During his teenage years, Aish was influenced by Iranian cinema’s golden generation — the works of Ebrahim Golestan, Forough Farrokhzad, and Dariush Mehrjui, as well as global auteurs such as Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini. After completing his high school education, he left Iran in the early 1970s, seeking formal training in the arts.
Studies Abroad and Artistic Formation
Farhad Aish’s academic and artistic journey took him first to England and later to the United States, where he initially pursued filmmaking and photography. These disciplines gave him a foundational understanding of image composition, visual rhythm, and cinematic storytelling. However, during his stay in San Francisco, he began to gravitate toward theater, seeing in it a more immediate and human form of artistic expression.
In San Francisco, Washington, Boston, and later Berlin, Aish immersed himself in the experimental theater scene of the 1970s and 1980s. He studied under and collaborated with actors and directors influenced by Stanislavski, Brecht, and Grotowski, learning the rigor of method acting as well as the freedom of physical theater.
