Ali Akbar Sadeghi
b. 1937
The history of Kanoon is equally entwined with many of Iran's most epic late-twentieth century stories, from Empress Farah's cultural initiatives to the heyday of the Iranian left to the revolution. Kanoon would become a sort of incubator for some of the country's most celebrated artists--including Ebrahim Forouzesh, Noureddin Zarrinkelk, and many of the protagonists of Iranian cinema, Sohrab Shahid-Sales, Abbas Kiarostami, and Amir Naderi among them. The following is the first in a series of conversations in Bidoun about Kanoon. Here, Arash Sadeghi engages his father, the painter Ali Akbar Sadeghi, who is best known for pioneering a style that mixed traditional Persian coffeehouse painting and the surreal, and Farshid Mesghali, one of Kanoon's most important graphic designers and animators. Among the elder Sadeghi's most iconic projects during his time at Kanoon was Malek ol-Khorshid (King of the Sun, 1975), a magical animation inspired by the tenth-century Persian epic The Shahnameh (The Book of Kings). Mesghali is probably most beloved for his illustration work on the book Mahee Siya Koochooloo (The Little Black Fish, 1968). Here, the three discuss the founding of Kanoon and…
Films