Iranian Artist Maryam Tafakory wins the 2024 Film London Jarman Award

Born and raised in Iran, Maryam Tafakory works at the intersection of cinema and live performance, collaging found-footage with the cinema of post-Revolutionary Iran to explore issues of censorship and prohibition. Her work considers what is often neglected and discarded as trivial or excessive and how objects, words and glances have been used as substitutes for physical contact between men and women in Iranian film history. Exploring the different registers through which images speak or refuse to speak to us, her work attempts to dissect veiled acts of erasure – of bodies, intimacies, and histories.
 
In her film Irani Bag (2020), Tafakory presents a split-screen video essay which deconstructs the depiction of a seemingly innocent object—the handbag. The film uses archival footage to show how in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema the handbag has been deployed as a stand-in for human touch.
 
Tafakory’s Nazarbazi (2022) is an abstract, non-linear narrative film about love and desire in Iranian cinema, where depictions of intimacy and touch between women and men are prohibited.  Layering different films with archival text, images and her own work, the film focuses primarily on images of women whose bodies have been erased and victimised in post-revolutionary cinema. The film uses poetry and silence to explore the discreet forms of communication that operate within yet circumnavigate the censors.
 
In Mast-del (2023), a forbidden relationship between two women is explored and a love song that would never pass through censors is narrated through images. Layers of found and original footage are superimposed to fill in some of the cracks, the deletions, and the limits of representation. Mast-del is an attempt to guide us away from the codes of censorship towards the unseen, the everyday. It inscribes the untold stories of disobedient bodies directly onto the images that silenced them. By doing so, it intends to transform the fictional films into a non-fiction fragment of everyday life and depict the political realities of contemporary Iran. 

Amid dense layers of ink-filled newspaper and images from film archives, Tafakory’s most recent work, Razeh-Del (2024) tells the story of Zan (Woman), the first Iranian women’s magazine. In 1998, two schoolgirls sent a letter toZan. While they waited to be published, they considered making an impossible film.
 
Maryam Tafakory’s solo screenings and exhibitions of her work include: MoMA, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; Academy Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of the Moving Image, New York; Filmoteca de Catalunya, Barcelona and LUX London. Selected group events include: Tate Modern, London; Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, Cannes; New York Film Festival; Locarno Film Festival; Toronto International Film Festival and Villa Medici, Rome. She was awarded the Gold Hugo at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival; the Tiger Short Award at the 51st Rotterdam IFF; the Barbara Hammer Feminist Film Award at the 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival; and the Best Experimental Film Award at the 70th and 71st Melbourne International Film Festival.
 
Maryam Tafakory was chosen from a distinguished shortlist of artists including Larry Achiampong, Maeve Brennan, Melanie Manchot, Rosalind Nashashibi and Sin Wai Kin. She receives £10,000 award money.
 
Matthew Barrington, Cinema Curator, Barbican, on behalf of the Jury said:
“Maryam Tafakory's practice is a compelling exploration of displacement, memory and resistance, interweaving archival fragments, poetry and personal narratives to craft deeply evocative works. Her films navigate historical and personal traumas with remarkable sensitivity, reflecting on the intersections of Iranian cultural identity and individual struggles. Tafakory’s innovative blend of reality and fiction through visual poetry, symbolism and archival compilation firmly establishes her as a worthy winner of the Jarman Award, showcasing an artistic voice that is both profound and essential.”

The 17^th edition of Film London’s Jarman Award was presented  by Rupert Everett, an acclaimed actor, writer and director. Rupert Everett met Derek Jarman in the 1970’s and enjoyed a long friendship with him. In 2019, Everett narrated extracts from Jarman’s journals, ‘Modern Nature’ for BBC Radio4.
 
Adrian Wootton, Chief Executive of Film London and the British Film Commission said: “We are thrilled to congratulate this year’s Film London Jarman Award winner, Maryam Tafakory, an outstanding artist working at the intersection of cinema and live performance. I would also like to congratulate all of the shortlisted artists and look forward to seeing what the future holds for them. As Film London celebrates its 20^th anniversary year, I am immensely proud of our role in discovering and developing some of the UK’s most exciting filmmakers. We have a legacy of championing ground-breaking talent and the Film London Jarman Award is central to our support of artist filmmakers, celebrating their spirit of experimentation and imagination. We are delighted to be able to showcase the work in this way, bringing artists’ moving image to an ever-growing audience. A sincere thank you goes to our funders, Arts Council England, our returning partners Whitechapel Gallery, and our Film London Jarman Award Patrons for all their ongoing support.”