Download or read book Shi i Islam in Iranian Cinema written by Nacim Pak-Shiraz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1999-07-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years there has been a remarkable surge in Iranian films expressing contentious issues which would otherwise be very difficult to discuss publicly inside the Islamic Republic of Iran - such as the role of clergy in Iranian society. Nacim Pak-Shiraz here highlights how many Iranian film directors concern themselves with the content of the religious and historical narratives of culture and society, sparking debate about the medium's compatibility or incongruity with religion and spirituality. She explores the various ways that Shi'i discourse emerges on screen, and offers groundbreaking insights into both the role of film in Iranian culture and society, and how it has become a medium for exploring what it means to be Iranian and Muslim after thirty years of Islamic rule. This is invaluable reading students and scholars of Film Studies and contemporary Iranian cinema, but also of the culture and identity of Iran more widely.

Download or read book Shi ism and Film written by Nacim Pak and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What constitutes a serious engagement of religion and spirituality in film remains a contentious topic in Western academia. The small body of literature dedicated to the study of religion and spirituality in Iranian cinema focuses largely on propaganda films exalting the Islamic Republic and its aspirations. My research examines ways in which other films participate and engage with Shi'i expressions of Islam. I have explored official and popular discourses within Shi'ism, and applied a philosophical framework to understand other engagements of film with religion. Moreover, I have situated the films I study within the larger socio-historical context of Iran and thereby located filmic discourses within a much longer-standing and continuing discourse on religion and spirituality in Iranian cinema. I study the various debates by Iranian academics, clerics and critics on film's compatibility or incongruity with religion and spirituality, and examine their relevance to the study of religion and spirituality in Iranian cinema. I examine films that debate contemporary official and formalistic religious discourses, drawing parallels between these films and the discourses of Iranian intellectuals, and thereby situating them within these wider debates. In order to demonstrate the more mystical approaches within Shi'a Islam, I explore how Majidi's films lend themselves to Sufi interpretations. I also analyse how Kiarostami's films are poetic philosophies that invite viewers to rethink their existing ideas, thoughts and beliefs, be they rooted in scientific or theological approaches to religion. Finally, I demonstrate how cinema acts as a reservoir for popular, yet threatened traditions such as ta 'ziyeh, which faces increased pressure from both intellectuals and clerics. As a medium that has received little serious attention in the analysis and understanding of Shi'i religious expressions and articulations, my study situates film as a valid and important tool in understanding many of the current debates within Iran.

Download or read book Popular Iranian Cinema before the Revolution written by Pedram Partovi and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The development of Iranian cinema after the Islamic Revolution written by Sophie Duhnkrack and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-05-28 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 slowly evolved few other interesting and formative films. “1969 is generally agreed to mark the birth of Iranian art cinema, called the New Wave.” In the following period various films were successfully presented to international film festivals. However, from its beginning on, the evolution of Iranian cinema was constantly accompanied by a consistent religious opposition. Through the lens of many Iranian clerics, films were immoral. They denounced cinema as a tool to access corrupt western influence into Iran. This suspicion and aversion against cinema, which was deep-rooted in many Iranian clergymen found later on as well expression in the Islamic Republic.

Download or read book Iranian Cinema and the Islamic Revolution written by Shahla Mirbakhtyar and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-02-18 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Iranian Cinema Uncensored written by Shiva Rahbaran and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-12-18 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Shi a Islamist Regime s Propaganda Machine in Iran written by Majid Mohammadi and published by Dan & Mo Publishers. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All news agencies, major newspapers, widely visited news websites, major film production companies, major publishing houses, and most of the theatres and libraries in Iran are state-owned, state-run, or state-sponsored structures. In this book, you will find facts and reports on Iranian culture and art that no one has disclosed to Western readers. I will present them as they are. Iranian-descent faculty members in Western universities and journalists of the leftist media usually do not report the ugly side of the Iranian cultural and art production that is their connection to the state propaganda machine.

Download or read book Iranian Cinema in a Global Context written by Peter Decherney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iranian films have been the subject of much critical and scholarly attention over the past several decades, and Iranian filmmakers are mainstays of international film festivals. Yet most of the attention has been focused on a small segment of Iranian film production: auteurist art cinema. Iranian Cinema in a Global Context, on the other hand, takes account of the wide range of Iranian cinema, from popular youth films to low budget underground films. The volume also reassesses the global circulation of Iranian art cinema, looking at its reception at international festivals, in university curricula, and at the Academy Awards. A final theme of the volume explores the intersection between politics and film, with essays on post-Khatami reform influences, representations of ineffective drug policies, and the representation of Jewish characters in Iranian film. Taken together, the essays in this volume present a new definition of the field of Iranian film studies, one that engages global media flows, transmedia interaction, and a heterogeneous Iranian national cinema.

Download or read book Masters Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema written by Hamid Dabashi and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of Iranian cinema to world prominence over the last few decades is one of the most fascinating cultural stories of our time. There is scarcely an international film festival anywhere that does not honour the aesthetic and political explorations of Iranian artists. MASTERS & MASTERPIECES OF IRANIAN CINEMA celebrates this remarkable emergence. It focuses on twelve of the most important Iranian filmmakers of the past half-century -- among them, such pioneers as Forugh Farrokhzad, Dariush Mehrjui, Abbas Kiarostami, and Jafar Panahi. In his examination of their lives and their greatest works, Hamid Dabashi explains how, despite the censorship of both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic, the creativity of these filmmakers has transcended national and cultural borders. His account traces the ascendancy of Iranian cinema in modern Iranian intellectual history and also probes its links to Persian poetry, fiction, art, and philosophy. In Europe and in North America, in Asia and in Latin America, in Australia and Africa, the thematic and narrative richness of Iranian cinema has met with tremendous acclaim. Indeed, its particular modes of realism -- building on such cinematic antecedents as Italian, French and German neorealism -- have become truly transnational, contributing a new visual vocabulary to filmmaking everywhere. Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema studies the role that prominent film festivals have played in fostering the global success of Iranian cinema, and investigates the reception of these films within Iran, an intriguing story in its own right. This is a book that will reward not only the scholar and the film aficionado but also anyone interested in the cultural history of modern Iran.

Download or read book The Politics of Iranian Cinema written by Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iran has undergone considerable social upheaval since the revolution and this has been reflected in its cinema. Drawing on first-hand interviews and detailed ethnographic research, this book explores how cinema is engaged in the dynamics of social change in contemporary Iran. The author not only discusses the practices of regulation and reception of films from major award winning directors but also important mainstream filmmakers such as Hatamikia and Tabizi. Contributing to ethnographic accounts of Iranian governance in the field of culture, the book reveals the complex behind-the-scenes negotiations between filmmakers and the authorities which constitute a major part of the workings of film censorship. The author traces the relationship of Iranian cinema to recent social/political movements in Iran, namely reformism and women’s movement, and shows how international acclaim has been instrumental in filmmakers’ engagement with matters of political importance in Iran. This book will be a valuable tool for courses on film and media studies, and will provide a significant insight into Iranian cultural politics for students of cultural studies and anthropology, Middle Eastern and Iranian studies.

Download or read book Iranian Cinema and Philosophy written by Farhang Erfani and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-01-02 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In film studies, Iranian films are kept at a distance, as 'other,' different, and exotic. In reponse, this book takes these films as philosophically relevant and innovative. Each chapter of this book is devoted to analyzing a single film, and each chapter focuses on one philosopher and one particular aesthetic question.

Download or read book A Social History of Iranian Cinema Volume 3 written by Hamid Naficy and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Covering the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first and addressing documentaries, popular genres, and art films, [this four-volume set] explains Iran's peculiar cinematic production modes, as well as the role of cinema and media in shaping modernity and a modern national identity in Iran."--Page 4 of cover.

Download or read book Displaced Allegories written by Negar Mottahedeh and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2008-11-14 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Iranian Cinema and Globalization written by Shahab Esfandiary and published by Intellect Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite critical acclaim and a recent surge of popularity with Western audiences, Iranian cinema has been the subject of lamentably few academic studies--and those have by and large been limited to the films and filmmakers most visible on the international film circuit. Iranian Cinema and Globalization seeks to broaden readers' exposure to other dimensions of Iranian cinema, including the works of the many prolific filmmakers whose films have received little outside attention despite being widely popular within Iran. Combining theories of globalization and national cinema with in-depth, interdisciplinary analyses of individual films, this volume expands the current literature on Iranian cinema with insights into the social, and religious political contexts involved.

Download or read book The Art and Material Culture of Iranian Shi ism written by Pedram Khosronejad and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shi'i Islam has been the official religion of Iran from the Safavids (1501-1732) to the present day. The Shi'i world experience has provided a rich artistic tradition, encompassing painting, sculpture and the production of artefacts and performance, which has helped to embed Shi'i identity in Iran as part of its national narrative. In what areas of material culture has Iranian Shi'ism manifested itself through objects or buildings that are unique within the overall culture of Islam? To what extent is the art and architecture of Iran from the Safavid period onwards identifiably Shi'i? What does this say about the relationship of nation, state and faith in Iran? Here, leading experts trace the material heritage of Iranian Shi'ism within each of its political, religious and cultural dimensions.

Download or read book The Films of Makhmalbaf written by Eric Egan and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the close and volatile relationship between a highly popular art form, the production of culture and the politics of power in society. Through a critical analysis the book reveals the social and political context of Iran's national cinema under the Islamic Republic. It tracks the emergence of Iranian cinema since the Islamic Revolution, as Makhmalbaf, one of Iran's most influential filmmakers, and a committed artist whose work is provocative and never far from controversy, sought to engage the dramatic social and political upheavals that have taken place over the past twenty-four years. Makhmalbaf's films have always been reflexive meditations on the nature of cinema and art within a society, and Makhmalbaf's art, as part of that system provides a view of film as an extension of its political environment.

Download or read book A Social History of Iranian Cinema Volume 4 written by Hamid Naficy and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fourth and final volume of A History of Iranian Cinema, Hamid Naficy looks at the extraordinary efflorescence in Iranian film and other visual media since the Islamic Revolution.