Pooya Ghoddousi was born in Tehran, Iran in 1974. He received his master’s in Architecture and Urbanism from Shahid Beheshti University in 2000 and an MSc in Urbanisation and Development from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2008. The subject of his dissertations were “Sustainable Development for a Metropolis in Crisis: A Strategy for Tehran” and “Global Nomads or Temporary Citizens: Transnational Mobility of Middling Iranians”. He has worked as an architect, consultant, and designer in companies in Iran and The United Arab Emirates from 1994 to 2004. from 2004 to 2007 he worked with CENESTA, an NGO based in Iran working with Qashqai Nomads on Sustainable Livelihoods and Nature Conservation. During this time he had a chance to learn the basics of this kind of lifestyle from the traditional nomads in order to use it for explaining some aspects of the current mobilities of transnational Iranians. His essay “Nomadism: Glimpses” was published in English and German languages in the book “Letters from Tentland” in 2005 and he also translated an article about the role of the Urban Design Panel in Vancouver for the Memar Magazine. He is currently researching and reading on nomadic alternatives to existing human settlements as a PhD at University College London (UCL) to come up with more sustainable models for development, urbanism, and architecture. He has formed a team with Farshid Behzad and Sohrab Daryabandari to turn this idea into a documentary film. | Sohrab Daryabandari born 1975 in Tehran, Iran is a self taught photographer who lives and works in Iran. He left high school to work for a film and photography company owned by veteran cinematographers to start his career in 1990. Later in 92 he started his own photography, and design studio in Tehran. His experience as a photographer is stretched between photojournalism, advertising, architectural photography, theatre and more. Although his personal passion has always been art. He has held nine personal and group photography exhibitions since 1990 and has worked and collaborated with many well known artists and designers inside and outside Iran. His last personal exhibition was held in 2003 at Seyhoun art gallery. This was a requiem for the many newspapers that were shut down all in one day in Iran during that year. The photographs of this exhibition were also printed along with an essay by Bijan Rouhani about information safety and freedom in Iran in a book printed in Italy by Ahmad Rafat: L’ultima Primavera. Since 2001 he started experimenting with video, starting with editing documentary and fiction films followed by video production for a number of concerts held in Iran. In 2005 he joined Ila Talebi to make Dammam and Sharveh, two documentaries about the ethnic music of Bushehr, a port in the South of Iran. Since then he has worked on music videos and documenting the contemporary music in Iran that has so far covered the works of musicians such as Saeed Shanbezadeh, Habib Meftah, 127, and Pooya Mahmoodi. | Farshid Behzad born in Tehran 1974 is a graphic designer and filmmaker working and living in Iran. He graduated in graphic design from Azad University in 2001 but before that in 1997 had already started his career as a film director at the Fajr Cinematic Institute. In 1996 he started to work in Aryan cinematographic company and had an opportunity to learn from Dr Akbar Alemi. In 2000 he co-founded Dayere Design Studio, a company active in the fields of film, graphic design and architecture. Since 2003 he is a member of the Iranian Graphic Designers Society. In 2005 he was in charge of video for “Letters from Tentland”, a play by the German director Ms. Helena Waldmann, based on the theme “Tent” in Iran. In 2007 he was the co-producer and programme director for Gabgoo ensemble performance, a mélange of music, performance and video. Since 2001 he started working on TV commercials and Industrial films with companies such as Canderel, Nature’s Family, Kish Air, Hype, Trust Watches, and Klassno Coffee. In 2007 he made a documentary film named “Inspired from Haiku”. He is currently working with Pooya Ghoddousi to create a documentary film to study the potentials of global and local nomadism for the development of Iran and Iranians around the world. |