Arta Barzanji is a cinephile, writer, filmmaker, and a current MFA candidate of Film and Media Arts at Temple University. His work, from wordless experimental shorts, to narrative pieces and feature-length documentaries, all deal directly with the cinema itself, exploring the relationship between the viewer and the screen while engaging with the works of filmmakers as diverse as Stan Brakhage, Orson Welles, Kamran Shirdel, and Malcolm Le Grice. Arta’s critical writings and translations have appeared both in Farsi and English in publications like Photogénie, Filmkhande, and Film Matters, focusing on filmmakers such as Sohrab Shahid Saless and Straub-Huillet among others.

Note on Practice:

An attempt to convey unspeakable internal sensations not through words, but noises. A sensory cinema that’s not concerned with stories, but feelings; not with characters, but bodies. Not an interdisciplinary artist, but an intradisciplinary one. Be it the pen, the camera, or the VR machine. Be it the critic, the director, or the installation artist. No matter the tools or the roles, they all exist to serve one muse: cinema. The screen itself is the source of inspiration, revelation, conversation. Of a life, not more real, but more genuine than “real life.” Like a black hole at the center of my universe, drawing everything towards it with an unstoppable force of the unknown. But unlike a black hole, it doesn’t consume light: it is the source of light.

Contact: tun70791@temple.edu

Work Samples:
https://vimeo.com/user52197528