INTRODUCTION: REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA AND THE LOGIC OF REFORM
2. Ruhollah Khomeini,
Islam and Revolution: Writing and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, trans. Hamid Algar (London: Routledge and Paul Kegan, 1981), 258.
3. Khomeini,
Islam and Revolution, 258.
4. Hamid Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 3:
The Islamicate Period, 1978–1984 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 34.
5. Hamid Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran: A Post-Khatami Update,” in
The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 28.
6. Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran,” 26–58.
7. Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran,” 29.
8. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 3; and Negar Mottahedeh,
Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
9. For more, see Lary May,
Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Nancy J. Rosenbloom, “Between Reform and Regulation: The Struggle Over Film Censorship in Progressive America, 1909–1922,”
Film History 1, no. 4 (1987): 307–25; Scott Simmon, “Movies, Reform, and New Women,” in
American Cinema in the 1910s: Themes and Variations, ed. Charlie Keil and Ben Singer (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009).
10. Rosenbloom, “Between Reform and Regulation, 309.
11. Simmon, “
Movies, Reform, and New Women,” 26–47.
12. Brigit Beumers,
A History of Russian Cinema (Oxford: Berg, 2009), 40; and Denise J. Youngblood,
Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), Kindle Edition, chap. 1, “Beginnings (1918–23).”
13. Youngblood,
Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, chap. 1.
14. Youngblood,
Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, introduction.
15. Vance Kepley Jr., “Soviet Cinema and State Control: Lenin’s Nationalization Decree Reconsidered,”
Journal of Film and Video 42, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 3.
16. Youngblood,
Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, chap. 2.
17. Kepley, “Soviet Cinema and State Control,” 12.
18. Youngblood,
Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, introduction.
19. Youngblood,
Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, introduction.
20. Kepley, “Soviet Cinema and State Control,” 12.
21. Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove City Press, 2005).
22. Teshome H. Gabriel,
Third Cinema in the Third World: The Aesthetics of Liberation (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982), 2.
23. See, for example, Hamid Naficy,
An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Robert Stam, “Beyond Third Cinema: The Aesthetics of Hybridity,” in
Rethinking Third Cinema, ed. Anthony R. Guneratne (London: Routledge, 2003), 32–47.
24. Robert Lang,
New Tunisian Cinema: Allegories of Resistance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
25. Anthony R. Guneratne, introduction to
Rethinking Third Cinema, ed. Guneratne (London: Routledge, 2003), 6.
26. For a compelling discussion of the unique filmic grammar that has developed in the Islamic Republic and its relationship to the Persian language, see Mottahedeh,
Displaced Allegories, 62–65.
27. For more, see Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran”; and Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 3. For a detailed study of the economics of the film industry during the first decade and a half of the Islamic Republic, see Hossein Ghazian, “The Crisis in the Iranian Film Industry and the Role of Government,” in
The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 77–84.
28. Hamid Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 4,
The Globalizing Era, 1984–2010 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 140.
30. For more on factionalism in Iran, see Daniel Brumberg,
Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); and Mehdi Moslem,
Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002).
31.
See, for example, Abdolkarim Soroush,
Qabz va bast-e te‘urik-e shari‘at: nazarieh-ye takāmol-e ma‘refat-e dini [The theoretical contraction and expansion of religious law: The concept of the evolution of religious knowledge] (Tehran: Mo‘aseseh-ye farhang-e sarāt, 1999).
32. Nima Hassaninasab, “Zhānr-e dovom-e Khordād” [The genre of the Second of Khordād],
Film 19, no. 270 (2001): 10.
33. For more, see Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran”; and Saeed Zeydabadi-nejad,
The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Film and Society in the Islamic Republic (London: Routledge, 2010), 37–38.
34. Zeydabadi-nejad,
The Politics of Iranian Cinema, 37.
35. “Nezārat bar nemāyesh-e film va eslāyd va vidiyu va sodur-e parvaneh namāyesh-e ānhā” [Supervision over the exhibition of films, slides, and video and issuing their exhibition permits],
Markez-e pazhuhesh-hā-ye majles-e shurā-ye eslāmi [Islamic Parliament Research Center], July 3, 1982,
http://rc.majlis.ir/fa/law/show/106928. A number of scholars have examined the effects of these censorship policies on the aesthetic and structural practices of Iranian cinema. See, for example, Mottahedeh,
Displaced Allegories; Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran,” and
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 3; and Zeydabadi-nejad,
The Politics of Iranian Cinema.
36. See, for example, Sussan Siavoshi, “Cultural Policies and the Islamic Republic: Cinema and Book Production,”
International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 29, no. 4 (1997): 517; and Zeydabadi-nejad,
The Politics of Iranian Cinema, 47.
37. “Matn-e este‘fānāmeh hojjat al-eslām va al-moslamin doktor Khatami montashar shod” [The text of his excellency Doctor Khatami’s resignation letter was published],
Ettelā‘āt, 4 Khordād 1371 / May 25, 1992.
38. Babak Dad,
Sad ruz bā Khatami: matn-e kāmel [A hundred days with Khatami: The complete text] (Tehran: Ministry of Culture and Guidance, 1998), 54–55.
39. Ervand Abrahamian,
A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 186.
40. Amy Motlagh,
Burying the Beloved: Marriage, Realism, and Reform in Modern Iran (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 113–14.
41. Mohsen Kadivar,
Salām, 26 Mordād 1376 / August 17, 1997.
43. Azadeh Farahmand, “Perspectives on Recent (International Acclaim for) Iranian Cinema,” in
The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 97.
44. For a compelling discussion of civil society, the discourse of reform, and their relationship to literature, see Motlagh,
Burying the Beloved, 112–28.
1.
WHEN LOVE ENTERED CINEMA: MYSTICISM AND THE EMERGING POETICS OF REFORM
1. “Matn-e este‘fānāmeh hojjat al-eslām va al-moslamin doktor Khatami montashar shod” [The text of his excellency Doctor Khatami’s resignation letter was published],
Ettelā‘āt, 4 Khordād 1371 / May 25, 1992.
2. Hamid Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 3:
The Islamicate Period, 1978–1984 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 141.
3. “‘Eshq-e mobtazal dar jashnvāreh-ye fajr” [Cheap love at the Fajr Film Festival],
Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi, 12 Esfand 1369 / March 3, 1991.
4. Hossein Ghazian, “The Crisis in the Iranian Film Industry and the Role of Government,” in
The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 77.
5. Ghazian, “The Crisis in the Iranian Film Industry and the Role of Government,” 77–84.
6. M. Shushtari, “Jashnvāreh-ye Fajr-e 1369” [The 1369/1991 Fajr Film Festival],
Resālat, 2 Esfand 1369 / February 21, 1991.
7. Hamid Dabashi,
Makhmalbaf at Large: The Making of a Rebel Filmmaker (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 17.
8. A. Nasrabadi, “Jashnvāreh-ye film-e 69: mosalleh-e ‘eshq v nafi-ye ārmān-hā” [The film festival of 1991: Armed with love and the negation of desire],
Keyhān, 8 Esfand 1369 / February 27, 1991.
9. Shahrnush Parsipur,
Khāterāt-e zendān [Prison memoirs] (Stockholm: Baran, 1996), 396–405; Nasrin Rahimieh, “Overcoming the Orientalist Legacy of Iranian Modernity: Women’s Post-Revolutionary Film and Literary Production,”
Thamyris/Intersecting 10 (2003): 149.
10. Abu Sabra, “Mosallas-e bi-‘effati dar Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi” [The impure triangle in Time for love],
Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi [The Islamic Republic], 15 Esfand 1369 / March 6, 1991. The term
gharbzade might be translated as “West-stricken” or “Westoxicated.” This concept became popular in Iran following the publication of Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s
Gharbzadegi (Westoxification, 1962). In this essay, Al-e Ahmad expands Ahmad Farid’s term
gharbzadegi and argues that an infatuation with the West is like a plague from which Iran suffers. He offers Shi‘i Islam, a source of unaffected locality, as a possible cure to this disease. For more, see Jalal Al-e Ahmad,
Plagued by the West, trans. Paul Sprachman (Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1982).
11. Abdolkarim Soroush, “Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi” [Time for love],
Omid, 12 Esfand 1369 / March 3, 1991.
12. I distinguish here between the Islamic Republic’s ethical system and Iranian society’s ethical system, because the Islamic Republic, as a religious government, purports a certain interpretation of Islam and holds its citizens to the moral code born of that interpretation. Makhmalbaf’s film and the reactions it incited allow us to discern the tension between how the Islamic Republic, as a system of governance, perceives what is ethical and how certain segments of Iranian society perceived themselves and their institutions as ethical or nonethical entities.
13. Morteza Razavi, “Nowbat-e Nawbeh,”
Abrār, 6 Farvardin 1370 / March 26, 1991.
14.
Ali Motahhari, “Tekrār-e tārikh va ebtezāl-e farhangi” [The repetition of history and the cheapening of culture],
Ettelā‘āt, 27 Esfand 1369 / March 18, 1991. Motahhari is the son of Morteza Motahhari, a conservative cleric who was killed less than a year after the revolution. Ali Motahhari was a professor of theology at Tehran University and has a long history of antireform beliefs. He currently serves as a member of the Majles and was elected on a pro-Ahmadinejad and antireformist platform.
15. Negar Mottahedeh,
Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 8.
16. Sabra Kowsari,
Keyhān, 12 Esfand 1369 / March 3, 1991.
17. “‘Eshq-e mobtabzel dar jashnvāreh-ye fajr” [Cheap love at the Fajr Film Festival].
18. “Cheshmandāz-e yek bahs” [An overview of one debate],
Film 108 (Tir 1370 / July 1991): 86–94.
19. N. Mahdiar, “Naqd-e ma‘lul qalat ast bāyad beh risheh-hā pardākht” [Defective criticism is wrong: We should go after the roots],
Keyhān, 23 Esfand 1369 / March 14, 1991.
20. Said Motamedi,
Resālat, 25 Esfand 1369 / March 16, 1991.
21. A. Darai,
Resālat, 14 Esfand 1369 / March 7, 1991.
22. Ahmad Jannati, “Sokhanāni az namāz-e jom‘eh-ye Qom” [Words from the Friday prayer of Qom],
Ettelā‘āt, 16 Esfand 1369 / March 6, 1991.
23. Jannati, “Sokhanāni az namāz-e jom‘eh-ye Qom” [Words from the Friday prayer of Qom].
24. Mohammad Khatami, “Pāsokh-e vazir-e farhang va ershād-e eslāmi beh sokhanān-e matrah shodeh dar namāz-e jom‘eh-ye Qom” [The minister of culture and Islamic guidance’s answer to the words posited at the Friday prayer of Qom],
Ettelā‘āt [Information], 21 Esfand 1369 / March 12, 1991.
25. Mehdi Moslem,
Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 167.
26. Fakhreddin Anvar, “Sinemā-ye Iran beh cheh zarurat-hā‘i pasokh midahad?” [To what needs does Iran’s cinema respond?],
Ettelā‘āt, 16 Esfand 1369 / March 6, 1991.
27. Seyfollah Dad, “Hoviyyat-e sinemā va sinemāgar-e Irāni” [The identity of Iranian cinema and filmmakers],
Resālat, 7 Farvardin 1370 / 27 March 1991.
28. The original Persian reads:…ما نگران و ناراحت
کوچک جنگلی باشیم که
عروس شد و خانهنشین و دست از مبارزات خود برای معرفی تاریخ اسلام و انقلاب اسلامی به وسیلهی سینما شست. The author played with the titles of films and is referencing another downward trend (in his opinion) that is similar to the course that led from
Towbeh-ye Nasuh to
Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi. Rahim Rahimipur, “Sinemā va jarayān-e roshanfekri-ye qarbzade” [Cinema and the course of West-stricken intellectualism],
Keyhān, 1 Ordibehesht 1370 / April 21, 1991.
29. Rahimipur, “Sinemā va jarayān-e roshanfekri-ye qarbzade” [Cinema and the course of West-stricken intellectualism].
30. Dabashi,
Makhmalbaf at Large, 47–48.
31. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, “Vaqt fara resid…” [The time has come…],
Omid, 19 Esfand 1369 / March 10, 1991.
32. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, “Nāmeh-ye sargoshādeh” [An open letter],
Omid, 10 Farvardin 1369 / March 30, 1991.
33.
Makhmalbaf, “Nāmeh-ye sargoshādeh” [An open letter].
34. Khatami, “Pāsokh-e vazir-e farhang va ershād-e eslāmi beh sokhanān-e matrah shodeh dar namāz-e jom‘eh-ye Qom” [The minister of culture and Islamic guidance’s answer to the words posited at the Friday prayer of Qom].
35. Khatami, “Pāsokh-e vazir-e farhang va ershād-e eslāmi beh sokhanān-e matrah shodeh dar namāz-e jom‘eh-ye Qom” [The minister of culture and Islamic guidance’s answer to the words posited at the Friday prayer of Qom].
36. Scholars have drawn comparisons between Makhmalbaf and Soroush, but these analyses do not consider material interactions between these two intellectuals. Previous attempts to consider these two intellectuals together have not engaged Soroush’s commentary on Makhmalbaf’s films or any other tangible exchange between them. Instead, this body of scholarship compares broad trends in these two individuals’ philosophical and intellectual works and their shared experiences within the Islamic Republic. In his comprehensive study of Makhmalbaf, Eric Egan argues in general that Soroush undertook the intellectual work of justifying religiously Mohammad Khatami’s notion of civil society through “attacks” on the “religio-political manifestations of the Islamic Republic.” This act, which in part permitted the rise of civil society in popular and public discourse, “meant a relaxation of the censorship laws” for filmmakers such as Makhmalbaf. See Eric Egan,
The Films of Makhmalbaf: Cinema, Politics, and Culture in Iran (Washington, DC: Mage, 2005), 172. Hamid Dabashi sees both Makhmalbaf and Soroush as “moral and intellectual by-products” of an Islamic revolution intended to overturn a monarchy with deep imperial ties and interests. As such, Soroush and Makhmalbaf, respectively, add “metaphysical (other-worldly)” and “artistic (aesthetically emancipatory)” dimensions to the “political resistance to the classical colonialization of Iranians.” See Dabashi,
Makhmalbaf at Large, 20.
Yet for Dabashi these two thinkers are separated by differing “modes of creative emancipation…from the colonial trappings of agential de-subjection.” Whereas he sees Soroush as “epistemicly trapped” in the “dialectical paradoxes of Enlightenment modernity in its colonial shadows,” Dabashi envisions Makhmalbaf’s “creative outbursts” as offering “a far more emancipatory track out of that cul-de-sac.” The difference crucially emerges from their respective methodologies. Soroush seeks “moral and political agency” by staging a “hermeneutic encounter…between Islam and Enlightenment modernity.” Makhmalbaf, on the other hand, navigates this terrain “artistically,” which renders his work less vulnerable to colonial subjugation. Although Dabashi astutely notes a historical and intellectual connection between Makhmalbaf and Soroush, his anti-imperialist agenda overshadows the creative and aesthetic ruptures that unite these two thinkers. In particular, mysticism acts as a force that marries Soroush’s and Makhmalbaf’s philosophical and creative efforts. Because mysticism and Sufism share long, historical ties with Persian poetry and Iranian culture, they are less susceptible to “epistemic trappings” and therefore allow me to move beyond the postcolonial discourse that limits—and even traps—Dabashi’s own analysis of this important relationship. See Dabashi, Makhmalbaf at Large, 19–20.
37.
Gilda Boffa, “A Study of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s ‘Time of Love’s’ Intertextual References to Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi’s Poem ‘The Three Fish,’”
Offscreen 10, no. 7 (2006); Boffa also considers the film in mystic terms. Her analysis of the mystic elements in
Love’s Turn is based on a comparison she stages between Makhmalbaf’s film and Rumi’s famous poem “The Three Fish,” which she claims is the inspiration for the film. Although her reading is productive in that she establishes some similarities between the poem and the film, Boffa overstates her suggestion that the poem directly informs the film. Her argument is, in fact, based on a misreading of the main character’s name. She writes, “Countless elements in the film provide hints that Makhmalbaf was deeply influenced by mystic poetry in the making of
Time for Love. The name of the main female character for example, is Ghazal.” She goes on to connect this name to the ghazal, a traditional poetic form employed by Rumi. However, the main character’s name is actually Güzel, a Turkish name meaning “beauty.” In the film’s Persian
filmnāmeh, the character’s name is written گزل, which should not be confused with غزل, the word for the poetic form. In
The Films of Makhmalbaf, Eric Egan also connects
Time for Love to poetry and focuses on particular symbols that he sees as poetic; see Eric Egan,
The Films of Makhmalbaf: Cinema, Politics and Culture in Iran (Washington, DC: Mage, 2005), 132–35. However, he fails to connect these symbols to any mystic tradition.
38. For more on the relationship between Rumi and Soroush, see Franklin D. Lewis,
Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: Life, Teaching, and Poetry Jalāl al-Din Rumi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000), 493–95.
40. Annemarie Schimmel,
As Though a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 64.
41. Schimmel,
As Through a Veil, 67.
42. Hamid Naficy, “Veiled Vision/Powerful Presences: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema,” in
In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran, ed. Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994), 148.
43. Soroush, “Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi” [Time for love].
44. Abdolkarim Soroush, “Moshkel hekāyati ast keh taqrir mikonand,” in
Gong-e khābideh:
montakhab-e maqāleh-hā, goftogu-hā, va barrasi-hā [Muted dreams: A selection of articles, interviews, and reviews], vol. 3, ed. Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Tehran: Nashr-e nay, 1372), 326.
45. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, “Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi: yāddāsht-e kārgardān” [Time for love: Director’s notes], in
Gong-e khābideh [Muted dreams], vol. 3, ed. Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Tehran: Nashr-e nay, 1372), 306.
46. Makhmalbaf, “Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi: yāddāsht-e kārgardān” [Time for love: Director’s notes], 307.
47. Makhmalbaf, “Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi: yāddāsht-e kārgardān” [Time for love: Director’s notes], 308.
48. Makhmalbaf, “Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi: yāddāsht-e kārgardān” [Time for love: Director’s notes], 312–13.
49. Shahla Haeri, “Sacred Canopy: Love and Sex Under the Veil,”
Iranian Studies 42, no. 1 (2009): 114.
50.
Since the late 1970s intellectuals in Iran have used term
nasbiyat-e akhlāq (moral relativism), but it does not imply the same “suspension of moral judgement” that it does in a European context. Rather, it is synonymous with what Soroush calls “pluralism.” In 2000, the newspaper
Ettelā‘āt reprinted a series of articles entitled “Moral relativism,” originally written in the late 1970s by Ayatollah Motahhari, who was a revolutionary Islamic philosopher and a contemporary of Khomeini. Motahhari, like Makhmalbaf in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was interested in the religious dimensions of morality but pushed for a more pluralist approach through the term “moral relativism.” That these articles were reprinted during Khatami’s presidency points to the fact that
nasbiyat-e akhlāq, or moral relativism, became important to the reformist discourse as well.
51. Makhmalbaf, “Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi: yāddāsht-e kārgardān” [Time for love: Director’s notes], 299–300.
52. Hamid Dabashi,
Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, and Future (London and New York: Verso Books, 2001), 212. In an interview with Heike Hurst, Makhmalbaf claims that in
Time for Love he tried to approximate cinematically the ideas conveyed in that Rumi anecdote. For more, see Heike Hurst, “Makhmalbaf questionne le pouvoir,”
Jeune Cinéma 247 (May–June 1996): 19.
53. Makhmalbaf, “Nowbat-e ‘āsheqi: yāddāsht-e kārgardān” [Time for love: Director’s notes], 300–301.
54. Soroush, “Moshkel hekāyati ast keh taqrir mikonand,” 325.
55. Soroush, “Moshkel hekāyati ast keh taqrir mikonand,” 325–26.
56. Makhmalbaf,
Gong-e khābideh [Muted dreams], vol. 3, 305.
57. Makhmalbaf,
Gong-e khābideh [Muted dreams], vol. 3, 303.
58. Makhmalbaf,
Gong-e khābideh [Muted dreams], vol. 3, 304.
59. Makhmalbaf,
Gong-e khābideh [Muted dreams], vol. 3, 303.
60. Hamid Reza Sadr,
Iranian Cinema: A Political History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 254.
61. Sadr,
Iranian Cinema, 254.
62. This statement follows several lines from Ahmad Shamlu’s famous modernist poem “Pariā” (Fairies): “Fire! Fire! So Pretty! Wow! / And it’s almost sunset now / Jumping up and jumping down / Jumping into the silver pond.” Hamun references Shamlu’s poetry several times throughout the film. As Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak has noted, Shamlu had mystical tendencies himself, particularly in the poem “Dar in bon bast” (In this dead end), in which the perfect revolution is presented as a kind of beloved, dreamt and fantasized but never realized. For more, see Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, “Of Hial and Hounds: The Image of the Iranian Revolution in Recent Persian Literature,”
State, Culture, and Society 1, no. 3 (1985): 148–80. Shamlu’s poetry is also significant to the film because Hamun’s thesis topic, the love and faith of Abraham—an exploration into mysticism in its own right—is also the subject of one of Shamlu’s famous poems, “Sorud-e Ebrāhim dar ātash” (The song of Abraham in the fire). More generally, Shamlu was the archetypal poet, the very kind of intellectual figure that the film critiques.
63. Hamun’s use of Ali’s surname crucially distinguishes him from Ali, the rightful successor of Mohammad according to Shi’i belief and the father of Hussein. Without this reference to his last name, Hamun’s question “Have you seen Ali?” might be misinterpreted in the context of the
‘āshurā ceremonies.
64.
Dabashi,
Makhmalbaf at Large, 29.
65. Dabashi,
Makhmalbaf at Large, 29.
66. Dabashi, “Dead Certainties: The Early Makhmalbaf,” in
The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, ed. Richard Tapper (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 134–35. Although Dabashi does not explicitly refer to Derrida, his description of Makhmalbaf’s early films as both the illness and the disease recalls “Plato’s Pharmacy,” in which Derrida argues that writing is both a poison and a remedy. Whereas Derrida sees the space created by the collapse of this binary as wrought with potential and productivity, Dabashi considers it a barrier that must be overcome, which he calls the “decisive moment,” and thereby establishes a new limiting binary between Makhmalbaf’s early films and his later films. For more, see Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy,” in
Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (New York and London: Continuum Books, 2004), 67–154.
67. Dabashi,
Makhmalbaf at Large, 20.
68. Dabashi, “Dead Certainties,” 135.
69. Afshin Matin-asgari, “Abdolkarim Sorush and the Secularization of Islamic Thought in Iran,”
Iranian Studies 30, nos.1–2 (Winter/Spring 1997), 102.
70. Matin-asgari, “Abdolkarim Sorush and the Secularization of Islamic Thought in Iran,” 103.
71. Matin-asgari, “Abdolkarim Sorush and the Secularization of Islamic Thought in Iran,” 103.
72. John Cooper, “The Limits of the Sacred: The Epistemology of Abd al-Karim Soroush,” in
Islam and Modernity: Muslim Intellectuals Respond, ed. John Cooper, Ronald L. Nettler, and Mohamed Mahmoud (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 43.
73. Abdolkarim Soroush, “Islamic Revival and Reform: Theological Approaches,” in
Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of ‘Abdolkarim Soroush, trans. and ed. Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 30.
74. Soroush, “Islamic Revival and Reform,” 31.
75. Soroush, “Islamic Revival and Reform,” 31.
76. Soroush, “Islamic Revival and Reform,” 31.
77. Soroush, “Islamic Revival and Reform,” 31.
78. Soroush, “Islamic Revival and Reform,” 32.
79. Soroush, “Islamic Revival and Reform,” 34.
80. Ashkan P. Dahlén,
Islamic Law, Epistemology and Modernity: Legal Philosophy in Contemporary Iran (London: Routledge, 2003), 255.
81. Abdolkarim Soroush, “Tolerance and Governance: A Discourse on Religion and Democracy,” in
Reason, Freedom and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of ‘Abdolkarim Soroush, trans. and ed. Mahmoud Sadri and Ahmad Sadri (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 145.
82. Soroush’s challenge of the political system has resulted in serious backlash. Soroush was initially a close ally of Khomeini and served on the Culture Revolution Institute, an organization whose seven members were handpicked by Khomeini to restructure higher education curricula to favor a more Islamic orientation. However, in the 1990s, he became increasingly critical of the clergy and their role in politics, falling out of favor with the government. Since 2000 he has lived in exile in the United States.
83.
For more, see Daniel Brumberg, “Ascetic Mysticism and the Roots of Khomeini’s Charisma,” in
Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 39–54.
84. Oliver Roy, “The Crisis of Religious Legitimacy in Iran,”
Middle East Journal 87, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 215.
85. See, for example, Mangol Bayat,
Mysticism and Dissent: Socioreligious Thought in Qajar Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1982), 29.
86. The term “clash of civilizations” was first used by Bernard Lewis in “The Roots of Muslim Rage,”
Atlantic Monthly 266, no. 3 (September 1990): 47–60. The concept, which is rooted the colonial term “clash of cultures,” was picked up and expanded by Huntington, first in the article “Clash of Civilizations?”
Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 22–49 and later in
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1997).
88. Khatami, “Round Table: Dialogue Among Civilizations.”
2. SCREENING REFORM: CAMPAIGN MOVIES, DOCUMENTARIES, AND URBAN TEHRAN
1. Majid Maafi, “Siyāsat dar keluz āp” [Politics in close-up],
Sorush 27 (28 Khordād 1384 / June 18, 2005): 54.
2. Scott Mcleod, “The Vote in Iran,”
Time, February 13, 2000, accessed December 29, 2014,
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,39214,00.html.
3. Maafi, “Siyāsat dar keluz āp” [Politics in close-up], 54.
4. Hadani Ditmars, “Rakhshan Bani-Etemad Talks to Hadani Ditmars About Bending the Rules in ‘May Lady,’”
Sight and Sound 20 (January 1999): 20.
5. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, “Ghamkhār-e bi edde‘ā-ye zanān-e darmānde: goftogu bā Rakhshan Bani-Etemad” [Sympathy without the pretense of distressed women: A conversation with Rakhshan Bani-Etemad],
Zanān [Women] 25 (Mordād/Shahrivār 1374/1995): 44.
6. See, for example, Hamid Naficy, “Veiled Voice and Vision in Iranian Cinema: The Evolution of Rakhshan Banietemad’s Films,” in
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls: Gender in the Film at the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. Murray Pomerance (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2001). Naficy seeks to chart the increasing presence of women in post-revolution cinema, to position Bani-Etemad’s films in the trajectory, and to examine the ways in which the director confronts or conforms to certain policies regulating onscreen modesty.
7. Rahul Hamid, “Review: Under the Skin of the City,”
Cineaste 51 (2003): 50.
8. Massoud Mehrabi, “Commitment, Cinema, Construction: An Interview with Rakhshan Bani-Etemad,”
Film International 13, nos. 52–53 (2007): 83.
9. Hamid Naficy, “Kiarostami’s
Close-Up: Questioning Reality, Realism, and Neorealism,” in
Film Analysis: A Norton Reader, ed. Jeffrey Geiger and R. L. Rutsky (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 804.
10.
Bill Nichols,
Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), 20.
11. Bill Nichols,
Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 5.
12. See Nichols,
Introduction to Documentary; Bill Nichols,
Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); and Nichols,
Representing Reality.
13. Nichols,
Representing Reality, 3–4.
14. For more see, Massoud Mehrabi,
Farhang-e film-hā-ye mostanad-e sinemā-ye Irān: az āghāz tā sāl-e 1375 [A guide to Iranian documentary films: From the beginning to 1997] (Tehran: Daftar-e Pezhuhesh-hā-ye farhangi, 1375/1997); and Hamid Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 2:
The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 49–146. Nichols,
Blurred Boundaries, 1.
15. Nichols,
Blurred Boundaries, 1.
16. Ditmars, “Rakhshan Bani-Etemad Talks to Hadani Ditmars About Bending the Rules in ‘May Lady,’” 20.
17. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, “Man filmsāz-e herfeh-i nistam: harf-hāi az Rakhshan Bani-Etemad” [I am not a professional filmmaker: A few words from Rakhshan Bani-Etemad],
Film 19, no. 263 (2001): 124.
18. Bani-Etemad, “Man filmsāz-e herfeh-i nistam” [I am not a professional filmmaker], 124.
19. Hamid Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran: A Post-Khatami Update,” in
The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 41–44.
20. Bani-Etemad, “Man filmsāz-e herfeh-i nistam” [I am not a professional filmmaker], 123.
21. Slavoj Žižek,
The Fright of Real Tears: Kryztof Kieslowski Between Theory and Post-Theory (London: British Film Institute, 2001), 52.
23. Stephen Winberger, “Neorealism, Iranian Style,”
Iranian Studies 40, no.1 (2007): 5–16; and Shohini Chaudhuri and Howard Finn, “The Open Image: Poetic Realism and the New Iranian Cinema,”
Screen 44, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 38–57.
25. For a thorough account of the luti and his political role in Iran’s modern history, see Willem M. Floor, “The Political Role of Lutis in Iran,” in
Modern Iran: The Dialectics of Continuity and Change, ed. Michael E. Bonine and Nikki R. Keddie (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 83–95.
26. For an analysis of one of these films,
Dash Akol (1971), directed by Masud Kimiai, see Hamid Naficy, “Iranian Writers, Iranian Cinema, and the Case of ‘Dash Akol,’”
Iranian Studies 18, nos. 2–4 (Spring–Autumn 1985): 231–51. This genre of film is examined further in chapter 4.
27. Hamid Reza Sadr,
Iranian Cinema: A Political History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 115.
28.
Other urban films that feature gritty and unflinching representations of Tehran include
Khesht va āyeneh (Mudbrick and mirror, 1965), directed by Ebrahim Golestan;
Qeysar (1969), by Masud Kimiai; and
Zir-e pust-e shab (Under the skin of the night, 1974), by Feridun Goleh.
29. Mohsen Kadivar,
Salām, 26 Mordād 1376 / August 17, 1997.
30. Mehran Kamrava, “The Civil Society Discourse in Iran,”
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 28, no. 2 (2001): 170.
31. Saïd Arjomand,
After Khomeini: Iran Under His Successors (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 95–97. For a particularly compelling discussion of the ways in which the framework of the Islamic Republic is unable to accommodate the freedoms of civil society, see Bahram Rahmani,
Afsāneh-ye jāme‘eh-ye madani [The myth of civil society] (Köln: Forugh Books, 2001). This book, published around the time of Khatami’s reelection, is representative of Iranians’ disillusionment with their president. As a political/philosophical text it resonates with Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s cinematic effort in
Under the Skin of the City.
32. Mehdi Moslem,
Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 257–65.
33. My assessment of the reformist movement is not an attempt to belittle the efforts of Mohammad Khatami or to devalue the appeal of his platform. Bani-Etemad’s film
Our Times… (2001), a documentary about the 2001 elections, demonstrates how strongly some people believed in these concepts. Rather, I am stressing that his big-picture ideas were unaware of the urgency of the economic hardships that most Iranians faced.
34. Michel de Certeau,
The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 92–93.
35. Sergei Eisenstein, “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form,”
Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, trans. Jay Leyda (San Diego and New York: Harvest Books, 1969), 46, 49.
36. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Pantheon, 1968), 250.
37. “Parvandeh-ye yek film:
Bu-ye kāfur, ‘atr-e yās” [The file on one film:
The Smell of Camphor, the Scent of Jasmine],
Film 264 (Bahman 1379 / February 2001): 79.
39. Ali Madanipour,
Tehran: The Making of a Metropolis (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998), 114.
40. Naghmeh Samini, “Rakhshan Bani-Etemad dar yek negāh” [Rakhshan Bani-Etemad at a glance].
Film 19, no. 263 (2001): 131–32.
41. Farzaneh Milani,
Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 23.
42. Bani-Etemad has a precedent for naming her female characters after important literary figures. For example, the main character in
Bānu-ye ordibehesht (
May Lady, 1998) is a documentary filmmaker named Forugh, who is shooting a film about motherhood. She is a clear reference to the famous poet Forugh Farrokhzad—also a documentary filmmaker—who likewise struggled with motherhood, losing custody of her only biological son and later adopting a child from a leper colony that was the site of her famous film
Khāneh siāh ast (The house is black, 1962).
43.
For a more detailed discussion of this novel as a feminist statement, see Kamran Talattof, “Feminist Discourse in Postrevolutionary Women’s Literature,”
The Politics of Writing in Iran: A History of Modern Persian Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 135–72. See also Amy Motlagh,
Burying the Beloved: Marriage, Realism, and Reform in Modern Iran (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 104–7.
45. The feminist journal
Zanān published an interview with Mohammad Khatami during the 1997 elections. Khatami’s answers to the journal’s questions about the status of women in Iran indicate that the reformist movement collapsed the solution to a variety of problems into the category of “civil society.” For Khatami, adhering to the ideals of democracy and civil society would have a similar positive effect on the social and economic problems that plagued the country. For more, see “Khatami darbāreh-ye zanān che mi-guyad?” [What does Khatami say about women?],
Zanān 34 (Ordibehesht 1376 / May 1997): 2–5.
46. Ahmadreza Jalili, “Sinemāgarān dar entekhābāt: ruzegār-e mā…” [Filmmakers in the elections:
Our Times…],
Film 20, no. 283 (2002): 18.
47. Madanipour,
Tehran, 114.
48. Madanipour,
Tehran, 111.
49. Madanipour,
Tehran, 113.
50. Madanipour,
Tehran, 114.
51. Nichols,
Representing Reality, 4.
52. Wendy Brown,
Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 15.
54. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Pantheon, 1968), 257.
3. VIDEO DEMOCRACIES: OR, THE DEATH OF THE FILMMAKER
1. Hamid Dabashi,
Close Up: Iranian Cinema Past, Present, and Future (London and New York: Verso, 2001), 268–69.
2. Nima Hassaninasab, “Zhānr-e dovom-e Khordād” [Genre of the Second of Khordād],
Film 19, no. 270 (2001): 10.
3. Hassaninasab, “Zhānr-e dovom-e Khordād” [Genre of the Second of Khordād], 10.
4. Hassaninasab, “Zhānr-e dovom-e Khordād” [Genre of the Second of Khordād], 10–14.
5. Hassaninasab, “Zhānr-e dovom-e Khordād” [Genre of the Second of Khordād], 10.
6. Abbas Yari, “Noqteh-ye ‘atf: goftegu bā Seyfollah Dad” [Turning point: A conversation with Seyfollah Dad],
Film 205 (Khordād 1376 / June 1997): 40–41.
7.
See, for example, Peter Chelkowski and Hamid Dabashi,
Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran (New York: New York University Press, 1999); and Roxanne Varzi,
Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolution Iran (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).
8. “Vorud-e navār-e khām-e vid‘eo mamnun shod” [The importing of blank video tapes is forbidden],
Film 34 (Esfand 1364 / March 1986): 10.
9. “Āmār-e vaz‘iyat-e sinemā, televiziyun va vid‘eo dar 42 keshvar-e jahān” [Statistics on the status of cinema, television, and video in 42 countries around the world],
Film 135 (Dey 1381 / January 1993): 8.
10. “Tahājom-e farhangi, ‘azm-e melli: nokāti az gozāresh-e vazir-e farhang va ershād beh majles va amār-e vaz‘iyat-e sinemā, televiziyun va vid‘eo dar jahān” [The assault on culture and national resolve: Points from the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance’s report to Majles and a look at statistics on the status of cinema, television, and video in the world],
Film 135 (Dey 1381 / January 1993): 6.
11. “Vazir-e farhangi va ershād-e eslāmi jāme‘eh rā az gheflat nesbat beh pishrafteh-hā-ye teknuluzhik bar hazar dasht” [The minister of culture and Islamic guidance warned society about ignorance regarding technological advances],
Ettelā‘āt, 12 Ordibehesht 1372 / May 2, 1993.
12. “Hamchenān darbāreh-ye vid‘eo” [Still about video],
Film 125 (Tir 1371 / July 1992).
13. Ali Mohammad Fakharzadeh, “Cherā vid‘eo…?” [Why video…?],
Ettelā‘āt, 15 Shahrivar 1372 / September 7, 1993.
14. “Siyāsat-hā-ye towlid-e film-hā-ye vid‘eo ‘elām shod” [The policies for the production of video were announced],
Ettelā‘āt, 6 Mehr 1372 / September 26, 1993.
15. “1000 vide‘o kelub tā pāyān-e in māh dar keshvar rāhandāzi mishavad” [By the end of this month, 1000 video clubs will open],
Ettelā‘āt, 12 Abān 1372 / November 3, 1993.
16. “Siyāsat-e pardākht-e samiyeh be towlidegān-e film-hā-ye vid‘eoii e‘lām shod” [A policy about subsidizing video movie producers was announced],
Ettelā‘āt, 12 Mehr 1372 / October 4, 1993; “Avalin jashnvāreh-ye vid‘eoii-ye sureh aghāz shod” [The first Sureh video festival began],
Ettelā‘āt, 4 Dey 1372 / December 25, 1993.
17. Michael Z. Newman,
Video Revolutions: On the History of a Medium (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 102–4.
18. See, for example,
Film 204 (Khordād 1376 / June 1997),
Film 207 (Shahrivar 1376 / September 1997),
Film 270 (Khordād 1380 / June 2001),
Film 287 (Tir 1381 / July 2002), and
Film 288 (Mordād 1381 / August 2002).
19. Sony, Advertisement,
Film 262 (Āzar 1379 / November 2001); Mo‘asseseh Āyat Film, Advertisement,
Film 280 (Bahman 1380 / January 2002); Sony, Advertisement,
Film 287 (Tir 1381 / July 2002).
20. Sanyo, Advertisement,
Film 275 (Mehr 1380 / September 2001).
21. Newman,
Video Revolutions, 61–71.
22. Adam Ganz and Lina Khatib, “Digital Cinema: The Transformation of Film Practices and Aesthetics,”
New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 4, no. 1 (May 2006): 29.
23.
10 on Ten, directed by Abbas Kiarostami (New York: Zeitgeist Films, 2004), DVD.
24. Parviz Alavi, “Sokhanrāni darbāreh resāneh-hā va jāme‘eh madani” [A speech about media and civil society],
Ettelā‘āt, 5 Khordād 1377 / May 26, 1998.
25.
“Aba‘ād-e namāyesh-e gheyr-e qānuni-ye film-hā-ye irāni dar NITV va shekāyat ‘aliyeh in shabkeh” [Dimensions to the illegal screening of Iranian films on NITV and complaints against the network],
Film 272 (Mordād 1380 / August 2001): 37–40.
26. “Estefādeh az barnāmeh-hā-ye vid‘eoii bedun-e mojavvez-e katabi-ye sāhebān-e film-hā mamnu‘ ast” [The use of video programming without written consent from the films’ owners is prohibited],
Film 288 (Mordād 1381 / August 2002): 16.
27. Roger Ebert, “Review:
Taste of Cherry,”
Chicago Sun-Times, February 28, 1998.
28. Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Abbas Kiarostami (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 95.
29. Azadeh Farahmand, “Perspectives on Recent (International Acclaim for) Iranian Cinema,” in
The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 95.
30. Hamid Reza Sadr,
Iranian Cinema: A Political History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 238–39. This open governmental policy, which encouraged Iran’s presence at international film festivals, is in contrast to the early 1990s, when religious leaders like Ali Jannati severely criticized the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for allowing films to be shown at film festivals around the world. “Sokhanān az namāz-e jom‘eh-ye Qom” [Words from the Friday prayer of Qom],
Ettelā‘āt, 16 Esfand 1369 / March 6, 1991.
31. Shahram Tabemohammadi, “Hargez film-e siāsi nakhvāham sākht: goft-o-gu bā Abbas Kiarostami” [I will never make a political film: A conversation with Abbas Kiarostami],
Film 19, no. 254 (Tir 1380 / July 2001): 44.
32. See, for example, Godfrey Cheshire, “How to Read Kiarostami,”
Cineaste 25, no. 4 (2000): 8–15; Alberto Elena,
The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, trans. Belinda Coombes (London: Saqi Books, 2005); Julian Graffy, “
Taste of Cherry/Ta’am-e gilas,”
Sight and Sound 8, no. 6 (June 1998): 57; Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Fill in the Blanks,”
Chicago Reader, May 29, 1998; and Khatereh Sheibani, “Kiarostami and the Aesthetics of Modern Persian Poetry,”
Iranian Studies 39, no. 4 (2006): 509–37.
33. Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad,
The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Film and Society in the Islamic Republic (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 149.
34. Laura Mulvey, “Kiarostami’s Uncertainty Principle,”
Sight and Sound 8, no. 6 (June 1998): 25–26.
35. F. Rosenthal, “Intiḥār,” in
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs (Brill, 2011),
http://www.brillonline.nl.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_SIM-3581.
36. Olivier Roy, “The Crisis of Religious Legitimacy in Iran,”
Middle East Journal 87, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 215, 202.
37. Keyvan Tabari, “The Rule of Law and the Politics of Reform in Post-Revolutionary Iran,”
International Sociology 18, no. 1 (March 2003): 112.
39.
Even in his criticism, Soroush notes the hope that Khatami’s election brought to Iranian society. In a letter to Khatami, he says, “The peaceful and democratic uprising of the Iranian people against religious dictatorship in May 1997 was a sweet experience…. But your failure to keep the vote and your wasting of opportunities put an end to it and disappointed the nation. Now, failures have turned into unrest.” For more, see “Khatami Threatens Resignation Over Power Struggle with Hard-Liners,”
Daily Star, July 17, 2003, accessed December 19, 2014,
http://www.drsoroush.com/English/News_Archive/E-NWS-20030714-Khatami_Threatens_Resignation-The_Daily_Star.html.
40. Cited in Elena,
The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, 124.
41. See, for example, Geoff Andrews,
10 (London: British Film Institute, 2005); Godfrey Cheshire, “How to Read Kiarostami”; Edmund Hayes, “10 × Ten: Kiarostami’s Journey Into Modern Iran,”
openDemocracy, 2002,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/content/articles/PDF/815.pdf; Laura Mulvey, “Repetition and Return,”
Third Text 21, no. 1 (January 2007): 19–29; Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum,
Abbas Kiarostami (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003),18–19; and Sheibani, “Kiarostami and the Aesthetics of Modern Persian Poetry.”
43. Elena,
The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, 254n97.
44. Kiarostami,
10 on Ten.
45. Ganz and Khatib, “Digital Cinema,” 31.
46. Elena,
The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, 178.
47. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Pantheon, 1968), 228–31.
48. Ganz and Khatib, “Digital Cinema,” 31.
49. Susan Sontag,
Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2004), 46.
50. Elena,
The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, 176; Negar Mottahedeh,
Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 138; Zeydabadi-Nejad,
The Politics of Iranian Cinema, 125.
51. Elena,
The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami, 176.
52. Ganz and Khatib, “Digital Cinema,” 30.
53. Saeed-Vafa and Rosenbaum,
Abbas Kiarostami, 68.
54. Farzin Vahdat, “Religious Modernity in Iran: Dilemmas of Islamic Democracy in the Discourses of Mohammad Khatami,”
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 25, no. 3 (2005): 660.
55. Mohammad Khatami,
Gozideh sokhanranihā-ye ra‘is jomhur darbāreh-ye tos‘eh-ye siāsi va eqtesād va ammniyat [Selected speeches by the president about political and economic expansion and security] (Tehran: Tahr-e No, 1379/2000), 83, quoted in Vahdat, “Religious Modernity in Iran,” 660.
56. Mohammad Khatami, “Women and Men Are Different, but Women Are Not the Second Sex and Men Are Not Superior,”
Zan-e ruz 143 (1997): 8–10.
57. Mohammad Khatami,
Zanān va javānān [Women and youth] (Tehran: Tahr-e no, 2000), 40.
58.
Khatami,
Zanān va javānān [Women and youth], 32, 33.
59. Vahdat, “Religious Modernity in Iran,” 660.
60. There is a similar scene in Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s
‘Arusi-ye khubān (Marriage of the blessed, 1989), which tells the story of an Iran-Iraq War veteran trying to reenter society after his traumatic experiences at the front. In one scene, Haji, who is trying to resume his career as a photographer, enters a room to do a photographic portrait, and a women takes off her veil to reveal a bald head; presumably she is undergoing chemotherapy. In the case of
Marriage of the Blessed, the male character quickly exits the room before taking the photo, and we only see the woman’s bald head for a few seconds. In
10, on the other hand, the mounted camera provides us with no relief through cuts or edits, and we have no choice but to watch.
61. Hamid Naficy, “Veiled Vision/Powerful Presences: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema,” in
In the Eye of the Storm: Women in Post-Revolutionary Iran, ed. Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994), 138.
62. Mottahedeh,
Displaced Allegories, 9.
63. Zeydabadi-Nejad,
The Politics of Iranian Cinema, 125.
64. Tabemohammadi, “Hargez film-e siāsi nakhāham sākht” [I will never make a political film], 44.
65. Saeed-Vafa and Rosenbaum,
Abbas Kiarostami, 100–101.
66. Kiarostami,
10 on Ten.
67. Ganz and Khatib, “Digital Cinema,” 26.
68. Kiarostami,
10 on Ten.
69. Kiarostami,
10 on Ten.
70. “Parvandeh-ye yek film:
Bu-ye kāfur, ‘atr-e yās” [The file on one film:
The Smell of Camphor, the Scent of Jasmine],
Film 264 (Bahman 1379 / February 2002), 79. As recently as 2009 news reports in Iran claim that Farmanara is finally going to make a film under this title. It is not clear whether or not this film is the same highly political project that he originally submitted with this title.
71. “Parvandeh-ye yek film” [The file on one film], 79.
72. Dabashi,
Close Up, 124–29.
73. Dabashi,
Close Up, 135.
74. “Parvandeh-ye yek film” [The file on one film], 79.
75. “Parvandeh-ye yek film” [The file on one film], 77.
76. Dabashi,
Close Up, 249.
77. Dabashi,
Close Up, 146.
78. Dabashi,
Close Up, 153.
79. Dabashi,
Close Up, 153.
80. Adam Tarock, “The Muzzling of the Liberal Press in Iran,”
Third World Quarterly 22, no. 4 (2001): 590, 585–602.
81. For more, see Shirin Ebadi,
Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, with Azadeh Moaveni (New York: Random House, 2006), 128–41.
83. Dabashi,
Close Up, 146.
4. WHO KILLED THE TOUGH GUY? CONTINUITY AND RUPTURE IN THE FILMFĀRSI TRADITION
1. See, for example, Hamid Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran: A Post-Khatami Update,” in
The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002); Negar Mottahedeh,
Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad,
The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Film and Society in the Islamic Republic (London: Routledge, 2010).
2. Hamid Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 2:
The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 295, 333.
3. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:301; and Hamid Reza Sadr,
Iranian Cinema: A Political History (London, I. B. Tauris, 2006), 139.
4. Hamid Dabashi,
Close-Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, and Future (London and New York: Verso, 2001), 250–51.
5. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:149.
6. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:150.
7. Hamid Naficy, “Iranian Cinema Under the Islamic Republic,”
American Anthropologist 97, no. 3 (1995): 549.
8. Azadeh Farahmand, “Perspectives on Recent (International Acclaim for) Iranian Cinema,” in
The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 86–108.
9. See, for example, Tejaswini Ganti,
Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (London: Routledge, 2002); Onookome Okome, “Nollywood: Spectatorship, Audience and the Sites of Consumption,”
Postcolonial Text 3, no. 2 (2007): 1–21; Ching-Mei Esther Yau,
At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).
10. Walter Armbrust, “New Cinema, Commercial Cinema, and the Modernist Tradition in Egypt,”
Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 15 (1995): 83, 82.
11. William Brown, “Cease Fire: Rethinking Iranian Cinema Through Its Mainstream,”
Third Text 25, no. 3 (2011): 335, 340–341.
12. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:147–49.
13. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:149.
14. See, for example, Ervand Abrahamian,
Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).
15. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:265.
16.
Naficy also deals with what happens to this genre in exile and explores how the ideals of masculinity promoted by these tough-guy types are maintained by Iranians abroad, especially by those Iranians in Los Angeles.
17. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:269–94.
18. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:305.
19. For more, see Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran,” 26–65. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:311–12.
20. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:311.
21. See, for example, Camron Michael Amin,
The Making of the Modern Iranian Woman: Gender, State, Policy, and Popular Culture, 1865–1946 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002); and Afsaneh Najmabadi,
Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
22. Quoted in Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:300.
23. Ebrahim Golestan, “Qeysar: sar mashq-e kāmeli az Masud Kimiai barā-ye Masud Kimiai” [Qeysar: Completed homework by Masud Kimiai for Masud Kimiai], in
Majmu‘eh-ye maqālāt dar naqd va barrasi-ye āsār-e Masud Kimiai [A collection of critical articles and reviews of the works of Masud Kimiai], ed. Zavan Qukasian (Tehran: Enteshārāt-e āgāh, 1364/1985), 121–25.
24. Quoted in François Penz, “From Topological Coherence to Creative Geography: Rohmer’s
The Aviator’s Wife and Rivette’s
Pont du Nord in Cities in Transition,” in
The Moving Image and the Modern Metropolis, ed. Andrew Webber and Emma Wilson (London: Wallflower Press, 2008), 132.
25. Jamshid Arjmand, Mohammad Ali Sepanlu, Hushang Golshiri, and Zavan Qukasian, “Va yek begumagu-ye dustāneh” [A friendly disagreement], in
Majmu‘eh-ye maqālāt dar naqd va barrasi-ye āsār-e Masud Kimiai [A collection of critical articles and reviews of the works of Masud Kimiai], ed. Zavan Qukasian (Tehran: Enteshārāt-e āgāh, 1364/1985), 50–51.
27. Hamid Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, vol. 1:
The Artisanal Era, 1897–1941 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 273.
28. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,
Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 1.
29. See, for example, Najmabadi,
Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards, 15–25; Willem Floor,
A Social History of Sexual Relations in Iran (Washington, DC: Mage, 2008), 279–354; Amy Motlagh,
Burying the Beloved: Marriage, Realism, and Reform (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 36–38.
30. Najmabadi,
Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards, 15–25.
31. Golestan, “Qeysar,” 122.
32. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:297.
33. Kaja Silverman,
The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 211.
34. Naficy,
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, 2:301, 300.
35. Zavan Qukasian, ed.,
Majmu‘eh-ye maqālāt dar naqd va barrasi-ye āsār-e Masud Kimiai [A collection of critical articles and reviews of the works of Masud Kimiai] (Tehran: Enteshārāt-e āgāh, 1364/1985).
36.
Laudan Nooshin, “Underground, Overground: Rock and Youth Discourses in Iran,”
Iranian Studies 38, no. 3 (2005): 462–94.
5. FILM ARCHIVES AND ONLINE VIDEOS: THE SEARCH FOR REFORM IN POST-KHATAMI IRAN
1. For more, see Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Mahjoob Zweiri,
Iran and the Rise of Its Neoconservatives: The Politics of Tehran’s Silent Revolution (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007).
2. Eva Patricia Rakel, “The Political Elite in the Islamic Republic: From Khomeini to Ahmadinejad,”
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 29, no.1 (2009): 121–23.
3. Michael Slackman, “Winner in Iran Calls for Unity; Reformists Reel,”
New York Times, June 26, 2005.
4. Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad,
The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Film and Society in the Islamic Republic (London: Routledge, 2010), 53.
5. Mohammad Said Mohassesi, “Futbāl bā qavānin-e handbāl” [Soccer according to the rules of handball],
Film 361 (2007): 109.
6. For more, see T. Lewicki, “Al-Ḳazwīnī, zakariyyā‘ b. muḥammad b. maḥmūd Abū Yaḥyā,” in
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs (Brill, 2011),
http://www.brillonline.nl.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_SIM-4093.
7. The emphasis is mine. It should be noted that in the English subtitles, this caution is translated as “All the characters and events in this film seemed to be real, but it’s not true.” Although this translation conveys the basic meaning, it fails to capture the complexity of the original.
8. Daniel Brumberg,
Reinventing Khomeini: The Struggle for Reform in Iran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 153.
9. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the old spelling was still in use throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and as late as the 1950s the old spelling of “Tehran” was featured on license plates.
10. It is interesting to note that the earthquake in Rudbar inspired Kiarostami’s film
Zendegi va digar hich (Life and nothing more, 1992). Kiarostami goes in search of the actors who played in
Khāneh-ye dust kojāst? (Where is the friend’s house?, 1987). The film mimics reality and shows a director and his son who return to the village where one of his films was set and examine the earthquake’s devastation.
11. William C. Wees,
Recycled Images: The Art and Politics of Found Footage Films (New York: Anthology Film Archives, 1993), 11, 46–47.
12. Negar Mottahedeh, “Iranian Cinema in the Twentieth Century: A Sensory History,”
Iranian Studies 42, no. 4 (September 2009): 529–31.
13.
Interestingly, Iranian cinema’s first venture into filmmaking with dialogue proved challenging.
The Lor Girl was produced and filmed in India, and producers Ardeshir Irani and Abdolhossein Sepanta had to rely on Iranians living in India to serve as actors. However, the exile community in India was largely composed of Iranians from the province of Kerman; among this group was the actress Ruhangiz Saminezhad. Because Saminezhad had a thick Kerman accent, Sepanta had to adjust his script, and he made Golnar’s character originally from Kerman. It is also worth noting that
The Lor Girl was the first Iranian film, and one of the first films in the Middle East, to cast a woman in a main role.
14. Hamid Reza Sadr,
Iranian Cinema: A Political History (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 27–28.
15. Mohassesi, “Futbāl bā qavānin-e handbāl” [Soccer according to the rules of handball], 109.
16. Jaber Tavazoi, “Jafar va Golnar dar Tehran-e bi-anār: goftogu bā Massoud Bakhshi” [Jafar and Golnar in Tehran without pomegranates: A conversation with Massoud Bakhshi],
Jām-e jam, 9 Tir 1388 / June 25, 2009, 7.
17. See, for example, Roger Bebee and Jason Middleton, eds.,
Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cell Phones (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Diane Railton and Paul Watson,
Music and the Politics of Representation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011); and Carol Vernallis,
Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetic and Cultural Context (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
18. It should be noted that other Western styles, including rock, alternative, and heavy metal, were still banned. However, the line that separates all of these different styles is fluid; thus determining the nature of “pop” has been left to the interpretive powers of various governmental agents. Laudan Nooshin, “Underground, Overground: Rock and Youth Discourses in Iran,”
Iranian Studies 38, no. 3 (2005): 469.
19. Nooshin, “Underground, Overground,” 469, 463.
20. Laudan Nooshin, “The Language of Rock: Iranian Youth, Popular Music, and National Identity,” in
Media, Culture, and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State, ed. Mehdi Samati (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 70.
21. For a fascinating look at the underground music scene, one that takes into consideration the distribution of permits and issues of form and style, see Bahman Ghobadi’s underground film
Kasi az gorbeh-
hā-ye Irāni khabar nadārad (No one knows about Persian cats, 2009).
22. Currently, competition among music videos is no longer based on limited airtime. Although in the age of YouTube storage and access to music videos is almost unlimited, the genre still adheres for the most part to its original conventions. Moreover, the hyper-nature of the Internet puts music videos in a different kind of competition, wherein they are rivaling against other videos and sites for user attention.
23. Vernallis,
Experiencing Music Video, 3.
24. This Arabic phrase is invoked by Shi‘i Muslims to refer to Hossein, the martyr at the Battle of Karbala in 680, and it is used especially during the celebration of Moharram. It also has a political history and has been used during resistance movements in Iran and India. Interestingly, in Iran supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi used
yā Hossein as a slogan after the results of the 2009 elections were announced.
25.
Although the choice to recruit random people on the streets of Tehran to perform the song’s lyrics has a subversive role in the video’s aesthetic (as I shall demonstrate), the decision was also likely practical. When the song and the video were released, the members of Kiosk were already living in exile because of their music. Returning to Iran to perform the song may not have been possible for them.
26. For more on the cosmetic surgery phenomenon in Iranian society, see Mehrdad Oskouei’s film
Damāgh, beh sabk-e Irāni (Nose Iranian style, 2006). The film’s title plays off of the title of Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini’s famous documentary
Divorce Iranian Style (1998).
27. It is significant that over the last thirty years, different governments within the Islamic Republic have marked their political atmosphere by readjusting women’s clothing. Moderate leaders allow women more freedom with their dress, and with the
hejāb in particular, whereas conservative leaders have announced their conservativeness by cracking down on women’s dress.
28. Vernallis,
Experiencing Music Video, 55.
29.
Qormeh sabzi is a traditional Iranian stew. Both in terms of taste and execution, it would be very difficult to create a
qormeh sabzi pizza. Nevertheless, several months after the “Love of Speed” music video premiered, there were reports that an Iranian team won third place at an international pizza competition with a
qormeh sabzi pizza. However, I was unable to find confirmation of this victory in non-Iranian sources. It is also worth noting that even the phrase
pitzā-ye qormeh sabzi is contradictory, because the word
pitzā (pizza) is a loanword, and it is being combined with the name of a very traditional dish. The Islamic Republic has attempted to eliminate Western loanwords and encourages the word
kesh loqmeh (stretchy snack) for pizza.
30. Janet Alexanian, “Poetry and Polemics: Iranian Literary Expression in the Digital Age,”
Multi-Ethnic Literature in the United States 33, no. 2 (2008): 146.
CONCLUSION: IRAN’S CINEMA MUSEUM AND POLITICAL UNREST
1. “Muzeh-ye sinemā, ganjineh-ye asnād va yādgār-hā” [The Cinema Museum, a repository of documents and relics],
Film 221 (Tir 1377 / July 1998): 19.
2. “Muzeh-ye sinemā” [The Cinema Museum], 19.
3. Ali Reza Mahmudi,
Bist-o-panj sāl-e sinemā-ye Irān: nashriyāt va ketāb-hā-ye sinemāii [Twenty-five years of Iranian cinema: Cinematic publications and books] (Muzeh-ye Sinemā: Tehran, 1382/2004).
4. For more, see Abdollah Gholamreza Kashi,
Matbu‘āt dar ‘asr-e Khatami [Publications during the Khatami period] (Tehran: Salak, 2000).