This week's most recent and presumably final announcements of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival lineup, a hefty list of titles that included narrative and documentary premieres as well as 72 short films, provided a lot to sift through. As usual, several names familiar to anyone keeping tabs on contemporary American cinema stand out. New movies from Ira Sachs ("Little Men"), Kelly Reichardt ("Certain Women") and Todd Solondz ("Wiener-Dog") are both expected and welcome reminders that some of this country's best working filmmakers show no signs of giving up. Read More: 9 Hidden Gems from the 2016 Sundance Lineup But they're only one part of the story. Dig deeper into these latest lists and a lot of other promising variables stand out. Here's a look at a few of them. "Bob Dylan Hates Me"Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi tends to push buttons in his work (most memorably in recent years with "The Sheik and I") but more than that,...
- 12/10/2015
- by Eric Kohn and Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Lena Dunham Shares Her Love for 'I Am a Sex Addict' in Exclusive Excerpt From 'Digging My Own Grave'
Read More: Was Caveh Zahedi "Blacklisted" By Thom Powers? It's More Complicated Than That Anyone familiar with the idiosyncratic "Holy Moment" section in Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" will recall the wide-eyed character talking about film's ability to capture "God incarnate." But there's a lot more to the man at the center of that scene. Director Caveh Zahedi's personal, button-pushing projects have been infused with his energetic personality since 1990's "A Little Stiff," his first feature, in which he explores his attraction to a UCLA student. Over the years, Zahedi's filmography has chronicled many outrageous moments in his life, from 2003's "Tripping With Caveh," in which he took mushrooms with Wil Oldham, to 2012's "The Sheik and I," a meditation on free speech that followed Zahedi's ill-fated assignment to produce a subversive project for a Middle Eastern art festival. For years, Zahedi's work has been...
- 4/30/2015
- by Lena Dunham
- Indiewire
As one of the three journalists contacted by documentary film programmer Thom Powers last Spring about Caveh Zahedi’s The Sheik and I, I wanted to weigh in on the controversy that erupted this week following Zahedi’s accusation that Powers has “blacklisted” his picture, which opens today from Factory 25. After watching Zahedi’s YouTube video and then reading Powers’ response, I decided to talk to both men to explore the situation in more detail. Then, in the midst of writing this, I noticed Eric Kohn’s post at Indiewire this morning, which exhaustively discusses the film, the timeline of Powers and Zahedi’s …...
- 12/8/2012
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
In early March, one week shy of the SXSW Film Festival, I received a secure link to view "The Sheik and I" online. Set to premiere in competition at SXSW, this was the latest provocation from performance artist/filmmaker Caveh Zahedi, whose reputation precedes him: Using a diary-like approach to make audiences uncomfortably intimate with his rabble-rousing, intensely neurotic persona, Zahedi's antics stretch back more than 20 years: They began with his debut feature, "A Little Stiff," and continued with later works like 2005's self-explanatory "I Am a Sex Addict." Needless to say, I figured "The Sheik and I" would push some familiar buttons, but could not have predicted the series of conflicts that it would create. First off: I loved "The Sheik and I." A documentary essay narrated by Zahedi, it follows his comically doomed attempts to take on an assignment from the Sharjah Biennial arts festival a year ago,...
- 12/7/2012
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Caveh Zahedi is a New York based filmmaker known for pushing people's buttons. In "I Don't Hate Las Vegas Anymore," he tries to get his Persian father to take Ecstacy with him, and in "I Am A Sex Addict" he confronts lust and fear of commitment. In his latest docu-comedy, entitled "The Sheik and I," the director takes on political repression in the Middle East. The film was commissioned for the 2011 Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates. Since the only explicit rule to the "transgressive" biennial was that Zahedi could in no way make fun of the Sheik, he decided to do just that. Thom Powers, the Toronto Film Festival's documentary programmer, allegedly said the film was "deeply troubling for its breach of documentary ethics and reckless behavior.” We recently spoke to Zahedi over the phone about his contentious film, which he claims was blacklisted from Tiff this year.
- 12/3/2012
- by The Huffington Post
- Huffington Post
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