Pittsburgh:Kamran Shirdel's films have been censored, banned and celebrated for documenting hidden parts of Iranian society the plight of Tehran's prostitutes, the desperation of female prisoners, and the reality behind false heroes.
Now he's visiting the US for the first time, speaking about his art and what it took to make it as a socio-political documentary filmmaker, first under the Shah then under Islamic rule.
Shirdel, 75, began filming poor and working-class Iranians in the 1960s. Early documentaries such as "Women's Quarter" established Shirdel as an uncompromising artist and got him fired from a job in the Shah's Ministry of Culture.
Shirdel spoke to The Associated Press at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, which invited him to America and sponsored the trip. He's also scheduled to talk at Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and at Columbia University in New York.
Educated in Italy under such legendary filmmakers as Roberto Rossellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Shirdel worked as an assistant on John Huston's epic film "The Bible."
Although he could have made his career working abroad, he said he couldn't forget "the harsh reality of life" among Tehran's poor and returned home and produced work that in spirit resembled documentary rabble-rousers such as US filmmaker Michael Moore.
