Regents' Lecturer Shirin Neshat in conversation with UC Berkeley scholars Stefania Pandolfo, (Anthropology), Larry Rinder (Director of the Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive) and Jeffrey Skoller (Film and Media). Shirin Neshat participated in this discussion as a Regents' Lecturer at the Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC Berkeley. An Iranian born artist and filmmaker, Shirin Neshat's early photographic works explored the question of gender in relation to Islamic fundamentalism and militancy. Her subsequent video installations have departed from overtly political content in favor of more poetic imagery and narratives. Neshat has held numerous solo exhibitions at galleries and museums internationally, including the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; the Serpentine Gallery in London; Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Musee d'Art Contemporain de Montreal. She was included in the Whitney Biennial (2000), Documenta XI (2002) and Prospect.1 New Orleans (2009). She was awarded the Golden Lion Award at the 48th Venice Biennale (1999); the Grand Prix of the Kwangju Biennial in Korea (2000); the Hiroshima Freedom Prize (2005), and the Lillian Gish Prize (2006). Neshat's first feature-length film, Women Without Men, received the Silver Lion Best Director Award in the 66th Venice International Film Festival (2009). She is currently working on her second feature length film based on the life and art of the legendary Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum. A major retrospective of Neshat's work will be at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2013. Neshat is represented by Gladstone Gallery in New York City. Sponsored by the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu