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Volume 15 - Number 2
February – March 2019£4
THIS ISSUETHIS ISSUE:: IRANIAN CINEMA IRANIAN CINEMA ●● Indian
camera, Iranian heart Indian camera, Iranian heart ●● The The
literary and dramatic roots of the Iranian New Wave literary and
dramatic roots of the Iranian New Wave ● ● Dystopic Tehran in ‘Film
Farsi’ popular Dystopic Tehran in ‘Film Farsi’ popular cinema
cinema ●● Parviz Sayyad: socio-political commentator dressed as
village fool Parviz Sayyad: socio-political commentator dressed as
village fool ●● The noir world The noir world of Masud Kimiai of
Masud Kimiai ● ● The resurgence of Iranian ‘Sacred Defence’ Cinema
The resurgence of Iranian ‘Sacred Defence’ Cinema ● ● Asghar
Farhadi’s Asghar Farhadi’s cinema cinema ● ● New diasporic visions
of Iran New diasporic visions of Iran ● ● PLUSPLUS Reviews and
events in LondonReviews and events in London
-
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Professor Sami ZubaidaBirkbeck College
EditorMegan Wang
ListingsVincenzo Paci
DesignerShahla Geramipour
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Volume 15 – Number 2February–March 2019
Sam Beklik, The Eye. Specially designed for the 'Iranian Cinema'
issue of The Middle East in Londonwww.sambeklik.com
Volume 15 - Number 2
February – March 2019£4
THIS ISSUETHIS ISSUE:: IRANIAN CINEMA IRANIAN CINEMA ●● Indian
camera, Iranian heart Indian camera, Iranian heart ●● The The
literary and dramatic roots of the Iranian New Wave literary and
dramatic roots of the Iranian New Wave ● ● Dystopic Tehran in
‘Film-Farsi’ popular Dystopic Tehran in ‘Film-Farsi’ popular cinema
cinema ●● Parviz Sayyad: socio-political commentator dressed as
village fool Parviz Sayyad: socio-political commentator dressed as
village fool ●● The noir world The noir world of Masud Kimiai of
Masud Kimiai ● ● The resurgence of Iranian ‘Sacred Defence’ Cinema
The resurgence of Iranian ‘Sacred Defence’ Cinema ● ● Asghar
Farhadi’s Asghar Farhadi’s cinema cinema ● ● New diasporic visions
of Iran New diasporic visions of Iran ● ● PLUSPLUS Reviews and
events in LondonReviews and events in London
-
February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 3
LMEI Board of Trustees
Baroness Valerie Amos (Chair)Director, SOAS
Dr Orkideh Behrouzan, SOAS
Professor Stephen Hopgood, SOAS
Dr Lina Khatib, Chatham House
Dr Dina Matar, SOAS
Dr Hanan MorsyAfrican Development Bank
Professor Scott Redford, SOAS
Mr James Watt, CBRL
LMEI Advisory Council
Lady Barbara Judge (Chair)
Professor Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem
H E Khalid Al-Duwaisan GVCOAmbassador, Embassy of the State of
Kuwait
Mrs Haifa Al KaylaniArab International Women’s Forum
Dr Khalid Bin Mohammed Al KhalifaPresident, University College
of Bahrain
Professor Tony AllanKing’s College and SOAS
Dr Alanoud AlsharekhSenior Fellow for Regional Politics,
IISS
Mr Farad AzimaNetScientifi c Plc
Dr Noel BrehonyMENAS Associates Ltd.
Professor Magdy Ishak HannaBritish Egyptian Society
HE Mr Rami MortadaAmbassador, Embassy of Lebanon
4 EDITORIAL
5INSIGHTIndian camera, Iranian heartRanjita Ganesan
7IRANIAN CINEMATh e literary and dramatic roots of the Iranian
New WaveSaeed Talajooy
9Cinema of urban crisis: dystopic Tehran in ‘Film Farsi’ popular
cinemaGolbarg Rekabtalaei
11Parviz Sayyad: socio-political commentator dressed as village
foolRoya Arab
13Th e noir world of Masud KimiaiParviz Jahed
15Damascus Time: the resurgence of Iranian ‘Sacred Defence’
CinemaKaveh Abbasian
17Asghar Farhadi’s cinema: a family torn apartAsal Bagheri
19Imagining homeland from a distance: new diasporic visions of
IranSaeed Zeydabadi-Nejad
REVIEWSFILMS21‘Poets of Life’ & ‘Puzzleys’, part of the
Karestan seriesTaraneh Dadar
22BOOKS IN BRIEF
24IN MEMORIAMRoger Owen (1935-2018)Sami Zubaida
25EVENTS IN LONDON
Contents
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4 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
EDITORIALEDITORIAL
Photograph taken on 24 November 2018 at SOAS’s Centre for
Iranian Studies screening of Karestan documentaries. From left to
right: Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad, Roya Arab, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad,
Shirin Barghnavard and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb
Iranian cinema’s prominence at international fi lm festivals
over the last three decades has raised interest and questions in
equal measure. Th e success has been paradoxical on many levels,
not least because the production of such a high volume of quality
fi lms has taken place under a strong ideological state that
requires overcoming a myriad of religio-political restrictions.
Th e international renown and academic interest in festival fi
lms has come at the expense of research and viewing of the larger
body of Iranian cinematic output from lesser known auteurs, as well
as mainstream and diasporic varieties. In this issue, authors with
wide-ranging interests –fi lmmakers, academics and critics – assess
an assortment of Iranian fi lmmakers, cinematic genres and
themes.
We begin this issue with Ranjita Ganesan’s exploration of the fi
lmmaking career of Abdolhossein Sepanta, maker of the fi rst
Iranian ‘talkie’ – which was made in India – with Parsi fi lmmaker
Ardeshir Irani. Ganesan describes the Zoroastrian
connections and common cultural interests between early Iranian
and Indian fi lmmaking traditions.
Saeed Talajooy provides an overview of the aesthetics and
thematic inspirations that Persian literature provided for Iranian
‘new wave’ fi lmmakers before the 1979 Revolution.
Golbarg Rekabtalaei takes a new lens to the denigrated ‘Film
Farsi’ – mainstream cinema before the Revolution – which, until
recently, has attracted little academic interest. She shows how
Film Farsi engaged with socio-cultural anxieties in urban life
under the Pahlavis.
Roya Arab reviews the works of Parviz Sayyad and asks if the
success of Samad, his iconic comic character, has overshadowed his
extensive contribution to Iranian cinema as a writer, director,
actor and producer.
Parviz Jahed explores the world of Persian Film Noir – specifi
cally, the works of Masud Kimiai, the most prolifi c creator of the
genre in Iran. He explores the recurring themes of criminality,
violence
and heroism in Kimiai’s homosocial fi lms. Kaveh Abbasian
discusses the aesthetic
aspirations of the so-called ‘Sacred Defence’ fi lms, which have
been a tool for propagating the Islamic Republic’s ideology since
their inception.
Asal Bagheri examines Asghar Farhadi’s latest fi lm Everybody
Knows (2018) and highlights the fi lmmaker’s use of recurring
themes and narrative techniques even beyond the borders of
Iran.
Mirroring Ganesan’s focus on fi lms made by Iranians abroad,
Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad brings the issue full circle by exploring
recent trends among diasporic Iranian fi lmmakers of narratives set
in fi ctionalised Iranian locations. He explores why and how
homeland has been imagined in these fi lms.
Th e issue is brought to a close with Taraneh Dadar’s review of
the Karestan fi lm project, which sheds light on a fascinating
series of documentaries (an infl uential and understudied cinematic
genre), two of which recently featured at a Centre for Iranian
Studies event at SOAS.
Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad, SOAS & Roya Arab, City, University of
London
Dear ReaderDear Reader
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February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 5
Every day for some months in 1935, Abdolhossein Sepanta
dutifully made the dull commute from Bandra to Andheri in Bombay.
By this time the fi nancial capital of India and home of Indian
cinema were familiar to Sepanta, a young poet and journalist from
Tehran who attended theatre school in his youth. He had studied and
worked in India for a number of years, taking on assignments as a
writer and translator. He had also scripted and made three of the
earliest Persian-language sound fi lms
(‘talkies’) in collaboration with a studio in Bombay. Th e fi
rst of these had been Dokhtar-e Lor (Lor Girl, 1933), a costume
drama featuring gypsies, bandits and government offi cials.
Th ose daily train journeys in 1935 marked a departure of sorts,
as Sepanta had just fallen out with his initial collaborator
Ardeshir Irani of the Imperial Films Company, the pioneer of Indian
talkies. So he was travelling instead to the leafy studios of a
rival production house, which had agreed to back his next
passion project. Released in both Iran and India, his fi lms are
a fascinating early example of co-productions in the East. His
experiences are also indicative of the remarkable diffi culties of
making cinema in those years.
Even if cut short, Sepanta’s time with Imperial Films was
signifi cant. Originally having arrived in India in 1927 with a
desire to understand the Zoroastrian history of Iran, he wrote for
publications of the Bombay-based Iran League – an organisation that
aimed to keep ties alive between Indian Zoroastrians and their old
land Iran. Sepanta was introduced to the prolifi c producer Irani
in 1932, who had just produced an Urdu fi lm Daku ki
Released in both Iran and India, Abdolhossein Sepanta’s fi lms
are a fascinating early example of co-productions in the East
Indian camera, Indian camera, Iranian heartIranian heart
Ranjita Ganesan provides an account of the early collaborative
talkies of Abdolhossein Sepanta from 1933 to 1937
Golnar (Roohangiz Saminejad) wrings her hands nervously while in
the custody of the bandit Gholi Khan. Still taken from Abdolhossein
Sepanta’s Lor Girl
INSIGHTINSIGHT
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6 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
Ladki. ‘Seeing the fi lm, plus the friendship between my
employer (Dinshah Irani) and Ardeshir Irani gave me the perfect
opportunity to interest Ardeshir in producing a fi lm in Persian
language’ Sepanta is quoted as having written in his memoirs.
An ambitious Ardeshir Irani (possibly) did not need much
convincing. He had raced against more established competitors to
make the fi rst Indian talkie Alam Ara in 1931 – exporting fi lms
to Iran would be another feather in his pheta. Episodes from the
Persian epic Shahnameh as well as Islamic fantasy tales from One Th
ousand and One Nights were already part of the public imagination
in Bombay, given their adaptation by the popular Parsi theatre.
When motion pictures emerged, a number of these became recurring
themes in cinema too; among them Shirin va Farhad and Leili va
Majnun. So the two set off making familiar yet exotic fi lms for
both the Iranian and Indian markets.
Irani, described by Sepanta as an excellent fi lm editor, off
ered him technical advice, along with books on script writing and
directing. Directed by Irani, Sepanta wrote and played the lead in
Lor Girl. Together, they persuaded Roohangiz Saminejad, wife of an
Iranian staff driver at Imperial Films, to take on the female lead
during a time when few women were willing to appear on screen. Her
lilting Kermani accent, while playing a Lorestani character, had to
be explained in a plot point; nevertheless it appealed to audiences
and some even mimicked her lines.
As the fi rst ever Persian talkie, Sepanta felt it should stir
patriotism among viewers. He conceived of a hero Jafar, a
government agent investigating bandits who, it is implied, thrived
during the Qajar era. His search leads him to a coff ee house where
he meets and falls in love with a dancer, Golnar. Golnar is a
heroine ahead of her time: she thwarts unwanted advances of men, fl
irts proactively with Jafar and pulls off daring escapes and
rescues. Th e two set off together to fi nd the chief bandit Gholi
Khan’s hideout and succeed in killing him. Fearing for their lives,
they sail to Bombay port and later, having learnt of a secure and
prosperous Iran under Pahlavi rule, return to Iran. Th e fi lm’s
alternative title ‘Iran of yesterday and Iran of today’ speaks
directly to its underlying message of advancement under Reza
Shah.
Lor Girl is the only Sepanta fi lm to have survived. It featured
luminous costumes, a two-minute dance sequence, a fl ashback,
several songs and gun-battles, all contributing to its success.
Khuzestan had been recreated in Chembur, then a verdant, far-fl ung
part of Bombay. When the couple fl ees to India, there are glimpses
of the Gateway of India, Taj Mahal Palace Hotel and Rajabai Clock
Tower. Despite its talkie credentials, intertitles were inserted to
inform of time lapses and plot details. Following the fi lm’s
enthusiastic reception – the applause in Cinema Mayak was so loud
one movie critic felt ‘the fl oor of the theatre tremble’ – Irani
handed over direction to Sepanta for the next releases, Ferdowsi
(1934) and Shirin va Farhad (1934).
By now, the young writer had brought in Fakhri Vaziri from Iran,
who worked in an acting school, and gave her a break on screen as
Shirin. To meet and convince Vaziri’s parents, he even brought
along his own mother, wife and son. Th e partnership with Irani
withered aft er Sepanta was disappointed with his share in the
returns; he joined other Indian studios to direct his next costume
dramas. Vaziri accompanied the director on the humid train commutes
to fi lm Cheshman-e Siah (Black Eyes) with Shree Krishna Films,
which released it in 1936. Based on Nader Shah’s invasion of India,
this fi lm was perhaps Sepanta’s most publicised, especially aimed
at India’s
Parsi viewers as a special release for the kadmi New Year
holiday.
Th e director’s most positive experience was in Bengal, telling
the love story Leyli and Majnun (1937) with the East India Film
Company, which had access to advanced cameras and sound equipment.
Th rough detailed meetings with the studio, he learnt about
pre-production. Vaziri co-starred in this fi lm too, which was
reported by the Times of India to have an ‘Oriental atmosphere’ and
‘probably the best Persian talkie made in India or Iran.’ On
returning to Iran soon thereaft er, his fi lmmaking hopes suff ered
as distributors tried to purchase the fi lms cheaply, and
government support for cinema was not forthcoming. Instead, he
resumed journalism and eventually made home movies with an 8mm
camera. His cinematic contributions are not forgotten; acknowledged
as father of Iranian sound fi lms, his Lor Girl is a subject of
academic and general interest, and the Iranian Film Festival in San
Francisco (est. 2007) is titled Sepanta Awards.
Th e story of Sepanta’s eff orts between 1933 and 1937 is,
importantly, the story of how two cultures enriched each other. It
is unfortunate that despite popular release in Iran and India, only
one of the fi ve fi lms remains available for viewing. Still, as
Irani’s Alam Ara appears to be lost forever, Lor Girl preserves the
legacy of two important artists and is a thing to be cherished.
His cinematic contributions are not forgotten; Sepanta is
acknowledged as father of Iranian sound fi lms, his Lor Girl is a
subject of academic and general interest and the Iranian
Film Festival in San Francisco is titled Sepanta Awards
Ranjita Ganesan is a Mumbai-based journalist who writes on
subjects of culture and the arts for the Indian daily Business
Standard and has contributed to outlets including Reuters and
Hindustan Times. She recently completed the MA in Iranian Studies
at SOAS
-
February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 7
Film poster advertising The Cow, directed by Dariush Mehrjui
During the last three decades, the ‘new wave’ fi lms of Iranian
cinema, particularly the docudramas and psychosocial fi lms, have
found a degree of visibility across the globe and won awards for
their aesthetic qualities and thematic probing into contemporary
human life. Films by Dariush Mehrjui, Bahram Beyzai, Abbas
Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi or Asghar Farhadi speak with a fi lmic
language understandable to people of diff erent cultures, but the
specifi cs of their expression and subtle innuendoes are rooted in
a rich tradition of Persian literary, dramatic and visual arts.
Th is article will explore the roots of the artistic expansion
of Iranian cinema in the 1960s, while highlighting the
contributions of Iranian drama and Persian literature.
Beginning in the early 1850s, drama was the very fi rst Iranian
creative form which replaced the image of mythical humanity with
depictions of more realistic fi ctional characters engaged with
topical, everyday problems. Traditionally, folktales were adapted
for puppet and taqlid comedies or even ta’ziyeh passion plays to
comment on secular subjects, but the level of socio-political
consciousness in Akhundzadeh’s Azari plays (1850-1856) and
Tabrizi’s
Persian plays (1873-1874) transcended these indigenous forms and
heralded the cultural products of the following decades.
Due to religious prohibitions, the adoption of modern theatre
and drama as a form of artistic expression was not straightforward.
Nevertheless, hybrid forms evolved with the adoption of
Western-style drama, particularly from the 1910s onward, and
continued to be important forms of artistic expression and
socio-political engagement in Iran. From the 1930s, theatre and fi
ction shared their functions as spaces for the production of modern
identities with radio, cinema and later television, but Persian
literature and drama continued to function as major bastions of
experimentation.
Cinema, arrived in Iran in 1900 as a royal hobby due to Mozaff
areddin Shah’s (r. 1896-1906) fascination with the idea of the
recorded image. While it proved to be very attractive to the
public, it was highly controversial to the retrogressive forces
that hid behind their fake idea of an unchanging tradition. Th e fi
rst documentaries of the period either show the old king in his
everyday activities or old Tehran. But, as with many other markers
of modernity, the Iranian experience of cinematography
suff ered disruptions: Mohamad Ali Shah (r. 1906-1909), for
instance, did not allow Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkasbashi (1874-1915),
the fi rst Iranian cameraman, to use the royal camera and the chaos
of the confl icts that followed the Constitutional Revolution made
such ‘luxurious activities’ impossible. Th e next time Tehran was
fi lmed was two decades later in 1924, when the fi rst Pahlavi
King, Reza Shah (1925-1941), had already begun implementing his
plans for authoritative modernity.
Th e history-proper of Iranian cinema, therefore, begins with
the Pahlavi era. Th e fi rst feature fi lms of the period
The literary and dramatic The literary and dramatic roots of the
Iranian New Waveroots of the Iranian New Wave
By combining elements from Iranian drama and Persian literature,
the New Wave marked a turning point in Iranian cinema. Saeed
Talajooy explains
Th e foremost infl uential fi gure in this move towards the new
wave was Ebrahim Golestan, a prominent Iranian
short-story writer. His documentaries revealed a powerful,
poetic vision with a high degree of socio-political, historical
and cultural consciousness, which had until then been only
observed in Persian drama and literature
IRANIAN CINEMAIRANIAN CINEMA
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8 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
Th e best fi lms of the New Wave in the 1970s combined the
aesthetics and the major themes of Persian literature and drama
with fi lmic elements from various cultures, particularly French
New Wave, Italian Neorealism and Japanese art-house cinema
were created by individuals who were motivated by artistic and
entrepreneurial aspirations, such as Abdolhossein Septanta. Aft er
a period of decline between 1936 and 1954, a new Iranian cinema
evolved with the initiative of Esmail Koushan (1917-1981). It was
characterised by a commercial spirit that made Iranian cinema
economically independent but had negative impacts on its artistic
aspirations. Due to its preoccupation with seemingly non-political
aspects of life, it also loosened the early links between Iranian
cinema and the more progressive forms of artistic production in
Iran. From the late 1950s, however, the momentum returned,
producing the fi rst prototype of Iranian New Wave.
One of the most infl uential fi gures in this move towards the
new wave was Ebrahim Golestan (1922-), a prominent Iranian
short-story writer, who began making documentary fi lms in the
1950s. Th ese documentaries – commissioned by British Petroleum –
exceeded expectations and from 1960 onward revealed a powerful,
poetic vision with a high degree of socio-political, historical and
cultural consciousness, which had until then been only observed in
Persian drama and literature. Th is poetic vision, which proved
instrumental in the later development of the Iranian New Wave, was
not the product of Golestan’s individual creativity but the child
of his long-standing romantic involvement with Forough Farrokhzad
(1934-67), the prominent female Iranian poet of the 1950s and
1960s. Forough’s poetic vision and Golestan’s literary and fi
lmmaking skills reshaped their creative output in ways that set the
stage for a new momentum in Iranian cinema, which foreshadowed the
documentary and feature tendencies of the Iranian New Wave in the
following decades. Forough’s documentary fi lm, Khaneh Siah Ast (Th
e House is Black, 1963) and Golestan’s fi rst feature fi lm, Khesht
va Ayenh (Mudbrick and Mirror, 1965) focus on topics such as gender
relations, the margins of society, the meaning of life, the
importance of belonging and the juxtaposition of the preoccupations
of diff erent classes and set the stage for many New Wave fi lms
that followed.
Th e same literary origins can be seen in another prototype of
Iranian New Wave, Jalal-e Moqaddam and Farrokh Ghaff ari’s Shab-e
Quzi (Th e Night of the Hunchback,
1964). Th e fi lm was a creative adaptation of the story of ‘the
tailor, the hunchback, the Jew, the advisor and the Christian’ from
One Th ousand and One Nights. It is a story about honesty and
justice and emphasises that true justice does not discriminate
against individuals due to their religious or class backgrounds. Th
e fi lm adds a number of noir elements to turn the narrative into a
black comedy set in a contemporary dystopia – the Tehran of the
early 1960s – in which people shun their responsibilities and
endanger others without considering the consequences of their
actions.
Th e most important fi lms of the 1960s, Mowlapour’s realist
Showhar-e Ahu Khanom (Ahu’s Husband, 1968) and Mehrjui’s Gav (Th e
Cow) shared the same literary and dramatic roots, but what made the
latter the most celebrated fi lm of the early years of the Iranian
New Wave was primarily the cooperation of an early career fi
lmmaker, Dariush Mehrjui (1939), and a young, yet fully-established
novelist and playwright, Gholamhossein Sae’di (1936-85). Sae’di’s
episodic novel Azadaran-e Bayal (Th e Mourners of Bayal, 1964) –
which is made of a series of interrelated stories about the
degeneration of village life in Iran – is one of the masterpieces
of psychosocial realist-surrealist literature in Iran, and the
script that Sae’di himself wrote for the fi lm was a unique piece
which echoed his concern with the Kafk aesque metamorphosis
of an individual and, by extension, a nation. Th anks to
Sae’di’s experience as a psychiatrist-turned-writer, the story and
the fi lm became an artistic commentary on the pitfalls of Iran’s
encounter with modernity and the impossibility of emancipation when
people are crushed under the burden of ignorance. Th e actors of
the fi lm were all theatre actors who had worked with Sa’edi for
about a decade. Sa’edi went on to work with Naser Taqvaei (1941-)
in Aramesh dar Hozour Digaran (Tranquillity in Presence of Others,
1971) and once more with Mehrjui in Dayereh-ye Mina (Th e Cycle,
1975), which were both among the best fi lms of the early years of
the Iranian New Wave.
To conclude, the Iranian New Wave was the child of Iranian drama
and literature; its most celebrated works were produced by fi
lmmakers who worked with novelists/dramatists or themselves had
literary/dramatic backgrounds. Th is is also refl ected in the best
fi lms of the New Wave in the 1970s, which were either adaptations
or were made by well-established Iranian dramatists such as Bahram
Beyzai (1938-) and Arbi Hovhannisyan (1943-) who became fi lmmakers
in the early 1970s. Th ese fi lms created a tradition for the
Iranian New Wave by combining the aesthetics and the major themes
of Persian literature and drama with fi lmic elements from various
cultures, particularly French New Wave, Italian Neorealism and
Japanese art-house cinema. By 1975 the Iranian New Wave had reached
a level of maturity that allowed it to become an independent form
refl ecting the many sides of Iranian creativity, and aft er the
1979 Revolution it began to evolve in diff erent directions.
Saeed Talajooy is lecturer in Persian at the University of St
Andrews. His research is focussed on the refl ections of the
changing patterns of the modalities of Iranian identity in Persian
literature and Iranian drama and cinema
-
February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 9
Still from Storm in Our City, directed by Samuel Khachikian
IRANIAN CINEMAIRANIAN CINEMA
Showing scenes of ‘murder, crime, betrayal… grand theft s,
street shootings, and horrifying police chases in Tehran’, the
anonymous author of a 1968 article in Ferdowsi magazine claimed
popular cinema, derogatively referred to as ‘Film Farsi’, had made
a monster out of Tehran, similar to the city of ‘Chicago during its
gangster era.’ Commonly denigrated as cheap, vulgar and immoral
productions and imitative copies of Hollywood, Indian and Egyptian
popular cinemas, the pre-revolutionary Iranian popular fi lm
industry has
gained little scholarly attention. While grudgingly regarded as
part and parcel of a national cinema, socio-cultural critics did
not view Film Farsi as an artistic form due to its ‘unrealistic’
mediation and understanding of the world. A closer look at popular
fi lms from the 1950s to the 1970s – against the backdrop of
national socio-political conditions – however, reveals something of
the social attitudes of the time. Film Farsi engaged with the real,
in so far as it engaged with the social. One of the ways through
which popular cinema tackled extant social concerns was
by attending to urban anxieties arising from modernisation.
Depicting the city and its disintegration in the form of an
urban crisis became the means through which this industry fl irted
with social and political criticism, thereby off ering dystopic
national imaginations that were in contradiction to the national
image of a modernising Iran propagated by the Pahlavi government.
Th e fi lms conjured a dark representation of the terrifying world
of the present to alert viewers to the dangers that the future
could hold. Taking this temporal shift into account then, dystopic
fi ctional fi lms of post-WWII cinema worked as harbingers of a
horrid future. Around the mid-20th century, the legacy of war,
post-war occupation, socio-political confl icts and the 1953 coup
gave rise to
Th e Film Farsi industry off ered dystopic national imaginations
that were in contradiction to the national image of a
modernising Iran propagated by the Pahlavi government
Cinema of urban crisis: Cinema of urban crisis: dystopic Tehran
in ‘Film Farsi’ popular cinemadystopic Tehran in ‘Film Farsi’
popular cinema
Golbarg Rekabtalaei on how popular Iranian fi lms from the 1950s
to the 1970s reveal the attitudes and anxieties of the times
-
10 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
the general notion that the moral stability of Iranian society
was disappearing. Cinema was complicit in this socio-cultural
disintegration. Materialism and consumerism, promoted through fi
lm, theatres and their surrounding image culture, were responsible
for the weakening of ‘the Iranian psyche.’ With the overpopulation
of cities – due, in part, to a large infl ux of people from rural
areas – and insuffi cient urban infrastructure and facilities, new
social and cultural problems arose in urban centres that stemmed
from the incompatibility of rural and urban social norms. Th ese
social anxieties associated with Iranian modernity and rapid
national modernisation became central to many Film-Farsi
productions. In fact, the city of Tehran became the subject and
setting of many popular fi lms.
From the beginning, Persian-language feature fi lm narratives
had a close connection to the city, as can be seen in fi lms such
as Haji Aqa, the Cinema Actor (1933) and Lor Girl (1933). Aft er a
decade-long hiatus in feature fi lm production from the late 1930s
to the late 1940s, the city loomed large again in mid-century
productions. While the fi lms of the 1930s and early 1950s had a
more ambiguous attitude towards the urban as a place of encounter,
possibilities, and creativity, the fi lms of post-WWII increasingly
viewed the city in a dystopic fashion. Moezzdivan Fekri’s Th e
Shepherd Girl (1953) did not paint Tehran in a dark mode, but it
highlighted the contradictions between the naïveté of villagers and
the debased, money-driven and materialistic Tehranis. While
including numerous shots of Tehran’s roundabouts and busy streets
adorned with statues of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the fi lm depicted
the conservative rural life as superior to an urban one, as Iranian
moral norms seemed to have been disappearing in the cities. Samuel
Khachikian’s Storm in Our City (1958), on the other hand, portrayed
Tehran as merciless in an excessive form. While the ruthless
cityscape alienated those who were already ostracised in a rapidly
changing society, the fi lm granted the marginalised, such as
single women and psychiatric patients, a place and a humanist
face.
Mehdi Raees Firooz’s Th e Wild Angel (1959) portrayed the
struggles of a single, unemployed young woman in a metropolis that
failed to off er job opportunities to young women. In the fi lm,
images showing the protagonist’s anxiety as she goes from offi ce
to offi ce looking for a job, juxtaposed with images of modern,
soulless and somewhat identical buildings, speak volumes about the
atomising forces of modern life in a rapidly changing society.
Saʻid Nayvandi’s Eve’s Daughters (1961) attended to issues of
overpopulation in Tehran and the proliferation of overpriced and
over-crammed apartment buildings. Opening with panoramic shots of
Tehran, the narrator describes how ‘large squares, wide streets,
and modern buildings’ lure villagers into the city on a daily
basis, but because of the population infl ux, new buildings could
no longer meet the demands of the people, creating ‘housing and
rent problems.’ Th e fi lm demonstrates the confl icts between old
and young generations, rural and urban lifestyles, traditional and
new social norms, and how building tenants create the means to
solve problems that arise from urbanisation – especially in the
absence of an eff ective government.
Films such as South of the City (1958) – or Competition in the
City (1963) – and Qaysar (1969) took a more critical outlook on
urban life and the estrangement of its downtrodden, blurring the
divide between popular cinema and alternative cinema. Th e urban in
these fi lms was the site where Iranian values were destroyed by
materialism (mostly associated with Western norms) and
individualistic hedonism. In the face of urban trauma, popular fi
lms promoted Perso-Islamic traditions as a panacea against the
disenchantment of modern urban life. Th e space and rituals of
Zurkhanah (a traditional type of gym), everyday religious
practices, Islamic tropes and moral norms associated with rural
areas and conservative boroughs, which fi lmmakers felt were
vanishing in urban settings, became commonplace in many fi lms.
Film Farsi’s light-hearted portrayal of social issues and its
frequent disengagement with realist cinematography common in
Italian
neorealism and French New Wave fi lms was not to the liking of
critics. Th e intelligentsia and fi lm critics such as Hushang
Kavusi rebuked popular fi lms in favour of global arthouse and
socially-committed fi lms which were compatible with the
intellectual climate from the 1950s to the 1970s. Because of their
concern with the everyday, however, popular fi lms too engaged
social anxieties and national debates of the time, albeit in
cheerful narratives with happy endings. Attending to the city
became one of the ways through which Film Farsi tackled
pre-revolutionary social distress. Th e dark representations of the
city worked as a form of urban criticism that embraced and rejected
modernity at the same time. In the liminal space of its fi lms,
Film Farsi imagined and unimagined the real, providing a
multiplicity of realities that subverted the national image of
progress that the Pahlavi state promoted, revealed something of the
temperament of society and spoke to the sentiments of the
masses.
Golbarg Rekabtalaei is a cultural historian of modern Iran and
an Assistant Professor of History at Seton Hall University. She
recently published Iranian Cosmopolitanism: A Cinematic History
(Cambridge University Press, 2019)
Th e dark representations of the city worked as a form of urban
criticism that embraced and rejected modernity at the same time
Film poster advertising Storm in Our City, directed by Samuel
Khachikian
-
February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 11
IRANIAN CINEMAIRANIAN CINEMA
Parviz Sayyad: Parviz Sayyad: socio-political socio-political
commentator commentator dressed as dressed as village foolvillage
fool
Samad is arguably Iran’s favourite comic character, born out of
a nameless village fool played by Parviz Sayyad on the Iranian
Television series Sarkar Ostovar (1964). Hilarious, somewhat
foolhardy and lovable, Samad made his way through eight highly
successful fi lms laced with social observations and critique, as
he moved from village to city, attended school, returned from war,
became homeless, fell in love and turned into an artist amongst
other transformative tales. Samad proved to be Sayyad’s most effi
cacious body of work and evoked fi lm character.
Sayyad was born in Lahijan in 1939. He began his career writing
and acting in the theatre before performing alongside other
theatrical luminaries in Iran’s fi rst television series Amir
Arsalan. His fi lm career began with the role of Hassan in Iran’s
fi rst musical, Hassan Kachal (1970), written/directed by Ali
Hatami. Th e lengthy opening credits with rhythmic underscoring and
unusual pauses pace the scene of Hassan’s mother enticing him out
of the house with apples. Bald Hassan meets Chelgis, who has been
kidnapped by an ogre, and sets off on an odyssey as a romantic
hero. Infused with varied musical vignettes paying homage to
performance traditions from around the globe, the sung
dialogues are largely accompanied with Persian drumming.
Besides a successful commercial fi lm career, Sayyad was a
persistent supporter of ‘Cinemaye Motefavet’ (‘alternative
cinema’), which sought to go beyond commercial cinema, now largely
grouped as ‘New Wave’ and, post-1979, associated with the likes of
Kiarostami, Panahi & Farhadi. Cinemaye Motefavet was initiated
and developed by Farrokh Ghaff ari (fi lm intellectual who opened
an infl uential fi lm club 1949, and set up the ‘National fi lm
archive’), Farrokhzad (poet and realist fi lmmaker), Bahram Beyzai
(literary, theatrically nuanced and considered sonic landscapes),
and the singular vision of Shahid Saless; other contributors
include fi lm-directors Parviz Kimiavi, Bahman Farmanara and Kamran
Shirdel. Dariush Mehrjui’s remarkable fi lm Gav (Th e Cow, 1968),
with Hormoz Farhat writing minimal amounts of music for the score
using only a handful of instruments and Masud Kimiai’s memorable
Qaysar (1968), with its melodic
and highly orchestrated, infl uential score by Esfandiar
Monfaredzadeh, provided, respectively, the high art and artful
commercial vistas of Motefavet fi lms.
Sayyad fi rst became involved in Motefavet fi lms in 1965. In
1972 he produced and acted in two Ali Hatami fi lms. Khastegar (Th
e Suitor, 1972), written and directed by Hatami and scored by
Monfaredzadeh, utilises Western art and Iranian classical
instruments. It follows a man’s lifelong pursuit of a feckless,
selfi sh woman who lets him down time and again, at one point
leaving him for her singing teacher; the fi lm concludes with a
tragic, poignant scene. Sayyad then produced and acted in Hatami’s
Sattar khan (1972) about an important revolutionary leader in
Tabriz during the 1906 Constitutional Revolution, which eventually
led to the overthrow of the Qajar Dynasty. Fereydoun Naseri’s score
employs solely Western art instruments, with one musical
celebratory scene showcasing an array of Persian instruments.
Roya Arab describes the indelible mark Parviz Sayyad left on
Iranian cinema
Besides a successful commercial fi lm career, Sayyad was a
persistent supporter of ‘Cinemaye Motefavet’ (‘alternative
cinema’), which sought to go beyond commercial cinema
Poster advertising Parviz Sayyad’s One Man Show (2018)
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12 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
I mentioned to Sayyad that the themes – urban/rural, rich/poor,
modernity/tradition – represented by arthouse
and some commercial fi lms had helped nurture the Revolution. He
responded ‘I wanted change not revolution…’
Sayyad then acted in Asrar ganj dareheye jenni (Th e Ghost
Valley’s Treasure Mysteries, 1974), one of only two feature fi lms
made by Ebrahim Golestan. In it he played an arrogant villager
whose fi nancial gains – from treasure he discovers and sells –
bring much woe. A French horn appears in the village, amidst other
exotic objects, showcasing his fall from grace. Th e fi lm has a
sparse score using Western and Iranian instruments by Farhad
Meshkat and contains a surreal celebratory scene with a motley crew
atop a hill with song and dance. A highly allegorical fi lm about
buried artefactual treasure leading to ruin, the fi lm could be
read as referring to Iran’s wealth of natural resources and their
misuse, with some commenting that the character stood for Mohammad
Reza Shah. In the same year Sayyad produced Still Life (1974),
written and co-directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. In 1977 he
co-produced Dayereh Mina (Th e Cycle) by Mehrjui, with Farhat’s
minimal musical touch, unapologetic and acerbic social commentary
focussing on a blood bank harvesting and selling the blood of drug
addicts and street lowlifes to hospitals with relevance beyond
Iran, for at the time of writing this essay, the USA fi nally
admitted to supplying bad blood to the UK in the 1980s.
During the last few years before the 1979 Revolution, Sayyad
wrote, directed and produced Bon Bast (Dead End, 1977), in which a
girl presumes the man appearing regularly at the end of her street
is a suitor and fantasises endlessly about love, only realising in
the fi nal scene that he was in pursuit of her politically active
brother. Th e fi lm has no score, in the vein of Iran’s ‘New Wave’.
However, Bon Bast contains a spate of pre-composed Western songs
emanating from electronic devices in private and public settings.
Sparingly and intentionally placed, these, along with posters of
musicians including Beethoven and Eno, provide narrative and
cultural underpinning. He followed this up with directing and
co-producing the highest-grossing pre-revolution fi lm, Dar Emtedad
Shab (Along Th e Night, 1978) in which Googoosh – a successful
singer and actress since the 1960s – plays a popular
singer pursued by a young handsome fan. Arguably risqué in
subject matter and its portrayal of scenes of a sexual nature, the
fi lm implied the existence of a corrupt power circle of elites
operating in Iran. One of a few dozen Iranian fi lms made in colour
pre-1979, it is scored by Mojtaba Mirzadeh and infused with musical
scenes set in night clubs where Googoosh performs a selection of
her popular songs.
Sayyad left Iran shortly aft er 1979. His fi lm, Th e Mission
(1983) was one of the fi rst fi lms made by an Iranian outside Iran
about the exilic condition post-1979. It depicts death squads
deployed by the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) to assassinate
oppositional agitators and follows an assassin in pursuit of a
former offi cial in the Shah’s regime. By chance he saves his
target from a mugging in the NY subway and realises he now works as
a cleaner and not what the IRI’s regime made him out to be. Th e fi
lm has no score but is punctuated with a live musical scene
eliciting heated debate about music in Iranian society. In 1984 he
made Trial of Cinema Rex as an attempt to make sense of the tragedy
of the Rex Cinema fi re (August 1978) which took many lives and was
a major a turning point in the lead up to the overthrow of the
Pahlavi regime. Sayyad has since made and appeared in various fi
lms, more recently providing the voice of Amir for the animated fi
lm Roxanna (2018).
Sayyad has had a multi-dimensional career; he is an
extraordinarily talented man who made us laugh, cry and contemplate
through writing, directing, producing and acting in a wide range of
fi lms and television series. Today, aged 80, he is still touring
his one-man theatre show. Watching Iranian fi lms with a focus on
fi lm
music, Sayyad initially piqued my interest when I saw him in
Iran’s fi rst musical. Aft er viewing more of his fi lms, the
nuanced use and portrayal of music – from his depiction of an
Iranian pop star’s world in 1978 to discussions of music, its
validity and place in Iranian society in 1983 – a lot of his fi lms
echo the ongoing dialogue and dialectic between music and the
socio-political context. As an artist who has collaborated on art
and commercial fi lms, I mentioned to Sayyad that the themes –
urban/rural, rich/poor, modernity/tradition – represented by
arthouse and some commercial fi lms had helped nurture the
Revolution. He responded ‘I wanted change not revolution…these were
concerns expressed in fi lms anywhere in the world where the
process of agriculture to industry was taking place’. Whilst Sayyad
is somewhat remiss in acknowledging the talents of post-Revolution
Iranian fi lmmakers, we should not overlook his valuable
contributions to Iranian cinema.
Roya Arab recorded music with various artists in the 1990s
before undertaking an Archaeology BA and MA (IoA, UCL). She is
currently a PhD candidate at City, University of London studying
Iranian fi lm music and what it reveals about ongoing dialogue and
dialectic between society and music/musicians
Roya Arab (left) and Parviz Sayyad (right) at ‘Three fi lms from
Parviz Sayyad’, Ealing Green Met (Theatre room) in London, United
Kingdom, July 2018. Photograph by Ali Akbar Arab.
-
February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 13
IRANIAN CINEMAIRANIAN CINEMA
The 1950s was the commercial and artistic peak for fi lm noir in
America and France. Th ese American and French noirs were being
shown to a wide audience in Iran at the time as well. Responding to
the public interest for such stylised visions of the criminal
underworld, Iranian fi lmmakers adopted this popular style and
created their own brand of noir-inspired gangster fi lms intended
for the domestic market. Among them, director Samuel Khachikian is
regarded as the forerunner and referred to as the ‘Iranian
Hitchcock’ and master of the crime thriller in Iranian cinema.
In the late 1950s Samuel Khachikian’s crime fi lms revelled in
Hollywood tropes, taking the US-inspired lens to the Iranian
underworld. His fi lms featured villainous characters, typically
involved with drugs, kidnapping and counterfeiting money, as well
as deceitful femme fatales, who would assist the criminals and use
their feminine charms and sexual allure to
seduce and deceive the male protagonist and then betray him.
With the continuation of the state’s eff orts to enforce
modernisation from above, the confl ict between modern and
traditional values was established as a theme, and a new form of
the crime thriller appeared in Iranian New Wave cinema, which was
darker and more pessimistic than the earlier more hollow eff
orts.
Masud Kimiai was among the fi rst of his generation to focus
solely on crimes and criminals in his fi lms, a niche which he
continued to pursue throughout. Friendship, betrayal and revenge
are the most common thematic elements
of Kimiai’s fi lms. He usually picked his characters from the
lowest rungs of Iranian society: soldiers, day labourers, hoodlums
and peasants. Th ey were people who were suff ering from poverty or
were the victims of injustice and inequality.
In Kimiai’s masculine world we see hard-boiled characters
clashing against each other without any kind of mercy. His emphasis
on masculinity in society takes precedence over all else. Women oft
en play a minor role in his fi lms; usually they live under the
heavy shadow of men and need their support to survive in a
patriarchal society. Th e focus oft en lies on highlighting
brutality and what motivates it. Whilst his protagonists are
The noir world of The noir world of Masud KimiaiMasud Kimiai
Parviz Jahed outlines the development of the crime thriller in
Iranian cinema through the works of Masud Kimiai
As an innovative forerunner and a key fi gure in the development
of Iranian New Wave cinema, Kimiai was
fascinated by American fi lm noirs and passionate about the
portrayal of rebellious anti-heroes
Behrouz Vossoughi as a vengeful anti-hero in Masud Kimiai’s
Qaysar
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14 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
Hokm (2006) contains the most constant thematic and stylistic
elements of Kimiai’s crime fi lms: male
camaraderie, deception, revenge and betrayal
contemporary in their appearance, they look to the past with
lamentation and regret (a past that is always with them and which
they cannot break away from).
Kimiai’s fi lms, whether an anti-Zionist political piece like
Sorb (Th e Lead,1989), or a post-war drama such as Dandan-e Maar
(Th e Snake Fang, 1990) and Gorouhban (Th e Sergeant, 1991), or
street-drama epics such as Radd-e Pa-ye Gorg (Th e Wolf ’s Trail,
1992), Soultan (1996) and Eteraz (Protest, 1999), or a purely
gangster fi lm like Hokm (Th e Verdict, 2006), all look to expose
and represent criminality, violence and heroism.
As a former assistant of Khachikian, an innovative forerunner
and a key fi gure in the development of Iranian New Wave cinema,
Kimiai was similarly fascinated by American fi lm noirs and
passionate about the portrayal of rebellious anti-heroes and disaff
ected people plagued by poverty and crime. He introduced a more
sophisticated form of criminal drama to Iranian cinema in 1968 with
his remarkable fi lm Qaysar.
With his rebellious and anarchic attitude and a yearning for
justice, Qaysar becomes the fi rst true anti-hero in Iranian
cinema. Th e fi lm combined the protagonists of revenge-seeking
American Westerns and the dark desperation of fi lm noir. It is the
story of a young, alienated traditional man who attempts to avenge
his sister’s rape and his brother’s murder by a villainous gang.
Unlike the pivotal characters of the previous Iranian crime dramas,
Qaysar is not driven by money or love, but solely by revenge.
Qaysar’s gruesome realism, graphic violence and doomed characters
had never been seen before in Iranian cinema. Th e audience was
impressed by the main character’s values and sympathised with his
rage and desire to get even.
In the traditional Iranian crime genre, a happy ending was an
uncompromising formula, but in the new crime fi lms such as Qaysar,
the rebellious character’s criminal acts and anti-social behaviour
were in fact glorifi ed by the fi lmmaker. Qaysar was the victim of
injustice in a world rife with violence, rage and despair. Th e
boundary between good and evil was blurred and the new heroes bore
more
similarity to and fewer distinctions from the villains.
Aft er making a few fi lms within the crime genre, Kimiai made
his powerful political drama, Gavaznha (Th e Deer) in 1975. In
Gavaznha, the criminality has a political resonance and Kimiai
addresses some critical social issues such as the confl ict between
good and evil, bank robbery, armed struggle, police brutality,
class division and drug addiction which were familiar elements in
American noir fi lms. Gavaznha may be regarded as the fi rst
political crime thriller of Iranian cinema. Th e protagonist was
acting against the interests of the government out of political
motivation and, as a protagonist on the run, he provokes sympathy
from the audience on a primal level.
Whereas Kimiai’s Gavaznha was a one-off as a political thriller
made before the 1979 Revolution, the early post-Revolutionary crime
fi lms were mostly about the confl icts between anti-Shah
guerrillas and the police. In Khat-e Ghermez (Red Line, 1981) – one
of the fi rst fi lms to be banned by the authorities aft er the
Revolution – a high-ranking secret agent of the Shah’s notorious
SAVAK marries a woman whose brother is arrested for his political
activities on the verge of the 1979 Revolution.
In Kimiai’s Sorb (Th e Lead, 1987), which takes place in 1950s
Tehran, the criminals are part of a covert Zionist organisation
attempting to assassinate
a young suspected Jewish couple who decided to immigrate to the
recently founded state of Israel. Th e infl uence of an American
noir visual style and iconic elements are highly prevalent,
including the bleak atmosphere: the problematic and lonely
characters trapped in unwanted situations, the dark and smoky urban
setting, the low-key lighting, the period specifi c cars, customs,
guns, the atmospheric music and the harsh violence.
Hokm (2006) contains the most constant thematic and stylistic
elements of Kimiai’s crime fi lms: male camaraderie, deception,
revenge and betrayal. Th e most intrinsically noir element of Hokm
is the inevitability that dictates the fates of the fi lm’s
characters and the actions that drive them towards disaster, an
element sustained from the mob fi lms of the 1930s.
Kimiai has managed to perfectly capture the dark, gloomy,
demoralising and violent atmosphere of fi lm noir in Hokm. His
conscious employment of fi lm noir elements – such as high contrast
lighting, seen especially in the outdoor scenes, and closed frames
– convey the feeling of confi nement and helplessness in people. Th
e overall eff ect leaves the viewer feeling that this fi lm is set
in a city rendered helpless as it sleeps at night while criminals
slither through it like wandering ghosts.
Kimiai has found in fi lm noir the perfect means to express the
ruthlessness, violence and corruption that pervade within the heart
of Iranian society. By placing the characters and the story in such
an environment, he underlines the decadence of humanity and
demonstrates the idea that people are ruled by material values and
a malicious spirit.
Parviz Jahed is a fi lm critic, fi lmmaker and lecturer in fi lm
studies, script writing and directing. He is the Editor-in-Chief of
Cine-Eye, a fi lm journal published in London. He is also the
author and editor of a number of books and essays on Iranian and
world cinema, including the two volumes of Directory of World
Cinema: Iran, published by Intellect in the UK. He is doing his PhD
at the University of St Andrews on the origins of the New Wave
cinema in Iran
-
February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 15
IRANIAN CINEMAIRANIAN CINEMA
Damascus Time: Damascus Time: the resurgence of Iranian ‘Sacred
Defence’ Cinemathe resurgence of Iranian ‘Sacred Defence’
Cinema
In 2018, Iranian media outlets associated with the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) insisted that a fi lm called
Damascus Time, directed by Ebrahim Hatamikia, be submitted as the
Iranian representative to the Oscars. Th eir bid, to their outrage,
was unsuccessful and another fi lm was submitted. But why is the
IRGC suddenly interested in the Oscars? And why this specifi c fi
lm? To answer these questions, we need to go back to the 1980s when
the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War gave rise to a new state-funded
movement in Iranian cinema: the movement that came to be known as
‘Iranian Sacred Defence Cinema'.
In 1989 aft er watching Hatamikia’s third fi lm Th e Immigrant,
Morteza Avini, an iconic fi lmmaker/writer of Sacred Defence Cinema
wrote, ‘Hatamikia blows his whole existence into the frames, and
each time he sets himself on fi re so that his fl ames can shed a
light, and each time like a phoenix, he gains life from that fi
re’. With this fi lm Avini had found a new hope in the capabilities
of fi ction fi lms in showing what he called ‘the truth of the war’
and the ‘ideals of the Islamic
Revolution’. He started to believe that creating a new Islamic
inspired form of cinema ‘freed from the shackles of the dominant
Western cinema’ was possible.
In 1993, while shooting a documentary about the war, Avini was
killed by a landmine. He did not live long enough to witness the
later fi lms and the downfall of his ‘phoenix’. In 1998, Hatamikia
made his eighth Sacred Defence fi lm: Th e Glass Agency. Despite
the long-standing claim of creating a truly independent
Kaveh Abbasian contrasts the ideals of state-funded Sacred
Defence Cinema with modern realities
In the 1980s the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War gave rise to a
new state-funded movement in Iranian cinema: the movement
that came to be known as ‘Iranian Sacred Defence Cinema’
ISIS commander and captive Iranian pilot in Syria. Backstage
photo from Ebrahim Hatamikia's Damascus Time (2018). Photograph by
Owj Arts and Media Organisation
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16 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
While the Sacred Defence Cinema has now expanded its defi nition
to include fi lms about the involvement
of the Islamic Republic in current wars, this new wave has
strayed further from its early ideals
cinema, Th e Glass Agency was an obvious adaptation of Dog Day
Aft ernoon (1975), a Hollywood production! A similar fate awaited
other Sacred Defence fi lmmakers. With the growing national
disinterest in the topic of the war, many of them – including
Hatamikia – stopped making war fi lms. For a while it seemed like
the ‘sacred defence’ had given up its claim on cinema.
Th is phase came to an end with Iran’s involvement in recent
wars in the Middle East. Aft er 23 years of not making a war fi lm,
Hatamikia went back to his roots with the 2014 release of Che,
which was about the war in the 1980s. He followed that with
Bodyguard (2016), a story about a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War and
his struggle to protect the son of his old ‘martyred’ comrade, who
is now a nuclear scientist in danger of being assassinated by
foreign powers. And eventually in 2018 he released Damascus Time, a
fi lm about the involvement of Iranian pilots in ‘humanitarian
activities’ in the Syrian civil war.
Hatamikia is not alone in this new wave of Sacred Defence fi
lms; many others, including a new generation of fi lmmakers, have
joined the wave too. Iran’s Fajr fi lm festival has also been
paying special attention to these fi lms and awards have been
directed towards them. Th is New Sacred Defence Cinema is
particularly signifi cant when understood as part of the current
policies of the Islamic Republic regarding the political situation
in the Middle East. As part of its internal policy, the state
presents its territory as an ‘island of stability’ in a turbulent
region. Th is ‘island of stability’ is depicted as being under
‘foreign threat’ and ‘heroes’ – such as the three main characters
in Hatamikia’s last three fi lms – are presented as the saviours.
Considering this political affi liation, it doesn’t come as a
surprise that Bodyguard, Damascus Time and several other recent
Sacred Defence fi lms are produced by the IRGC-funded Owj Arts and
Media Organisation, which was founded in 2011. In this year’s
festival two war fi lms produced by the Owj organisation took home
nine out of sixteen Crystal Simorghs. Th e Lost Strait (directed by
Bahram Tavakkoli) was awarded six Simorghs, including Best Picture;
Damascus Time received three, including Best Director.
While Sacred Defence Cinema has now expanded its defi nition to
include fi lms
about the involvement of the Islamic Republic in current wars,
this new wave has strayed further from the early ideals of Sacred
Defence Cinema theorised by the likes of Avini. Western methods of
story development and character building are ever more present in
these new fi lms, and the action scenes are clearly planned under
the heavy shadow of Hollywood cinema. Hatamikia’s last two fi lms,
Bodyguard and Damascus Time, are good examples of this Western infl
uence. He decided to shoot these two fi lms based on storyboards.
For this purpose, he employed Soheil Danesh Eshraghi, a young
artist known for his Western-styled comic characters. Th e result
is a surreal combination of Western comic-book aesthetics and
Islamic ‘heroes’ who try to ‘save Iran from the West’!
In Damascus Time the mixture of these comic-book elements along
with exaggerated character make-up and excessive use of relatively
poor CGI (computer-generated imagery) creates a situation where the
fi lm looks more like an out-of-date video game rather than the
reality of the Syrian civil war and the proclaimed ‘sacrifi ces’ of
the Iranian pilots. Th is was the fi lm that IRGC-affi liated media
outlets championed; they started a campaign to try and persuade
offi cials to send it to the Oscars. Perhaps by doing so they hoped
the fi lm would reach a larger international audience, ultimately
achieving what it was meant
to achieve: justifying Iran’s presence and criticising Western
involvement in the Syrian civil war. But those offi cials proved to
be more pragmatic and chose another fi lm: No Date, No Signature, a
fi lm with dark social content reminiscent of Iran’s past
successful bids for the academy award.
What is clear now is that Sacred Defence fi lmmakers have
quietly given up their claim of creating a ‘new form of cinema’.
But the need to make war fi lms in order to propagate Iran’s ruling
ideology still remains, and large amounts of state funds continue
to fl ow towards those fi lmmakers closest to the centres of power.
In the middle of all these state-sponsored war propaganda fi lms,
and in an atmosphere dominated by calls for war, one is tempted to
ask ‘where is Iranian anti-war cinema’? With only a handful of
attempts at making anti-war fi lms, in a system where censorship is
an omnipresent aspect of fi lmmaking, anti-war cinema is the
forgotten part of Iranian Cinema. Perhaps, with the emergence of
accessible methods of fi lmmaking, the Iranian anti-war cinema will
consist of fi lms that will be watched not on the large screens of
mainstream cinema venues but on the small-yet-inspiring screens of
underground fi lm collectives.
Kaveh Abbasian is a fi lmmaker and lecturer in Film and
Television Studies at the University of Roehampton, London. He is a
former fellow of John W. Kluge Centre at the Library of Congress,
Washington D.C. His PhD thesis is titled Th e Chronicle of Triumph:
Iranian National Identity and Revolutionary Shi’ism in Morteza
Avini’s Sacred Defence Documentaries
-
February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 17
IRANIAN CINEMAIRANIAN CINEMA
Everybody Knows (2018), in the same vein as world famous Iranian
director Asghar Farhadi’s seven other movies, is a social family
drama with an emphasis on concealment and what remains unsaid. On
the occasion of her sister’s wedding, Laura returns with her
children to her native village in the heart of a Spanish vineyard.
But unexpected events disrupt her stay and resurrect a past long
buried.
In most of his fi lms, Farhadi focusses on
young, middle class couples torn between tradition and
modernity, between the past and the future. By using signifi cant
indices – such as a lack of warm colours in clothes and set design
and the selection of desaturated colour palates to set the tone and
atmosphere of his fi lms – Farhadi reveals a cold relationship
between the couples in his movies. Th e couples also display few
gestures of love or aff ection, and few comforting words are
exchanged.
No matter which geography he chooses,
from Tehran to Spain, stopping by Paris, betrayal, lying and
secrets are the leitmotivs of the Farhadian style. He pushes these
themes so far that the form embraces the substance, the fi rst
becoming a tool for the establishment of the second. Ellipsis is
one of Farhadi’s favourite narrative techniques, which puts the
spectator in a situation of uncertainty until he decides to reveal
a truth.
In Everybody Knows the spectator discovers more information as
the story progresses; a character reveals a secret to another
character and at the same time to the spectator, or important
information is divulged through a secretive conversation between
two characters.
Ellipsis is one of Farhadi’s favourite narrative techniques,
which puts the spectator in a situation
of uncertainty until he decides to reveal a truth
Asghar Farhadi’s Asghar Farhadi’s cinema: a family cinema: a
family torn aparttorn apart
Asal Bagheri provides a brief analysis of Everybody Knows
Film poster advertising Everybody Knows, directed by Asghar
Farhadi
-
18 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
In the beginning of the fi lm, a young girl, Irene, who is later
the victim of a crime, discovers that her mother, Laura, and a
family friend, Paco, were lovers in their youth. Later, Laura
reveals to Paco that Irene is his daughter and informs her family
that her husband has been unemployed for more than two years. Even
more shocking is the discovery of a kidnapping plot, information
that the fi lmmaker withholds from the audience until the very end
of the fi lm.
Women despite menIn all of Farhadi’s movies, women try to
do something to change the problematic situations the couple fi
nds themselves in, despite the refusal of the men. In Fireworks
Wednesday (2006), Mojdeh follows her husband to fi nd out if he is
unfaithful, and in the process she gets hit by him; meanwhile, the
mistress is the one who fi nally ends the relationship, despite her
lover’s pleas. Rouhi, the housekeeper feels compelled to testify to
the loyalty of his employer, despite his doubts, in order to save
the couple’s relationship. In About Elly (2009), Sepideh repeatedly
lies to save a situation, starting with the beginning of their
journey where she lies to the owner of the villa about Elly and
Ahmad’s relationship. Finally, it is for one of her lies that
Sepideh gets violently hit by her husband. In A Separation (2011),
it is Simin who decides to leave her husband; and later, Simin also
tries to fi x a tricky situation by attempting to pay the caretaker
that her husband, Nader, shoved out the door and onto the stairs.
Th e caretaker, Razieh, who is responsible for looking aft er
Nader’s elderly father, and her husband also have a similar
Farhadian relationship: Razieh works without the knowledge of her
husband in order to pay his debts. She is also ultimately the one
who makes the decision not to accept money from the well-to-do
Simin and Nader, because she is no longer sure that the loss of her
baby was due to Nader’s mistreatment of her.
In Everybody Knows Laura, played by Penelope Cruz, like all
other women in Farhadi’s movies, seems to be a passive woman.
Nevertheless, she is the one, despite her husband’s refusal, who
decides to reveal a very important secret to save her daughter from
kidnappers. Revealing
to Paco that Irene is his daughter, she puts him in a moral
dilemma. She asks him to sell his land to pay the kidnappers. In
Farhadi’s cinematographic structure, women always fi nd ways out of
the defi ned ethical frames to save the situation and in the end,
men, by choosing the ethical ‘right way’, settle the situation.
Th e unbearable weight of the familyIn Everybody Knows, the
heavy weight of
family relationships and the unsaid secrets over the years is
depicted from the fi rst frame. But more than the images, it is the
soundscape of the fi lm that is witness to the unfolding
revelations: from the ticking of a clock (suspense), to the too
early ding-dong of a bell (the announcement of a ceremony that will
go wrong), to the roar of a drone fl ying over a wedding party (the
overhanging gods that dictate the fate of mortals), to the
thunderclap that precedes the vibration of a telephone (the
devastation of a mother who reads a message confi rming her
greatest fears), to the creaking of a poorly oiled door that
resonates in a deserted house (the loneliness of a man who sacrifi
ced his existence). It is this soundscape that communicates to the
audience the heavy atmosphere of the story and indicates the taboos
that will soon blow up.
Th e sound obeys a well-defi ned rhythmic strategy,
encapsulating thriller moments while pointing out the emptiness of
the images that scroll on the screen. Because emptiness is perhaps
precisely the subject of the fi lm, Farhadi insists on
the emptiness of the small epiphanies in the family reunions:
the outraged mind of a parent who tries to make a child laugh, the
exaggerated dance of a party-goer who amuses the gallery, and the
embraces of a family that is gradually going to break apart over
unresolved old confl icts.
Th e invisible threads of social classesTh e triggering event of
the story, the
kidnapping of a girl in the midst of a bourgeois wedding
celebration, shakes the superfi cial harmony on screen. Th e
euphoric snapshots of siblings celebrating the wedding are
juxtaposed with the faces of onlookers contemplating, without joy.
Th us, Paco (Javier Bardem, the true hero of the fi lm) initially
suspects his emigrant employees of being behind the abduction, not
by purely racist refl ex but by asking the perverse question ‘What
if ...?’ before being himself violently brought back to his social
origin (he is the son of a servant) by the patriarch of the
family.
Th e fi nal wordEverybody Knows, in addition to the
usual themes of Farhadi’s cinema, such as diff erences in social
classes, depicts the complete deterioration of the foundations of
the family. Th e grandfather of the family, an elderly man, is a
lonely man who is hated by the entire village. Over the years he
has lost his fortune due to gambling. Th e new groom of the family
and his young wife hate their family. Laura’s husband is bankrupt
and unemployed. Paco sells his vineyard, his only possession, and
his wife may be leaving him. And fi nally, the joyful Irene is
turned into a beaten and traumatised girl. Th ree generations
mistreated by the script reveal allegories of an ailing past,
present and future. Insisting on symbols and objects (the clock, a
door tossed by the wind), Farhadi depicts a tragic thriller which
laboriously gives fl esh to fate.
Th e soundscape communicates to the audience the heavy
atmosphere of the story
and indicates the taboos that will soon blow up
Asal Bagheri has a PhD in Semiology and Linguistics, with a
specialization in Iranian Cinema. She’s the author of the thesis
Men & women relationships in post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema:
Directors’ strategies and semiotic analysis. Her forthcoming book,
which will be published in French, is entitled Feelings, Love and
Sexuality: the Cinema’s Dilemma in Islamic Republic of Iran
-
February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 19
IRANIAN CINEMAIRANIAN CINEMA
Film poster advertising Tehran Taboo (2017), directed by Ali
Soozandeh
Homeland is oft en a subject of diasporic representation.
Migrant fi lmmakers imagine their place of origin in various ways
based on political positions, personal and familial experiences as
well as aesthetic choices to do with the stories they wish to tell.
Oft en the representations of homeland tend to be of a boundless
and timeless place that is nostalgically fetishised. In contrast,
political exiles tend to construct their place of origin as
claustrophobic places of surveillance. Exploring three recent
diasporic directors’ fi lms that are set in Iran – namely, A Girl
Walks Home
Alone at Night (2014), Under the Shadow (2016) and Tehran Taboo
(2017) – I will discuss their representations of homeland,
exploring how the new generation of diasporic Iranian fi lmmakers
construct Iran as a narrative space in contrasting but intersecting
ways that at once resonate with the award-winning Iranian cinema of
the last four decades and broaden its boundaries in bold new
directions.
Shot in California, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) is
Ana Lili Amirpour’s fi rst feature fi lm. It is a beautiful black
and white vampire fi lm set in an Iranian town called ‘Bad City’,
where
giant oil pumps feature in the industrial landscape, women wear
the veil outdoors and dance to popular music indoors, and everyone
speaks Persian, albeit oft en less than perfectly. Th e street
signs, the graffi ti and even people’s tattoos are in Persian. Th e
fi lm is more black than white in every sense of the word: Bad City
is a lawless place where corpses pile under a bridge and a violent,
drug-pushing pimp has his profession tattooed on his head. Th e
only force for good is a chador-clad skate-boarding female vampire
who avenges the marginalised, particularly the female victims of
patriarchy. Her wearing of the black chador (a head-to-toe cloak)
subverts the stereotypical iconography of the veil and the oft en
taken-for-granted unidirectional, subjugating power relations read
into it. Her chador fl oats in the air behind her like a cape as
she glides on her skateboard down the street,
Th e new generation of diasporic Iranian fi lmmakers construct
Iran as a narrative space in contrasting but intersecting ways that
at
once resonate with the award-winning Iranian cinema of the last
four decades and broaden its boundaries in bold new directions
Imagining homeland Imagining homeland from a distance:from a
distance: new diasporic visions of Irannew diasporic visions of
Iran
Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad explores how and why diasporic Iranian fi
lmmakers set their fi lms in Iran
-
20 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
making her look like a superhero. Th e chador also allows the
vampire to blend in with the darkness as she lurks at night waiting
for her next villain-cum-victim.
Th ere is more to the ‘Iranian-ness’ of the fi lm than the veil.
Like the now-cliched image of middle-class youth in Tehran, there
is a Western style party which Arash – the James-Dean lookalike
would-be lover of the vampire girl – attends. Some of the
middle-class youth wear a plaster over their noses as a
recognisable mark of having had plastic surgery, as is fashionable
in Iran. Th e fi lmmaker has billed the fi lm as ‘the fi rst
Iranian vampire Western’; thus, on the one hand, the fi lm draws on
the director’s Iranian background, including her knowledge of
Iranian popular music, as well as the admiration for Iranian cinema
in the West. On the other, it makes a connection to vampire and
Western fi lm genres that are less relevant to Iranian cinema.
Under the Shadow (2016) is a horror fi lm set in Tehran, Iran
(but shot in Jordan) and entirely in Persian. Th e fi lm is the
British-Iranian director Babak Anvari’s fi rst feature. Th e
director has painstakingly brought the Persian-speaking diasporic
cast together from all over the world and has used photos and
memories of his childhood in Iran to recreate the Iranian space in
Jordan.
Th e story is about a young woman called Shideh and her 7 or
8-year-old daughter Dorsa who are residents of a block of fl ats in
Tehran during the Iraqi bombing raids in the late 1980s. Th e
opening titles declare that at the time Iran went through rapid
political and cultural transition as a legacy of the bloody 1979
Revolution. Shideh has been expelled from her course in medicine at
university for political reasons during the so-called Cultural
Revolution. Her husband, Iraj, who goes away to the war front,
tells her repeatedly on the phone that she must leave Tehran to go
to his parents in the north of Iran to be safe from bombing raids.
When an unexploded Iraqi bomb literally penetrates the building
from the top and leaves much of it cracked other residents abandon
the building. Refusing to give up her independence, Shideh stays, a
decision with grave consequences; imaginary or ‘real’ ghostly jinn
appear
to enter the building through the cracks created by the bomb and
infect the lives of Shideh and Dorsa.
Anvari has recreated the horrors of the fi rst decade of the
post-Revolutionary period to chilling eff ect. Th e surveillance
regime and socio-political oppression, including the forceful
imposition of the veil on women, are overtones of the atmosphere in
and out of the building. Th e ghost appears mainly as a faceless
chador-clad woman. Shideh once takes fright when she suddenly sees
her own refl ection in a black chador in the mirror before taking
it off in disgust. However, the veil is not an icon in and unto
itself: the child, Dorsa tells her mother that the ghost insists
that Shideh cannot look aft er her but she could. Her husband tells
her on the phone that she cannot look aft er Dorsa, calls her a
‘whore’, ‘useless’ and ‘nothing but a disappointment’. Shideh looks
at her medical books with longing, particularly one in English gift
ed and signed by her mother. Th e chador represents the
claustrophobic role of ‘housewife’ which is being imposed on her.
In a frightening scene Shideh enters the fl apping, oversized
tent-like chador/ghost to rescue Dorsa, who is being swallowed by
it.
Th e third fi lm is Tehran Taboo (2017) by Ali Soozanzadeh, a
German-Iranian fi lmmaker. Th e fi lm is done in rotoscope, with
live action characters turned into animation with digital
background images that strongly resemble Tehran. Th is noir
Persian-language fi lm tells three intertwining stories from the
seedy
underbelly of Tehran about two women and a man whose lives
intersect through a narrative about their sex lives. Such themes
are oft en alluded to in fi lms made in Iran but are here explored
in sordid detail, including an aff air between a clergyman/judge
and a prostitute. Th is beautifully created, animated fi rst
feature comes portrays Iran more accurately than the two live
action fi lms mentioned previously, or any other diasporic fi lm
for that matter. Th e cityscape that forms the background of the fi
lm is remarkably Tehran-like and the dialogue mimics the language
spoken on the streets.
While tales of desperation, loneliness and patriarchal hypocrisy
dominate the fi lms, there are subtle but prominent traces of
optimism in and about them. Th e fi lms’ production in Persian and
detailed settings in Iranian time-space are testimony to the strong
following of Iranian fi lms in the West, including a sizeable
Iranian diaspora with cultural capital and a critical eye for
detail. In each fi lm there seems to be a very conscious eff ort to
improve on the predecessors to create a more detailed construction
of the fi lmic location as Iran. Th e fi lms, particularly the last
two, show deep critical knowledge of urban Iran, including the
lives of the cosmopolitan youth. Like much of post-Revolutionary
Iranian cinema, they all feature complex gender politics with
strong female characters in battles with the patriarchy. Finally,
all three are visually stunning, wonderfully craft ed and
innovative fi lms, each of which has a cinematic freshness that is
on par with some of the best fi lms made in Iran.
Th e fi lms’ production in Persian and settings in Iran are
testimony to the strong following of Iranian fi lms in the West
Dr Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad lectures at the Centre for Media and
Film Studies, SOAS. He is the author of Th e Politics of Iranian
Cinema: Films and Society in the Islamic Republic (Routledge,
2010). His current research is about transnational media and new
modes of authority in Shi’i Islam
-
February – March 2019 The Middle East in London 21
REVIEWS: FILMSREVIEWS: FILMS
‘Poets of Life’ & ‘Poets of Life’ & ‘Puzzleys’, part of
‘Puzzleys’, part of the the KarestanKarestan series seriesDirected
by Shirin Barghnavard & Mehdi Ganji, respectively
Reviewed by Taraneh Dadar
New Iranian Cinema – as the arthouse fi lms coming mostly out of
post-revolutionary Iran were referred to in Western fi lm circles –
was known for its unique blend of documentary and fi ction, with fi
lms such as Abbas Kiarostami’s Close Up (1990) putting Iranian
cinema fi rmly on the world map. But while New Iranian Cinema is an
established national tradition, not enough is known about Iran’s
equally rich documentary cinema.
Since its birth in 1900, Iranian documentary cinema has gone
through numerous changes, but has maintained its resilient,
innovative and subversive spirit, making the best of whatever
support has been available and surviving and thriving in the face
of challenges, from fi nancing and production to exhibition and
distribution.
A taste of this spirit was showcased in SOAS on 24 November
2018, with the screening of two documentaries, Poets of Life
(Shirin Barghnavard, 2017) and Puzzleys (Mehdi Ganji, 2017),
followed by a Q&A session with Barghnavard and seasoned
directors Rakhshan Banietemad and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb.
Th e two fi lms are part of Karestan, a documentary series about
unsung local heroes in Iran, celebrated for their entrepreneurial
skills and commitment to creating a better world around them. Th e
idea of the series was conceived in 2013 by renowned Iranian auteur
Rakhshan Banietemad, whose long career spans documentary and
feature fi lms with a strong focus on social issues and strong
female characters. Together with Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, another
acclaimed Iranian
documentary fi lmmaker, they launched the Karestan project in
spring 2015.
Against the backdrop of Western and domestic pressures on
Iranians, the series has set itself the simple yet daunting task of
giving hope: through the stories of men and women who have overcome
all sorts of obstacles to realise their dream, be it to start a
locally-owned eco-feminist paddy fi eld, establish a charity for
treating children with cancer, or create a 100 per cent waste
recycling plant.
Puzzleys tells the story of how four students living Birjand –
the capital of South Khorasan province – move to Tehran to launch
their start-up to create an app which allows others to create their
own apps. Poets of Life off ers us a glimpse into the life of
Shirin Parsi, a farmer, environmentalist and social activist who
works against all odds to produce organic rice, promote sustainable
farming and campaign against the use of chemicals. Structured
around Shirin’s daily activities, and punctuated by her voice-over
reading her poems, the fi lm is a tribute to one woman’s
determination to build a sustainable, local economy despite the
corruption, mismanagement and greed that challenges her vision.
Planting her tomatoes, she tells the camera: ‘My happiness is as
big as this tomato, that strawberry, as big as those worms. My
sorrows I choose not to dwell on.’
Seven fi lms have already been made as part of the series, as
listed on the Karestan website. Another key fi lm in the series is
Touran Khanum (2018), about the life of Touran Mirhadi (1927-2016),
a visionary educator who believed that ‘peace needs to be
cultivated at childhood’.
Directors Banietemad and Mirtahmasb shot the fi lm over the last
four years of Mirhadi’s life. Aft er the state broadcaster IRIB
refused to show the fi lm, the two took the unusual step of relying
solely on online screenings in a massive campaign endorsed by many
other celebrities. Th e proceeds from the screenings were donated
to the Children’s Book Council, and the Encyclopaedia for Children
and Young Adults, both founded by the late Mirhadi.
Indeed, independence in production and exhibition is key to
Karestan’s business model. In the lively Q&A session which
followed the screenings at SOAS, the fi lmmakers emphasised time
and again their determination to stay independent in funding,
choice of subject matter and avenues for exhibition, and outlined
the enormous challenges involved in doing so. In this, the
discussion off ered a glimpse not just into the Karestan project,
but also into broader issues that independent Iranian documentary
cinema grapples with.
Th e Karestan series is available to watch on IMVBOX, a
streaming service for Iranian fi lms with English subtitles. More
info can be found at www.karestanfi lm.com
Taraneh Dadar is a communications professional based in London.
She did a PhD on gender and popular cinema in post-revolutionary
Iran
Local women working on a paddy fi eld in northern Iran. Still
taken from Shirin Barghnavard's documentary Poets of Life
(2017)
© Peym
an Houshm
andzadeh/Karestan
-
22 The Middle East in London February – March 2019
Inside the Arab State examines a broad range of political,
economic, and social variables that have shaped conceptions of
power, the functions and institutions of the state, the rise and
evolution of social movements, the eruption of civil war in some
countries and fragile polities in others, and evolving
civil-military relations before and aft er the 2011 uprisings.
Beginning with an analysis of politics and political institutions
in the Arab world from the 1950s onwards, the book traces the
challenges faced by Arab states, and the wounds they infl icted on
their societies and on themselves along the way. At the crux of the
book are the 2011 uprisings, states’ responses to them, and eff
orts by political leaders to carve out new forms of legitimacy, as
well as the reasons for the emergence and rise of the Islamic
State.
June 2018, Hurst, £25.00
Inside the Arab StateInside the Arab State
By Mehran Kamrava
Th is book investigates how ecology and politics meet in the
Middle East and how those interactions connect to the global
political economy. Th rough region-wide analyses and case studies
from the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf of Aden, the Levant and North
Africa, the volume highlights the intimate connections of
environmental activism, energy infrastructure and illicit commodity
trading with the political economies of Central Asia, the Horn of
Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Th e book’s nine chapters
analyse how the exploitation and representation of the environment
have shaped the history of the region – and determined its place in
global politics. It argues that how the ecological is understood,
instrumentalised and intervened upon is the product of political
struggle: deconstructing ideas and practices of environmental
change means unravelling claims of authority and legitimacy.
September 2018, Hurst, £25.00
Environment Politics in the Middle Environment Politics in the
Middle East: East: Local Struggles, Global ConnectionsLocal
Struggles, Global ConnectionsEdited by Harry Verhoeven
Th e Saudi off ensive launched in 2015 has made Yemen a victim
of regional power struggles, while the global ‘war on terror’ has
labelled it a threat to international security. Th is perception
has had disastrous eff ects: the country’s complex political
dynamics have been largely ignored by international observers –
resulting in problematic, if not counterproductive, international
policies. Yemen and the World off ers a corrective to these
misconceptions and omissions, putting aside the nature of the
world’s interest in Yemen to focus on Yemen’s role on the global
stage. Laurent Bonnefoy uses six areas of modern international
exchange – globalisation, diplomacy, trade, migration, culture and
militant Islamism – to restore Yemen to its place at the heart of
contemporary aff airs.
October 2018, Hurst, £35.00
Yemen and the World: Yemen and the World: