A tripartite event celebrating over 50 years of Iranian cinema, Salaam Cinema! comprises an exhibition of rare movie posters selected from the Hamid Naficy Movie Poster Collection at Northwestern University Libraries Archives; a film series of work spanning from early silent cinema to contemporary political documentaries (with introductions by directors from around the world); and a two-day symposium featuring major cinema and art history scholars on the art of cinema and movie posters. The exhibition Salaam Cinema! 50 Years of Iranian Movie Posters offers a range of posters dating from the 1960s to the present that document the social history of cinema in Iran in an era of dramatic political change. The posters cover two subgenres of popular commercial filmfarsi cinema: tough guy films (sinemaye jaheli) and stewpot films (sinema-ye abgushti), as well as new wave, art house, cinema of exile, and women’s cinema. The exhibition has been curated Hamid Naficy’s Iranian Movie Poster Collection and will be on view in the Block Museum of Art’s Alsdorf Gallery from September 17 to December 11, 2016. It features highlights from the collection (nearly 300 posters in total), which is housed at Northwestern University Archives. All the posters have been digitized and are available online for 2 further study.
The film series, Iranian Cinephilia: From Filmfarsi to Art House Cinema, takes place Thursday, October 6 through Friday, November 18, 2016 as part of the museum’s Block Cinema screening program. The series features ten discrete programs (and over 14 films) focusing on tough guy movies; new wave and art house films; post-revolutionary women’s films; and films made in exile. Many of these films highlight the cinephilic culture and cinema inside Iran, including the earliest extant Iranian silent fiction movie by Ovanes Ohanians, Mr. Haji the Movie Actor (1933), which will be screened with live piano accompaniment. Five filmmakers (based in Iran and the U.S.) will present their films in person and engage in conversation with Northwestern University students, faculty, visiting scholars, and the community.
The symposium, Lucid Figurations: Iranian Movie Poster Art/ Film Art, takes place on Thursday, November 17 and Friday, November 18, 2016. It consists of two panels of scholars: one focused on the art of movie poster design and the graphic arts in Iran, and the other on Iranian cinema. Scholars from major U.S. 3 universities, as well as from Australia and Israel, will be present.
Iran’s Film Poster Artists
Many of Iran’s most prominent graphic design and poster artists began their work before the Islamic revolution and continued after adapting to new politics and aesthetics. The most frequently 4 featured artists in Salaam Cinema! are profiled here.
Morteza Momayez (1936-2005, Tehran) Momayez received his B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Tehran. He was one of the most notable Iranian poster designers and one of the founders of the Iranian Graphic Design Society. Oh Iran (Naser Taqvai, 1990), The Immigrant (Ebrahim Hatamikia, 1989), The Deer (Masoud Kimiai, 1974), Far from Home (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1975), and Still Life (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1975) are among his notable works.
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Mohammad-Ali Heddat (1948- Yazd) Heddat received his diploma in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Isfahan. He started designing posters for films in 1970, and over the past forty years he has designed more than six hundred posters for Iranian films. Revenge (Abbas Kasai, 1976), Reza the Motorcyclist (Masud Kimiai, 1970), Honeymoon (Fereydoun Goleh, 1977) and Beehive (Goleh, 1975) are among his notable works.
Reza Abedini (1967- Tehran) Abedini is a prominent graphic designer and teaches visual culture and design at the American University of Beirut. He is recognized not only for his graphic designs but also for his Persian typography. He received his formal art education from the School of Fine Arts, graduating in 1985. He then majored in painting at Tehran Art University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1992. Abedini began his professional career as a graphic designer in the late 1980s. Sara (Dariush Mehrjui, 1992) and Zinat (Ebrahim Mokhtari, 1994) are among his notable works.
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Ebrahim Haghighi (1949- Tehran) Haghighi received his M.A. in Architecture from the University of Tehran in 1971 and worked with Morteza Momayez on the production of the animation An keh Khial Baft, An keh Amal Kard (The One Who Dreamed, the One Who Acted). After this collaboration, Haghighi taught graphic design at the Faculty of Fine Arts. In 1983, Haghighi began working with Arapik Baghdassarian in Nourredin Zarrinkelk’s atelier and designed posters, brochures, boxes, and labels for Daroopakhsh Pharmaceuticals. He designed the poster for the Second International Fajr Film Festival and, later, the logo, catalogue, promotion materials, and the Silver Simorgh Award of the Festival. In 1987 he received the diploma for the best poster design in the Fifith Fajr Festival for the film Thorn Apple (Kyoumarss Pourahmad). In 2000 he received the award for the best titles for Under the Skin of the City (Rakhshan Banietemad) in the Fourth Feast of the House of Cinema.
Farhad Farsi (1950-2011, Isfahan) Farsi, an outstanding poster and stage designer in Iranian cinema, was twice the winner of Crystal Simorgh from the Fajr Film Festival for the stage design of the films The Last Act by Varuj Karimi-Masihi (1991) and Once Upon a Time, Cinema by Mohsen Makhmalbaf (1992). He was a graduate of stage and costume design from the College of Dramatic Arts at the University of Tehran and continued his studies in Rome. He began his career as a stage designer for Bahram Baizai’s Ballad of Tara (1979), and continued with Ali Hatami’s Haji Washington (1982), Rakhshan Banietemad’s The Blue-Veiled (1995), Bahman Farmanara’s A Little Kiss (2005) and several more. The poster for Life, and Nothing More... (Abbas Kiarostami, 1992) is one of his most notable works. Siamak Valipour (1945-1996, Tehran) Valipour was a prominent Iranian poster designer. He worked with influential directors such as Abbas Kiarostami and Bahram Baizai. Among his most famous works are the posters for the films Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989) and Bashu, the Little Stranger (Bahram Baizai, 1990).
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Iranian Cinephilia: From Filmfarsi to Art House Cinema Iranian cinema frequently addresses film culture itself—the act of filmmaking, genre conventions, the experience of going to the movies, and the cinephilia that is specific to Iran. This self-reflexivity is central to our film series, which includes appearances by Iran’s leading female filmmaker, Rakhshan Banietemad, who is traveling from Tehran to present her latest film; Noureddin Zarrinkelk, the “father of Iranian animation,” who will present a retrospective of his films; Mehrnaz SaeedVafa, who will screen a documentary on the late exile director Sohrab Shahid Saless; Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, who will screen a documentary on performing a medieval composition for the first time; and Ahmad Kiarostami, the son of the late Abbas Kiarostami, who will introduce a selection of his father’s work. The film series offers some of the best films from Iran’s most productive periods, from filmfarsi movies to art house movies to women’s movies. If the pre-revolution filmfarsi movies (Persian language films) were melodramatic and celebratory, like most genre films, the art house film movements before and after the revolution tended to be somber and critical of both society and the state. The post-revolution women’s films, too, are less driven by genre conventions than by authorial impulses and critical perspectives. The cinema produced by the large Iranian community outside Iran was initially dystopic and nostalgic (see Sohrab Shahid Saless’s Far From Home), and continued to evolve as exile turned into diaspora. 9
Schedule Thursday, October 6, 7pm: Noureddin Zarrinkelk in person – Golden Quill: A Retrospective of Films by Noureddin Zarrinkelk, Father of Iranian Animation (70 min.). The retrospective includes the following films: A Playground for Baboosh A Way to Neighbor Association of Ideas Atal Matal Bani Adam Excellencies Duty First Flippo and the Train from Hong Kong Noureddin Zarrinkelk Biography One Two Three More… Pood Super Powers The Little Prince and the Magic Carpet The Mad Mad Mad World Friday, October 7, 5pm: Masud Kimiai – Qaisar, 1969 (100m) w/ intro by Hamid Naficy Friday, October 7, 7pm: Dariush Mehrjui – The Cow (Gav), 1969 (100m) w/ intro by Hamid Naficy Monday, October 10, 7pm: Mojtaba Mirtahmasb in person – Six Centuries, Six Years (Shesh Qarn va Shesh Sal), 2014 (83m), screening takes place in room 119, John J. Louis Hall Thursday, October 20, 7pm: Bahram Beyzaie – Downpour (Ragbar), 1971 (122m) Friday October 21, 7pm: Abbas Kiarostami – Close Up (Nema-ye Nazdik), 1990 (98m) with Reza Haeri – Do You Know Mr. Kiarostami? (Shoma Aqa-ye Kiarostami ra Mishenasid), 1999 (30m)
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Thursday, October 27, 7pm: Sohrab Shahid Saless – Still Life (Tabi’at-e Bijan, 1974 (93m) w/ Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa in person – Sohrab Shahid Saless: Far from Home, 1998 (16m) Thursday, November 3, 7pm: Mohsen Makhmalbaf – Salaam Cinema, 1995 (75m) Thursday, November 10, 7pm: Mohammad Shirvani – Seven Blind Women Filmmakers (7 Filmsaz-E Zan-E Nabina), 2004-08 (116m) Thursday, November 17, 5pm: Ovanes Ohanians – Mr. Haji, the Movie Actor (Haji Aqa, Aktor-e Sinema), 1933 (60m, silent, with live piano accompaniment) Thursday, November 17, 7pm: Rakhshan Banietemad in person – Tales (Qesseh-ha), 2014 (88m) Friday, November 18, 4:30pm: Ahmad Kiarostami in person – A Tribute to Abbas Kiarostami
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Lucid Figurations: Iranian Movie Poster and Film Art This symposium offers two panels featuring renowned international scholars and artists who will focus on the art of movie poster design, the art and industry of film, and the culture of cinephilia in Iran. Filmmaker Rakhshan Banietemad will open the symposium with a discussion and screening of her 2014 film Tales (Qesseh-ha). The symposium will close with a tribute to Abbas Kiarostami presented by his son Ahmad Kiarostami.
Schedule DAY ONE: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17 5pm: Ovanes Ohanians – Mr. Haji, the Movie Actor (Haji Aqa, Aktor-e Sinema), 1933 (60m, silent, w/ live piano accompaniment) 7pm: Screening with Rakhshan Banietemad in person – Tales (Qesseh-ha), 2014 (88m) DAY TWO: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18 9am – 12:30pm: Symposium Panel 1: Cinema Art (Kaveh Askari, Michelle Langford, Negar Mottahedeh, Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa) 1:30pm – 3:45pm: Symposium Panel 2: Poster Art (Ruth Iskin, Shiva Balaghi, Hamid Dabashi, Rambod Vala) 4:30pm: Screening with Ahmad Kiarostami in person – A Tribute to Abbas Kiarostami (select new works)
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Guest speakers
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Noureddin Zarrinkelk Noureddin Zarrinkelk is considered the father of Iranian animation. He founded Iran’s first animation school in 1974, and the national branch of the International Animated Film Society in 1987. He has worked extensively in education, creating illustrations for textbooks and films for Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults.
Mojtaba Mirtahmasb Mirtahmasb graduated from the Art University of Tehran in 1995. He began his professional activities in cinema as a sound director, photographer, editor, assistant director, and program manager in several fiction and documentary films, collaborating with prominent Iranian directors such as Parviz Kimiavi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Ebrahim Mokhtari, and Rakhshan Banietemad. Mirtahmasb has made over 30 documentary films, several of them award-winning. He has served as a jury member at a number of festivals in Iran and abroad, and has also conducted several workshops on documentary filmmaking. Among his best known works are Six Centuries, Six Years (Shesh Gharn, Shesh Sal, 2014) and This Is Not a Film (Ein Yek Film Nist, 2011), on which he collaborated with Jafar Panahi.
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Rakhshan Banietemad Rakhshan Banietemad is one of Iran’s foremost filmmakers. She was born in Tehran in 1954. Her career began in television documentary, and she continues to incorporate documentary elements into her feature films. In 1991, she became the first woman recipient of the best director award at Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran for Nargess. In 1995 she won the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival for The Blue Veiled. Her next film, Under the Skin of the City, was the highest grossing film in Iran in 2000. Most recently, Banietemad won the best screenplay award at the 2014 Venice film Festival for her feature film Tales.
Ahmad Kiarostami Ahmad Kiarostami is the co-founder and CEO of Koantum, a new startup that teaches science to elementary school students in the United States. He also founded Fotomoto (acquired in 2012), where he holds two patents on distributed e-commerce. Before moving to the United States, he founded three companies in Iran, including Negah, the first multimedia and online production venue in Iran. Additionally, Kiarostami is the director of several popular Iranian music videos. He currently serves as a board member at National Iranian American Council, and The Roxie, the oldest operational movie theatre in North America. In 2014, he started Docunight, an initiative to screen Iranian documentaries, with monthly screenings in major cities in North America. He is also a fellow at the Aspen Institute.
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Panelists
Kaveh Askari Relayed Prints and Midcentury Assemblages Synopsis: Taking a cross-media and cross-border approach to the film culture in Iran from the early 1950s through the late 1960s, this talk traces how film prints, print design (posters and film magazines), and sound technologies circulated through the region. The creative environment of this period, characterized by the rapid growth of the film industry but also by its limited global visibility, fostered an aesthetic of recombination left out of many histories of world cinema. Bio: Kaveh Askari is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at Western Washington University and Associate Professor of Communication in Residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is the author of Making Movies into Art: Picture Craft from the Magic Lantern to Early Hollywood (British Film Institute, 2014), editor of a special issue of Early Popular Visual Culture on the Middle East and North Africa (2008), and co-editor of Performing 17 New Media, 1890-1915 (John Libbey, 2014).
Michelle Langford Sohrab Shahid Saless, A Filmmaker “Between Two Stools”: From New Iranian Cinema to New German Cinema Synopsis: This paper will focus on Shahid Saless’ first year in Berlin, from late 1974 to late 1975, tracing the personal, professional and social context in which he produced In der Fremd (Far From Home). It will focus particularly on Shahid Saless’ contradictory self-inscription as a Gastarbeiter (guest worker) and his desire to be counted among the rising stars of the New German Cinema, which was flourishing at the time. Bio: Dr. Michelle Langford is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the School of the Arts and Media at UNSW Australia. Her current research spans the cinemas of Iran and Germany. She is author of Allegorical Images: Tableau, Time and Gesture in the Cinema of Werner Schroeter (Intellect, 2006) and editor of The Directory of World Cinema: Germany (Intellect, 2012, 2013). Her work on Iranian cinema has appeared in leading film studies journals including Camera Obscura, Screen and Screening the Past. She is currently working on a book entitled Allegory in Iranian Cinema: 18 An Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance.
Negar Mottahedeh Oil and Water and a Revolution in Film Synopsis: Working from the assumption that on-location sound was first recorded in oil films, this talk traces the history of onlocation sound through Iranian cinematic and digital history, capturing the sounds, the dialects, and the voices of the people. Bio: Negar Mottahedeh is a professor in the Program in Literature at Duke University. She is a cultural critic and a media theorist. Mottahedeh is the author of four award winning books: Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema (2008); Representing the Unpresentable: Historical Images of National Reform from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic of Iran (2008); #iranelection: Hashtag Solidarity and the Transformation of Online Life (2015); ed. Abdu’lBahá’s Journey West: The Course of Human Solidarity (2013) and the 19 collaborative text After Oil (2016).
Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa Watching Hollywood Movies in Iran and Their Impact Synopsis: During the 1960s and 1970s, when going to the movies was the most popular form of entertainment in Iran, Hollywood dominated the screens. Dubbed-into-Persian films influenced the hearts and minds of the public, especially the youth, and created a colorful, desirable image of America. Bio: Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa is professor of film at the Cinema Art + Science department of Columbia College Chicago. She is also an award-winning filmmaker. Her documentary A Tajik Woman won the 11th AFI/Sony first prize and a jury grand prize at the 20th Annual Festival of Illinois Film & Video Artists in 1995. Her last film, Jerry & Me (2012), won the first prize in nonfiction category from UFVA (University of Film and Video Association.) She has written extensively on Iranian cinema, including a monograph co-authored with Jonathan Rosenbaum on Abbas Kiarostami. She has been the Artistic Consultant of the Festival of Films from Iran 20 at the Gene Siskel Film Center Chicago since 1989.
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Ruth Iskin Posters as Art: Integrating Aesthetics and Function in the Nineteenth Century Synopsis: During the late nineteenth century, the illustrated poster was a new form of communication using color lithography. Although posters were commissioned to function as advertising, critics and collectors recognized them immediately as art. The talk features numerous posters from France, England, and other European nations, as well as the U.S. Bio: Ruth E. Iskin is the author of The Poster: Art, Advertising, Design, and Collecting, 1860s-1900s (Dartmouth Press, 2014), Modern Women and Parisian Consumer Culture in Impressionist Painting (Cambridge University Press 2007), and editor of Reenvisioning the Contemporary Art Canon: Perspectives in a Global World (forthcoming from Routledge). Her articles have appeared in many notable journals, anthologies and museum catalogues, most recently by the Guggenheim, Bilbau. Her work has been translated into Chinese, Czech, Danish, Hebrew and Spanish. Recently she was the Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. She was a member of the faculty of the Department of the Arts, BenGurion University of the Negev till 2013, and currently lectures 21 and teaches in Israel and abroad.
Hamid Dabashi Bio: Hamid Dabashi was born in Ahvaz, Iran. He is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. He has written twenty-five books, edited four, and contributed chapters to many more. He has published on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies and medieval and modern Islam to comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). A selected sample of his writing, The World is my Home: A Hamid Dabashi Reader (Transaction 2010) is coedited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi. He is also the Series Editor of Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic 22 World for Palgrave Macmillan.
Shiva Balaghi Tracing History: Iranian Film Posters from the 1960s and 70s Synopsis: Though an ephemeral art form, film posters are a kind of archive that reveals the intersectionality of cinema and the art world. Focusing on some iconic posters from the 1960s and 70s, one can map a quixotic moment in the history of Iranian visual culture. Hamid Naficy’s rare collection, currently exhibited at the Block Museum, contains traces of the fading lines of Iranian cultural history. Bio: Dr. Shiva Balaghi is an independent scholar and curator. Balaghi was among the first faculty to introduce the subject of Contemporary Middle Eastern Art at U.S. universities, teaching for nearly two decades at NYU and Brown University. Her recent curatorial projects include co-curating a retrospective of Iran’s leading sculptor, Parviz Tanavoli, at Wellesley’s Davis Museum and curating Ghada Amer’s first exhibit in the Arab world in two decades. Balaghi is an editorial correspondent for Ibraaz. She has written widely on visual culture for museum catalogues and publications like Artforum and Canvas. Her books include 23 Picturing Iran: Art, Society, and Revolution.
Rambod Vala To Cinema it May Concern Synopsis: This is a letter to cinema addressing what happened to Iranian movie poster design after the corporatization of this art form – a process in which meeting an international aesthetic defined by Hollywood changed the homegrown aesthetic of Iranian posters. Bio: Rambod Vala is an artist, graphic designer, and educator working with moving images and sound. His early education and practice was as a graphic designer in Tehran, where he is a member of the renowned “Studio Tehran.” After moving to Chicago to pursue his Master of Fine Arts at Northwestern University, where he was awarded a two-year fellowship, he has continued to work with video, installation, and various narrative structures. His work has been exhibited in a multitude of international exhibitions, including the Post-Past exhibition at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. Vala won the prize for typographic excellence at the 2nd Chicago International Poster Biennial in 2010, the Jury award at the 5th China International Poster Biennial in 2011, and The Luminarts Fellowship from Luminarts Cultural Foundation in 24 2016, among others.
Curators Hamid Naficy and Michelle Puetz will moderate the film series and symposium.
Hamid Naficy Professor of Radio-Television-Film and the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Professor in Communication, Hamid Naficy is a leading authority in cultural studies of diaspora, exile, and postcolonial cinemas and media of Iranian and Middle Eastern cinemas. Naficy has published and lectured nationally and internationally, on these and allied topics. His English-language books are: An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking; Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place; The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles; Otherness and the Media: the Ethnography of the Imagined and the Imaged (coedited); and Iran Media Index. His latest work is the award-winning four-volume book A Social History of Iranian Cinema, published in 2011-12. He has also published extensively in Persian, including a two-volume book on documentary cinema theory and history, 25 Film-e Mostanad.
Michelle Puetz Michelle Puetz is the Pick-Laudati Curator of Media Arts at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. She was the 2013-15 Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where she curated a group exhibition titled Body Doubles and solo exhibitions with the artists Lilli CarrĂŠ and Phil Collins. She was the archivist and director of programming at the Chicago Film Archives from 2004-2013. Puetz taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the department of Film, Video, New Media and Animation from 2008-15. She has a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University, and received her PhD in 2012 from the Department of Cinema and 26 Media Studies at the University of Chicago.
Acknowledgments Curators Hamid Naficy Michelle Puetz Curatorial Assistants Simran Bhalla Azadeh Safaeian Graphic Designer Rambod Vala Symposium assistant Molly Schneider The Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art Lisa Corrin, Director Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs Lindsay Bosch, Communications Manager Mark Leonard, Lead Preparator Justin Lintelman, Film Program Coordinator Rebecca Lyon, Head Projectionist Dan Silverstein, Associate Director of Collections and Exhibition Management Liz Warren, Collections and Exhibitions Coordinator The Northwestern University Archives Dan Zellner, Production Coordinator Nicole Finzer, Digital Curation Librarian Kevin Leonard, University Archivist of Distinctive 27 Collections
Co-sponsors • The Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art • Buffett Institute for Global Studies • Center for Global Culture and Communication • Kaplan Institute for the Humanities • The Department of Radio-TVFilm • Screen Cultures Program, • International Studies Program • Middle East and North African Studies Program • Anthropology Department • The Postcolonial Film Fund Students of Professor Naficy’s National Cinema: Iranian Cinema class, Winter 2016, who made presentations on posters of various film genres Stewpot: Kevin Kryah; Weichao Yu; Clark Jennison Tough Guy: Fatima Al Hajri; Piril Dobrucali; Dorothy Kramer Pre-revolution New Wave: Gautier Dagan; Valeria Marinova; Dasha Gorin; Henry Beshar Diaspora: Riza Tolga Ulman; Will Engellenner; Emily Fung Women’s Film: Fallon Schlossner; Alana Rosenbloom; Nicole Bauke Post-revolution Art House: Dominique Teoh; Charles Kieser; Colleen Cassingham; Kerry Driscoll