Film screening: Derbent: What Persia Left Behind
Join us for a film screening and the US premiere of the documentary Derbent: What Persia Left Behind and a discussion with director Pejman Akbarzadeh. Film is in English with occasional English subtitles (30 min).
Registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the 6th-century Derbent (Darband) fortification complex is considered the largest defensive structure of Sasanian Persia in the Caucasus. It is now located in the Republic of Dagestan, the southernmost tip of Russia, where Westerners have been advised against traveling due to the ongoing conflicts between Islamist groups and Russian forces. This film illuminates the historical significance of the fortification system, which was originally built to guard the northern frontier of the Persian Empire (Iran).
Built strategically in the narrowest area between the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea, the fortification includes the northernmost Middle Persian (Pahlavi) inscriptions in the world, which are in danger of destruction. The 42 km defense wall of the complex toward the Black Sea was previously destroyed during the Soviet era.
Funded by the Persian Heritage Foundation and the Soudavar Memorial Foundation, the documentary features commentary from four internationally recognised scholars; Murtazali Gadjiev (head of the Archaeology Department of the Dagestan Science Academy), Dietrich Huff (German Archaeological Institute), Parvaneh Pourshariati (New York City College of Technology), and Matthew Canepa (University of California, Irvine).
Pejman Akbarzadeh, born in Shiraz, is a documentary maker, pianist and journalist, based in the Netherlands. Alongside his activities in the field of music and journalism, in 2009 he started a new phase of his career. Recognising the wider catchment of visual media over literature, that same year he completed his first documentary, the feature-length film "Hayedeh: Legendary Persian Diva.” The film was screened at festivals in both Europe and the United States and nominated for Best Documentary at the Noor Iranian Film Festival in Los Angeles. “Taq Kasra: Wonder of Architecture” (2018) is Akbarzadeh’s second documentary film, for which he traveled to Iraq twice, despite the lurking presence of ISIS nearby. The film premiered in 2018 in London and subsequently screened at various international conferences and museums including the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art in Washington DC and Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The documentary "Derbent: What Persia Left Behind" is Pejman's latest work which has been screened at various academic conferences including the German Orientalists Conference (Berlin) and the European Conference of Iranian Studies (Leiden). The film is part of his ongoing efforts to raise awareness about Persian heritage beyond the modern borders of Persia (Iran).
If you need a disability-related accommodation for this event, please contact us at iranianstudies [at] stanford.edu (iranianstudies[at]stanford[dot]edu). Requests should be made by September 25, 2024.