Cinema of Iran
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The cinema of Iran (or Persian cinema) is a flourishing film industry with a long history. Many popular commercial films are annually made in Iran, and Iranian art films win praise around the world.[1]
Film festivals that honour Iranian films are held annually around the globe. Along with China, Iran has been lauded as one of the best exporters of cinema in the 1990s.[2] Some critics now rank Iran as the world's most important national cinema, artistically, with a significance that invites comparison to Italian neorealism and similar movements in past decades.[1] World-renowned Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke and German filmmaker Werner Herzog, along with many film critics from around the world, have praised Iranian cinema as one of the world’s most important artistic cinemas.[3]
Besides films made in Iran, the terms "Iranian cinema" and "Persian cinema" can also refer to the cinema of the Iranian Cultural Continent ("Greater Iran"), such as Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The term may also refer to movies made using the Persian language but filmed or produced in other regions, such as Europe and the United States or to movies made by Iranians in languages other than Iranian ones.
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History
Visual arts in Persia
See also: Persian theatre One of the earliest examples in visual representations in Iranian history can be traced to the bas-reliefs in Persepolis (c. 500 B. C.). Bas relief is a method of sculpting which entails carving or etching away the surface of a flat piece of stone or metal. Persepolis was the ritual center of the ancient kingdom of Achaemenids and "the figures at Persepolis remain bound by the rules of grammar and syntax of visual language."[4]
This style and complexity of visual representation reached its high peak about a thousand years later during the Sassanian reign. A bas-relief in Taq-e-Bostan (western Iran) depicts a complex hunting scene. In these visual representations, movements and actions are articulated in a sophisticated manner. It is even possible to see the progenitor of the cinema close-up: a wounded wild pig escaping from the hunting ground.[5]
After the conversion from Zoroastrianism to Islam — a religion in which visual symbols were avoided — Persian art continued its visual practices. Persian miniatures are great examples of such attempts. The deliberate lack of perspective enabled the artist to have different plots and sub-plots within the same image space. A very popular form of such art was Pardeh-Khani. Another type of art in the same category was Naqqali.[5]
Other than-popular dramatic performance arts, before the advent of cinema in Iran, are Khaymeshab-bazi (puppet show), Saye-bazi (shadow plays), Rouhozi (comical acts), and Ta'zieh.[6]
Early Persian cinema
Cinema was only five years old when it came to Persia at the beginning of the 20th century. The first Persian filmmaker was Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkas Bashi, the official photographer of Muzaffar al-Din Shah, the Shah of Persia from 1896–1907. After a visit to Paris in July 1900, Akkas Bashi obtained a camera and filmed the Shah's visit to Europe upon the Shah's orders. He is said to have filmed the Shah’s private and religious ceremonies, but no copies of such films exist today. A few years after Akkas Bashi started photography, Khan Baba Motazedi, another pioneer in Iranian motion picture photography emerged.[7] He shot a considerable amount of newsreel footage during the reign of Qajar to the Pahlavi dynasty.[8]
In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim Khan Sahhafbashi opened the first movie theater in Tehran.[7] After Mirza Ebrahim Khan, several others like Russi Khan, Ardeshir Khan, and Ali Vakili tried to establish new movie theaters in Tehran. Until the early 1930s, there were little more than 15 theatres in Tehran and 11 in other provinces.[5]
In 1925, an Armenian-Iranian cinematographer, Ovanes Ohanian, decided to establish the first film school in Iran. Within five years he managed to run the first session of the school under the name "Parvareshgahe Artistiye cinema" (The Cinema Artist Educational Centre).[9]
1930s and 40s
In 1932, Abdolhossein Sepanta made the first Iranian sound film, entitled Lor Girl. Later, in 1935, he directed movies such as Ferdowsi (the life story of the most celebrated epic poet of Iran), Shirin and Farhaad (a classic Iranian love story), and Black Eyes (the story of Nader Shah's invasion of India). In 1937, he directed Laili and Majnoon, an Eastern love story similar to the English story of Romeo and Juliet.
The present day Iranian film industry owes a lot of its progress to two industrious personalities, Esmail Koushan and Farrokh Ghaffari. By establishing the first National Iranian Film Society in 1949 at the Iran Bastan Museum and organizing the first Film Week during which English films were exhibited, Ghaffari laid the foundation for alternative and non-commercial films in Iran.
Early Persian directors like Abdolhossein Sepanta and Esmail Koushan took advantage of the richness of Persian literature and ancient Persian mythology. In their work, they put emphasized ethics and humanity.[10]
Pre-revolutionary cinema, 1950s-70s
The 1960s was a significant decade for Iranian cinema, with 25 commercial films produced annually on average throughout the early ‘60s, increasing to 65 by the end of the decade. The majority of production focused on melodrama and thrillers.
The movie that really boosted the economy of Iranian cinema and initiated a new genre was Ganj-e-Qarun (Croesus Treasure), made in 1965 by Siamak Yasami. Four years later Masud Kimiaie made Kaiser. With Kaiser (Qeysar), Kimiaie depicted the ethics and morals of the romanticized poor working class of the Ganj-e-Qarun genre through his main protagonist, the titular Qeysar. But Kimiaie's film generated another genre in Iranian popular cinema: the tragic action drama.[11]
With the screening of the films Kaiser and The Cow, directed by Masoud Kimiay and Darius Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films established their status in the film industry. Attempts to organize a film festival that had begun in 1954 within the framework of the Golrizan Festival, called for the boring of fruits with the Sepas Festival in 1969 and the endeavors of Ali Mortazavi, which resulted in the formation of the Tehran World Festival in 1973.
Pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema produced notable movies such as:
- The Bride of the Sea, by the late Arman (1965)
- Siavash at Persepolis, by the late Ferreydun Rahnama (1967)
- The Brick and The Mirror, by Ebrahim Golestan (1967)
- The House of God, by Jalal Moghaddam (1966)
- The Husband of Ahoo Khanom, by Davood Mollapour (1968)
Post-revolutionary cinema
Post-revolutionary Iranian cinema has been celebrated in many international forums and festivals for its distinct style, themes, authors, idea of nationhood, and cultural references. Starting With Viva... by Khosrow Sinai and followed by Many excellent Iranian directors who emerged in the last few decades, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, who some critics regard as one of the few great directors in the history of cinema,[12] planted Iran firmly on the map of world cinema when he won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Taste of Cherry in 1997.
The continuous presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals such as Cannes, the Venice Film Festival, and Berlin Film Festival attracted world attention to Iranian masterpieces., as Iranian films have repeatedly been nominated for or won prestigious prizes at those festivals. In 2006, six Iranian films, with six different styles, represented Iranian cinema at the Berlin Film Festival, and critics considered this a remarkable event in the history of Iranian cinema. [13][14]
An important step was taken in 1998 when the Iranian government began to fund ethnic cinema. Since then Iranian Kurdistan has seen the rise of numerous filmmakers. In particular the film industry got momentum in Iranian Kurdistan and the region has seen the emergence of filmmakers such as Bahman Ghobadi, actually the entire Ghobadi family, Ali-Reza Rezai, Khosret Ressoul and many other younger filmmakers.[15]
Contemporary Iranian cinema
Today, the Iranian box office is dominated by commercial Iranian films. Foreign films are not commonly shown in movie theaters as part of a ban on films originating from the West. But heavily censored versions of classic and contemporary Hollywood productions are shown on state television. Uncensored versions are easily available in black markets. Iranian art films are often not screened officially
Commercial cinema in Iran
The internationally award-winning cinema of Iran is quite different from the domestically oriented films. The latter caters to an entirely different audience, which is largely under the age of 25. This commercial Iranian cinema genre is largely unknown in the West, as the films are targeted at local audiences. There are two categories of this type of film:
- Films about the victory of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the ensuing Iran–Iraq war, filled with strong religious and national motifs.
- Formulaic films starring popular actors. With 130 Iranian films looking for a screening each year, cinema managers tend to prefer crowd-pleasing comedies, romantic melodramas, and family comedies over the other genres.[16] The Lizard, Outsiders, Aquarium, Ceasefire, M like Mother, Glass Agency, Charlatan and Killing Mad Dogs were among the post-revolutionary films that gained the highest box office records.[17][18][19]These films have similarities with Indian popular cinema and with Hollywood (but also have distinct differences). They are chaste, in that the hero and his love interest do not so much kiss but rather walk off into the metaphorical sunset as the end credits roll. The appeal of these films is the escapism offered by their “western” attributes and their "non-Iranian" identity.
For many years, the most visible face of Iranian commercial cinema was Mohammad Ali Fardin, who starred in a number of popular successful films. In the more conservative social climate of Iran after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, however, he came to be considered an embarrassment to Iranian national identity and his films — which depicted romance, alcohol, scantily-clad women, and a lifestyle now condemned by the Islamic government — were banned. Although this would effectively prevent Fardin from making films for the remainder of his life, the ban did little to diminish his broad popularity with Iranian moviegoers: His funeral in Tehran was attended by 20,000 mourners.[20] Before Fardin, one could argue, Iran simply did not have a commercial cinema.[21]
During the war years, crime thrillers such as Senator (1983), The Eagles (1984), Boycott (1985), The Tenants (1986), and Kani Manga (1987) occupied the first position on the sales charts.[22]
Officially, the Iranian government disdains American cinema: in 2007 President Ahmadinejad's media adviser told the Fars news agency, "We believe that the American cinema system is devoid of all culture and art and is only used as a device."[23] However, numerous western commercial films such as Edison, The Illusionist, Passion of the Christ, House of Sand and Fog, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Others and The Aviator have been screened in Iranian cinemas and Iranian film festivals since the revolution. Despite great pride in the country’s more than one hundred year old film history, Western cinema is enormously popular among Iran’s young people, and practically every recent Hollywood film is available on CD, DVD, or video.[24][25][26][27] Conservative-controlled state television has also broadcast more Western movies -- partly because millions of Iranians have been switching to the use of banned satellite television equipment.[27]
There is no particular love of Arab or Indian cinema among the Iranian masses – in the last eight years, there has not been a single film from these countries screened in Iran. 6 to 8 Hollywood films make it to Iranian movie theaters each year.
Iranian New Wave films
In the 1960s, there were 'New Wave' movements in the cinema of numerous countries. The pioneers of the Iranian New Wave were directors like Forough Farrokhzad,Khosrow Sinai, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Bahram Beizai, and Parviz Kimiavi. They made innovative art films with highly political and philosophical tones and poetic language. Subsequent films of this type have become known as the New Iranian cinema to distinguish them from their earlier roots. The most notable figures of the Iranian New Wave are Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Majid Majidi, Bahram Beizai, Darius Mehrjui, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Khosrow Sinai, Sohrab Shahid-Saless, Parviz Kimiavi, Samira Makhmalbaf, Amir Naderi, and Abolfazl Jalili.
The factors leading to the rise of the New Wave in Iran were, in part, due to the intellectual and political movements of the time. A romantic climate was developing after the 19 August 1953 coup in the sphere of arts. Alongside this, a socially committed literature took shape in the 1950s and reached a peak in the 1960s, which may consider as the golden era of contemporary Persian literature.[28]
Features of New Wave Iranian film, in particular the works of legendary Abbas Kiarostami, can be classified as postmodern.[29]
Iranian New Wave films shared some characteristics with the European art films of the period, in particular Italian Neorealism. However, in her article 'Real Fictions', Rose Issa argues that Iranian films have a distinctively Iranian cinematic language
- "that champions the poetry in everyday life and the ordinary person by blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, feature film with documentary." She also argues that this unique approach has inspired European cinema directors to emulate this style, citing Michael Winterbottom's award winning In This World (2002) as an homage to contemporary Iranian cinema. Issa claims that "This new, humanistic aesthetic language, determined by the film-makers’ individual and national identity, rather than the forces of globalism, has a strong creative dialogue not only on home ground but with audiences around the world." [30]
In his book Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future (2001) Hamid Dabashi describes modern Iranian cinema and the phenomenon of [Iranian] national cinema as a form of cultural modernity. According to Dabashi, "the visual possibility of seeing the historical person (as opposed to the eternal Qur'anic man) on screen is arguably the single most important event allowing Iranians access to modernity."
While Kiarostami and Panahi represent the first and second generations of New wave filmmakers respectively, the third generation is represented by Bahman Ghobadi, Maziar Miri, Asghar Farhadi, Mani Haghighi, and Babak Payami, [31][32] along with newly emerged filmmakers such as Kiarash Anvari, Maziar Bahari, Sadaf Foroughi, Saman Saloor, and Mona Zandi-Haqiqi.
Iranian popular art films
Parallel to the Iranian New Wave, with its neorealist and minimalist art cinema, there exists a so-called "popular art cinema" in Iran. Filmmakers who belong to this circle make films with a broader range of audience than the narrow spectrum of highly educated people who admire the New Wave, but believe that their movies are also artistically sound. Filmmakers such as Nasser Taghvaee and Ali Hatami are the best examples of this cinematic movement (some of these filmmakers also make new wave films (e.g. Mom's Guest by Darius Mehrjui).[28]
Iranian women's cinema
Following the rise of the Iranian New Wave, there are now record numbers of film school graduates in Iran and each year more than 20 new directors make their debut films, many of them women. In the last two decades, there have been a higher percentage of women directors in Iran than in most countries in the West.[30]
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, writer and director is probably Iran's best-known and certainly most prolific female filmmaker. She has established herself as the elder stateswoman of Iranian cinema with documentaries and films dealing with social pathology.[33] Samira Makhmalbaf directed her first film, The Apple, when she was only 17 years old and won the Cannes Jury Prize in 2000 for her following film ‘’The Blackboard’’.
The success and hard work of the pioneering Rakhshan Bani-Etemad is an example that many women directors in Iran were following much before Samira Makhmalbaf made the headlines. Internationally recognized figures in Persian women's cinema are:
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