Film and Art
Hamid Dabashi has been principal advisor for many globally recognized artists and filmmakers; he was consulted by Ridley Scott in his making of Kingdom of Heaven (2005, Fox Twentieth Century, Hollywood, USA). Scott defended his film by saying that it was approved and verified by Dabashi: "I showed the film to one very important Muslim in New York, a lecturer from Columbia, and he said it was the best portrayal of Saladin he's ever seen".
Dabashi was the chief consultant to Hany Abu-Assad's “Paradise Now” (2005), awarded the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and an Academy Award nominee in the same category, and Shirin Neshat’s “Women without Men” (2006).
Professor Dabashi has also served as jury member on many international art and film festivals, most recently the Locarno International Festival in Switzerland. In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, he is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. As a theorist of trans-aesthetics (“art without border”), his articles and essays on the relationship between art and politics have been featured, translated to many languages, and published by museums and cultural institutes in Europe. For his contributions to Iranian cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the Iranian film-maker called Dabashi "a rare cultural critic".
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