Figure 1: Still from the film Love Stricken (Dilshudigān), directed by ‘Alī Hātamī, 1992. The cathedral leaves its locale to be received in the studio of a lover of art; the choral production, performed in…

Figure 1: A still from the film Radiograph of a Family (Rādīyugrāphī-i yak khānavādah), directed by Fīrūzah Khusruvānī, 2020. Introduction Who gets access to which spaces, and why, remains a globally contentious issue. How does…

Prologue By the time Muhammad Rasūluf’s film The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024), after making its way through multiple festivals and a few public screenings, arrived at the small, independent, and well-supported Lüneburg’s SCALA,…

How might we imagine a utopian space in a past saturated by political trauma without assuming it can be fully recuperated? The question takes on particular urgency when we confront moments like the 1953 CIA-engineered…

Figure 1: A still from the film Critical Zone (Mantaqah-yi Buhrānī), directed by ‛Alī Ahmadzādah, 2023. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the term “underground art” in Iran has been widely used but is sometimes misapplied….

Figure 1: St. Petersburg, awaiting the arrival of Muzaffar al-Dīn Shah in 1902. In addition to the films of Mirza Ibrāhīm Khan ‛Akkāsbāshī, created before the Constitutional Revolution of 1905, and Georges Ismā‛īluf’s news report…

Figure 1: Poster for Tomorrow is Bright (Fardā Rushan Ast), directed by Sardar Sager, 1960. Sardar Sager’s filmmaking career in Iran is the best kind of anomaly. He was the most prominent film professional to…

Figure 1: A still from the film Shāzdah Ihtijāb (Prince Ihtijāb), directed by Bahman Farmānārā, 1974. Imagine living in the 18th or 19th century, before the advent of cinema and the introduction of movies into…

“Martyrdom is a trap for the oppressed.” Éric Vuillard (The War of the Poor) Introduction “Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” (“Woman, Life, Freedom”), the central slogan…

Ethnographic filmmaking—defined as making films that represent one culture to another or to itself—emerged in Iran in the 1960s, driven by many factors, such as rapid modernization and the resulting population displacements and psychic and…

Figure1: ‛Abbās Kiyārustamī with the Palme d’Or for Best Director, the Cannes Film Festival, 1997. Paradoxically, the status of ‛Abbās Kiyārustamī (1940-2016) as a universal filmmaker appears to be one of his most underrated virtues….

Introduction In this entry, I trace the trajectory of Bahrām Bayzā’ī’s creative impulse and examine his oeuvre to offer an analytical overview of his aesthetic and thematic concerns and innovations. Before embarking on my chronological…

Figure 1: Portrait of ‛Abbās Kiyārustamī. ‛Abbās Kiyārustamī’s work has often been praised for displaying at once formal simplicity and sophisticated emotional registers. This simplicity can be observed both in Kiyārustamī’s acclaimed narrative work and…

Introduction1With changes and additions, this essay is a section from my articles, published under the title “Leisure Architecture and the Aesthetics of the Pahlavi ‘Modern Middle Class’,” in Political, Social and Cultural History of Modern…

Before the narrative even begins, Rakhshān Banī-i‛timād’s Nargis (Nargess) of 1992 directly engages the theme of love. As the film opens accompanied by the melodic score, a close-up of a conventional bride and groom figurine…

Asghar Farhādī was born in 1972 in Humāyūnshahr, also known as Sidah (now called Khumaynīshahr), on the outskirts of Isfahan. He gravitated towards theater and film at an early age despite having no obvious family…

Introduction  Iranian cinema entered the European film festival scene in the 1960s. The first Iranian film to screen at Cannes was Mostafa Farzaneh’s…

This article is about an emergent form of cinema in whose production and propagation most of us have participated in one way or another.  I will concentrate on its manifestation in Iran around the political…

Iranian pre-revolutionary cinema has been characterized by different cinematic trends. While distinct in their modes of production, cinematic grammar, means of circulation, and reception, these cinematic trends were connected and overlapping. Starting in the late…

The choice of location was a crucial aspect in the creation of most Iranian films from the 1930s to the end of the 1970s. These locations depicted in Iranian cinema become significant parts of the…

Figure 1: Bihrūz Vusūqī, A screenshot from the film Dashnah (The Dagger). Introduction Né Khalīl Vusūqī on March 11, 1938, in the city of Khuy, Bihrūz Vusūqī made his entry into the Iranian film industry…

Introduction In the aftermath of Mahsa Amini’s untimely death in September 2022, following her arrest by the morality police for allegedly wearing an improper hijab, Iranian women took center stage in the Women, Life, Freedom…

Figure 1: Still from Critical Zone (Mantaqah-yi buhrānī), directed by ‘Alī Ahmadzādah, 2023. The Rise of the Social Issues “Genre” in Cinema Under Muhammad Khātamī’s Reformist Presidency In 1999 a seminal conference on Iranian cinema…

Introduction From its inception cinema has been defined by its capacity to foster collective experience. The Lumière brothers’ inaugural 1895 public screening on Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, was not only a technological breakthrough but also…

Figure 1: Poster of the film A House Built on Water (Khānah-ʾī rūy-i āb), directed by Bahman Farmān-Ārā, 2002. Introduction: The Portrayal of a Type In exploring modern Iranian literature and cinema, one can see…