Library
The Infinity Mirrors
Author: Bahram Beyzai
Summary:
“The Infinity Mirrors” is a screenplay by Bahram Beyzai which implicitly enclosed the most important periods before it or, the most difficult aspects of Iran’s contemporary history, at the center of its story. Although this story is not intended to confront politics and history, the context in which this story takes place is not totally unrelated to politics, and “Bahram Baizaei” has dealt with the issue of revolution in it. Nez’hat is advised by one of the prison guards to sleep with the General in charge of her brother’s case who is sentenced to be executed soon. After a week of being passed around, Nez’hat finally realizes that she’s been deceived and played with as her brother has already been shot to death. She decides to break up her engagement with her fiancé, Eftekhari prior to giving herself up to the General’s pleasure. This is while Eftekhari is still in love with her and all that happened surrounding Nez’hat’s brother’s execution hasn’t changed his decision in the slightest. Nez’hat assumes that she can belittle the General by sleeping around with men from the lowest levels of society. Nez’hat’s father dies from the grief of her daughter’s prostitution and the rest of the family ostracize her.
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Language: Farsi
From Far and Near: 45 Articles and Conversations About Cinema from 1974-2011
Author: Aidin Aghdashloo
Summary:
The present collection consists of forty-five film articles written and published by Aidin Aghdashloo between the years 1974 to 2011. The content of this collection includes film critiques of Iranian and international films and filmmakers, memoirs, reports, references, interviews, and theoretical discussions. The articles in the first section revolve around cinema and its influences. In the second section, films such as ” The Passion of the Christ “, “Fani and Alexander”, ” The Defeated Conqueror “, and ” Ten Days to the Sea ” are critically reviewed. The third section, dedicated to filmmakers, explores the works of Ali Hatami, Robert Altman, Ebrahim Golestan, Abbas Kiarostami, Masoud Kimiai, and others. Reports, interviews, and several other articles are also included in this collection.
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Language: Farsi
Thirty-Two Years of Iranian Cinema After the Revolution
Author: Mojtaba Habibi
Summary:
In the book “Thirty-Two Years of Iranian Cinema After the Revolution (Existence or Non-Existence),” Mojtaba Habibi delves into the critique and analysis of films after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, ultimately describing the views of the leaders of the system regarding cinema. Cinema, as a powerful mass medium, quickly established and secured its position and, at least two decades after its emergence, surpassed the preceding arts that had in some way influenced its formation. With technological advancements in each decade, cinema’s recreational and entertainment aspects have also increased. In Iran, the growth of cinema began with jolly and ebullient Indian movies along with Persian and Turkish movies and continued with artistic films that had a festival-oriented approach, such as those by Satyajit Ray, Ebrahim Golestan, Bahram Beizai, Dariush Mehrjui, and others.
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Language: Farsi
The History of Dubbing in Persian in Iran
Author: Ahmad Jyrafar
Summary:
This book recounts the historical journey of film dubbing in Iran, from the early and initial methods of using intertitles to dubbing films into Persian in foreign countries including India, Egypt, the Soviet Union, Turkey, Italy, France, America, and Germany. The author in this collection has attempted to delve into the dark and unknown aspects of dubbing. Additionally, it introduces the history of film dubbing in Iran in each decade from the 1920s to the 1990s, along with the films shown each year and the best examples of dubbing in each year. Other sections of the book include one hundred outstanding dubs and one hundred selected voice actors, which encompass the film dubbing credentials and the introduction of dubbing directors and selected voice actors. The final section of the book includes biographies and introductions of dubbing historians to the present day, accompanied by interesting and nostalgic photographs and memories. Some of the content is the result of conversations with artists in this field.
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Language: Farsi
The Role of Cinema in the Iranian Revolution
Author: Amir Shafaqi
Summary:
During the 1960s and 1970s, while cinema is becoming the most significant modern entertainment for urban Iranians, it also becomes the most influential medium in society. This situation occurs while the Iranian society, after the White Revolution, is engaged in the most intense covert and overt battle between the manifestations of modernity and traditionalism. In fact, the rise of Iranian cinema, after the movie “Ganj-e Qarun” (Qarun’s Treasure) coincides with the intensification of conflicts between traditional values and the new order brought about by modernity. This book examines the relationship between Iranian cinema and this ongoing struggle.
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Language: Farsi
Iranian Theater Over Time 4: Elixir of Role: The Artistic Life of Mohammad Ali Keshavarz
Author: Azam Kianafraz, Yasin Mohammadi, Ali Nasirian
Summary:
The first part of the book takes a narrative approach to the personal and theatrical life of Mohammad Ali Keshavarz. Then, we have selected five reviews that examine Keshavarz’s work in both the role of an actor and a theater director. Furthermore, a detailed description is provided of the films in which Mohammad Ali Keshavarz has acted. Following that, four interviews with Keshavarz are included, with the first interview conducted by Behzad Sedighi and the subsequent three interviews selected from the numerous interviews that Mohammad Ali Keshavarz has given to post-revolutionary publications. Additionally, Keshavarz’s undergraduate thesis titled “The Reciprocal Influences of Society and the Artist on Each Other” has been published in this book as is. The conclusion of this section includes visual appendices comprising over a hundred images and documents that have been collected from various sources.
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Language: Farsi
Documents of Music, Theater, and Cinema in Iran
Author: Seyyed Hossein Mousavi, Hadi Khaniki, Ahmad Masjed Jame'i
Summary:
In this three-volume collection, documents relating to music, theater, and cinema in Iran (during the years 1921 to 1978) have been compiled. These documents reflect the most important issues and problems faced by artists, directors, musicians, cinema owners, café, and restaurant managers, as well as their expectations from the government and the nation. Other topics covered in the documents include the cost of ceremonies and celebrations, hiring foreign musicians, the establishment of music, cinema, and theater schools and institutes, dispatching artistic groups abroad for performances, performances by foreign artists in Iran, the establishment of filming and production companies, inauguration of certain cinemas, criticism of films, protests against increased municipal fees, and similar subjects. Certain laws, by-laws, canons, and circulars related to music, theater, and cinema are also included in specific sections of the book. The compiler of this collection has prepared it based on the documents available at the “Presidential Archives Center” and the ” National Library and Archive of Iran.
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Language: Farsi
From Cinémathèque Paris to Tehran Film Center: Face to Face with Farrokh Ghaffari
Author: Parviz Jahed
Summary:
Farrokh Ghaffari’s legacy is not insignificant to Iranian cinema. He was a pioneer to undertake the collection of documents and materials related to the history of Iranian cinema. He was also the first person to establish the National Film Center and subsequently, the National Film House in Iran. Ghaffari, like Ebrahim Golestan and Farrokh Rahnama, is important not only for his films but also for the various roles he played in the Iranian artistic and cinematic community. The book “From Cinema Tec Paris to the Tehran Film Center” includes a conversation between Farrokh Ghaffari and Parviz Jahed. Farrokh Ghaffari was a cinema scholar, historian, critic, director, and one of the pioneers of Iranian New Wave cinema. Resembling Ebrahim Golestan and Farrokh Rahnama, Ghaffari too is not deemed significant merely for his films; he has also worked in various fields and areas and had multiple roles in the Iranian contemporary art community. The present interview showcases the different dimensions of Farrokh Ghaffari’s work in his own words, in various fields and areas he has worked in. It serves as an important source for students and researchers of contemporary art in Iran, especially in the field of cinema.
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Language: Farsi
From Hajji Washington to Hajj Kazem
Author: Seyed Naser Hashem Zadeh
Summary:
After the victory of the Islamic Revolution, different genres of cinema in Iran gained various experiences. Sometimes, by disregarding the taste of the national audience, post-revolution genres of Iranian cinema have become reluctantly disinterested in the narrator cinema, and at other times, they have gone to the extremes in excessive adaptation albeit mostly from foreign literature. Sometimes, they have glorified heroism in significant arenas like the imposed war, and other times, they have created mountains out of molehills and inadvertently or deliberately engaged in sensationalism and detraction in society. Occasionally, they have reflected on issues of the intellectual thinkers of society as the minority and other times, they have become narrators of the filmmaker’s paradoxical thoughts. The analysis of important complications such as festival-centricity, politicization, disregard for untapped potentials like “shared cinema” (among nations with cultural affinities), etc., plays a crucial role in forming our proper understanding of the various cinematic forms and genres. Accordingly, this book initially takes a pathological approach to the most significant themes and intellectual and cultural aspects of prominent cinematic genres in the country. Finally, key points and strategic approaches for improving the current situation are presented.
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Language: Farsi
Bahram Beizayi from Another View: Analysing Four Masterpieces of Beizayi
Author: Soheila Najm
Summary:
In this book, Dr. Soheila Najm has examined the following four outstanding works of Bahram Bayzaei in four different narratives: “Passing through the Mirror of History in the Death of Yazdgerd”; “Woman’s Image and the Mythical Infrastructure in Basho, the Little Stranger”; “A Look at the Screenplay of the Shahnameh’s Modern preamble” and “Passengers from Another Point of View”. These four cinematic works are various experiences that each have roots in Beyzaei’s exploration in the discovery and comprehension of endemic rituals and performances of Iran and other theatrical domains of the East.
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Language: Farsi
Poetics of Rupture: Cinema of Asghar Farhadi
Author: Maziyar Eslami
Summary:
In this book, Eslami has discussed Asghar Farhadi’s cinema and its peculiar characteristics. Farhadi’s cinema is the product of the historical disintegration created during the reform period in the history of Iranian cinema, which includes the transition period between the dichotomy of cinema and the cinematographer before and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This period resulted in the emergence of a new generation of filmmakers to overcome the historical division that began with the 1979 revolution and had somewhat redefined other social, political, and cultural fields. This historical division created two prefixes, “pre” and “post” revolution, to describe two different situations, not merely historically, but rather ontologically. The dichotomy underwent a crisis in June 1997. This crisis – although not prosperous, at least in some cases made the rigid figure in front of this dichotomy problematic. By unfurling a new space, through a new generation, to discredit the false dichotomy that, on the one hand, held at its pinnacle the intellectualism of pre-revolution cinema, and on the other hand, held the engineered religious and value-oriented cinema of post-revolution that deemed itself the historical representative of revolution-era cinema. Various cinematographers were the product of this crisis and expressed distinct reactions to the void created by this rupture. The first response to this constructed semantic void, to this dual displacement of “pre” and “post” revolution, was inherently the same as the official religious and value-oriented narrative, similar to its modern form. This response entailed refusal and denial to accept such a void. Fundamentally, if some kind of displacement had occurred, there would always be a greater, more stable, and indisputable meaning that could fill in this void.
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Language: Farsi
The Love of ‘Farsi Film’ Years and the Renaissance of Iranian Cinema
Author: Behzad Eshghi
Summary:
In this book, the renaissance of Iranian cinema, which came from the heart of Farsi film, as well as the emergence of history-making filmmakers, such as Masoud Kimiai, Dariush Mehrjui and others, are analyzed from a sociological perspective. Among the topics discussed in this book are: ‘Lasting characters and literary adaptations’, ‘Street cinema and Iranian Naturalism’, ‘Mania, modern rationality and the cinema of Parviz Kimiavi’, ‘The politics of elimination and the game of feigning ignorance’, ‘The star is dead and will not die again’, ‘Let’s not make a Stalin out of Kiarostami’, ‘Reading lies and history’, ‘Farhadi’s references and intertextual dialogues’, and others. The story of this book begins from the end of the 1960s up to the present day when the art of Iranian cinema has turned into the most important cultural ambassador for the country in international congregations.
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Language: Farsi
The Reflection of Modern Iranian Cinema in the World
Author: Jalal Khosro Shahi
Summary:
The first section includes the preface as well as the introduction. The achievement of Iran’s new wave cinema before the Islamic Revolution; the public view of the world’s reception of modern Iranian cinema; and the global presence of modern Iranian cinema based on statistics are also discussed in the first section. In the second section, Iranian films and foreign press and media will be reviewed. And the third chapter is composed of an interview with Alireza Shoja Nouri, list of films and festivals, and Iranian movie posters for abroad.
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Language: Farsi
Social Transformation and Cinematic Films in Iran: A Sociology of Popular Iranian Films (1930-1979)
Author: Parviz Ejlali
Summary:
There has always been some kind of alignment and correlation between social stabilities and changes and the subjects and contents of Iranian films. Iranian films between 1930 to 1979 reflected features of a stable Iranian society as well as characteristics of social transformations that had occurred in recent times. This is to say that popular Persian films, despite their superficiality and vulgarity, still reflected some stable and ancient characteristics of our national culture and depicted development in perspectives and attitudes from traditionalism to modernity. Accordingly, this book tries to first describe the social institution of filmmaking in Iran before the revolution, then proceed to analyze the content of Iranian movies, and finally produce an evaluation of the process of modernizing the culture.
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Language: Farsi
(A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 1: The Artisanal Era, 1897-1941)
Author: Hamid Nafisi
Summary:
The present book is the first volume of a three-volume collection written by Hamid Nafisi containing a social and political review of Iranian cinema. The first volume of this collection describes and analyses the early years of Iranian cinema. Film was introduced in Iran in 1900, three years after the country’s first commercial film exhibitor saw the new medium in Great Britain. An artisanal cinema industry sponsored by the ruling shahs and other elites soon emerged. Ruling until 1941, Reza Shah implemented a Westernization program intended to unite, modernize, and secularize his multicultural, multilingual, and multiethnic country. It was in this climate, therefore, that movies showing the rapid process of modernization in Iran were highly regarded.
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Language: Farsi
The Difficult Path of Cinema in Exile
Author: Parviz Sayad
Summary:
In several ways, this book is more noteworthy than an ordinary research work or a collection of articles about Iran’s cinema under the Islamic Republic. Firstly, at the time of this book’s composition, many of the issues related to the Islamic Republic cinema were yet unknown. The collusion of cinema festivals with repressive regimes was not yet exposed to the extent that they are today. The dealers and moneylenders of the Islamic Republic’s regime only had a limited scope of activities. Most of the show programs for festivals were still arranged by Hamid Nafisi (the role of Hamid Nafisi is discussed in detail in Sayyad’s book), and Changiz Haghighat (who changed his name to Mohammed after he started working with the Islamic Republic). Even the managers of festivals had not yet been involved in the Fajr/Zajr Festival. At the time, Europe had not yet discovered Ertejae Sabz (Shi’i Islamic Movement) to establish public relations and open trade with the Islamic Republic thereby. Intellectuals inclined to compromise with the “holy regime” had not yet become so reckless to want to express their frustrations as an excuse for restoring national pride through supporting films that had been made with contributions of the Revolutionary Guard Bank (Pasargad Bank). This book, however, contains many important and informative points that show how our carelessness and lack of attention paved the way for further and deeper infiltration of the Islamic Republic’s agents.
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Language: Farsi
The History of Iranian Cinema 1901–1979
Author: Jamal Omid
Summary:
After the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, cinema was one of the fields that underwent immense serious modifications. After the heated debates of the early years of post-revolution, and following qualitative developments in this area, Iranian cinema has been able to win many awards in international festivals. This book is the most comprehensive and complete reference on Iranian cinema from the first days to the threshold of the Islamic Revolution. In 18 separate chapters, this book covers the following titles: Genesis and Utilization, Ovanes Ohanian, Sepanta, Recession, Second Birth, Others are Coming, Years of Repeating Prosperity and Depression, Ten Years to Fall, Documentary Cinema, Censorship, Dubbing, Cinema Publications, Film Club, Festivals, Division, Fees and Union, Television, Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults and Free Cinema. This book additionally includes a photo album related to this period in the history of Iranian cinema.
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Language: Farsi
Trauma: A Critical Examination of Cultural-Political Transformations in 2009-2015 from the Perspective of Asghar Farhadi’s Cinema
Author: Seyed Majid Hosseini, Zaniar Ebrahimi
Summary:
This book adopts a critical view of the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests and their aftermath, drawing insights from a revaluation of Asghar Farhadi’s films namely “A Separation,” “About Elly,” and “The Past.” In the first section, the authors interpret the political and social context of the election period using the concept of “Bakhtin’s Carnivalesque”, a concept formed by Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher, literary critic, and scholar. They demonstrate how this era in Iranian history fundamentally shifted discourses and cinematic productions. The second section delves into the analysis of electoral debates through a Lacanian psychoanalytical perspective, followed by a psychoanalytical analysis of Farhadi’s films based on the same perspective. Moving to the third section, the authors explore trauma during President Rouhani’s term and illustrate how this fresh period led to transformations and reforms in politics and political discourses. Asghar Farhadi’s cinematic legacies are still noteworthy in examining these developments, reflecting on the trauma, and conducting more rational analyses within discourses and society.
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Language: Farsi
A Dictionary of Cinematic Phrases
Author: Parviz Davaei
Summary:
“The sweetest cinematic dictionary ever written in Persian!” I think this sentence is the most complete and accurate one that can be said or written about this book. The Dictionary includes technical and artistic terms, styles, schools and types of film.
The dictionary of cinematic words is the result of the efforts of Parviz Davai, one of the best and most influential film writers in Iran. Even after nearly a quarter of a century, no other Persian cinematic dictionary has been able to match the appeal of Davai’s book. As the title of the book suggests, the dictionary of cinematic terms is a collection of common and customary words and terms in the art and industry of cinema. Davai did not neglect any effort for this book and many of its entries, such as gangster films, lack films, musical films, soundtracks, Western films, Hollywood, etc., only attest to the author’s fascination and infatuation with the history of cinema. In editing and translating these words and terms, which cover the technical parts of cinema as well as the artistic parts of styles and schools, an attempt has been made to compose a simple and comprehensible source for those who have a background in the field of cinema as well as those novice learners who want to get new information.
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Language: Farsi
The Tragedy of Comedy Cinema in Iran
Author: Abbas Baharloo
Summary:
The book is written with the intention of evaluating the nature of the comedy genre as a part of the Iranian cinema culture. The author takes a somewhat pessimistic view of the achievements of the comedy genre in Iranian cinema and rarely observes the established criteria for comedy as a genre or literary form in films produced in Iran. However, his study provides an initial overview surrounding Iranian comedy cinema. Upon a detailed introduction of the characteristics of comedy films in the cinema, such as “the structure and format of funny films” and “types of comedy,” the author delves into the analysis of comedic films produced after the Islamic Revolution until 1990. Among these productions are “Mr. Haq Doost’s House,” “Mirza Norooz’s Shoes,” “The Tenants,” “Canary Yellow,” “Ja’far Khan Returned from Farang,” and others, which are subjected to critique and examination. The book concludes with a comprehensive list of Iranian comedy films from 1930 to 1990, which can be a worthy resource for researchers in this field.
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Language: Farsi
The Oxford History of World Cinema
Author: Goeffrey- Nowell Smith
Summary:
This book was published to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the invention of the Cinema by Oxford University, with the assistance of prominent cinema researchers from various countries. The Farabi Cinema Foundation in Iran translated and published the book in Farsi. The book analyzes the history of world cinema in three prominent periods: Silent Cinema (1895-1930), Sound Cinema (1930-1960), and Modern Cinema (1960-1995). The central three chapters of the book delve into topics such as technological and aesthetic developments in film, preparation and production patterns, characteristics of various countries’ National Cinema, and cinematic genres. The first chapter covers cinema in the early years, the rise of Hollywood, silent movies, and cinema in various countries. The second chapter discusses sound, years of studio, genre cinema, dealing with reality, cinema of nations, and the post-war world. The last of these three central chapters explores modern cinema, cinema in the age of television, American cinema, the development of borders, and world cinema. The book concludes with an exclusive index of names and a bibliography, that significantly boosts the research purposes of this book
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Language: Farsi
The Image of Children in the Iranian Cinema
Author: Dariush Norouzi
Summary:
Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran lacked a cinema dedicated for and to the subject of children and young adolescents. The primary reaction to neglecting cinema for the youth was expressed by children themselves. There was no pre-determined agenda to address this topic and cinematic policies had their own concerns. However, from the mid-80s, children began to slowly conquer Iranian cinema. Iranian cinema was transformed with the aid of the youth and obtained novel experiences in the field of cinematic expression. In this book, the author has examined and analysed the image of children in Iranian cinema across different eras.
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Language: Farsi
An Introduction to the Political History of Iranian Cinema (1900-2000)
Author: Hamidreza Sadr
Summary:
The book eloquently and introspectively revisits the history of Iranian cinema in the context of political and social transformations. For Hamidreza Sadr, Iranian cinema has always been a platform for representing politics broadly and on a macro level that can explain the nature of human and Iranian filmmakers/artists in the past century as an inevitable form of political expression. Nonetheless, throughout all eight chapters of the book, spanning from the earliest experiences of Iranian filmmakers to the end of the first term of Mohammad Khatami’s reformist government, the author has endeavored to portray himself as an advocate of a depoliticized approach to films and filmmakers. It is as if politics is, in a way, a fate that cannot detach itself from cinema, while cinema is simultaneously reluctant to terminate its connections to the domain of politics. The book provides an analytical and captivating insight into many prominent works in the history of Iranian cinema, from “Qarun’s Treasure” to films by Abbas Kiarostami, aiming to ultimately elucidate the relationship between Iranian cinema and the course of social and political transformations.
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Language: Farsi
Industry of Cinema in Iran
Author: Ḥabib Allah Nasirifar
Summary:
For a long time, in various circles and congregations, even the streets, markets, and homes, a debate has sparked about why Iranian cinema has not progressed to the level of foreign cinemas and has been incompetent to find its place in the international domain. Cinema is a delicate industry and constitutes one of the largest exports for major countries in the contemporary world; not to mention being the best and most suitable means for people’s entertainment. On this account, authors of this book have made it their mission to investigate and explain to readers if there are, in fact, any reasons that caused Iranian cinema to lag behind foreign countries. Consequently, many Iranian producers and directors were continuously contacted for almost 8 months and were interviewed about the factors behind Iranian cinema’s lack of progress relative to that of other countries. The answers to these questions were given with much interest and patience and these finalized enquiries were gradually included in the “Tehran Economist” magazine. Due to the warm reception of the readers, these articles were compiled and published into the single present book.
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Language: Farsi
(An Expanded Summary of the Cinema of Sohrab Shahid-Saless)
Author: Hamed Darbanian
Summary:
What is of great importance in the process of creating art is the profundity and initiation of thoughts. In this regard, Shahid-Saless is amongst the artists whose many peculiarities and stylistic elements appeared either simultaneous to or prior than many of his cohort of contemporary filmmakers. His works are among, if not ahead of, the creations of revered directors in terms of thematic and structural aspects in framework of concepts such as minimalism, long shot, brevity, etc. Sohrab Shahid-Saless is rightly regarded as the father of the Iranian cinema’s new wave and the most influential cinematographer in the history of Iranian cinema. While influencing Iranian cinema, his films have also impacted numerous works of filmmakers from the modern European cinema. This author believes that by incorporating various stylistic and structural elements, Sohrab Shahid-Saless has been able to portray a cinematography in his films that is unique to only him. He utilizes brevity in the most wondrous manner and, indeed, his brief storytelling mystifies and poeticizes the atmosphere that consequently further wakens the audience’s mind for perceiving the voids and the unsaid. In a profound way, Shahid-Saless introduced the art of brevity, which was previously into cinema; this is unprecedented in Iranian cinema and rare in the world. Beyond a cinematographer, he is a peculiar poet as poets create blank canvases with īhām and brevity, and the audience brings the poem to meaning and perfection as they wish. The films of Sohrab Shahid-Saless and the works of Anton Chekhov bear many similarities rooted in their almost identical political and social lifestyles as well as their ontological and objective viewpoints. A shared approach which, although is incompatible with some political and social currents of their lived societies, is cold and stagnant but overfilled with idealistic thoughts. What is surprising here, is that both artists, despite living in two completely different eras, posses a common perception of humans and the conditions imposed on them by structural systems.
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Language: Farsi
Perspective in Cinema of Iran
Author: Gholam Heydari
Summary:
This book divided into two sections: the first section from which the title of the book is derived and the second section “Time in Cinema” which was first published in 1987 in the 54th issue of the Film Magazine under the title “A Discussion About Time in Iranian Cinema”. In the preface of his book, Baharlu wrote that “in order to compose this book, it was essential to watch an abundance of Iranian movies during the years when most movies were majorly not available on video tape, and one had to inevitably watch them in the archives of the Iranian National Cinema or Channel One of the National TV Network.
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Language: Farsi
Four Women in Two Decades of Bahram Bayzai’s Cinema
Author: Sara Asefi
Summary:
Women in Iranian cinema continue to remain at a dilemma of either expressing their selves or abiding by the imposed frameworks. Acknowledging the endeavours that women have undertaken towards achieving their social and civil rights in the world is difficult for the patriarchal culture of the Middle East. For this, to show the real image of women or reiterate the society’s interpretation of her, remains an on-going challenge in Iranian cinema. “Women” in Bahram Bayzai’s cinema is a topic highlighted by Sara Assefie in this book by focusing on the following movies “The Crow”, “Death of Yazdgerd”, “Bashu, the Little Stranger”, and “Ballad of Tara”. The second decade of Bahram Bayzai’s filmmaking career in Iran coincides with the 80s, during which the Islamic Revolution (1979), the Cultural Revolution, and the Iran-Iraq War effectuated significant changes in art and cinema and guided the expression of war in a direction to only allow men in dominating the leading roles of movies. However, during this time, Beyzai approached cinema and filmmaking with a different perspective by choosing female leading characters for his movies. Subsequently, Assefie has purposely chosen the four aforementioned movies of Beyzai as centre of her research for their characters are women.
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Language: Farsi
Memoirs and Dangers of Cinematographers in Cinema of Iran
Author: Gholam Heydari
Summary:
It has been more than six decades since the birth of Iran’s professional cinema; and from a historical point of view, sixty or seventy years is not a long time. For archaeologists who deal with timescales of thousands and millions of years, generally six or seven decades do not even count. Yet, for those researching about the Iranian cinema, on the other hand, it is a different matter. While illuminating on the dark corners of the origins and the course of filmmaking in Iran and obtaining a complete and documented account of it is a difficult but bold task, its examination and interpretation in void of first-hand or “primary sources” is even rougher and somewhat more perilous.
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Language: Farsi
“Hafez” narrated by Abbas Kiarostami
Author: Abbas Kiarostami
Summary:
This book is a collection of poems by Khwaja Shams-od-Din Mohammad Ibn Mohammad Hafez Shirazi, a great poet of 14th century Iran and one of the famous orators of the world, selected by Abbas Kiarostami and reinterpreted in a modern style. The book presents a distinctive and modern iteration of Hafez’s poetry. In a period when people’s common approach towards Hafez, and sometimes even that of the literary academics themselves, is one of seeking help and solace, and the audience is only looking for one line in the poems that resonates with their soul, and so to speak, shines a light for them, Kiarostami has adopted a different view to Hafez. He highlighted another aspect for Hafez’s devoted audience, one that can also be reached by reading a single line of his poetry as each line is emersed in such a way with Hafez’s soul that it can be an entirely independent poem of its own. This particular approach of Kiarostami is influenced by his inclination towards photography and the art of poetic imagery; a kind of micro detailed view that illuminates the macro, the total. It is one that does not often happen in practice in Iran, yet the peaks of Persian literature are certainly not lacking it. Sometimes people think that the longer your sentences are, the more meaningful and lively your speech becomes. Abbas Kiarostami’s view and narrative was a revolutionary act against this common view of Persian literature which undoubtedly had little previous presence in our literature.
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Language: Farsi
The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami
Author: Robert Safarian
Summary:
In the book “The Cinema of Abbas Kiarostami”, the author examines and analyzes the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami in three different time-periods: pre-revolutionary, revolution to the early 2000s, and the 2000s to the present period. Safarian has divided the book into three sections, covering approximately four decades of Abbas Kiarostami’s filmmaking career. The first section is devoted to Kiarostami’s activities in the pre-revolutionary period and mentions his films “The Traveler” and “The Report.” The second section focuses on the successful works of this filmmaker at renowned international festivals, while the third section highlights his experimental films such as “Ten” and “Shirin,” as well as works made abroad. The conclusion of the book attempts to summarize the artistic and cinematic persona of Abbas Kiarostami as a post-modernist with traditional inclinations.
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Language: Farsi
Nasser Taqvai’s Cinema
Author: Saeed Daqiqi, Reza Ghiyath
Summary:
Nasser Taqvai’s innate talent revealed itself from those early reporting documentaries and especially, the collection of thin but dense and intellectual short stories in the summer of the same year. And his tranquility in the presence of others seemed to be a seal of approval for everything that Iranian cinema desired from Taqvai. Nasser Taqvai, who was consistently considered a respectable stranger often had to stand at the end of the queue with a possibility of never getting his turn. So, he no longer stood at the end of the long queue that distanced him from the cinema. He left the queue and decided not to ever make a film again. In an effort to comprehensively review Taqvai’s works, authors have tried to point out the same details that he himself embraced in his work with a distinguished order and arrangement. The credibility of Nasser Taqvai is intuitively and spontaneously rooted in his legacies.
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Language: Farsi
A Post-Structuralist Reading of Abbas Kiarostami’s Works
Author: Farideh Afarin, Amir Ali Nojumian, Farzan Sojoodi
Summary:
The present book while offering a short biography of Kiarostami with a presumption that his cinema has an intertextual relationship with critical contemporary theories, through a novel perspective and method, endeavours to reveal an aspect of Kiarostami’s cinema that has not yet been explored. It is highlighting Kiarostami’s cinema that, by multiplying and multi-functionalizing the denotative signs in texts, makes the defining process more powerful and richer and concurrently challenges the classic narratives of cinema. Seven selected works of Kiarostami are presented and reviewed in this book: “Where Is the Friend’s House?”, “Life, and Nothing More…”, “Through the Olive Trees”, “The Wind Will Carry Us”, “Close-Up”, “Ten”, and “Taste of Cherry”, as well as topics such as deconstruction, post-structuralism in cinema, indecision, binary opposition, contradictory signs, de-authorization, centrifugalism, and repeatability have herein been explored in Kiarostami’s films. This book has additionally compiled the summaries of the aforementioned movies.
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Language: Farsi
Mehrjui’s Cinema and Jung (Individuality in Hamoon, Lady, Pari and Pear Tree)
Author: Hamid Bagheri
Summary:
In this book, the theories of the famous Swiss psychologist “Carl Gustav Jung” are first introduced and the content and protagonists of the films of an influential Iranian cinema director, “Dariush Mehrjui” are interpreted based thereof. Four controversial films “Hamoon”, “Pear Tree”, “Pari” and “Lady” are analyzed. Jung’s notion of individuality accompanies complementary concepts such as shadow, veil, self, sage, self-awareness, and others. Each film is followed by its introduction and summary, as well as a discussion of the relevance of that film with each of Jung’s intended concepts. In the preface, the author writes with respect to Jung’s psychological thoughts on cinema: “Our view of Dariush Mehrjui’s works comes from the perspective of analytical psychology. Analytical psychology is a branch of psychology founded by Carl Gustav Jung which we will come back to in the first chapter. This school of analysis has often been incorporated along with others to criticize literary and cinematic works. Yet sometimes the thoughts of Jung and his like-minded associates have been used directly…”
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Language: Farsi
Iranian Documentary Cinema, The Arena of Differences
Author: Mohammad Tahaminejad
Summary:
Spread over five chapters, Tahaminejad has well expressed the ups and downs of documentary cinema through a concurrent adoption of both general and specialized historical approaches. The arguments presented in this book can be extended to fiction cinema as well. Bringing theoretical discussions along with referring to concrete examples in the history of documentary cinema is one of the defining characteristics of this book that adds on to its charms. Reference to the documentary films of Ebrahim Golestan, Parviz Kimiavi, Taqvai, and many others are among these concrete cases. The chapter index reads as follows: description and the artistic and theoretical scope of the research, the period of projection on screen, the Islamic Revolution and image, and the 90s: the decade of video. Following the publication of this book, Tahaminejad won the Hafez Award for a lifetime of activity in the field of cinema written literature and was also introduced as an exemplar researcher of the country’s documentary cinema.
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Language: Farsi
Iranian Cinema from Birth to Maturity to Crystallization
Author: Amir Esmailie
Summary:
In this book, all the Iranian films ever made since the beginning of cinema in Iran to this day have been collected and introduced. The book has been organised and presented in two distinct volumes to shine line on the evident dichotomy in Iranian cinema. The content is sorted given the significance of cinema in the years following the Islamic Revolution and the evident differences, contrasts, views, beliefs, and cinematic programs of the pre-revolution era in comparison to post-revolution cinema. These two volumes, to reflect the dichotomous timeline, are respectively named “Cinema of Iran from Birth to Maturity” and “Cinema of Iran from Maturity to Crystallization”.
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Language: Farsi
The Cinema of the 1908s in Dialogue with Cinema Managers
Author: Mahmoud Arjmand and Mohammad Ali Heydari
Summary:
The book “Cinema of the 1980s in Dialogue with Cinema Managers” explores the often-discussed topic of Iranian cinema in the 80s. The authors, Mahmoud Arjmand and Mohammad Ali Heydari, utilizing a documentary approach to this book by conducting interviews with the prominent film directors and industry professionals of that era. The result is a valuable resource that offers a realistic perspective on the cinema of the 1980s. The authors have made every significant effort to gather precise and relevant information, rightly addressing the concerns of those seeking to understand the quality and cinematic features of this decade. The book delves into conversations with influential figures such as Mohammad Beheshti, Fakhreddin Anwar, Mohammad Aghajani, Mohammad Mehdi Dadgou, and Mohammad Mehdi Heidarian. As time passes, the era becomes more enigmatic and obliterated for which the vitality of documentary references on the 1980s improves. This book fills a gap in the history of Iranian cinema, providing valuable insights for those interested in exploring the nature and significance of films from the 80s.
Publisher:
Language: Farsi
