Rouzbeh Rashidi

🎬 Two August events in Dublin

This August, Rouzbeh Rashidi brings two special events to Dublin on consecutive dates.

1. Experimental and Personal Filmmaking — Five-Day Intensive Masterclass
📍 Dublin
📅 17–21 August 2026
🕙 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. daily

Organised by EFS Film School, this five-day intensive masterclass offers an immersive exploration of experimental cinema as a personal, poetic, and philosophically grounded practice. Through lectures, screenings, discussions, readings, and collaborative work, participants will engage with form, sound, image, and radical audiovisual expression.

This is not a conventional filmmaking course, but a space for filmmakers, artists, and moving-image practitioners seeking a deeper and freer approach to cinema.

⚠️ Places are limited — early registration is strongly encouraged.
🔗 efsfilmschool.com/experimental-and-personal-filmmaking
📧 [email protected]

2. Rouzbeh Rashidi: A Decade of Cinema — Lighthouse Cinema
📍 Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin
📅 22 August 2026
🕑 14:00

The following day, Lighthouse Cinema will host Rouzbeh Rashidi: A Decade of Cinema, a special three-hour event tracing the first major phase of Rashidi’s filmmaking through a chronological film essay. Featuring selected excerpts from eleven feature-length works made between 2009 and 2019, the programme offers a rare insight into the artistic, philosophical, and methodological foundations of his practice, followed by an extended audience Q&A.

⚠️ Early booking is highly recommended.
🎟️ lighthousecinema.ie/film/rouzbeh-rashidi-a-decade-of-cinema

✨ Two events. Two very different experiences. One August in Dublin.

I am delighted to announce that my 2019 experimental feature-length film, Luminous Void: Docudrama, will screen at the 72nd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen on Saturday, 2 May 2026, at 8:15 p.m., as part of Travelling Companions – Beyond Omnibus Film 5, followed by a Q&A. 🎬🎟️

This screening is profoundly significant to me for many reasons. Above all, this film was the last work I made in the deepest spirit of collaboration within the Experimental Film Society. In many ways, it brought to a close twenty years of running, curating, and leading the Experimental Film Society, from its infancy in Iran to its maturity in Ireland. 🤝🎞️

With this film, alongside my wonderful colleagues, we reached the outer limits of what collaboration, film collectivism, and the artistic methods, themes, and techniques we had developed over two decades could make possible. For that reason, the occasion is both joyful and deeply emotional for me. The film remains very special in my eyes, but it also functioned as a farewell to the cinematic language and collective practice I had cultivated with the Experimental Film Society over twenty years. 🕰️🎥

Making this work was one of the greatest challenges of my career, precisely because we were testing the limits of collaboration and artistic input. It was as demanding as it was rewarding.

As always, but especially in this film, the ghost of Raúl Ruiz was ever-present. His ideas and vision of cinema profoundly shaped the emergence of this work, and the film is dedicated to him. 🌒

I am deeply grateful to the festival for programming the film, to everyone who was part of this long journey within the Experimental Film Society, and to the Arts Council of Ireland for supporting the work. 🙏

Tickets:
https://kurzfilmtage.filmchief.com/shop/tickets?v=2126

I look forward to seeing you in Oberhausen on 2 May 2026. 📍

Onwards.
oberhausen

W dniach 16-18 kwietnia będę przebywać na krótkim wyjeździe w Warszawie.
Po latach korespondencji i rozmów, spotkam się osobiście z Rouzbehem Rashidim - wybitnym artystą o pochodzeniu irańskim, reprezentującym współczesny film eksperymentalny. W 2018 roku miałem zaszczyt zaprezentować w Poznaniu zestaw czterech jego filmów krótkometrażowych. Projekcja odbyła się w Domu Spotkań (dawna siedziba redakcji pisma "Miasteczko Poznań"). Były to: "Strand", "Harmony with you", "Anatomy of a Man" i "Emptiness".
Gdy jedna z moich znajomych onegdaj zamieściła na Facebooku post o tym twórcy i dzięki temu zainteresowałem się jego dorobkiem, to poczułem, jakby otworzył się przede mną portal do najbardziej wyrafinowanej sztuki współczesnej, o której mi się przez lata marzyło, gdy jeszcze studiowałem filmoznawstwo. Byłem przekonany, co robił wówczas Rouzbeh Rashidi, w pewnej mierze definiowało i wyznaczało drogę dla współczesnego filmu eksperymentalnego.
W linku pod tym postem dołączam odsyłasz do mojego artykułu o Rashidim, który ukazał się w 2019 roku w piśmie "Art. Luk".
[fot.: Rouzbeh Rashidi / strona autorska]

Rest in peace, Auntie Vahideh.

You were one of the great presences of my childhood and adolescence. I remember coming to your house and spending endless hours with my cousin Toofan, making noise, causing trouble, playing football, playing Nintendo, and filling those days with all the chaos and joy of youth. Through all of it, you were always kind, patient, and understanding. You received us with warmth and generosity, and you cooked for us with such love. I still remember that particular chicken and rice dish you used to make for us. Those days remain among the most beautiful and cherished of my life, days of innocence, before the tyranny and nihilism of the world revealed themselves to us.

When I heard of your passing, I tried to remember your face clearly, and I must confess that I struggled. I have been away from Iran for more than twenty-two years, and in all that time we met only once or twice. Perhaps exile slowly erodes memory. Perhaps distance carries away even the most precious things. For a moment, I feared that I had lost a part of my life forever.

Then I remembered that I had captured you, almost without knowing it, in a film I once made. You were not at its centre, but you were there in passing, bringing us food, giving us fruit, telling me that I should speak more sense into Toofan so he might become a better man. You were there, as you always were. And the film preserved you not in sharp clarity, but like memory itself: as a ghost, a spectre, a gentle phantom moving through the background, as though cinema had foreseen this day.

When I heard that you were gone, a pain struck my heart. But I am grateful that somewhere, within my work, your presence endures. It reminds me that perhaps we always make films for ourselves, even when we do not yet understand why.

May you rest in peace, Auntie Vahideh. I will always love you. 😢❤️

🎬 Two August events in Dublin

This August, I will be presenting two separate events in Dublin, taking place one after the other.

1) Experimental and Personal Filmmaking — Five-Day Intensive Masterclass
📍 Dublin
📅 17–21 August 2026
🕙 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. daily

Organised by EFS Film School, this intensive five-day masterclass is devoted to experimental cinema as a personal, poetic, and philosophically grounded practice. Through lectures, screenings, discussions, readings, and collaborative work, the programme invites filmmakers, artists, and moving-image practitioners to think seriously about form, vision, sound, image, and radical audiovisual expression.

This is not a conventional filmmaking course, but an immersive space for those who wish to approach cinema as an art of inner necessity, formal freedom, and transformation.

🔗 Registration and full information:

efsfilmschool.com/experimental-and-personal-filmmaking

📧 [email protected]

2) Rouzbeh Rashidi: A Decade of Cinema — Lighthouse Cinema
📍 Lighthouse Cinema, Dublin
📅 22 August 2026
🕑 14:00

On the following day, I will present Rouzbeh Rashidi: A Decade of Cinema at Lighthouse Cinema. This special three-hour event takes the form of a chronological film essay on the first major phase of my filmmaking, tracing eleven feature-length works produced or co-produced in Ireland between 2009 and 2019 through the methods and production ethos of the Experimental Film Society.

Through selected excerpts and reflections, the event explores how these films came into being—artistically, philosophically, and methodologically—and will conclude with an extended audience Q&A.

⚠️ Early booking is strongly recommended.
🎟️ Tickets:

https://www.lighthousecinema.ie/film/rouzbeh-rashidi-a-decade-of-cinema