Ebert Center Screening: Iranian Cinema
Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory, Urbana
A screening of Fariyad-e Nim-e Shab / Cry of Midnight will be held on Thursday, Oct. 26. The 1961 film was directed by Samuel Khachikian, who was described as the "Iranian Hitchcock," and was known for his strong female characters and the use of crime cinema motifs. In this film, a young man becomes entangled with a criminal gang but eventually finds his way back to the innocent girl that he's in love with.
The Roger Ebert Lecture will be presented on Friday, Oct. 27, by Kaveh Askari, an associate professor and director of film studies at Michigan State University.
Askari is the author of Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit, which won the 2023 Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. He also wrote Making Movies into Art: Picture Craft from the Magic Lantern to early Hollywood (2014) and is the co-editor of several volumes including a special issue of Film History titled "South by South/West Asia: Transregional Histories of Middle East--South Asia Cinemas" (2021) and "Performing New Media, 1890-1915" (2014).