Matt Dembicki was a finalist for the Small Press Expo’s minicomics award last year for Xoc, his comic about the life of a shark. Matt’s also one of the founders of the D.C. Conspiracy comics collective and in 2007 had a story in Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened (edited by Jason Rodriguez), an anthology of comics stories inspired by jottings found on old postcards. Matt also has a new book on American Indians coming out next month.

Washington City Paper: What type of comic work or cartooning do you do?

Matt Dembicki: I do a wide variety of comic books, from horror to anthropomorphic science fiction, but over the past few years my longer projects have focused more on fictional ecological stories with animal characters.

WCP: When (within a decade is fine) and where were you born?

MD: I was born in Hartford, Conn., in 1970.

WCP: Why are you in Washington now?  What neighborhood or area do you live in?

MD: I moved to D.C. from Connecticut in 1992 for a job (I’m a journalist/editor by trade and this city is a hub for those jobs). My family and I live in Fairfax, Va., but I commute to work in Dupont Circle.

WCP: What is your training and/or education in cartooning?

MD: I’ve had no formal cartooning training. I took a few art classes in high school and art appreciation classes in college. Otherwise, I’m self-taught.

Read More “Meet a Local Cartoonist: A Chat with Matt Dembicki” »

The Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami has long blurred fiction and reality—in his films, it’s never clear what reflects the real world and what’s been plucked from the director’s interior universe. A subset of such ambiguity is Kiarostami’s interest in art, its intent, and how it affects us. His 1997 film Taste of Cherry ended with a shot of Kiarostami and his crew…filming Taste of Cherry. In his 2008 film Shirin, he instead fixates on the audience. Showing as part of this year’s Iranian Film Festival, it observes the faces of more than 100 Iranian actresses—and Juliette Binoche—as they watch a film of a nearly millennium-old Persian tale. —Jonathan L. Fischer

Read the full City Lights pick here; screening details after the jump:

Read More “Tonight in Film: Kiarostami’s Shirin at the Freer” »