However, all celebrations are tinged with a little bit of sorrow in place of loved ones on separate continents and in memory of times when we were all together. When Iranians want to say they miss someone, they say “your place is empty.” As in your place at the dinner table – or more broadly, your place in my life.

Here are some excerpts:

What do you hope your film will do for Iranians in Iran and in the U.S.?

Exploring Iranian culture has made me realize how difficult it is to get to the truth about our culture. When talking about Iran, everyone seems to be an activist. This is because so much of the country’s history has been so politically volatile – everyone has a version of the country they wish existed. This, either subconsciously or blatantly shapes how they describe Iran. I hope “People You Think You Know” will get at the truth of what our culture really is.

I don’t think I have any special insight into that – however I think my search will be of some use in inspiring other Iranians to also examine our culture as objectively as possible. As Iran continues to change dramatically, especially since the 2009 election, it is more and more important to know where Iran comes from as we try to shape where it will go. I hope “People You Think You Know” will also be valuable to Americans, as they find their country’s future more and more wrapped up with Iran’s without really understanding the people they are dealing with.

Tell me a little about your background. What was life like for you growing up?

One thing I’ve found interesting in how my family’s coped with moving to the U.S. is looking at how my brother and I have handled the cultural shift differently.

He is five years older than me and so went through some elementary school in Iran. As a result, he’s “more Iranian” than I am because he’d been surrounded in Iranian culture for five more years than me. So when he came to the U.S. and started the 5th grade, it was impossible for him to hide his Iranian-ness from his classmates. And as a way to cope with this strange new world where he felt so different and was treated as such, he decided to flaunt his Iranian identity. Before he learned English, he would simply speak Persian with his classmates. He grew up to make almost exclusively Iranian friends. And has recently moved back to the Middle-East.

For me on the other hand, because it was easier to bury my Iranian identity and because pre-school kids generally don’t care about these things, it seemed wisest to blend into my American surroundings. I’ve always had American friends, listened to American music and generally didn’t talk about Iran outside my parents’ home. Recently, as I began working on this project, I’ve delved more deeply into not only my own relationship to Iran but also Iranian culture as a whole.

How did you get into film making?

My path to becoming interested in documentaries makes a certain amount of sense. In elementary school I wanted to become a newspaper comic-strip artist. That turned into pursuing animation in middle school. In high school I became interested in scripted, fictional movies and finally after film school that turned into documentaries. So basically I’ve always wanted to convey ideas through images and stories.

You refer to your film as “open-ended.” How will you know it’s time to wrap it up and stop shooting? Do you ever plan to stop shooting?

I have two long term goals for “People You Think You Know”: The first objective is to turn it into a feature-length documentary. Releasing short episodes on the website is a way for me to explore my footage and discover what that feature will be like. I will probably stop shooting once I finish the feature-length documentary. Although I also like the idea of continuing to shoot periodically as the years go by…we’ll see.

A more long-term goal is to expand the website to allow for other filmmakers and artists to create content exploring their own cultural backgrounds. Each culture represented could have its own map and visitors to the site could “travel” from one culture to the next to experience intimate portraits of each. If my portion of the site represents Iran, there could be others for China, South Africa, Brazil or Italy. These maps could further overlap and interact with each other in many interesting ways, reflecting and commenting on the interaction of cultures in the real world.

What’s next for you? How do you want to continue to spread your message?

One of the things “People You Think You Know” will address is how differences in culture cause miscommunication between people. On my next project I want to explore the problems arising from miscommunication on a different level: through a documentary about babies. Similar to people from different cultures, babies are like aliens to us. They have no way of expressing to us what’s in their minds. If a baby, who is seeing, hearing and feeling the world for the very first time could speak, what would he or she say? It seems like we know almost nothing about what it is like to be a baby and yet we act so sure about how to raise them. (Kind of like how politicians know nothing about other cultures, yet are convinced they know how to deal with them.) Since babies are quite literally the future, how we decide to raise them says so much about who we are and how we want the world to be.

Of course I have a long way before I finish work on “People You Think You Know.”

Thanks to the folks at Payam Ashena.

Also the director of Dear Mr. Watterson, Joel Schroeder, has generously pledged to People You Think You Know on Kickstarter. Thanks Joel.

As a boy, Alborz’s father would go to sleep listening to the sounds of American jazz broadcast by the Voice of America onto his small transistor radio. Abbass followed that music all the way to the United States in the 1970s where he earned his PhD in chemistry. For nearly every morning since, he has gone to work to support himself and his family – all until the financial crisis of 2009 when he lost his job. A self-described political radical in his youth who left Iran a second time for fear of possible persecution by the newly Islamic government, how has nearly 20 years of work in the pharmaceutical industry changed him? And what is he doing living in ultra-conservative Orange County, California?

My future dad.

Shahin (Alborz’s mother) followed Abbass to the United States, children in tow and little else. Hardly a day goes by that she doesn’t think of the rest of the family she left behind more than twenty years ago. In America she did her best to follow in the footsteps of her older brothers to pursue a career in art, however raising two children hasn’t allowed for things to go exactly as planned…yet. Is it enough that through her sacrifices, her children may be able to reach their goals? She wonders if both she and they would have been better off staying in Iran, close to a large and vibrant familial support system and a culture she understands.

My mom talking to family in Iran.

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These days Alborz’s parents, who came to the U.S. over 20 years ago (in the first large wave of Iranian immigration to the U.S.), find themselves seriously out of place inside the borders of a country hostile to their now tumultuous homeland. The regular pangs of homesickness are coupled with the very immediate fear for the safety of fellow Iranians back in the motherland. Meanwhile, a crumbling U.S. economy has made the original decision to immigrate “for a better life,” an increasingly paradoxical one when their middle-class family in Iran seem to be leading surprisingly comfortable lives financially.

(Watch Majd’s full interview on Bill Maher – from right after the election protests broke out.)

But as soon as the topics of Iranian culture or history come up, things turn conspiratorial and/or depressing. Of course there’s no shortage of bad history to account for this and as I work on the project, I find myself focusing on the sorrowful Iran more often than I’d originally hoped. (See 1, 2, 3, 4.) It’s hard not to; so much of the culture centers around mourning. Everyday sayings use analogies of martyrdom and death. Rumi’s poetry, that paragon of Persian society, is defined by sorrowful longing for a lost love. In an upcoming episode, an immigrant – my mom – longs for a home that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere. (watch a clip below)

Given the Iranian tendency towards melancholy, I was very pleased to come across this wonderful idea from a blogger named “seamorg.”

Seamorg writes:

So if you’re a dancer, or aren’t afraid of people knowing you’re not, please shoot seamorg an email.

The new episode, “memories of a girl from north country,” takes the project in a slightly different direction. One of the original impulses in starting People You Think You Know was to explore how every aspect of our lives make up who we are, and make us ever so slightly (or incredibly) different from everyone else. This way, there are as many cultures on earth as there are people – making us all immigrants in each others’ lives. As I concentrate on my relationship (and the U.S.’s) to Iran, I also intend to take a look at some other case studies in immigration. The newest video entry begins the story of my girlfriend: a traveler from Alaskan winters who finds herself in an unlikely relationship with a boy from a land of pomegranates and the world’s oldest cypress tree.

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To see and read more, find this episode inside the main site.