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In its 250-year history, the United States has been enormously influenced by Iran's culture and history. Poets like Hafez and Sa'adi guided the words and thoughts of Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, while Americans like Howard Baskerville played a critical role in the Constitutional Revolution that marked the end of the Qajar Dynasty. KHANEVADE: Portraits of Iranian Americans examines the everyday stories of the Iranians who have rebuilt their lives in the U.S., particularly in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and contributed significantly to its civic and cultural life, while navigating questions of belonging and identity.
This program spans documentary works shaped by empathetic, quotidian portraits of Iranian American communities. Norouz: Persian Spring Festival is a revealing time capsule of the Bay Area in the 1960s, showcasing the presence of Iranian American families and communities nearly 20 years before the revolution. Maryam Kashani’s Best in the West builds upon this portrait to examine the lives of four lifelong friends who studied in the United States with humor, warmth, and bittersweetness. Armon Mahdavi’s Untitled, Jackson Heights closes the program on the present day to examine public spaces in Queens through a poignant, epistolary voiceover correspondence from a mother to her child. The in-person screening at MOMI will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Armon Mahdavi.
KHANEVADE is curated by Nick Kouhi and is co-presented by ArteEast and Museum of the Moving Image. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. Selections from KHANEVADE will be screened in-person at 12:30pm on July 12 followed by a discussion with filmmaker Armon Mahdavi moderated by the curator. For more information about the in-person screening visit https://movingimage.org/event/khanevade-portraits-of-iranian-americans/. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from July 13-23, including a recorded discussion with filmmaker Persis Karim and scholar Amy Malek.
About the curator
Nick Kouhi is a programmer and film critic who's written for Filmmaker Magazine, Reverse Shot, Screen Slate, and Documentary Magazine. His previous collaboration with ArteEast was I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile, and he has served on the screening committees of True/False and DOC NYC.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Discussion with Persis Karim, scholar and director of The Dawn is Too Far, scholar Amy Malek, and program curator Nick Kouhi.
Persis Karim is the former director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also taught the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature from 2017-2025. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian diaspora writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before directing the Center at San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She retired from San Francisco State University in fall 2025.
Amy Malek is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in the intersections of migration, citizenship, memory, and culture in the Iranian diaspora. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at William & Mary. Her research investigates how immigrants and their descendants actively construct cultural belonging and navigate the constraints and possibilities shaped by state projects, market logics, racial formations, and digital technologies. Her book, Culture Beyond Country: Strategies of Inclusion in the Global Iranian Diaspora (NYU Press, 2025), is an ethnographic examination of the impacts of cultural policies on diasporic Iranian communities in Sweden, Canada, and the United States. Her scholarship has been published in a wide variety of interdisciplinary journals, such as Memory Studies, CSSAAME, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Iranian Studies.
Nick Kouhi is a programmer and film critic who's written for Filmmaker Magazine, Reverse Shot, Screen Slate,and Documentary Magazine. His previous collaboration with ArteEast was I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile, and he has served on the screening committees of True/False and DOC NYC.
In its 250-year history, the United States has been enormously influenced by Iran's culture and history. Poets like Hafez and Sa'adi guided the words and thoughts of Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, while Americans like Howard Baskerville played a critical role in the Constitutional Revolution that marked the end of the Qajar Dynasty. KHANEVADE: Portraits of Iranian Americans examines the everyday stories of the Iranians who have rebuilt their lives in the U.S., particularly in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and contributed significantly to its civic and cultural life, while navigating questions of belonging and identity.
This program spans documentary works shaped by empathetic, quotidian portraits of Iranian American communities. Norouz: Persian Spring Festival is a revealing time capsule of the Bay Area in the 1960s, showcasing the presence of Iranian American families and communities nearly 20 years before the revolution. Maryam Kashani’s Best in the West builds upon this portrait to examine the lives of four lifelong friends who studied in the United States with humor, warmth, and bittersweetness. Armon Mahdavi’s Untitled, Jackson Heights closes the program on the present day to examine public spaces in Queens through a poignant, epistolary voiceover correspondence from a mother to her child. The in-person screening at MOMI will be followed by a discussion with filmmaker Armon Mahdavi.
KHANEVADE is curated by Nick Kouhi and is co-presented by ArteEast and Museum of the Moving Image. This program is part of the legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which preserves and presents over 20 years of film and video programming by ArteEast. Selections from KHANEVADE will be screened in-person at 12:30pm on July 12 followed by a discussion with filmmaker Armon Mahdavi moderated by the curator. For more information about the in-person screening visit https://movingimage.org/event/khanevade-portraits-of-iranian-americans/. The full program will be screened online on artearchive.org from July 13-23, including a recorded discussion with filmmaker Persis Karim and scholar Amy Malek.
About the curator
Nick Kouhi is a programmer and film critic who's written for Filmmaker Magazine, Reverse Shot, Screen Slate, and Documentary Magazine. His previous collaboration with ArteEast was I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile, and he has served on the screening committees of True/False and DOC NYC.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Discussion with Persis Karim, scholar and director of The Dawn is Too Far, scholar Amy Malek, and program curator Nick Kouhi.
Persis Karim is the former director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University, where she also taught the Department of Humanities and Comparative and World Literature from 2017-2025. Since 1999, she has been actively working to expand the field of Iranian Diaspora Studies, beginning with the first anthology of Iranian diaspora writing she co-edited, A World Between: Poems, Short Stories and Essays by Iranian-Americans. She is the editor of two other anthologies of Iranian diaspora literature: Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora, and Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Before directing the Center at San Francisco State, she was a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State where she was the founder and director of the Persian Studies program, and coordinator of the Middle East Studies minor. She has published numerous articles about Iranian diaspora literature and culture for academic publications including Iranian Studies, Comparative Studies of South Asian, African and Middle East Studies (CSSAMES), and MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States. “The Dawn is Too Far: Stories of Iranian-American Life,” is her first film project (co-directed and co-produced with Soumyaa Behrens). She retired from San Francisco State University in fall 2025.
Amy Malek is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in the intersections of migration, citizenship, memory, and culture in the Iranian diaspora. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at William & Mary. Her research investigates how immigrants and their descendants actively construct cultural belonging and navigate the constraints and possibilities shaped by state projects, market logics, racial formations, and digital technologies. Her book, Culture Beyond Country: Strategies of Inclusion in the Global Iranian Diaspora (NYU Press, 2025), is an ethnographic examination of the impacts of cultural policies on diasporic Iranian communities in Sweden, Canada, and the United States. Her scholarship has been published in a wide variety of interdisciplinary journals, such as Memory Studies, CSSAAME, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Iranian Studies.
Nick Kouhi is a programmer and film critic who's written for Filmmaker Magazine, Reverse Shot, Screen Slate,and Documentary Magazine. His previous collaboration with ArteEast was I Am From Here, I Am From There: Writers in Exile, and he has served on the screening committees of True/False and DOC NYC.