Film London, the UK’s premier film and media agency, gave this year's Jarman Award to the film artist Maryam Tafakory for her outstanding contributions to film. The Jarman Award, which was established in 2008 in memory of the avant-garde British filmmaker Derek Jarman, carries a monetary prize of £10,000 and is awarded on an annual basis to contemporary artists working in film.

Tafakory was born and raised in Iran but moved to the UK after dropping out of university courses in her home country. She began studying computer science in Southampton, but subsequently moved to Oxford where she acquired a Master's degree in fine arts. Tafakory, whose artistic practice represents a meeting between cinema and live performance, drew inspiration for a recent work from an archive of 417 post-revolution Iranian films which she watched during the pandemic lockdown.

Maryam Tafakory, Razeh-del, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

Tafakory's films captured the attention of the Film London jury for their compelling exploration of displacement, memory and resistance, motifs which she was able to extract from the archival footage which she had researched during the period between 2020 to 2024. In each of the four films featured at the Whitechapel Gallery as part of the award ceremony, Tafakory navigates the historical and the personal through Iranian cinema of the past three decades, innovatively blending reality and fiction.

Tafakory has screened work and exhibited at leading institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Filmoteca de Catalunya, Barcelona; Museum of the Moving Image, New York; Tate Modern, London; Locarno Film Festival; and Toronto International Film Festival. She has been awarded the Golden Hugo at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival; the Tiger Short Award at the 51st International Film Festival Rotterdam; the Barbara Hammer Feminist Film Award at the 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival; and the Best Experimental Film Award at the 70th and 71st Melbourne International Film Festival.

More information about Tafakory can be found on her site and her Instagram profile. For more on the activities of Film London, please visit their site.

The link has been copied!