Taghi Amirani - Producer-Director
Taghi Amirani was born in Iran. He read physics at Nottingham University where for his final year project instead of doing something in the lab he made Shades of Black, a documentary about an imaginary journey into a black hole. While completing a postgraduate film and TV course at University of Bristol, he made Mechanics of Love, a low-budget B&W silent comedy. This lame homage to Buster Keaton via Woody Allen landed him his first job at Thames TV as a researcher working on design and technology programmes.
In 1989 he made his debut as a producer director with Earth Calling Basingstoke, a warm quirky look at the extraterrestrial lives of English amateur astronomers. Basingstoke, made for Channel 4's flagship science series Equinox, was received with critical acclaim and launched Taghi as a director. He has since made 35 films, one fiction short, and a handful of commercials.
Taghi has been a jury member at the International Emmys, Royal Television Society, One World Media Awards and Sheffield International Documentary Festival where he's also a member of the Advisory Committee. He writes occasionally for Broadcast Magazine and The Guardian.
In 2006 he ran the New York Marathon and raised $10,000 for the homelessness charity Shelter. In 2009 he was awarded a TED Fellowship followed by a TED Senior Fellowship in 2010.
Taghi lives in London and recently had his bicycle stolen.
Taghi’s Press
"Director Taghi Amirani manages to evoke a truly magical quality in the images he captures, turning the least auspicious ideas into absolute gems.... Intelligent cutting...and a genuine interest in the people he features make Amirani's gentle films presently some of the best on television."
Fiona Morrow Time Out
"I confess to having been skeptical about Taghi Amirani's series when I saw it described on paper because it seemed unlikely that the matter - people's love affairs with machinery - could amply fill the time. It sounded like a set of quirky miniatures that had got ideas above their station. In the event though, the films offer something genuinely unusual on television - a sustained set of ideas running through portraits of very different lives.
Thomas Sutcliffe The Independent
"Amirani has a special feeling for his subjects, which prevents his films from being the least bit patronising. The result is unusual amid the current plethora of heavily ironic documentaries, proving that film-makers don't need gimmicks if they have a sure eye and an open mind."
Fiona Morrow Time Out
"If you're keen to understand how it is that the things we love shape our lives, Taghi Amirani's exquisitely made programme will fill both your eyes and your cuttings bin."
Nicola Barker The Observer
"It's Taghi Amirani's first film and a beauty of its quiet kind"
Hugh Hebert The Guardian
"An eccentric, entrancing, heart-warming film"
Elaine Paterson Time Out
"...while the overall effect is similar to that of a formal exercise in surrealism by Peter Greenaway, the star watchers themselves are presented with respect and affection."
Anne Billson The Times
"It's rare for television cameras to capture such ingenuousness"
Jasper Rees The Times
"Wonderfully buoyant, utterly entrancing. See it."
John Lyttle City Limits
"Taghi Amirani’s film reminded you how in a good documentary the word 'observation' always has a double sense, both the act of watching and an act of commenting."
Thomas Sutcliffe The Independent
"Clever film making by Taghi Amirani ...the strength of this beautifully lit film is that it does not overdo either spookiness or scepticism."
Sean Day-Lewis Sunday Telegraph
"Taghi Amirani's first entrancing film was about amateur astronomers, and Beyond The Barrier is just as good. He has a marvellous eye for what British television loves: individuals with enthusiasm, harmless obsession, and eccentricity - his subjects are not eccentric in any mocking sense but in the sense of ordinary people whose lives seem to run on axis slightly off centre from ours. He is a born miniaturist and they are a valuable, rare, and endangered species."
Hugh Hebert The Guardian
"Video has for too long been treated as the runt brother of film but Chris Morphet's team of cameramen showed what the medium is capable of doing, making stunning use of natural lighting. Dissolves melted on the eyes, while the audio post-dubbing was exceptional, and the entire programme a starred first. Throughout the series, director and producer Taghi Amirani has displayed sensitivity and integrity, currently rare attributes among television makers, the collective noun for whom these days, must surely be a callousness."
Victor Lewis-Smith Evening Standard
“Anyone wanting a clearer picture of the complexities and contradictions that are today’s Iran should tune into this week’s installment of “Wide Angle”, PBS’s weekly series of international documentaries. Red Line and Deadlines, directed by Iranian filmmaker Taghi Amirani, provides an unprecedented look into the Orwellian world of Iranian journalism.
The Wall Street Journal
"The Dispossessed charts the fall of the Taliban from a unique perspective... A remarkable record of how fast-moving events affect ordinary lives. A quietly humane film... powerful and dignified"
The Daily Telegraph
“so understated it transcends eccentricity.... it’s an affectionate film that never sends ordinary people up"
Time Out
