Naficy, Hamid
Dates
- Existence: 1944
Biography
Hamid Naficy was born in 1944 in Isfahan, Iran. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Telecommunications from the University of Southern California (USC) and a Master of Fine Arts in Theater Arts – Television and Film from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). During this time, he created experimental and educational films, while working as a producer and director in various capacities. Returning to Iran in 1973, he served as Assistant Professor and Director of the Broadcast and Media Center at the Free University of Iran in Tehran. While in Iran, he completed his first book, the two-volume Film-e Mostanad (Documentary Film), a textbook published by the Free University of Iran Press.
Naficy’s research focuses on Iranian cinema, Middle and Near Eastern cinema, history of documentary and ethnographic film, as well as film and other media created by those who are expatriates, exiled, or otherwise living away from their cultural homeland. Naficy coined the term “accented filmmakers” or “accented cinema” to describe this last type of creative work, arguing that artists whose sense of place has been disrupted share certain common underlying viewpoints or traits in creating their art. While teaching and working in Los Angeles, Naficy continued work on his films and began extensive research on the diasporic Iranian population in Los Angeles and Persian television there.
Naficy returned to the United States in 1985, completing his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in Film and Television Studies at UCLA. He held a post-doctoral position at Rice University in Houston in 1992 and was hired to teach Film and Media Studies the following year. Naficy was a professor at Rice until 2006, when he began teaching at Northwestern University.
Hamid Naficy has published five books (Film-e Mostanad (1978-1979), Iran Media Index (1984), The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles (1993), An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), the four-volume A Social History of Iranian Cinema (2011-2012)), edited two anthologies (Otherness and the Media: The Ethnography of the Imagined and the Imaged, co-edited with Teshome Gabriel (1993) and Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place (1999)), and written numerous articles and essays. He created the Iranian Film Festival in Los Angeles, which debuted in 1990. In 1992, Naficy organized a joint annual film festival with Rice University and the Houston Museum of Contemporary Art, focusing on new films from Iran.
Found in 2 Collections and/or Records:
Hamid Naficy (1944- ) Papers
The Hamid Naficy Papers, spanning the years 1897-2017 (bulk 1967-2012), comprise 149 boxes and 1 spreadsheet born-digital file of 0.13 megabytes and include biographical, professional, and research files; files on Naficy’s writings and publications; photographs; and audiovisual materials. Hamid Naficy, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in Communication in the Radio/Television/Film department at Northwestern University, joined the faculty in 2006.
Hamid Naficy Iranian and Middle Eastern Movie Posters Collection
The Hamid Naficy Iranian and Middle Eastern Movie Posters Collection contains 258 posters, 249 of which have been digitized and cataloged individually. These posters document the social history of film in Iran and offer a unique visual representation of the political and social climate there between 1966 and 2014. The posters also document film history in other Middle Eastern countries.