Best in the West

Synopsis

A humorous and poignant documentary chronicling the fast times of Kashani’s father and his male buddies as they emigrated from Iran as teenagers in the 1960s, immersed themselves in San Francisco counterculture, and eventually found success as entrepreneurs. The filmmaker interweaves interviews, images of a pre-revolutionary Iran and an oil-hungry America, and a heady soundtrack of soul and R+B.

Director

Maryam Kashani is a Chicago and St. Louis-based filmmaker and scholar. Her films and videos consider public and private histories and possible futures in relationship to landscape and texts. Producing “moving portraits” of individuals, families, buildings, and transportation infrastructures, she explores time’s passage, how modes of movement and improvisation in everyday life intersect with structures of power, knowledge, economy, and representation. She is currently involved in the Zaytuna Project, a series of videos and installation work produced in conjunction with her ethnographic monograph on Zaytuna College (Berkeley, California) and the knowledge practices of Muslims in the United States. Her previous films have screened at festivals, museums, and universities internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Pacific Film Archive, and the Hammer Museum. She received her MFA in Film/Video from the California Institute of the Arts in 2003 and her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin, in 2014. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.

b. 1977, San Francisco, California