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This title turns the spotlight on the cinema of Iran, with particular attention to the major genres & movements, historical turning points, & prominent figures that have helped shape it. A wide range of genres are presented, including Film Farsi, New Wave, War film, art house film & women's cinema.
Iranian films have been the subject of much critical and scholarly attention over the past several decades, and Iranian filmmakers are mainstays of international film festivals. Yet most of the attention has been focused on a small segment of Iranian film production: auteurist art cinema. Iranian Cinema in a Global Context, on the other hand, takes account of the wide range of Iranian cinema, from popular youth films to low budget underground films. The volume also reassesses the global circulation of Iranian art cinema, looking at its reception at international festivals, in university curricula, and at the Academy Awards. A final theme of the volume explores the intersection between politics and film, with essays on post-Khatami reform influences, representations of ineffective drug policies, and the representation of Jewish characters in Iranian film. Taken together, the essays in this volume present a new definition of the field of Iranian film studies, one that engages global media flows, transmedia interaction, and a heterogeneous Iranian national cinema.
There is something weird and eerie going on in the oneiric Iranian ghost-town Bad City. A mysterious female vampire, clad in a long-black veil, imbued with occult and erotic power, has newly arrived in town and is summarily dispensing with its unsavory characters. Through a chance encounter in a night of luminal darkness, an eternally dark romance begins – baptized in love’s blood. Shot in dazzling anamorphic black and white cinematography and accompanied with an intoxicating and mesmeric soundtrack, Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut feature film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014), was an instant popular and critical success. Dubbed ‘the first Iranian vampire western’ the genre-bending film is a pastiche of genres such as vampire cinema, gothic and horror films, spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, and Iranian cinema; yet the film stands as a new vampire fairy-tale with a unique style all its own. The first full-length study dedicated to the film since its release, this book in the Devil’s Advocate series provides a unique approach to the film situated within three theoretical coordinates: the vampire genre, psychoanalytic (film) theory and German Idealism.
In Iran, since the mid–nineteenth century, one issue has been a common concern: how should Iran become modern? More than a century of struggle for or against modernity has constituted much of the social, political, and cultural history of the country. In the decades since the 1979 Revolution, the question has become even more critical. In Modernity, Sexuality, and Ideology in Iran, Talattof finds that the process of modernity never truly unfolded, due in large part to Iran’s reluctance to embrace the seminal subjects of gender and sexuality. Talattof’s approach reflects a unique look at modernity as advancement not only in industry and economy but also toward an open, intellectual disc...
Reveals a rich cinematic history, discussing Hamlet films from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
This study highlights the connections between power, cultural products, resistance, and the artistic strategies through which that resistance is voiced in the Middle East. Exploring cultural displays of dissent in the form of literary works, films, and music, the collection uses the concept of 'cultural resistance' to describe the way culture and cultural creations are used to resist or even change the dominant political, social, economic, and cultural discourses and structures either consciously or unconsciously. The contributors do not claim that these cultural products constitute organized resistance movements, but rather that they reflect instances of defiance that stem from their peculiar contexts. If culture can be used to consolidate and perpetuate power relations in societies, it can also be used as the site of resistance to oppression in its various forms: gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality, subverting existing dominant social and political hegemonies in the Middle East.
This edited collection brings together international scholars and filmmakers with research expertise across a range of non-Western film cultures, but who have one shared aim: to challenge and offer alternatives to Eurocentric theoretical, historical perspectives in film studies.
Javanmardi is one of those Persian terms that is frequently mentions in discussions of Persian identity, and yet its precise meaning is difficult to comprehend. A number of equivalents have been offered, including chivalry and manliness, and while these terms are not incorrect, javanmardi transcends them. The concept encompasses character traits of generosity, selflessness, hospitality, bravery, courage, honesty, truthfulness and justice--and yet there are occasions when the exact opposite of these is required for one to be a javanmard. At times it would seem that being a javanmard is about knowing and doing the right thing, although this definition, too, falls short of the term's full meani...
"Bahram Beyzaie is one of Iran's leading auteur filmmakers. This book examines several of Beyzaie's films and plays and their preoccupation with the modalities of Iranian contemporary, historical and mythical identity, from different perspectives. The chapters analyse films such as Bashu, the Little Stranger, Killing Mad Dogs and Uncle Moustache from a range of critical perspectives including ecofeminist and socio-political readings. They also explore Beyzaie's use of genre, different Iranian languages, and the representation of religious themes. Together, the chapters show how Beyzaie's works negotiate narratives of belonging in Iran, and how they use the resources of Iranian folk and performance traditions to comment on the position of women, children, intellectuals, and minorities in society"--
In recent years, the Arab world and Iran have been afflicted by cataclysmic events, among them brutal state crackdowns of revolutions. Yet, filmmakers have persisted in their desire to tell their stories, against the odds, in creative acts that attest to their imagination, courage and resilience. In this book, Shohini Chaudhuri examines a broad range of films made during the tumultuous period since 2009, ranging from internationally award-winning festival favourites, such as For Sama (2019), Capernaum (2018) and Taxi Tehran (2015), to lesser-known films from the region. While freedom of expression is often understood through the lens of state censorship, she reveals the different types of ob...