronicling the course of her breakdown with imagery that is both graphic and beautiful, Neshat evokes the torment of one so tortured by her subjugated role in society that she feels completely powerless. As the men Zarin encounters appear without faces, horror, shame, and guilt overwhelm her. Viewing this as her punishment from God, she flees the brothel for a bathhouse. Scrubbing her skin raw and bloody, she attempts to make amends with her past; however, she descends deeper in madness as she strives for redemption.

The Colony, which shares the screen and the character of Shirin Neshat's Land of Dreams, is about an immense research institute devoted to recording and archiving the dreams of the local population.

Her poetic two-channel video installation Tooba is based on the Koran, in which Tooba, the sacred tree of paradise, offers shelter and sustenance to those in need. Neshat's video places a woman within a groove in the trunk of a large fig tree, symbolising its soul. They stand, alone, in a stone-walled garden set in a mountainous landscape. Men and women draw near and enter the enclosure, seeking refuge, as the Tooba-woman disappears into the Tooba-tree. The piece is ambiguous. Who has agency? Is it the crowd, who 'invade' the garden or the tree-woman who draws them towards her like a magnet? Tooba is dedicated to Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipour, whose novel Women without Men concerns five women sojourning in a garden, one of whom is transformed into a tree.

On one wall, a singer delivers a passionate love song to a group of men. He is faced away from his audience, secure that his performance will be accepted and adored. On the opposite wall, a woman in a black chador stands silently throughout his song. Then something stunning happens…

This film is a rumination on cultural identity told through the viewpoint of a female photographer from Iran, traveling across the western US.

The installation features two black-and-white projections. One depicts a group of men dressed in Western suits and the other captures a group of women veiled in chador. In the work, Neshat takes on entrenched gender stereotypes by placing the men in a structured, architectural fortress and the women in a wild, natural desert. The viewer is positioned between these dichotomies, with the videos displayed on opposite walls, and is forced to shift attention from one to the other. The installation shows how established beliefs and presumptions can flourish in social and religious systems, emphasizing that these deep-rooted dynamics profoundly impact all people, indiscriminate of gender.

Two screens face each other in a dark room, only a bench off to the side interrupting the space between them. Settling into this interstitial expanse of Shirin Neshat’s Soliloquy (1999), viewers become mediators, with the series of scenes on each screen flowing not past, but through this audience – asking them, perhaps, to act as witnesses to the ensuing visual dialogue. The titles begin, in English and Persian; then, the sole character appears, clad in black robes and played by Neshat herself. She is looking out of two different windows: one in Albany, New York; the other in Mardin, Turkey, not far from the artist’s native Iran.

In a highly fictionalized and stylized way, Neshat’s new film addresses the sexual exploitation of female political prisoners by the Islamic Republic’s regime in Iran. Subjected to severe torture, sexual assault, including rape, it is commonly known that even after being released, many of the women are unable to recover emotionally from the trauma experienced in prison, and often commit suicide. The video traces the psychological and emotional journey of a young Iranian woman, who, although now lives freely in the United States, remains traumatized by her memories in captivity. [Overview Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery]

The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.