Homework: Film Production and Cultural Exchange at Kanoon, (Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults), 1965-1989

Simran Bhalla

Abstract:

Kanoon, or the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. was founded in the mid-1960s as one of several governmental organizations established to grow Iran's cultural production. This presentation considers how technocratic national development agendas resulted in a flourishing of modernist and experimental cinema at Kanoon. I examine animated, non-fiction, and fiction films, including a selection of early films by Abbas Kiarostami. This paper demonstrates that Kanoon films, which were for or about children, laid the formal groundwork for Iran's well-documented humanist film tradition, However, these films simultaneously advanced an elitist state's ideologies of modernity.

Bio:

Simran Bhalla is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California. She received her PhD in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University in 2021. Her research interests include state-sponsored and institutional films from India and Iran, global modernisms, and architecture and design in postcolonial film and television. She has published in Iran Namag and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and curated film series on Arab, Indian, and Iranian cinemas.