02.09.14 - Experimental film on the history of Iranian cinema by MVS Student Roya Akbari premiers at the Edinburgh International Film Festival
Only Image Remains, a film produced by Roya Akbari, a Master of Visual Studies student in her first year of the Studio program at the University of Toronto, received its international premiere in June at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF). The thirty minute experimental documentary is an evocative history of Iranian cinema told through a series of interviews with filmmakers in exile, many conducted via Skype. The resulting work — rich with clips of rare pre-Revolutionary Iranian cinema classics — is a poetic discussion across generations of Iranian filmmakers.
The screening at EIFF was augmented by a panel discussion featuring the renowned Iranian film scholar Hamid Naficy (Northwestern University), who has written extensively on diaspora, exile, and postcolonial cinemas and media; Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies scholar Nacim Pak-Shiraz; and Edinburgh International Film Festival Artistic Director Chris Fujiwara.
Only Image Remains will be part of a touring program of films from the EIFF over the coming months.