Iranian Cinema Uncensored

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.

Introduction: new Iranian cinema in its cultural, historical and political context --1.Mohammad Beheshti: the role of post-revolutionary institutions in the development of Iranian cinema --2.Bahram Beyzaie: the myth of revolutionary cinema --3.Abbas Kiarostami: where is the revolution? --4.Dariush Mehrjui: Islamic ideology and post-revolutionary intellectual films --5.Bahman Farmanara: exporting new Iranian cinema --6.Rakhshan Bani-Etemad: cinema as a mirror of the urban image --7.Majid Majidi : the revolution and the cleansing of film Farsi --8.Jafar Panahi: cinema and resistance --9.Tahmineh Milani: new Iranian cinema and the education of the masses --10.Ebrahim Hatamikia: cinema, war and peace --11.Mohsen Makhmalbaf: an interview that never was.

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.

As an endeavor to contribute to the burgeoning field of comparative literature, this monograph addresses the dynamic yet understudied "intertextual dialogism" between modern American literature and contemporary Iranian Cinema, pinpointing how the latter appropriates and recontextualizes instances of the former to construct and inculcate vestiges of national/gender identity on the silver screen. Drawing on Louis Montrose’s catchphrase that Cultural Materialism foregrounds "the textuality of history, [and] the historicity of texts", this book contends that literary "texts" are synchronic artifacts prone to myriad intertextual and extra-textual readings and understandings, each historically conditioned. The recontextualization of Herzog, Franny and Zooey, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Death of a Salesman into contemporary Iran provides an intertextual avenue to delineate the textuality of history and the historicity of texts

Iran has undergone considerable social and political upheaval since the revolution and this has been reflected in its cinema. Focusing on the practices of regulation, production and reception of films in Iran, this book explores the politics of Iranian cinema in its post-revolutionary context.

Working at the intersection of religion and ever-shifting political, economic and social environments, Iranian cinema has produced some of the most critically lauded films in the world today. The first volume in the Directory of World Cinema: Iran turned the spotlight on the award-winning cinema of Iran, with particular attention to the major genres and movements, historical turning points and prominent figures that have helped shape it. Considering a wide range of genres, including Film Farsi, New Wave, war film, art house film and women’s cinema, the book was greeted with enthusiasm by film studies scholars, students working on alternative or national cinema and fans and aficionados of Iranian film. Building on the momentum and influence of its predecessor, Directory of World Cinema: Iran 2 will be welcomed by all seeking an up-to-date and comprehensive guide to Iranian cinema.

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2009 in the subject Orientalism / Sinology - Islamic Studies, grade: 85, Ben Gurion University, course: The 1979 Iranian Revolution: A Thirty-Year Perspective, language: English, abstract: An analysis of the recent development of Iranian Cinema should primarily mention its origins and history, especially since Iranian cinema always has been so closely linked to the political circumstances dominating the social reality. Its outset is generally accepted to have begun around 1900, when Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkas Bashi, the official photographer of Muzaffar al-Din Shah, shot the first Iranian documentary.... As Richard Tapper states in his work, The New Iranian Cinema, "both government and religious authorities sought to control the images to be shown publicly." 'Formal censorship' began in the 1920s, when the imported films exhibiting women, sex and amusement dominated the Iranian market. In contrast to this permissive attitude, depicting the political or social reality critically in local productions was taboo. Until the Second World War "nothing worthy of being called 'national cinema'" was produced. In these decades, Iranian films were mainly remakes of foreign works, mainly Indian or Egyptian, and normally they lacked artistic quality. This genre of films is known as "Film Farsi." Along with the development of film comes the history of censorship, which tries to curb the freedom of expression in increasingly institutionalized manners. Indeed, in 1950 a committee for the supervision of locally produced or imported films was established. This might have contributed to the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, next to the import of American and Indian films, only "commercial films" were famous in Iran, whose sole aim was to entertain and to fill the cash tills. In this period too, the censorship worried more about the expression of political opinions than about the demonstration of sex. However, on the edge of mainstream productions s

"Cinema Mihan," means "Homeland Movie Theatre" in Persian, but saying it in an ironic tone in Persian or Farsi, the language in which this book is written, it also means "Spectacular Homeland" too. "Cinema Mihan," written by Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam, a socio-cultural old student and writer, also a professional "cinephile," is not a book on Iranian cinema, nor a book on the history of cinema in Iran, but rather an enterprise, taking Iran's modern history as a movie theatre, where the screen lends itself to numerous sharp and witty notes on social, cultural and political events over three centuries in a country that has never been freed of its devastating Asian feudal structure including an 'up dating' theocracy only with mobile phones and Internet only for arresting and killing all dissidents and dilapidating free lovers... In "Cinema Mihan" there are "trailers" in words of many Iranian cultural, social and political "movies," from "Encounter with Modern Kind" to "Everything You Wanted To Know About The Post Revolution Demographical Explosion of Iranian Film-makers But...," "Why Every Film Festival Must Have An Iranian Winner Too?," "Deep Throats of Foreign Film Producers," "Juliette Binush & Magnificent Abbas Kia-Rostami," "Citizen Golestan," "Trotskyites Who Voted Khomeini and his Islamic Dilapidations." Trailers of "movies" such as "Rossellini in Fascist Italy and Mussolini, as Kia-Rostami, Makhmalbaf, Ja'far Panahi and Others in Islamist Iran and Khomeini...." More "clips" of "Elites & Intellectuals, Hypocrisy & Betrayal," "A King who Wanted To Be A Man" which was shown also under the title of "A King Who Never Was" with a sequel: "An Ever A Virtual Nation," "Yes! Oil Can!," "The Ascend and Fall of A Popular Prime Minister," "Five Hundred Years of Religious Persecutions of Minorities," "How To Convert An Inevitable Fall Into A Fake Revolution..". Many other tips; scenes of "movies" such as "Closely Observed Iranian Films, Propaganda and Censorship." "Cinema Mihan" also has discovered forgotten archive rushes from 'tragic films' such as "Reagan's First Day & Hostages Go Home," "Oil and Nationalism," "1953, The Cheapest Coup d'etat ever made by CIA..".many others. This is really a book on "Movie of Iran." An over ten years personal socio-historical study & research, going beyond the swampy and corrupted Qajar Dynasty, when cinema was introduced to Iranian society, to another bloody and rotten order, that of Safavid, over five centuries ago, when Shia was forced as national religion and when in a French travelogue, one can read: "There were about 12000 tax payer prostitutes in Isfahan of "all Shia Shah Abass time...." A founder member of Iranian Writers Association, Fereydoun Moezi Moghadam has offered a must reading for not only all film-lover Iranians but also for those who are looking for a daring pen on modern social history of this country, this cinema, this Iran.