Hamid
Rahmanian

Hamid Rahmanian is a 2014 John Guggenheim Fellow. Rahmanian’s work centers on theater, moving image, and graphic arts. His work has been exhibited in international competitions and publications. His films have screened at Venice, Sundance, Toronto, Tribeca, and IDFA film festivals and broadcast on PBS, Sundance Channel, IFC, Channel 4, BBC, DR2, and Al Jazeera.

He undertook the immense task of illustrating and commissioning a new translation and adaptation of the tenth-century Persian epic poem Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, entitled Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings (2013). This best-selling 600-page art book, which the Wall Street Journal lauded as a “masterpiece,” is currently in its second edition (Liveright Publishing). In 2017, he released an immersive audiobook version of Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian King, with an introduction by Frances Ford Coppola. In 2018, he released a pop-up book, entitled, Zahhak: The Legend of the Serpent King (Fantagraphics Books) in English and French, which received the Meggendorfer Prize for the Best Pop-Up Book and was hailed “simply breathtaking” by Le Monde. In 2014, he shifted his focus to theater arts, working with shadows and digital media.

To date, he has created four theater pieces: Zahhak: The Legend of the Serpent King (2014), Mina’s Dream (2016, commissioned by the Onassis Foundation), and the UNIMA award-winning Feathers Of Fire (2016), which premiered at Brooklyn Academy of Music and toured in twenty-three US cities and six countries to an audience of 100,000. In 2019, he was commissioned by Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble to create a video animation for their new multimedia project, Heroes Take Their Stand. Presently, Rahmanian is working on his new stage production, Song of the North.

Portrait Photo by Vahid Zamani.