Thursday 7th May 7.30pm we host a free screening and Q&A of Dingomaro (2014, 66mins) with Cine Club DXB.

On Iran’s Gulf coast a particular culture has grown from centuries of naval history and nearby trade.

African roots in Iran result in remarkable and distinct customs, including styles of Persian-African music and dancing that is particular to Bandar Abbas and the south. The film trailer is below.

Narrated in Persian by musician Hamid Said, named Dingomaro after a wild wind that is said to come to Iran from Africa and which is present whenever music is heard, the tale is relayed in documentary style footage by street photographer and film-maker Kamran Heidari.

The plot follows Hamid Said as he travels by motorbike to hunt out the best musicians sharing his African origins, in Iran’s southern province of Hormozgan. From history’s greats to young schoolchildren bursting with potential, Said encounters a…

There is no utopia without nature. Life is already a utopia–Mileece Petre

When I heard sound artist and environmental researcher Mileece refer to utopia as she presented on her bio-sound work  this past year for MOMA’s PSA1 series “Speculations: The Future Is ____” I was startled and intrigued. When I asked Mileece to delve further into her conception, Mileece explained how when faced with an environment lacking flora–such as on a recent trip to India where she spent a lot of time in a cityscape heavy with apartment blocks–she noticed that finally coming upon a garden outside a temple or other flush area felt like utopia. “I’m referring to an ecological utopian society, not a fictional one.” Mileece told me, “But either way, what we imagine as a perfect society always comes with fruit. Nature makes man right in the head. Without it, things get really rough. With it too of course, but you can see what…

The third album from the enigmatic Strië (Iden Reinhart) is a lesson in abstraction: an impressionistic set inspired by abstract art, swaths of sound built upon whispers.  On this album, Reinhart travels farther down the path she set out upon in Sléptis and fine-tuned in Õhtul.  Signposts are still present: a series of beats here, an intense crackle there.  And yet, the artist known for her public shyness (despite orchestra tours, only a half-photo seems to exist) continues to disappear, dragging her instruments slowly into the void.  The beauty of the set is its chimeric nature; the songs shimmer and shift beneath the ear.  The danger is that Strië seems intent on becoming an abstraction herself: a smudged memory, an elusive impression, a series of images scattered in the sun.  We fear that one day the artist will fade like fog, molecules made invisible by the heat, leaving only a faint…