Counter-Memories in Iranian Cinema
Title | Counter-Memories in Iranian Cinema PDF eBook |
Author | Matthias Wittmann |
Publisher | EUP |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2023-08-31 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9781474479769 |
Reassesses the post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema from a new mnemo-political perspective.
Popular Iranian Cinema before the Revolution
Title | Popular Iranian Cinema before the Revolution PDF eBook |
Author | Pedram Partovi |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 389 |
Release | 2017-07-14 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1315385600 |
Critics and academics have generally dismissed the commercial productions of the late Pahlavi era, best known for their songs and melodramatic plots, as shallow, derivative ‘entertainment’. Instead, they have concentrated on the more recent internationally acclaimed art films, claiming that these constitute Iranian ‘national' cinema, despite few Iranians having seen them. Film discourse, and even fan talk, have long attempted to marginalize the mainstream releases of the 1960s and 1970s with the moniker filmfarsi, ironically asserting that such popular favorites were culturally inauthentic. This book challenges the idea that filmfarsi is detached from the past and present of Iranians. Far from being escapist Hollywood fare merely translated into Persian, it claims that the better films of this supposed genre must be taken as both a subject of, and source for, modern Iranian history. It argues that they have an appeal that relies on their ability to rearticulate traditional courtly and religious ideas and forms to problematize in unexpectedly complex and sophisticated ways the modernist agenda that secular nationalist elites wished to impose on their viewers. Taken seriously, these films raise questions about standard treatments of Iran's modern history. By writing popular films into Iranian history, this book advocates both a fresh approach to the study of Iranian cinema, as well as a rethinking of the modernity/tradition binary that has organized the historiography of the recent past. It will appeal to those interested in Iranian cinema, Iranian history and culture, and, more broadly, readers dissatisfied with a dichotomous approach to modernity.
Poetic Cinema
Title | Poetic Cinema PDF eBook |
Author | Proshot Kalami |
Publisher | |
Pages | 166 |
Release | 2008 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Displaced Allegories
Title | Displaced Allegories PDF eBook |
Author | Negar Mottahedeh |
Publisher | Duke University Press |
Pages | 217 |
Release | 2008-11-14 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 0822381192 |
Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iran’s film industry, in conforming to the Islamic Republic’s system of modesty, had to ensure that women on-screen were veiled from the view of men. This prevented Iranian filmmakers from making use of the desiring gaze, a staple cinematic system of looking. In Displaced Allegories Negar Mottahedeh shows that post-Revolutionary Iranian filmmakers were forced to create a new visual language for conveying meaning to audiences. She argues that the Iranian film industry found creative ground not in the negation of government regulations but in the camera’s adoption of the modest, averted gaze. In the process, the filmic techniques and cinematic technologies were gendered as feminine and the national cinema was produced as a woman’s cinema. Mottahedeh asserts that, in response to the prohibitions against the desiring look, a new narrative cinema emerged as the displaced allegory of the constraints on the post-Revolutionary Iranian film industry. Allegorical commentary was not developed in the explicit content of cinematic narratives but through formal innovations. Offering close readings of the work of the nationally popular and internationally renowned Iranian auteurs Bahram Bayza’i, Abbas Kiarostami, and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Mottahedeh illuminates the formal codes and conventions of post-Revolutionary Iranian films. She insists that such analyses of cinema’s visual codes and conventions are crucial to the study of international film. As Mottahedeh points out, the discipline of film studies has traditionally seen film as a medium that communicates globally because of its dependence on a (Hollywood) visual language assumed to be universal and legible across national boundaries. Displaced Allegories demonstrates that visual language is not necessarily universal; it is sometimes deeply informed by national culture and politics.
Iranian Cinema Uncensored
Title | Iranian Cinema Uncensored PDF eBook |
Author | Shiva Rahbaran |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Pages | 288 |
Release | 2015-12-18 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 0857728296 |
The New Iranian Cinema is considered by many to be the most fascinating cultural phenomenon produced within the Islamic Republic of Iran. Containing twelve first-hand interviews with the most renowned film-makers living and working in contemporary Iran, this book provides insights into film-making within a society often at odds with its rulers. Reflecting upon the 1979 revolution and its influence on their work, as well as the effect of their films on Iranian audiences, film-makers such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi highlight the key issues surrounding the reception of Iranian cinema in the West and also its role in the development of Iran's global image. Through these conversations Shiva Rahbaran reveals that the seeds of the New Iranian Cinema were sown long before the revolution, and that Iranian film-makers gave rise to a cinema which became a global phenomenon despite censorship, sanctions and political isolation.
Iranian Cinema and the Islamic Revolution
Title | Iranian Cinema and the Islamic Revolution PDF eBook |
Author | Shahla Mirbakhtyar |
Publisher | McFarland |
Pages | 211 |
Release | 2015-02-18 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 1476609837 |
In spite of international award-winning productions, Iran's cinema is underexposed. Because of the prevailing religious, political and social atmosphere in Iran, the country's cinema remained stagnant for more than 50 years. Although the "new" Iranian cinema had begun to develop before the 1979 revolution, the political changes gave rise to a new wave of expression. This volume examines the two waves of modern Iranian cinema: before and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The first began about 1969, and the second started in 1984 and carried its momentum through 1997. Topics discussed include the effect of cultural mores on cinematic growth, the development of Iranian cinema as a reaction against commercial cinema and the effect of politics on the film industry. Foreign influence (largely American and Indian) on Iranian films is also examined. Critical sources used are primarily Persian to give the reader a culturally inclusive view of each production. Specific films discussed include Fickle, The Cow, Mud-brick and Mirror, Captain Khorshid and Downpour. A chapter-by-chapter filmography is included.
ReFocus: the Films of Rakhshan Banietemad
Title | ReFocus: the Films of Rakhshan Banietemad PDF eBook |
Author | Maryam Ghorbankarimi |
Publisher | EUP |
Pages | 264 |
Release | 2023-02-28 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9781474477628 |
This book, the first English language study of her films and career, Iranian director Rakhshan Banietemad contains chapters by some of the most prominent scholars of Iranian cinema, as well as younger scholars with fresh points of view.