Babak and Friends - A First Norooz is a direct-to-DVD animated film by Norooz Productions, later renamed Big Bad Boo Studios. The 33-minute animated cartoon was released in 2005. [1] The film was made to teach children about the Persian New Year Norooz, celebrating the coming of spring and is about a little boy named Babak who is stuck between being Iranian and being American. Through a dream and magical visit by Amoo norooz, Babak learns to be proud of his heritage and celebrates the New Year with his family.
The movie was produced by Aly Jetha, Shabnam Rezaei, Matt Hullum, Dustin Ellis, and Mastaneh Moghadam, and written and directed by Dustin Ellis. It included the voices of oscar-nominee Shohreh Aghdashloo, Parviz Sayyad, Ali Pourtash and Catherine Bell. It was the first time the character of Amoo Norooz was animated in Iranian history. The movie was produced in both English and Persian as a language-learning tool for Iranian-American children.
Babak and Friends - A First Norooz first screened in the Soho Apple Store Theatre and subsequently in other Apple stores and various museums such as Asia Society and The British Museum. The producers used this and other channels such as film festivals and Amazon to gain traction for distribution. [2]
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor. As one of the key actors in the formation of New Hollywood, Hoffman is known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and emotionally vulnerable characters. He is the recipient of numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. Hoffman has received numerous honors, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1997, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1999, and the Kennedy Center Honors Award in 2012. Actor Robert De Niro has described him as "an actor with the everyman's face who embodied the heartbreakingly human".
Adam Richard Sandler is an American comedian and actor. Primarily a comedic leading actor in film and television, his accolades include nominations for three Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2023, Sandler was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. A cultural icon of Generation X, Sandler became a staple of American comedy, television, and film in the waning years of the 20th century.
Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live-action programming for television from 1963 until 1989. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1962. Filmation's founders and principal producers were Lou Scheimer, Hal Sutherland and Norm Prescott.
Jonathan Kolia Favreau is an American filmmaker and actor. As an actor, Favreau has appeared in films such as Rudy (1993), PCU (1994), Swingers (1996), Very Bad Things (1998), Deep Impact (1998), The Replacements (2000), Daredevil (2003), The Break-Up (2006), Four Christmases (2008), Couples Retreat (2009), I Love You, Man (2009), People Like Us (2012), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Chef (2014), and several films created by Marvel Studios.
The cinema of Iran, or of Persia, refers to the film industry in Iran. Particularly Iranian art films have garnered international recognition. Iranian films are usually written and spoken in the Persian language.
Gholamreza Takhti was an Iranian freestyle wrestler and varzesh-e bastani practitioner. He was a gold medalist at the 1956 Summer Olympics, 1958 Asian Games, 1959 World Championships, and 1961 World Championships, as well as a three-time Pahlevan of Iran. Popularly nicknamed Jahân Pahlevân because of his chivalrous behavior and sportsmanship, he was the most popular athlete of Iran in the 20th century, although dozens of Iranian athletes have won more international medals than he did. Takhti is still a hero to many Iranians. He is listed in the UWW Hall of Fame.
ImageMovers (IM), is an American production company which produces CGI animation, motion-capture, live-action films and television shows. The company is known for producing such films as Cast Away (2000), What Lies Beneath (2000), The Polar Express (2004), Monster House (2006), and Beowulf (2007). From 2007 to 2011, The Walt Disney Company and ImageMovers founded a joint venture animation facility known as ImageMovers Digital which produced two motion-captured CGI-animated films: A Christmas Carol (2009) and Mars Needs Moms (2011) for Walt Disney Pictures, neither of which were financially successful.
Masoud Jafari Jozani is an Iranian film director, screenwriter and producer. He has received an award for the best short film at the Fajr International Film Festival. In the Wind's Eye is one of Jafari Jozani's most notable works, which he directed and wrote. This TV series In the Wind's Eye was the first Iranian film to be shot in the United States since the Iranian Revolution (1979) and one of the most expensive films in the history of Iran, with a budget of $12 million.
Parviz Sayyad is an Iranian-born American celebrated actor, director, translator, and screenwriter of Iranian cinema. He was one of the earliest television stars in Iran.
Charles Peckham Day is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and podcaster. He is best known for playing Charlie Kelly on the FX comedy It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005–present), which he co-created with Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton, and of which he is also a writer and an executive producer. In 2011, he was nominated for a Critics' Choice Television Award and a Satellite Award for the role. He subsequently co-created the Fox sitcom The Cool Kids (2018–2019) with Paul Fruchbom and the Apple TV+ comedy Mythic Quest (2020–present) with Rob McElhenney and Megan Ganz, and continues to executive-produce the latter.
In parallel to what happened in other Soviet republics, a cinema of Tajikistan was promoted by the Soviet state, and declined in the first years after the independence, before being revitalized through the efforts of the new government.
Strawberry Shortcake is a cartoon character used in greeting cards published by American Greetings. The line was later expanded to include dolls, posters, and other products featuring the character and an extended cast of friends and pets. In addition, the franchise has spawned television specials, animated television series and films. The franchise is currently owned by the Canadian children's television company WildBrain through the holding company Shortcake IP Holdings LLC.
Morteza Najafipoor Moghaddam, better known as Shahin Najafi, is an Iranian musician, singer, composer, poet, author, and political activist.
Ali Pourtash is an actor and comedian of Iranian cinema. Having worked in numerous plays, films, TV shows and stage productions in Tehran and in Los Angeles Pourtash was most recently seen in the 2008 film The Stoning of Soraya M. directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh. Other notable roles include the role of Haji firouz, the comedic side-kick to Amoo norooz in the classic holiday special Babak and Friends - A First Norooz.
Mixed Nutz is a Canadian animated cartoon series produced by Big Bad Boo Studios. The show is about a group of friends from different backgrounds in a fictional town called Dyvercity. The main characters are Babak from Iran, Sanjay from India, Adele from Austria, Damaris from Cuba and Jae from Korea. The show has been referred to as "International" Peanuts for the simplicity of the animation style and its multicultural angle.
Big Bad Boo is a Canadian production company that specializes in animated series for television as well as games, apps, websites and curriculum development. Popular TV series are 16 Hudson, based on the miniseries Lili & Lola and musical series ABC with Kenny G, which is also spinoff.
The Bright Day is a 2013 Iranian social drama film directed by Hossein Shahabi.
Winnie the Pooh is a media franchise produced by The Walt Disney Company, based on A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard's stories featuring Winnie-the-Pooh. It started in 1966 with the theatrical release of the short Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.
Tehran Taboo is a 2017 Persian-language German-Austrian animated romance film directed by Ali Soozandeh.
The Night is a 2020 psychological horror-thriller film directed by Kourosh Ahari in his directorial debut. It is a co-production between Iran and the United States, starring Shahab Hosseini, Niousha Noor, Leah Oganyan, and George Maguire. The film centers on an Iranian couple living in the United States, who are imprisoned in a Los Angeles hotel.