Bardia Saadi-Nejad
Bardia Saadi-nejad is an Iranian-Canadian independent filmmaker and artist, living and working in Montreal since 2003. Graduated from Concordia University in Digital Technologies in Design Art Practice, his thesis project, a video installation, was awarded the Special Grant for Graduate Student thesis projects on art and technology, by “CIAM, Centre interuniversitaire des arts mediatiques”. Subsequently, the main body of the video installation, “2 or 3 Things I Know about Love” won the “Best Documentary Production Award” in 29th Montreal World Film Festival (2005), Canadian Student Competition.
Bardia studied at University of Art in Tehran, where he achieved a double major B.F.A in Photography and Graphic design in 1997. After a few years of working in the “Film Museum of Iran” as a part-time designer and teaching diverse courses on visual art theory and practice, in different art institutes in Tehran, he cofounded Atelier Koochak, the visual art center in 2000, with Shahriar Tavakkoli. Soon after, the two artists professional partners cofounded “Herfeh: Honarmand” (Profession: Artist), Art Quarterly Magazine, where Bardia was also the Art Director and the responsible editor for the Cinema section for the first 6 volumes.
In 2001 Bardia was awarded to participate in Japan’s Young Artists Invitation Program, an exchange convention on art and culture between Japan and Iran, held by “Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan” in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Nara.
Bardia’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and TV channels, including Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran. Bardia Saadi-nejad is currently working on preproduction of his first medium-length fiction film.
Flames from Tehran a video-collage by Bardia Saadi-nejad “Flames from Tehran” is an experimental video, a personal journey of an artist who returns to his native country with a light video camera in hand going through his reminiscences from an Iranian popular celebration! Chahar-shanbeh-soori is a yearly festival in Iran specifically interrelated with fire and fireworks, while it is absolutely unlike to other comparable events around the world! Most of the dissimilarities are because of the malformed aggravating reaction of Iran’s current regime against this magnificent ancient ceremony, with over 5000 years of cultural history supporting it. This video-collage is to express the way I see it today, a whimsical spectacular yearly event, with which I grew up, playing with fire for some 30 years!