Emmsen Jafari
Biography
Emmsen Jafari is an Iranian filmmaker and video artist born in Tehran in 1985. His relationship with image-making began at the age of four, when his father introduced him to photography. This early fascination led him to participate in two editions of the Sooreh Photo Festival of the Child and Young Adult and to exhibit his photographs in several group exhibitions in 1989 and 1993.
Jafari grew up alongside his father, the actor Majid Jafari, and spent much of his childhood amid the sets, rehearsal rooms and backstage environments of film and theatre productions. These formative experiences established a lasting connection to performance and the moving image, eventually shaping a multidisciplinary practice encompassing cinema, theatre, video art, photography, graphic design, curating and critical writing.
He began his professional career in 2001 as an actor in the theatre production Vortex. Since then, he has contributed to more than twenty-five theatrical productions, working both as a performer and as a video and graphic designer. In 2003, he directed his first short film, Hush!. This was followed in 2004 by Tabu, which received awards at the inaugural Shahed Theatre Festival.
From 2007 onwards, Jafari increasingly concentrated on video art, presenting his work in numerous group exhibitions. In 2010, a lecturer at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Lille (ENSAPL) introduced his work to students as a reference point for the development of their own projects. That same year, Jafari and Ramin Etemadi organised and curated Time’s Memory / Remembrance of Objects, a collaborative artistic project connecting Iran and France. An exhibition emerging from the project was presented at Tehran’s Mohsen Gallery in 2012.
Jafari’s films and moving-image works have been exhibited internationally, including presentations in Iran, France, Australia and South Korea.
Alongside his artistic practice, Jafari has contributed extensively to Iranian film culture as a writer and editor. He founded Ghâb-e Kuchak in the weekly magazine Mehr, the first regularly published section in an Iranian magazine devoted specifically to short films and documentaries. Through reviews, essays and profiles, the section sought both to bring greater attention to emerging filmmakers and to establish a sustained critical platform for discussing their work.
Jafari also served for a period as editor-in-chief of Khâneh-be-Khâne, the publication of the Young Cineastes House. His writing on film, art and media has appeared in a range of publications, including Soroosh-e Haftegi and Art and Media.
In 2011, Jafari and Golnoosh Hamidi co-founded the artist-run Entr’acte Studio, creating a platform for independent artistic production, experimentation and exchange. In 2015, the studio began a collaboration with the Experimental Film Society, extending its engagement with experimental cinema and international moving-image practices.
Films
The following films are part of the EFS collection:
- Nineveh (2015), 10 min, Iran/Ireland
- Beata (2015), 3 min, Iran
- Ill! (2010), 10 min, Iran
More of Emmsen Jafari’s work is on Instagram.