Maz Ghaderi
Director,Writer,Showrunner's Assistant,Writer's Assistant,Producer,Editor,Supervising Editor,Assistant Editor,Junior/Assembly Editor,Cinematographer,1st AC,2nd AC,Assistant Director,Production Designer,Set Decorator,PA (Production Assistant),Casting Assistant,Post Supervisor,Post Producer,VFX Editor,Motion Graphics Designer,Graphic Designer,On-Set Videographer,Instructor/Professor
Profile Details
- Country: Canada
- Province/State: Ontario
- City: Toronto
- How do you Identify?: Persian/Iranian
- Age: 38
- Experience Level: Mid-Career
- Field of Work: Fiction/Scripted, Drama Series, Animation, Narrative Film, Documentary, Commercials, and Music Videos
- Union: Non-Union
- Interested In: TV Writing Room, Directing TV For Hire, Directing Film/Digital for Hire, Directing Music Videos/Commercials, Developing my own Film/TV/Digital Material, Other, For-Hire Work, and Shadowing
- Favourite Movies: “Black Swan” (2010), “A Girl Walk Home Alone At Night” (2015), “American Psycho” (2000), “Blade Runner” (1982), “Blade Runner 2049” (2017), “Under the Shadow” (2016), “Fight Club” (1997), “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “Sin City” (2005), “The Blind Owl” (
- Pitch a Project: “Lights Fallen” (psychological sci-fi thriller) a Persian-language psychological sci-fi horror about Magi, a celebrated, but self-absorbed artist and technologist that begins to lose his mind when experimenting with cybernetic implants.
- Authorized to work in the USA?: No
- Contact Information: maz@maziart.ca
- Link: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7987676/
- Link 2: https://www.instagram.com/maziart/
- Link 3: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@maziart
Bio
Maziar Ghaderi is a Toronto-based multimedia artist, educator, writer and director that works with film, multimedia and interactive technology. With a background in media production, Maziar strives to articulate his social commentary through metaphors, epiphanies and critiques.
Maziar’s work has been curated across North America, Europe, West Asia and recognized by the MIT Media Lab, International Symposium on Electronic Art, Columbia University, CBC Docs POV, The Creator’s Project, VICE, Toronto Media Arts Centre, Blast Theory, The Globe & Mail, CBC Radio, IxDA, Toronto Life, The Georgia Straight, Newsweek, The Washington Times, Russia Today, The Irish Times, National Review, The Stranger, WIRED and SIGGRAPH. He has also presented at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre, Augmented Cinema Film Festival, Toronto Wearables, Tashkeel Dubai Art Center, Subtle Technologies, Brooklyn’s Film Noir Cinema, Gladstone Hotel, The Gardiner Museum, Shopify, SummerWorks Festival, Luminato Festival, HarbourFront Centre’s HATCH festival, Sumahan Istanbul Art, The Fridge Dubai, Nuit Blanche, Ontario Centre of Excellence and has co-authored several academic articles for design conferences.
With the direction of Marina Abramovic, Maziar was the media producer and on-site technical assistant for the 2013 Luminato Festival’s MAI Prototype, and has directed and produced his original work, Dissolving Self for the International Symposium on Electronic Art 2014 (ISEA) held in Dubai.
The very first feature film that he produced went on to clinch the #1 spot on iTunes upon its debut in 2019 and was broadcast on CBC and distributed by Gravitas Ventures to rave reviews.
Maziar has also taught media production and conceptual development at OCAD University and Ryerson University, and holds a Diploma in Marketing Management, a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from McGill University, a Bachelors in Media Studies and a Masters in Design.
In past lives, Maziar has filmed obscure shorts in Vancouver, cut limes in Montreal, sold phrasal verbs in Brazil and worn cotton diapers in Tehran.
Intro
My family’s story of escaping the Iran-Iraq war has fuelled my artistry. Coming to Canada as refugees and having to go on welfare upon arrival coloured my creative work in emergent ways that I’m still realizing to this day. Together with this inspiration and my fascination for innovative media forms, I have risen the ranks as an acclaimed media artist with several international directorial credits to my name. I now strive to bring nuanced, imperfect characters of related life experiences to the promising, and potentially revolutionary genre of sci-fi film. I want to take my artistic practice to the next level by mastering film production and to create imaginative storyworlds that reflect our millennial woes through shiny black mirrors ubiquitous in our postmodern lives.
Since I was a kid, film greatly influenced me because it opened windows to new worlds and perspectives while articulating universal themes of the human condition that I could relate to. Science fiction and speculative design in particular inspired me to create theatre and performance art shows that use emerging technologies to tell old stories, such as those from my own culture, in new and unprecedented ways.
With the commercial success of shows like Star Trek Discovery, and Persian-language psychological horrors like “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” and “Under the Shadow”, I see an emerging market to tell diverse stories in these predominantly white male centric genres. Because of this cultural shift, I feel confident that larger budget sci-fi films of diverse voices can actually have a commercial life that is not limited to insular arthouse circuits. I am motivated to weave untold myths of my own culture into the sci-fi genre to challenge the status quo through displaced BIPOC protagonists in search of meaning through ancestral visions.
Reel/Clips
https://maziart.ca/