VOYAGE TO PERSIA

curated by Lila Azam Zanganeh


Friday, July 4
Traditional concert and contemporary poetry



Recital of poetry from the book At Dawn, Tomorrow (Atelier 65, 2014) with an introductory concert by Dariush Talai and Keyvan Chemirani, the greatest masters of setar (cord instrument) and of zarb (percussions), who will also perform classical music of ancient Persia intermeshed with short excerpts from the poetry of Nilou Ghodsi Azam Zanganeh, written and recited in Italian. At Dawn, Tomorrow is the title of the second collection by the Iranian poetess Nilou Azam Zanganeh, after This Nowhere Place. The choice to write in Italian, which is not the mother-tongue, creates a sense of otherness that amplifies the effects of nostalgia without rhetoric. Zanganeh uses language in an invocation to a world once lost yet now recovered through the lens of poetry. A language of love for the house of childhood and the ways of the ancient country for the things that return because they’re called back by language, like a shamanic incantation before the spirits of the old house. The verse, like fragments of a lost frame, evokes pathways and rivulets, dawns and winds, time that cancels everything. But here nostalgia doesn’t close in on itself, it plays with a poem always dancing between fragment and prose, words that ultimately become a prayer to the angel for things to reemerge like a new dawn.

Saturday, July 5
Film projection "Women Without Men", Shirin Neshat



Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran´s 1953 coup, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship. In Women Without Men, renowned visual artist Shirin Neshat offers an exquisitely crafted view of women’s rights in Iran today, as compared to 1953. The film was adapted from the novel by the celebrated Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur and portrays four extraordinary women whose fate will ultimately be determined by their heart and the strictures of the social order.

Visions and Visionaries
a dialog about the stunning modernity
of medieval genius Omar Khayyam



This dialogue between Iran’s most prominent living philosopher, Daryush Shayegan, and the former Italian ambassador to Iran, Roberto Toscano, will delve into the visionary genius and artistic magic of Omar Khayyam. Who was Khayyam and why does he continue to inspire so many eastern and western artists? What was his relationship to God? And how would he interpret the meaning of a theocracy in the modern world? This talk about visions and visionaries will feature readings of Khayyam in both its original Persian and in modern Italian translation.

Sunday, July 6
Film projection Rhino Season by Bahman Ghobadi
followed by a dialogue with writer Lila Azam Zanganeh



Kurdish-Iranian poet Sahel has just been released from a thirty-year prison sentence in Iran. Now the one thing keeping him going is the thought of finding his wife, who thinks him dead for over twenty years. A haunting love story that spans three decades, Rhino Season is based on the tragic story of a Kurdish poet and family friend of Ghobadi’s who was unjustly incarcerated during Iran’s Islamic Revolution. The victim of a personal vendetta, Sahel (Behrouz Vossoughi) is thrown into prison along with his devoted wife Mina (Monica Bellucci). Inexplicably released after serving a ten-year sentence, Mina is informed by the authorities that Sahel is dead. Heartbroken, she and her two children leave Iran for Istanbul — unknowingly leaving behind her husband, who is forced to stay in prison for another twenty years. Finally released, Sahel sets out to find his wife, the memory of whom is the only thing that has sustained him throughout his ordeal. But after clinging to an intangible vision for so many years, what is the reality that awaits him now?

Mystical Persian Dance
The Seven Pavilions of Love
by Nakissa Dance Company



Nakissa Dance Company and Shahrokh Moshkin-Ghalam of the Comédie Française reinterpret the famed medieval poem of The Seven Pavilions of Love by Nizami Ganjavi. The Seven Pavilions tell the story of the Sassanid Prince Bahram Gur and his seven princesses from seven climes: how he comes to fall for each of them and loose them all by an act of pure will. The best and most beautiful epic in New Persian poetry and also one of the most important creations in the whole of oriental Indo-European literature, The Seven Pavilions illustrate the harmony of the universe, the affinity of the sacred and the profane and the concordance of ancient and Islamic Iran. For the first time at Spoleto, this poetic masterpiece is presented in a sensuous and exquisitely choreographed rendering, with Bahram Gur, his seven princesses, and the timeless storyteller Sheherazade.

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