Interview | Hamid Rahmanian on Building Persian Culture, One Story at a Time
Learn Persian with Chai and ConversationShow Notes
In this episode, Leyla sits down with Hamid Rahmanian — the Iranian-American artist, filmmaker, and visionary behind some of the most ambitious Shahnameh projects of our time, including the illustrated Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings, the touring live productions Feathers of Fire and Song of the North, and most recently Rostam: Tales from the Shahnameh, a beautifully illustrated edition for younger readers. Hamid takes us back to his childhood in Tehran, where he grew up in a traditional family with no exposure to the arts — not knowing that art school even existed until he was nineteen. He shares the moment Pink Floyd changed his life, the exam that nearly sent him to the front lines of the Iran-Iraq war, and the Saadi poem that pushed him to leave his successful Tehran design firm at the height of his career to start over in New York. The conversation traces his unlikely path through Pratt Institute, Disney Animation (which he begged to be laid off from), early documentary films exploring Iranian identity, and his eventual partnership with his wife Melissa — whose simple challenge, "Why don't you just do it?", sparked what would become nearly two decades of work bringing the Shahnameh to global audiences. Hamid speaks honestly about the economics of cultural work that doesn't fit easily into grants or markets, why he refuses to make art for elites or museums, and what he's learned about the Iranian diaspora's complicated relationship with its own culture. He shares why he believes culture, not politics, is what endures — and why building it requires us to show up, spend money, and participate, rather than scroll past. It's a generous, funny, and often pointed conversation with someone who has spent his life proving that Persian stories belong on every table, in every classroom, in every home — and that the people best positioned to make that happen are us.
Related Links Hamid Rahmanian's official site — kingorama.com (note: I wasn't able to verify the exact URL spelling — Hamid mentions it in the interview as "Kingarama" but this should be confirmed before publishing) Hamid's instagram- https://www.instagram.com/hamidinperson/ Rostam: Tales from the Shahnameh — the new illustrated edition, available at his site (this is the book Leyla is giving away in the episode) Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings — the complete illustrated edition referenced throughout Feathers of Fire — the touring live production (full video viewable on his site) Song of the North — the second major live production, which toured over 100 times Tragedy of Siyāvash — his newest live production, just finished The Glass House — his 2008 documentary about a charity center for troubled teenage girls in Tehran Sir Alfred of Charles de Gaulle Airport — his documentary about Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the Iranian who lived in the Paris airport Saadi's Golestan — the source of the poem (tang-cheshmān nazar be meeve konand, mā tamāshā-konāne bostāni) that changed Hamid's life Ja'far Mahjoob — the Shahnameh scholar whose recordings ignited Hamid's love for the epic Zeffirelli's Don Giovanni at the Met — the production that convinced Hamid to stay in New York
More from Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation
In this episode, Leyla sits down with Ali Banisadr, the Tehran-born, New York–based painter whose work hangs in museum collections around the world. His exhibition Temple of the Mind at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (on view through November 8, 2026) is the museum's first-ever artist intervention in its collection. Ali's paintings are hung throughout the galleries in conversation with Gorky, Rothko, Bacon, Max Ernst, Chadwick and Giacometti, and the show ends with his largest painting, Return to Mother, beside a Rothko. Ali explains how the show came about. He talks about the Hemicycle Gallery he filled with works pulled from the museum's storage, along with pages from his notebooks and the five records he listens to in his studio. He also explains the title Return to Mother, which comes from ama-gi, the ancient Sumerian word for freedom. Then the conversation goes back to Ali's childhood in Tehran during the Iran–Iraq War, when he experienced the air raids mostly as sound and vibration from the basement and made drawings of whole worlds to understand them. Years later, in art school in New York, his teachers noticed how often he described his paintings in terms of sound. That's how he learned the word for what he'd always had: synesthesia. He hears images and sees music, and he paints by tuning the "notes" of a canvas until they become an orchestra. Ali also talks about arriving in San Diego at twelve with no English, finding belonging in mid-'90s hip hop and San Francisco graffiti culture, and the Greyhound trip to New York that convinced him to become an artist. He talks about his mother, a psychologist who introduced him to Jung and archetypes, and his grandmother, a poet who read him Hafez and Rumi. He says the structure of Persian Sufi poetry, with its metaphor, concealment and slow revelation, is still how he thinks about every painting. Along the way, he shares the four pillars behind all his work (personal history, art history, current events and the cosmos), his two-notebook research practice, meditation and Kepler's "music of the spheres," and why he thinks of his paintings as Trojan horses that keep opening long after you walk away. He closes with a line about what an Iranian American artist can be: someone who carries Iran and the whole history of images, making work from the place where they meet and transform one another. See Temple of the Mind at Buffalo AKG (through Nov 8, 2026): https://buffaloakg.org Talisman: Carte Blanche to Ali Banisadr, Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris (through Nov 7, 2026): https://ropac.net/news/3072-talisman-carte-blanche-to-ali-banisadr/ Talisman at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais (through Oct 10, 2026): https://ropac.net/exhibitions/801-ali-banisadr-talisman/ Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/tA5iG-lKxXk Ali's website: https://alibanisadr.com
In the fifth and final part of our discussion of Attar's Conference of the Birds, Leyla is joined by Omid Arabian of the YOUniversal Center for the poem's climax, as the thirty surviving birds finally reach the Simorgh and discover, through Attar's wordplay on see morgh and seemorgh, that the sovereign they sought all along was themselves. For the full lesson — including the guide, the Persian text, and a printable version — visit https://chaiandconversation.com/culture/attars-conference-of-the-birds-part-5
In the fourth part of our discussion of Attar's Conference of the Birds, Leyla is joined by Omid Arabian of the YOUniversal Center as the birds set out in dread on a road no one has ever returned from — and after a lifetime of travel, only one in a thousand arrives. For the full lesson — including the guide, the Persian text, and a printable version — visit https://chaiandconversation.com/culture/attars-conference-of-the-birds-part-4
In the third part of our discussion of Attar's Conference of the Birds, Leyla is joined by Omid Arabian of the YOUniversal Center as hundreds of thousands of birds set out on the road — only to falter at the edge of the wilderness — and the Hoopoe lays out the seven valleys that lie between them and the Simorgh. For the full lesson — including the guide, the Persian text, and a printable version — visit https://chaiandconversation.com/culture/attars-conference-of-the-birds-part-3
In the second part of our discussion of Attar's Conference of the Birds, Leyla is joined by Omid Arabian of the YOUniversal Center as the Hoopoe finally names the king the birds have been seeking — the Simorgh, near to them though they are far from it — and warns them how long the road ahead will be. For the full lesson — including the guide, the Persian text, and a printable version — visit https://chaiandconversation.com/culture/attars-conference-of-the-birds-part-2