Iranian Cinema

This paper aims to study the imagination of Tehran through 1340s and 1350s Iranian cinema and the main question is that what kind of representation on city was fueled by cinema. This study was conducted based on analysis of four impressive films in these two decades. Two of them are popular movies (Ganje Gharoon and Khater Khah) and the two other (Khesht-o Ayeni and Ragbar) are related to avantgarde cinema. Although they are different in presenting the city in some aspects, the results reveal that both approaches emphasise on the negative aspects of the city and expose latent contradictions in the extreme way.

"Under the Skin of the City"  is an Iranian drama directed by Rakhshan Bani Etemad. This paper draws on the social systems that Under the Skin of the City considers to analyze the dynamics of Iranian society and the interactions among its people. Through such an approach, I will examine to what extent the film reflects upon human reality in interpersonal/intercultural communication.

Majidi’s Baran (2001) is a never-never love story between an Iranian boy and an Afghan girl.
With a sublime lyrical vision and visual artistry, the protagonist's personal journey towards
his final act of self-denial is framed in the much broader context of the Afghan refugee crisis
in Iran. While achieving a fine balance between the romantic sentimentality and a stark
realism, Baran takes us into the microcosmic setting of the Afghan migrant workers in the
Northern Iran. The relationship between two irreconcilable enemies is played out on the
microcosmic level of Lateef’s exchanges with Baran and other Afghan coworkers. He
gradually probes deeper into the miserable existence of the Afghan refugees and gradually
comes out of the kernel of his singular Iranian self. Thus, recurrently, the film addresses the
possibilities that differences should not necessarily be antagonised but can be accommodative
in perpetuating a broader humanism. His leaps are his attempts to evade boundaries between
two antagonistic identities. And by the end of the film, he succeeds in rising beyond any
imposed identity as he achieves a transcendence. Love evades all borders as Lateef's identity
no more remains a local one in embracing the global. The film is all about this journey
(having a spiritual overtone, given to Majidi’s inclination towards Sufism; but this paper does
not go into discussing that). This paper attempts to focus on the themes of identity and
identification and the issue of self and other, chiefly highlighting on the journey of the central
character.
Keywords: Afghan Refugee Crisis, Identity, Self-denial, Transcendence, Allegories.

This book analyzes the changes in the representation of women in Iranian cinema since the 1960s, and investigates the reasons and motives for this. Iranian cinema, both before and after the Islamic Revolution, has been closely monitored by the ruling power, and has been utilized to relay messages and information that comply with the ruling ideology.

However, it was only after the 1979 Revolution and the subsequent legitimization of cinema by the Islamic rule that cinema became widely accessible to the general public. Within this context, this book explores the changing roles of women in film production and their representation in films made between the 1960s and 2000s. Although some aspects of women’s lives became stricter after the revolution, it was in the late 1980s that women took a prominent role both behind and in front of the camera for the first time. It is demonstrated here that such shifts were due to several factors, including factionalism within the Islamic Republic, shifts in the Iranian film industry, and the emergence of a group of highly educated film production teams, in addition to the fuller integration of women into the film industry, which is analyzed in particular detail.

This study explores a number of representative female-centric films, with a focus on their cultural, social and cinematic contexts. Discussing these films with respect to the representation of women, it uses textual analysis as its base methodology. Interviews conducted with filmmakers and people active in the industry also serve to place the films into their historical, social, and political context.

This introduction to my book, Jafar Panahi: Interviews (ed. Todd, Uni Press of Mississippi, 2019), provides a critical overview of second-wave Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi's life and filmmaking career. In it I address certain tendencies in Panahi's cinema, including the influences of neorealism and Abbas Kiarostami, but also his distinctive modernism and politics.

בעבודה  אני אעסוק בסרטי הקולנוע האיראני אשר דנו בתפקיד האישה בתוך החברה האיראנית, בין אם הייתה אם או אחות או אישה ולנתח כיצד מציג הקולנוע האיראני הפוסט-מהפכני את האישה בתוך החברה האיראנית? לעבודה זו נבחר ניתוח דמות האישה בכמה סרטים אשר יוצאו לאור בין השנים 1979- 2015 לבמאים ובמאיות איראניות ואלה שצולמו באיראן לבמאים זרים.

Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Islamic theocratic rule clamped down on cinema perceived to be dissenting.  It was thus incumbent on filmmakers to encode their films by exploiting other and diverse cinematic devices. Abbas Kiarostami’s, Taste of Cherry (1997) is certainly an exercise in this.  Critically employing Taste of Cherry’s conclusion, this essay serves to analyse whether the film’s tone is nihilistic or hopeful. Finally using, the open image the essay will analyse how the film is socio-politically coded.

Iranian filmmakers have long been recognised for creating a vibrant, aesthetically rich cinema whilst working under strict state censorship regulations. As Michelle Langford reveals, many have found indirect, allegorical ways of expressing forbidden topics and issues in their films. But for many, allegory is much more than a foil against haphazardly applied censorship rules. Drawing on a long history of allegorical expression in Persian poetry and the arts, allegory has become an integral part of the poetics of Iranian cinema. Allegory in Iranian Cinema explores the allegorical aesthetics of Iranian cinema, explaining how it has emerged from deep cultural traditions and how it functions as a strategy for both supporting and resisting dominant ideology.
As well as tracing the roots of allegory in Iranian cinema before and after the 1979 revolution, Langford also theorizes this cinematic mode. She draws on a range of cinematic, philosophical and cultural concepts - developed by thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Christian Metz and Vivian Sobchack - to provide a theoretical framework for detailed analyses of films by renowned directors of the pre-and post-revolutionary eras including Masoud Kimiai, Dariush Mehrjui, Ebrahim Golestan, Kamran Shirdel, Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi, Marziyeh Meshkini, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Asghar Farhadi.
Allegory in Iranian Cinema explains how a centuries-old means of expression, interpretation, encoding and decoding becomes, in the hands of Iran's most skilled cineastes, a powerful tool with which to critique and challenge social and cultural norms.
Available 25 July 2019

Shīʿi Islam and the Aesthetics of Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema.
During the last two decades, the Iranian cinematography has been highly acclaimed by film critics all around the world, and Iranian films were showed at all the important international film festivals. This sudden appreciation of Iranian cinema is due to, on the one hand, the humanistic issues it explores – a surprising point of view coming from an Islamic Republic so demonized by the western powers, and, on the other hand, to the unusual aesthetics this cinema displays. In this study I argue that the most valuable contribution of Iranian cinematography to the international art scene is to be found in the field of aesthetics. As some film critics have shown, the emergence of this aesthetics is indebted to the post-revolutionary Iran’s Islamic code of censorship. The aim of the present study is also to show that there is more at the origins of this unusual aesthetics, namely a long tradition of dissimulation and a different kind of mimesis than the Aristotelian one to which the western spectator is used to, a mimesis rooted in the Shīʿa believes and rituals and, more consistently, in the only indigenous drama the Islamic world ever produced, the Shīʿite passion play – Taʿziyeh. I sustain this theory by analysing and contextualising from this point of view some of the most outstanding works of post-revolutionary Iranian cinematography.

This essay argues that the popular but banned Iranian comedy, Marmoulak/The Lizard (Kamal Tabrizi, Iran, 2004) troubles the distinction between Deleuze’s movement- and time-image categories. The essay also compares Deleuze’s work with that of Iranian philosopher Abdolkrim Soroush, arguing that both have in common a philosophy of becoming. Given that The Lizard has been read in the light of Soroush's work, and given that the two philosophers share becoming as a central tenet of their philosophy, the essay suggests that a Deleuzian reading of The Lizard is not inappropriate even though he is, so to speak, from the West and The Lizard is from the Middle East. Indeed, the essay also argues that not only can Deleuze help us to understand The Lizard but that The Lizard can also help us to understand Deleuze - by suggesting, as per a refrain oft-repeated in the film, that there are as many paths to the time-image as there are films in the world.

در این پژوهش سعی شده به مساله ای در رابطه با پوسترهای فیلم دوره ای از تاریخ ایران، از شروع تا پایان جنگ، یعنی از شهریور 1359 تا 1367 پرداخته شود. این مساله، حضور پر رنگ و غالب عنصر نقاشی در این پوسترهاست، تا جایی که بیشتر با نقاشی مواجه هستیم تا گرافیک.

While the cinema of post-revolutionary Iran is internationally acknowledged, the world outside Iran has been ignorant of the Iranian war films that are the subject of this pioneering book. Over 200 Iranian feature films concentrating primarily on fighting and military operations have appeared since the 1980s and the beginning of the war between Iran and Iraq. This book presents a detailed exploration of the 'Sacred Defence cinema' established by Seyed Morteza Avini, a cinema that directly connects this war to the faith and religious belief of volunteer guardians of the revolution. These films remain the primary vehicles of the Islamic state in Iran for the preservation and memorization of the theme of martyrdom. As the distinguished film scholar, Hamid Dabashi writes in his Foreword to the book: 'If national cinemas are predicated on national traumas, in the volume that Pedram Khosronejad has put together we are at the heart of Iranian cinema.' "The eight-year Iran-Iraq war near the end of the 20th century renewed the horrors of the First World War near the start of the century - causing millions of casualties and untold devastation on both sides. It also resulted in a vigorous and dynamic cinematic output in Iran, producing some of the most ardent Islamist political movies, Shii-inflected spiritual films, and original theorization of what constitutes an 'Islamic cinema'. Khosronejad has managed to amass an astute and fascinating anthology - the first in English - that brings together an international roster of scholars to deal with the complexities and varieties of war fiction films, documentaries, television series and auteur directors." Prof. Hamid Naficy Northwestern University

Iranian children’s cinema demonstrates that the concept of childhood and adolescence has been constructed and reconstructed significantly depending on the drastic socio-political changes of contemporary Iranian society in the past five decades. This cultural history is the story of tensions between modernity and tradition. I consider children and childhood as symbols of modernity, yet children seem to be the major victims of modernizing forces. In one decade, they are represented as little adults, while in another, they cry for understanding and tolerance. Iranian children’s cinema portrays young people as agents on a humanist quest for self-identity and freedom, and at the same time, depicted children remain as the voices of change, rebellion, and resilience.

İNEK, Gaav, The Cow, Dariush Mehrjui, 1969 ÖZET Gaav, İran sinemasının en önemli filmlerinden biri olarak kabul edilir. Aynı zamanda film, 'İran yeni dalga' akımının başlangıcı olarak görülür. Film yayımlandıktan sonra 1971 yılında Venedik Film Festivali'nde, 1972 yılında Berlin Film Festivali'nde ödül alarak İran sinemasının uluslararası başarı kazanan ilk filmi oldu. Böylece kendisini ve başarısını İran sinemasının hanesine yazdırmayı başarmıştır. Filmde zamandan ve mekandan daha çok olaylar ve insanlar ön plana çıkar. Film köy halkının bakışlarıyla başlar ve izleyici bu bakışları üzerinde hisseder. Filmde ilk dakikalarda duyulan çıngırak sesi kulaklarda çınlar ve yaşanacak olayların habercisi gibi bir his uyandırır. Film boyunca köye dair verilen ayrıntılar abartıya kaçmadan özenle seçilmiştir. Köy meydanında bulunan havuz bütün yaşananların şahidi gibi filmde karşımıza sık sık çıkar. İzleyici, filmdeki görsellerin kuvvetli olmasından dolayı yaşananların dışında kalamaz ve olayların bir parçası haline gelir. Filmde olayların yaşandığı köy, fakir bir köydür. Ancak odağa alınan yoksulluk olmaz. Filmde sık sık Bolouriler'in (hırsızlar) adı geçer. Ama köy halkı, onlara karşı birlik olarak bu durumun üstesinden gelmeye çalışırlar. Buna rağmen filmi izlerken toplumsal bir sorun olarak bu yoksulluğu görür, hisseder hatta yaşarız… Film en kaba tabirle "Hassan" karakterinin dönüşümünün öyküsüdür. Filmde ineğine çok bağlı olan Hassan'ın ineğinin aniden ölümü üzerine "deliye" dönmesinin hikâyesi anlatılır… Hassan rolünde oynayan Ezzatolah Entezami, rolünü o kadar iyi oynar ki yaşanan olayların sıra dışılığı gerçeğe dönüşür. Hassan'ın dönüşümünün hakkını her sahnede verir. Hassan köyde ineği olan tek kişidir. İneği ile olan ilişkisindeki sıcaklık ve farklılık ilk sahnelerde dikkati çeker. İneğin her ihtiyacına, bakımına kendi koşar ve ilgilenir. Hassan işi için köyde olmadığı bir gün ineği aniden ölür. Hassan'ın ineğine olan bağlılığını bilen köylüler, kendine bir şey yapmasın diye ondan gerçeği gizlerler. Hassan'a ineğinin kaybolduğunu, içlerinden birinin onu bulup getirmeye gittiğini söylemeye karar verirler. İneği görmesin diye de eski bir kuyuya atıp üstünü kapatırlar… Hassan köye döndüğünde ineği ile ilgili söylenen sözlere inanmaz. "Yavaş yavaş" delirmeye ve kendini ölen ineği gibi görmeye başlar. İneği gibi böğürür başını samanlara gömüp beslenir. Ağzına doldurduğu samanları çiğnerken ve ağzındaki ezilmiş otları sarkarken görmek köylüler kadar izleyicileri de etkisi altına alır…Tüm ısrarlara, söylemlere rağmen köylü Hassan'ın durumunu iyileştiremez. Hassan'ın durumu gün geçtikçe daha da kötüye gider. Bunun üzerine şehirdeki hastaneye yürüyerek götürmeye karar verirler. Yolculuk sırasında yağmurun bastırması, Hassan'ın yürümeye direnç göstermesi üzerine; köyün en aklı başında olan, köyün başına gelen belalardan kurtarmaya çalışan İslam'ın "yürü, seni hayvan" deyip ona vurmaya başlaması filmdeki en etkili sahne olarak belirmektedir. Film, hikâyenin görsel dilini etkili bir şekilde kullanmayı başarıyor. Hassan'ın ahırda karanlıklar içinde yaşaması, eşinin, köylünün çaresizliğini, huzursuzluğunu iliklerimize kadar hissedebiliyoruz. Filmde, yerel renkler yoğun biçimde kendini hissettiriyor. Filmde kültürel ve dinsel kodları görmek mümkün. Köyün sosyal yapısındaki rollerini kör göze parmak ajitesine girmeden iyi tahlil eden bir film olmuştur. Alıntı: https://www.birdunyafilm.co/gaav/

The concept of death is unique in Eastern and Western societies. In this chapter, the different realization about death is analyzed through “Taste of Cherry”. Death, which is not an end but regarded as a transition to a new life and a stage, appears in the representations of the film, and the ritualized death of the hero provides a transition to a brand new awakening with its symbolic meanings. The several effects of culture on death are tried to be highlighted in this chapter, which aims to handle the basic practices of death in the Eastern world in the context of Islam.

The Second World War resulted in the death of millions of people, but it had an enormous impact on art. Many new schools and ideas came out from the countless misery and pain, which the whole world carried. Absurdism in theater, Abstract art and Surrealism in painting,

In post-revolutionary Iran, cinema has long been a site of contestation between the Islamic government and filmmakers attempting to resist socio-political and religious censorship of film form and content. In the wake of the Iranian revolution in 1979, strict censorship guidelines were introduced to ensure that films conform to revolutionary values and codes of modesty in line with Islamic law. Between 1979 and the present day, these censorship rules have shifted slightly with the ebbs and flows of Iranian politics, with a perceptible loosening of codes during the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) and the gradual tightening of restrictions again following the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. With the entry of the country into political crisis in 2009 following President Ahmadinejad’s contested re-election and emergence of the Green Wave protest movement, yet another raft of restrictions have been placed on Iran’s film community. These restrictions, which have seen travel bans placed on various filmmakers and actors, the arrest of numerous filmmakers, actors and producers and a 20-year filmmaking ban imposed on prominent director Jafar Panahi, are increasingly designed to control the people with the means and expertise to produce meaningful content, rather than the content itself. Arguably, this is in part a result of the sophisticated practices of allegorical encoding that Iranian filmmakers have developed over more than three decades of censorship and political scrutiny.  Authorities have become increasingly aware of and sensitive to the openness and critical potential of such ‘texts’ and the attendant capacity of audiences to read into them. At the same time, digital and Web 2.0 technologies are enabling filmmakers to connect much more directly with viewers, bypassing the many layers of censorship imposed at all stages of the filmmaking process: production, distribution and exhibition.

Aiming to contribute towards studies of gender in Iranian cinema, this article draws on feminist and masculinities theories to examine representations of gender in the films of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, including his first Academy Award-winning film, A Separation. While most literature on gender in Iranian cinema equates gender with femininity and women, I show that foregrounding men and masculinities in the analysis of Farhadi’s films enhances our understanding of his films’ feminist concerns and of the underlying structures of gender in current Iranian society, as represented in these films. Furthermore, I argue that theories of masculinity can help in expanding the corpus of Iranian feminist cinematography. In current accounts of Iranian feminist cinema, scholars refer to well-known sets of films that mostly feature female leads; however, reading Farhadi’s movies in light of masculinities theories shows that even though the films focus on both men and women, a nuanced feminism has been ever present in his works.

این نوشته مطالعه‌ای در اسناد منتشرنشده سانسور نمایشنامه‌های بهمن فرسی و نظارت ساواک بر اجرای آثار او در سال‌های 1347، 1351، 1352 و 1356 است که رویاروئی کارمندان و ماموران نهادهای نظارتی و امنیتی با آثار او را نشان می‌دهد. هدف از بازخوانی این اسناد نخست، یافتن دلایل حساسیت نهادهای امنیتی و نظارتی به آثار اوست و دوم این‌که سانسورچی‌ها چگونه زبان پیچیده فرسی را برای بالادستی‌های خود تفسیر می‌کردند تا سانسور آثار او را تسهیل و توجیه کنند. در نهایت با مطالعه متن اسناد در می‌یابیم که نقد و نگاه جلال آل‌احمد بر آثار فرسی، چگونه ابرازهائی برای سانسور او فراهم می‌کند. البته این هرگز به معنای همدستی آل‌احمد با دستگاه سانسور نیست، بلکه نشان از تاثیر دیدگاه او بر کارمندان و سانسورچی‌ها است. در واقع نگرش آل‌احمد به پیچیدگی‌های زبانی آثار فرسی، ضمن انتقاد رادیکال از سانسور، ناخواسته ابزارهائی هم برای سانسور آثار او در اختیار دستگاه‌های نظارتی فراهم می‌کند

To organise the mise-en-scène is also to organise what is not to be seen, a process of selection and arrangement as much as a process of reduction and omission. In Abbas Kiarostami’s films, which always involve a complex interplay between sound and image, the mise-en-scène often emphasises an absence, where what is missing takes on equal or greater importance to what is shown. Through an analysis of the opening sequence of The Wind Will Carry Us, this paper considers how the director uses offscreen space to mount a reflexive critique of his own role as a filmmaker.

Convenors
Prof. Roy Dilley (Head of Department of Social Anthropology, University of St. Andrews)
Dr. Pedram Khosronejad (Department of Social Anthropology and Research Fellow in The Institute for Iranian Studies, University of St. Andrews).

13-16 June 2008 (conference and film season), 5-18 June 2008 (exhibition)
University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland.
A conference, film season and photographic exhibition that aim to interpret and theorise visual representations of Iran in ethnographic, documentary and feature films, as well as other visual art forms.
Presented by

The Department of Social Anthropology, the Institute for Iranian Studies and the Centre for Film Studies of the University of St. Andrews and the Iran Heritage Foundation
with the support of:
Centro Incontri Umani, Documentary & Experimental Film Center, Documentary Filmmakers Society, Farabi Cinema Foundation, Houtan Scholarship Foundation, Iran Cultural Heritage Organisation, Iranian Young Cinema Society, Bank Julius Baer, Ravayat-e Fath Institute, Visual Media Institute, Young Filmmaker House.


Summary

In recent years, there has been a steady growth in, and global recognition of, the innovative qualities of Iranian cinema and visual arts. Yet, at the same time, Iran occupies an ambiguous place in the imagination of the West. As a field of academic inquiry, contemporary Visual Anthropology opens up a range of possibilities for examining the ambiguities that surround the imaginations and representations of Iran. Drawing from the broad spectrum of theoretical approaches that span the poetics and practice of filmmaking, photography as well as the art and politics of representation, Visual Anthropology poses a series of questions that may be the basis for dialogue and debate over images of Iran between scholars from a variety of disciplines. A four day programme will investigate these issues within the context of a conference, a film season and a photographic exhibition (the exhibition will remain on view after the conclusion of the four day programme).

This course will introduce students to one of the most critically acclaimed cinemas in the world today, that is, Post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema, through the thematic lens of gender, sexuality, and diversity. During the semester, the students will watch and practice reading critically a wide variety of films by both world-renowned and new directors from Iran and the Iranian diaspora, focusing on the films' representations, constructions, and contestations of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, religion, ability, and bodily normativity. Film screenings, class lectures and discussions, post-screening mini-quizzes, and pertinent readings (on Iranian cinema, society, and culture and on critical diversity studies) will provide the students with the conceptual tools and the skill set required to complete their major group assignment. Despite the course's focus on the post-revolutionary era, and in order to provide sufficient context, the course will begin with an overview of Iranian cinema from its inception to the 1979 Revolution. The course argues that despite all sociocultural and political challenges and restraints, an ever-growing thread of filmmakers within the Post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema has been effectively foregrounding and tackling vital issues concerning social and gender democracy in Iran. Importantly, these filmmakers voice no unified perspective, but a variety of perspectives, on the questions of gender, sexuality, and diversity. (Note: This course presumes no prior knowledge of Iranian cinema/culture or gender and sexuality studies on the part of the students.)

In the total darkness, poetry is still there,
and it is there for you.
Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016)


The work of mourning involves an interiorization of the one who has passed away, a turning of the dead to an appropriated image. Derrida thus reminds us of the ethics of an impossible mourning in which the dead remains within and at the same time beyond us. The gaze of the dead addresses us from within but remains unappropriated. 

In 2016, world cinema lost Abbas Kiarostami (1940-2016), one of its most influential auteurs—a filmmaker who has been credited as one of the poets of cinema in the twentieth century, along with Ozu, Rossellini, and Tarkovsky. With the impossible mourning and unassimilable gaze of Kiarostami in mind, this panel invites contributions that reflect on his rich cinematic legacy and, more broadly, on the relation between cinema and poetry. What is the border, if any, between the so-called poetry and prose cinema? What are the limits and potentials of thinking cinema through linguistic terms? Whither poetic cinema in the 21st century?

Interested participants are invited to share their thoughts along the following lines:



• The Ends of the Poem / The Ends of Cinema
• Rethinking Pasolini’s “Cinema of Poetry”
• Poetic Gaze/Cinematic Gaze
• Intersemiotic Translation between Poetry and Cinema
• Impossible Mourning between Poetry and Cinema
• Poetic Critiques of Sovereignty and the Question of Cinematic Life (and Nothing More)
• Poetic Indeterminacy and Cinema
• Rhythm and Poetic Temporality in Cinema
• Experimental Cinema and Poetic Techniques
• Poetry and the New Wave Cinemas across the World
• Modernist Poetry and Cinema
• Digital Technology and Poetic Cinema
• Kiarostami’s Legacy in Iran and Beyond

While contributions in dialogue with Kiarostami’s cinema are encouraged, works invoking other filmmakers and poets are welcome as well.