Kamshad Kooshan

Kamshad Kooshan is an Iranian-American Movie Writer and Director. Iranian-born & Bay Area film director, screenwriter and film producer, Kamshad Kooshan, immigrated to the United States at the age of Sixteen. He has been involved with photography since the age of 12 and has had many exhibitions. Additionally he has directed full length plays in various San Francisco venues and has written and published many short stories, among them, Moonlit Garden, a collection of short stories published by Raha Press. Since graduating from San Francisco State University and studying at American Conservatory of Theater, Kamshad Kooshan has written and directed three short films, with the last one, The Last Illusion touring such venues as American Film Institute and UCLA Film & Television Archive. He has taught at the Graduate Motion Picture & Video department of Academy of Art University in San Francisco for three years. With hard work by Kooshan, in 1998 the screenplay for Surviving Paradise attracted producers & investors and with more than 50 actors went into production in Los Angeles. Upon its completion, after being invited to various international film festivals as an American film, and garnering attention from critiques and the media, it went on a 3 months theatrical run at major American movie theaters, introducing Shohreh Aghdashloo to Hollywood and becoming the first English Language Iranian feature film by an Iranian-American filmmaker to be distributed in movie theaters in North America.