For The Art Screen, a film and a never-before-seen interview with Iranian artist Shirin Neshat

Available on the online platform Più Compagnia del cinema la Compagnia di Firenze, starting at 9 p.m. on Thursday, June 11 for twenty-four hours, is Iranian artist Shirin Neshat ’s film Looking for Oum Kulthum, in collaboration with In Between art Film and Vivo Film.

The screening of the film will be followed by an unprecedented interview made for the occasion between Shirin Neshat and Leonardo Bigazzi, curator of Lo Schermo dell’arte and Artists’ Film Italia Recovery Fund, the fundraising campaign open on Gofundme until June 15 to support the production of original video works by young Italian artists. The Iranian artist immediately joined the campaign, believing it “fundamental at this critical moment to help the new generations.”

“We are in lockdown and of course we are terrified and trying to follow the rules but at the same time we feel outraged and we believe that at this time it is even more important for artists and the creative community to have a voice and it is even more important for those artists who are part of marginalized communities, for immigrants, for African Americans, to have a voice, not only through media and protests but also through works that speak to people about what’s going on.” These are the artist’s words from the interview. He adds, “This is the situation: we are caught between being mere citizens in this country, and at the same time being artists, trying to metabolize everything that is happening and asking ourselves: how can we help? How can we voice our responsibilities, propose answers, and bring sympathetic help to our friends in the black community and anyone else who is discriminated against?”

“I always address issues that I feel are important to me as a woman artist and an artist in the Middle East, and Oum Kulthum was a legend to me as a woman and an artist, able to become the most important woman of the 20th century in the entire Middle East,” said Neshat, “and as much as she was an unconventional figure for never having had children, nor a traditional family and for possibly being homosexual, she came to be the most popular artist by reaching the hearts of people, whether they were Jewish, Muslim or Christian, in Israel, in Saudi Arabia, in Iran, across the entire Arab world, and thus a woman who was a unifying point, not only artistically, but also politically, which is unprecedented even in the present day and in Western culture.”

Shirin Neshat thus returns to talk about the condition of women and tell her Iran from the side of women. The exiled Iranian director Mitra is working on a project to make a film about the life of Egyptian singer Oum Kulthum, realizing the difficulties faced by the diva as a female artist in a male-dominated society.

In this new work of hers constructed as a film within a film, on which the Iranian artist has been working for more than six years, Neshat superimposes her own story on Oum’s story, demonstrating the great power of her gaze that allows her to move from film to artwork, from photograph to installation.

To view the film, one must make a donation (minimum 5 euros per screening), on the Artists’ Film Italia Recovery Fund campaign that allows one to receive via email the ticket code with which one can access one’s seat in the virtual theater.

Image: Shirin Neshat, Looking for Oum Kulthum (2017)
courtesy of In Between Art Film, VIVO Film

For The Art Screen, a film and a never-before-seen interview with Iranian artist Shirin Neshat

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