Persian Culture

Chetori!

Come and join us for drinks and a dance at our first get together in January for our Shab-e Shanbeh. Persian speakers and non-Persian speakers are welcome.

We are gathering at The Bar in Montcalm hotel, ground floor, but we’ll go dancing afterwards.

Mibinamet,

مونیکا

Join me on:

English reading club: www.meetup.com/gaia-books
Spanish reading club: www.meetup.com/gaia-libros
French reading club: www.meetup.com/gaia-livres
Instagram @persian_culture_

Salam, Dustan!

‘Abbas Kiarostami’ has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and Close-up is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves. With its universal themes and fascinating narrative knots, Close-up has resonated with viewers around the world.” – Janus Films

We’ll meet 10 minutes before the film and after for a chat and drinks at the cinema. Reservation link for the 6pm screening:
https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/close-up-cinema/e-qgvobz

Join us for an evening of conversation with one of Central Asia's greatest novelists, Hamid Ismailov, to discuss his latest novel We Computers.

Buy your ticket:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-with-hamid-ismailov-kings-road-tickets-1975109600985?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

‘Many paths cross in Ismailov’s beautiful new work—poetry, history and the infinite imagination. Every path winding into another. Every path worth taking.'—Patti Smith

In the late 1980s, French poet and psychologist Jon‑Perse finds himself in possession of one of the most promising inventions of the century: a computer. Enchanted by snippets of Persian poetry he learns from his Uzbek translation partner, Abdulhamid Ismail, Jon-Perse builds a computer program capable of both analyzing and generating literature. But beyond the text on his screen there are entire worlds—of history, philosophy, and maybe even of love—in the stories and people he and AI conjure.

Hamid Ismailov brings together his work as a poet, translator, and student of literature of both East and West to craft a postmodern ode to poetry across centuries and continents. Crossing the poètes maudits with beloved Sufi classics, blending absurdist dreams with the life of the famed Persian poet Hafez, moving from careful mathematical calculations to lyrical narratives, Ismailov invents an ingenious transnational poetics of love and longing for the digital age. Situated at the crossroads of a multilingual world and mediated by the unreliable sensibilities of digital intelligence, this book is a dazzling celebration of how poetry resonates across time and space.

Join me on:
English reading club: www.meetup.com/persian-culture
Spanish reading club: www.meetup.com/gaia-libros
French reading club: www.meetup.com/gaia-livres
Instagram @persian_culture_

Salam,

This is a special screening dedicated to the work of John Baily, Emeritus Professor of Ethnomusicology and the former Head of the Afghanistan Music Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London.

John has been closely connected to the music of Afghanistan since 1973, and his contribution to the field has shaped how Afghan musical heritage is studied, taught, and understood.

The film follows John’s return to Kabul a few months after the fall of the Taliban to observe how music was re-emerging in public life. The film documents a range of musical expressions — from traditional rubab performances to a student pop group experimenting with electronic instruments. Beyond its observational richness, the film captures a moment of cultural reawakening under shifting political realities. Showing this work now feels especially important as it reminds us of the fragility and resilience of cultural practice, and of the role film can play in witnessing, remembering, and honouring forms of expression that are once again under threat.

Doors will open at 5.30pm, this will be an opportunity to meet before the film starts at 6pm. The screening (52 minutes) will be followed by a Q&A moderated by André Singer. We’ll linger around after the documentary to share impressions.

This film event is organised in partnership with the Afghanistan Society. Further details and registration link:

https://raifilm.org.uk/events/a-kabul-music-diary-film-screening-and-conversation/