Hamid Rahmanian is a 2014 John Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of the 2020 United States Artists Fellowship. His work centers on theater, moving image, and graphic arts. His work has been exhibited in international competitions and publications. His films have screened at Venice, Sundance, Toronto, Tribeca, and IDFA film festivals and broadcast on PBS, Sundance Channel, IFC, Channel 4, BBC, DR2, and Al Jazeera. Mr. Rahmanian undertook the immense task of illustrating and commissioning a new translation and adaptation of the tenth-century Persian epic poem Shahnameh by Ferdowsi, entitled Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings (2013). This best-selling 600-page art book, which the Wall Street Journal lauded as a “masterpiece,” is currently in its second edition (Liveright Publishing). In 2017, he released an immersive audiobook version of Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian King, with an introduction by Frances Ford Coppola. In 2018, he released a pop-up book, entitled Zahhak: The Legend of the Serpent King(Fantagraphics Books) in English and French, which received the Meggendorfer Prize for the Best Pop-Up Book and was hailed as “Simply breathtaking” by Le Monde. In 2014, Rahmanian shifted his focus to theater arts, working with shadows and digital media. To date, he has created five theater pieces: Zahhak: The Legend of the Serpent King (2014), Mina’s Dream (2016), commissioned by the Onassis Foundation), and UNIMA-USA award winning Feathers Of Fire (2016) which toured in 23 cities around the world to an audience of over 100,000. In 2019, he was commissioned by Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble to create a video animation for their new multimedia project, Heroes Take Their Stand. Mr. Rahmanian completed his latest stage production, Song of the North, which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2022 and is currently touring around the world. His most recent project, the new pop-up book, The Seven Trials of Rostam, is now available.
