Kamran Shirdel was born in Tehran 1939. He studied architecture and design in the University of Rome and film direction at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia ( CSC), also in the eternal city. During his studies he had Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nanni Loy, Gillo Pontecorvo, Francesco Rosi, Vittorio De Seta , Michelangelo Antonioni and many others as teachers. His diploma film ” Gli Specchi ” ( The Mirrors ) won the diploma of honor in the World Cinema School Film Festival in Tokyo ( 1965 ). In the same period he worked as assistant director to John Houston while he was shooting ” The Bible ” in Cinecitta’ and around Italy . He also worked as dubbing translator,editor and director in Italian dubbing studios. After his graduation in Rome, in 1965, Shirdel returned to Tehran where he started to direct documentaries for the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Art. In the three following years he directed his most known sociopolitical documentaries; six films which in a direct, sincere and brave approach reveal the darkest side of the Iranian economical boom then, analyzing with black satire, the true portrait of a society immersed in the petrodollars. These films can be placed in the genre of a deep social conscious reminiscent of the best Italian Neorealism school which had marked and influenced Shirdel during his life and studies in Italy. The furious language and style of these documentaries brought him the reprisal of the Shah’s regime, forcing Shirdel to be expelled, exiled and be put on the black list, as he had dared to talk about the life of the less privileged and excluded people; workers, women, prostitutes,etc. denouncing and criticizing the corruption inside the mechanism of power. Due to the strict Iranian censorship almost all his films were banned and confiscated. Six years after the completion of his last banned film; ” The Epic of The Gorgani Village Boy or The Night It Rained “, it received The Grand Prize at The Third Tehran International Film Festival ( 1974) to be banned again – soon after festival was over and foreign guests and press had left the country a week after – as his other films such as Nedamatgah ( Women’s Prison -1965), Qaleh ( Red Light District – 1966 ) , Tehran Is The Capital Of Iran – ( 1966 ) among many others and were only released and screened after the revolution ( 1979 – 80 ).

after the revolution ( 1979 – 80 ). Shirdel’s only ( until today ) completed long feature film ” The Morning of The Fourth Day ” ( 1972 ) – a remake of Jean Luc Godard’s famous “A Bout de Souffle “, won several prizes at Sepas National Film Festival but was a flop at box office making him bankrupt as producer…… . His second feature ” The Camera ” freely adapted from Nikolai Gogol’s ” The General Inspector ” was abruptly halted and censored while amid shooting and all it’s material confiscated and destroyed (1975 ) . Shirdel was forbidden to proceed his work as an acute social observer and analyzer and was forced to place his creativity and technical talent in the production of a huge volume of commissioned, industrial, educational and advertising films.