Maryam Kashani

Maryam Kashani was born and raised in San Francisco to a Japanese mother and Iranian father. Coming from a music background, she began filmmaking as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley. She received her MFA in Film and Video from the California Institute of the Arts in 2003.

Her background as a musician and DJ continue to inform her film and video works, including “things lovely and dangerous still”, [modes and tactics], “flat tire during a boxing match”, and “My Mother is not Chinese”, which have been shown at places like the Museum of Modern Art (NY), MadCat Women’s International Film Festival, the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Pacific Film Archive, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and the Jornados de Estudio de la Imagen in Madrid, Spain.

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Best in the West is her first feature film.

“My primary focus as a filmmaker is an exploration of physical landscape as it relates to political and economic histories, social expression, music, and personal events. My work explores the idea of place as both a location of and an impetus towards social action and manifestations of identity. In the translation of reality to representation, I hope to elicit a space of possibility and change.”