Anvar Hassanpour
Pronouns: He/Him
Lecturer
Television, Film, and New Media
School of Theatre, Television, and Film
College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts
SDSU
Primary Email: [email protected]
Bio
Anvar Hassanpour teaches courses in the Department of Theater, Television, and Film at San Diego State University as well as in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. His teaching focuses on cinema studies, film theory, and critical film theory and production, with an emphasis on the political economy of cinema and the ways film both reflects and shapes broader social and historical conditions.
In addition to teaching, Anvar is an independent Kurdish filmmaker with more than two decades of experience producing documentaries, experimental works, film essays, and narrative films. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus on directing fiction film and an MFA in Documentary Media from Northwestern University. Currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication at UC San Diego, his research draws on the methodology of historical materialism to analyze the concept of totality in film production and its impact on both the form and content of cinematic works. His filmmaking practice and scholarship are deeply informed by questions of displacement, cultural memory, and collective struggle, as well as by a critical examination of the influence of capitalism and colonialism on global cinema.
Areas of Specialization
Political economy of film and media, critical film studies and practice, “totality” in film and media production, decolonizing film practice, documentary films
Languages
Kurdish, Persian, Turkish