It is nearly impossible to separate contemporary Iranian cinema from the Islamic revolution that transformed film production in the country in the late 1970s. As the aims of the revolution shifted and hardened once Khomeini took power and as an eight-year war with Iraq dragged on, Iranian filmmakers confronted new restrictions. In the 1990s, however, the Reformist Movement, led by Mohammad Khatami, and the film industry, developed an unlikely partnership that moved audiences away from revolutionary ideas and toward a discourse of reform. In Reform Cinema in Iran, Blake Atwood examines how new industrial and aesthetic practices created a distinct cultural and political style in Iranian film between 1989 and 2007. Atwood analyzes a range of popular, art, and documentary films. He provides new readings of internationally recognized films such as Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (1997) and Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Time for Love (1990), as well as those by Rakhshan Bani, Masud Kiami, and other key Iranian directors. At the same time, he also considers how filmmakers and the film industry were affected by larger political and religious trends that took shape during Mohammad Khatami's presidency (1997-2005). Atwood analyzes political speeches, religious sermons, and newspaper editorials and pays close attention to technological developments, particularly the rise of video, to determine their role in democratizing filmmaking and realizing the goals of political reform. He concludes with a look at the legacy of reform cinema, including films produced under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose neoconservative discourse rejected the policies of reform that preceded him.

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.

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.

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.

In the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iranian society and culture underwent massive changes. Here, Khatereh Sheibani argues that cinema evolved after the national uprising in 1978/79, and ultimately replaced poetry as the dominant form of cultural expression. She presents a comparative analysis of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema as an offshoot of Iranian modernity, and explains its connections with the themes present in traditional Persian poetry and conventional visual arts. She examines the pre-revolutionary film industry - such as Iranian new wave and filmfarsi movies - its styles and themes, and its relation to the emerging cinema after 1978. Sheibani argues that Iranian art cinema, as one of the signifiers and agents of modernity, underwent a cultural revolution by employing the aesthetics of Persian literature and visual arts in a modern context. This is a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on Iranian cinema, politics and culture.

Recent, post-revolutionary Iranian cinema has of course gained the attention of international audiences who have been struck by its powerful, poetic and often explicitly political explorations. Yet mainstream, pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, with a history stretching back to the early twentieth century, has been perceived in the main as lacking in artistic merit and, crucially, as apolitical in content. This highly readable history of Iran as revealed through the full breadth of its cinema re-reads the films themselves to tell the full story of shifting political, economic and social situations. Sadr argues that embedded within even the seemingly least noteworthy of mainstream Iranian films, we find themes and characterisations which reveal the political contexts of their time and which express the ideological underpinnings of a society. Beginning with the introduction of cinema to Iran through the Iranian monarchy, the book covers the broad spectrum of Iran's cinema, offering vivid descriptions of all key films. "Iranian Cinema" looks at recurring themes and tropes, such as the rural versus the 'corrupt' city and, recently, the preponderance of images of childhood, and asks what these have revealed about Iranian society. The author brings the story up to date explaining Iranian filmmaking after the events of September 11, from Mohsen Makhmalbaf's astonishing Kandahar to Saddiq Barmak's angry work Osama, to explore this most recent and breathtaking revival in Iranian cinema.

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.