Close Up Iranian Cinema: Past, Present and Future

by Dabashi, Hamid

• ISBN13: 9781859843321
• ISBN10: 1859843328
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-11-17
• Publisher: VERSO

Summary

Abbas Kiraostami planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival in 1997 for his film A Taste of Cherry . Here the growing reputation of Iranian cinema from its origins in the films of Kimiai and Mehrjui, through the work of established directors such as Kiraostami, Beyzai and Bani-Etemad, to young film-makers like Samira Makhmalbaf and Bahman Qobadi, who triumphed at the Cannes 2000 festival, is examined. Dabashi employs interviews with directors, insightful commentary on individual films, an extensive filmography, and generous illustration to provide an indispensable guide to a little-studied cinematic genre. Unabashedly polemical, he dissects the idea of the oriental in western perceptions of Iranian cinema and details the way that film festivals and distribution in the west have shaped domestic output in Iran. He looks, too, at the particular difficulties faced by women film-makers in a country of Islamic orthodoxy, and the obstacles placed in the path of directors attempting to introduce dissident politics in their work.

Author Biography

Hamid Dabashi is Professor of Comparative Study of Culture and Iranian Studies at Columbia University

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	ix
Introduction	1	(11)
On Modernity and the Making of a National Cinema	12	(21)
The commencement of modernity
A window unto the world
The constitutional revolution
The Making of an Iranian Filmaker: Abbas Kiarostami	33	(43)
The 1950s
The 1960s
The 1970s
The year of the revolution
The 1980s
The 1990s
The Sight of the Invisible World: The Cinema of Bahram Beiza'i	76	(36)
Daybreak
Remythologizing the real
Mythologies
Ritual birth
Urban legends
Bahman Farmanara: Twice upon a Time	112	(44)
Studying in Los Angels
Back to Iran
The early films
After Prince Ehtejab
At the dawn of the revolution
The rise of a new generation of filmmakers
Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine
Once upon a Filmmaker: Conversation with Mohsen Makhmalbaf	156	(57)
To the manner born
Precociously political
To take arms,...and by opposing end them
In Pahlavi prison
At the dawn of the revolution
The politics of a poetic turn
Cinema saves
The totality of a cinematic career
The loss of a partner
Art as a future
The poetics of a visionary
Sources of cultural maladies
In the Speculum of the Other: The Feminine Figure of Modernity	213	(31)
Successive sites of resistance
In the curvature of the speculum
Deterritorializing the Iranian subject
A threesome arrangement
Whither Iranian Cinema? The Perils and Promises of Globalization	244	(39)
Tehran
Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine (2000)
Mix (2000)
Protest (2000)
The Wind Will Carry Us Away (1999)
Cannes
Jom'eh (2000)
A Time for Drunken Horses (2000)
The Apple (1998)
Blackboard (2000)
Whither Iranian cinema?
Filmography	283	(8)
Notes	291	(8)
Acknowledgements	299