Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Bahram Beyzaie
Join us to celebrate the life and legacy of Professor Bahram Beyzaie (1938-2025). The event will include a short film about Professor Beyzaie, in person and video talks, and a performance by acclaimed Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor. Event will be in Persian.
Bahram Beyzaie is a celebrated Iranian playwright, filmmaker, critic, scholar, and stage director. Born in December 1938 in Tehran to a family of poets and literary scholars, he was first introduced to Western audiences in 1963 when his play was staged at the Festival du Théâtre des Nations in Paris. Beyzaie later became Professor and Chair of the Dramatic Arts Department at Tehran University until the Islamic Revolution. He has published over 35 plays and more than 50 screenplays—many translated into several languages—and directed numerous stage productions in Iran and the U.S.
From 2010 to 2025, he served as the Daryabari Visiting Lecturer in Iranian Studies at Stanford University, teaching Iranian cinema, theater, and mythology while directing innovative theatrical and shadow play productions.
As a filmmaker, Beyzaie was a leading figure of the Iranian New Wave. He directed ten feature films, including Downpour; The Ballad of Tara; Death of Yazdgerd; Bashu, The Little Stranger; and The Travelers, earning numerous national and international awards, most recently from the Venice Film Festival for Bashu, The Little Stranger. His scholarly contributions include major studies on Iranian, Japanese, and Chinese theater, research on One Thousand and One Nights, and a book on Alfred Hitchcock’s films. His comprehensive work Theatre in Iran (1965) remains an authoritative account of Iranian theater history.
Photo credit: Mehrdad Oskouuei
In person speakers:
Abbas Milani is the director of the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University; and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He taught at Tehran University’s Faculty of Law and Political Science until 1986, where he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the university’s Center for International Relations. After moving to the United States, Milani was the Chair of the Political Science Department at the Notre Dame de Namur University for 14 years. He was a visiting Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Middle East Center for eight years. His expertise is U.S.-Iran relations as well as Iranian cultural, political, and security issues. He has published more than 25 books and 250 articles and book reviews in scholarly magazines, journals, and newspapers.
Mojdeh Shamsaie graduated with a degree in theater. Her artistic activity began in 1987 with makeup work on the films Maybe Some Other Time. Travelers (a film directed by Bahram Beyzaie in 1991) and the play Cherry Orchard (directed by Roknoddin Khosrowi) mark the start of her acting career. She received the Best Actor award for her role in Killing Mad Dogs and Best Makeup artist award for The Last Curtain. Her ongoing collaboration with Bahram Beyzaie over the past thirty years has resulted in three feature films, two short films, and eleven stage plays–the last six of which were produced by the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford University. Since 2015, alongside Beyzaie, she has been involved in training aspiring actors in acting workshops organized by Stanford Iranian Studies, and has worked as an actress, assistant director, and production manager. The book Kyogen: The Joyful Theater of Japan was published based on her research.
Afshin Hashemi, born in Tehran, is a prominent Iranian actor, director, and playwright who is recognized for his nuanced performances and thoughtful direction, often weaving poetic narratives with deep cultural resonance. He earned an MFA in directing from Tehran University of Art. His contributions to Iranian theater have left a lasting impact, particularly in the realm of contemporary and experimental theater.
In cinema, Hashemi has directed and acted in several notable films and television series. His film “Soft Voice (Sedaye Ahesteh),” filmed in New York, received multiple awards and international acclaim for its subtle storytelling and visual style. He also directed the popular feature film “Goodbye Shirazi Girl,” and two successful original series: “The Women’s Secret Network” and “DaVinchiz!,” which showcase his diverse creative vision and social commentary.
Remote speakers:
Hamid Amjad is a prominent Iranian playwright, film and theater director, author, and scholar. Born in 1968, he holds a BA in Cinema and both an MA and PhD in Art Research from the University of Tehran. A prolific author and translator, his work includes over forty books—spanning plays, screenplays, novels, and scholarly research—and more than one hundred articles. Dr. Amjad is the recipient of numerous cultural and artistic awards, recognized for his exceptional writing and directing as well as his landmark research on the analytical history of Iranian dramatic literature and comparative studies.
Jaleh Amouzegar is a distinguished Iranologist, researcher, and Professor Emeritus of the University of Tehran. Born in 1939, she received her PhD in Ancient Cultures and Languages from the Sorbonne in Paris. Her work as an author and translator includes dozens of books and hundreds of articles on culture, literature, mythology, and ancient languages, making her the most-cited Iranian author in the humanities. A recipient of numerous accolades for her contributions, she was awarded the French Legion of Honour in 2016. Dr. Amouzegar also serves on the selection and judging committee for the Ehsan Yarshater Book Prize for Ancient Iranian Studies.
Niloofar Beyzaie is a director, playwright, and writer, born in Tehran, Iran, in 1967. She has lived in exile in Frankfurt, Germany, since 1985. Born into a renowned family of artists, she is the eldest child of acclaimed filmmaker and playwright Bahram Beyzaie. Her family’s artistic legacy also includes her uncle, Iraj Raminfar, a well-known costume and set designer in the film industry, and her mother’s uncle, Abbas Javanmard, who was a highly renowned theater director in Iran.
Beyzaie studied German studies; theater, film and television studies; and education at Goethe University in Frankfurt, where she earned her Master's degree in 1994. That same year, she founded the theater group "Daritsche." The central themes of her theatrical work are women, “otherness,” and “the suffering of the individual within the masses.” In addition to writing plays, she has authored articles on theater, political issues, and women's rights, consistently using her platform to critically examine Iran and human destinies from a sociopolitical perspective.
She has directed 25 plays, including the recent Four Narratives of an Uprising (2025), which follows four actresses recounting their lives and destinies before and after the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. Beyzaie is a founder of the "Association of Iranian Film and Theatre Artists Abroad" and has been a dedicated supporter of women's, Baha'i, and LGBTQ rights in Iran for many years.
Susan Taslimi was born into a film and theater family of producers, screenwriters, and actors in Iran. She graduated in directing and acting from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Tehran. She began her theater career in 1969 and her film career in 1980.
She gained international recognition through her collaboration with renowned Iranian playwright and filmmaker Bahram Beyzaie, starring in his major works including “The Ballad of Tara,” “Death of Yazdgerd,” and “Bashu, the Little Stranger.” Her powerful portrayals of women in these films became landmarks in Iranian cinema.
Her performances, along with her open protests against the political and cultural climate following the Islamic Revolution, created a threatening situation that forced her to leave Iran for Sweden in 1987, at the height of her career as an actress. Just over three years later, she returned to the stage, acting and directing in Swedish. Today, she is active as a Swedish actress, film and theater director, and screenwriter.
Performance by Kahyan Kalhor
Kayhan Kalhor is an internationally acclaimed kamancheh (Persian spike fiddle) player. His musical collaborations have helped popularize Persian music outside of Iran and attract audiences from around the world. Kayhan is a founding member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble (which received a Grammy in 2016 for the album “Sing Me Home”). He has composed music for Iran’s most renowned vocalists including Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri, and has toured as a soloist with ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and Orchestre National de Lyon.
Part of the Stanford Festival of Iranian Arts.
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