Close Up: Iranian Cinema
Author: Hamid Dabashi
First published: Verso
2001
Price: £15
By: Nargess Shahmanesh-Banks
The history of cinema in Iran
cannot be read in isolation with its political and social development that can
be traced as far back as 1906 when the constitutional and subsequently
bourgeois revolution rocked the whole internal nature of the country. The
discovery of oil, followed by the country’s entrance to the age of global
capitalism, through a colonising presence with the British and Russian
occupation during the First World War, and the formation of the Iranian
communist party shortly after, are all aspects of a jigsaw puzzle that can help
explain the journey of Iranian cinema, as well as its potency as a medium
today.
Pre-cinema, the most
significant forms of artistic expression in Iran were modern literature and
poetry that found their own aesthetic space beyond the colonially controlled
modernity that defined the time. Photographic representation and fine art were
then confined to the royal court. Even though the history of film watching can
be traced back to as early as 1904, cinema had not yet found its national
language, emerging later as a populist art form taking the place of public
storytelling (Naqqali). Interestingly enough it was in fact the
Armenians, Jews and Zoroastrians that were initially responsible for
introducing cinema to the Iranian public of the 1930s, and not surprisingly
from the start there was religious opposition to the medium, due to its very
nature that is ultimately against Islamic principals.
Most significant to the
history of Iranian cinema was perhaps the coming to power of Reza Shah in 1926
and a forced modernisation programme, which lead to mass urbanisation. The new
urban dwellers needed a new form of entertainment hence a whole wave of silent
films emerged in the 1930s with movie houses packed with this new generation of
city dwellers. Also significant was the following wave of terror under the Shah
and his notorious political prisons. Notable was the banning of an old traditional
Iranian performing art, Ta’ziyeh. Deemed anti-establishment, it went
underground emerging only later under the Islamic regime.
The American military
occupation of Iran in 1942 followed by the CIA-engineered coup against Mosaddiq
in 1953 brought with it a new social political awareness very different to that
of Europe. Under the young Shah, cinema became a commercial commodity. Numerous
production houses were set up making films that mainly depicted the emergence
of an educated middle class. Additionally the concept of nationalism emerged in
Iranian films. However Filmfarsi did not attract a mass audience who
were wooed by the glamour of Hollywood and Bollywood imports. Instead it was
through modern poetry and fiction that secular intellectuals found a voice of
opposition to the governing dictatorship.
Cinema’s power as an art form
only saw light in the 1960s. By then Iranians were exposed to the best of world
cinema, which had a major impact on the more social-realist films of the
period. Most significantly were Forough Farrokhzad’s The House is Black (Khaneh
Siyah Ast), and Farrokh Gaffari’s the Night of The Hunchback (Shab-e
Ghuzi), both major influences on films of the 1980s and 1990s. But perhaps
most symbolic to that period was Daryush Mehrju’i’s 1969 masterpiece The Cow (Gav)
that transformed the definition of Iranian cinema and gave it an entirely
unique visual language.
By the 1970s opposition to
the Pahlavi regime was in full swing. Amir Naderi’s Tangsir reflected
the anti-establishment feeling in the air and in particular was a critic of the
brutal suppression of the Siyahkal guerrilla movement. Sohrab Shahid Sales’ One
Simple Incident (Yek Ettefaq-e Sadeh) introduced a whole new way of
looking at reality and the formation of a unique form of realism. In the period
that followed, cinema became an important window -- and has remained even more
so -- to a modernity that Iranians could only partially experience.
The world changed for Iran
and its intellectuals, poets, writers and filmmakers in 1979 when Mohammad-Reza
Shah was forced into exile and the revolution took a turn that allowed for
Ayatollah Khomeini’s reign and the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This was shortly followed by the Iran-Iraq war and a brutal suppression of anyone
with beliefs against the new regime. Women were once again veiled and most
secular intellectuals fled the country. It was an altogether uncreative time
for most artists and cinema became a tool solely for the government’s
propaganda. The Iranian new wave cinema was born into this vacuum. Its success
has since been universal, not only for the films, but also for some of its
directors who have become world celebrities.
Hamid Dabashi begins his
venture with a brief, but thorough look at Iranian social political history as
well as a quick glance at other art forms that existed alongside cinema. The
chapter is significant in that it creates an initial insight that is not only
crucial in the latter understanding of Iranian cinema, but also useful for
non-Iranian readers who are perhaps less familiar with the history. It does
also prepare you for a rich journey into a vast jungle of information and data
gathered in Close Up: Iranian Cinema. Dabashi employs interviews with
directors, insightful commentary on individual films, and an extensive
filmography, to create a well-directed journey through the development of
Iranian cinema.
We are first introduced to
probably the most famous Iranian cinematic export, Abbas Kiarostami, with a
chronological look at his work pre and post-revolution. Second on the list is
director Bahram Beiza' i, again an active pre-revolutionary director. We gain
an insightful glimpse into his work through an interview Dabashi conducted in
the US in 1995, followed by a comprehensive analysis of the director’s major
films. The author sees Beiza' i as one of the founders of the modern movement
in Iranian cinema. In an engaging conversation Dabashi deliberately engages
Beiza' i in the subject of myth and mythology as to argue what he thinks is central
to the director's beliefs, that he "remythologises Iranian culture".
For his next move, Dabashi introduces veteran director Bahman Farmanara, a very
different choice to the previous two. Farmanara left Iran after the revolution,
returning some 20-odd years on to make a film that Dabashi argues has been
important to the development of modern Iranian cinema. Again using a Q&A
format the reader seems to gain much better insight into the life of Farmanara
than we have so far with the others.
However it is in the fifth
chapter that things really begin to heat up. Here Dabashi puts down on paper –
exactly as transcribed it seems – a conversation he had with controversial
director Mohsen Makhmalbaf in New York in 1996, at the very height of his
popularity. It seems that the author has deliberately allowed his subject to
air his views. Makhmalbaf's account is as much about his colourful life, and
his transforming ideology as it is about his work. Dabashi successfully allows
for the interview to take its natural course, only at times egging his subject
on or challenging his thoughts. Interestingly enough it is only later on in the
book that we realise Dabashi's familiarity and perhaps friendship with
Makhmalbaf.
Next the author touches on a
very significant and often ignored subject of women in Iranian cinema. Here
another maverick director, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s documentary style social
realist work is introduced in more detail. In a significant analysis of her
cinema, Dabashi argues that her "subversive jolting of sexuality is
something exclusive to her cinema," which he sees as pathologically absent
from the work of her male counterparts. He notes that it is only after reading
this "feminine gaze" that it becomes transparent that the men wish to
remodel the real.
In the final chapter the
author explores concepts of globalisation and its effect on Iranian cinema. The
journey first takes us to Tehran where the author believes old masters are
ageing gracefully, then to Cannes where the new ones are creating fresh
visions. Potent to Dabashi's argument is what he refers to as the
"graceful rise of a new generation who see the world from the material
basis of their organic roots in reality". This as a transition from the
older generation, whose world was a reflection of their creative ego, marks the
moment of rapid globalisation of Iranian cinema. Here Dabashi puts Kiarostami
on the stand and with a clever interrogation of his work, deconstructs many of
the myths surrounding the famous director. Dabashi sees Kiarostami's success a
result of the "unobtrusive corner in which his camera is positioned."
He notes that the director's story has been the spectacular success story of a
Third World filmmaker who has universalised his native location, restoring a dignity
to its people. However this aspect, since global recognition, has been lost
from his cinema. As for Beiza'i, our author sees him as being left behind from
the globality of our condition, turning into a museum piece and in a sense
"museumising" his own culture.
This is where Dabashi sees
the importance of the new generation of filmmakers in beating this
museumisation. He says if those who control the elite European film festivals
continue to favour the aggressive exoticisation of the Third World, thus
becoming the cinematic version of the National Geographic, then it will
have catastrophic consequences. On the other hand if the films chosen were to
have a public function beyond the festivals, the nativism needs to posses a
critical awareness of globality. The author does not see the older generation
responding well to this globalisation, but the younger ones -- or the 'children
of the Revolution' -- are subconsciously part of this globalised world and this
is naturally reflective in their creative eye.
Which brings us to Dabashi's
last three subjects: Samira Makhmalbaf, Hasan Yektapanah and Bahman Qobadi.
These directors are significantly from the fringes of Iranian society, something
that would have been impossible under the previous regime. The most famous of
the three, Makhmalbaf is a woman, Yektapanah an Afghani Iranian and Qobadi's an
Iranian Kurd. Their collective marginality is in fact crucial to the power of
their films. This is a post-ideological generation that Dabashi sees, in its
defiance of the institutional foregrounding of abstract idealism, reaching for
a kind of "virtual realism". The only one from the older generation
with a similar naturalism is perhaps Makhmalbaf senior.
----
Dabashi argues that the power
of cinema has proceeded that of literature in that it has become an
international art, with wide global viewing. Accordingly the Iranian cinema is
so powerful because Iranians have watched and assimilated the world through
film. Now the cinema is reflecting back to the world what it has seen, adding
its own cultural colour. Additionally its power stems from the fact that the
world had made up its mind about Iran through images and news reports following
the revolution, and was therefore perhaps a little surprised by what it saw on
the screen. Dabashi goes further to say: “In the cinema we were re-born as
global citizens in defiance of the tyranny of the time and the isolation of the
space that sought to confine us.” In a sense cinema is a glimpse into the hopes
and desires of a nation.
Close Up is a successful fusion of art, politics and social
history, with cinema placed successfully in a global context. Dabashi's choice
of subject matters are interesting in that they are all from very different
social, economic, political and ideological backgrounds and so in a sense each
offers a branch of what makes present Iranian cinema. There is more than one
way to interpret history and in this case cinema has been used to tell the
story of modern Iran. As Dabashi says: “The history of modern Iranian cinema is
as much a record of that failure [that of the project of modernity] as a wish
list for its successes. At its best, this cinema has succeeded in re subjecting
the Iranian self where the project of modernity has failed.”
HIS PICTURE: http://www.unc.edu/pcs/dabashi.html
Mohsen if you like you can
include these two boxes
Side bar 1:
Professor Hamid
Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies, the chair of the
Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures Department, and the director of
Graduate Studies at the Centre for Comparative Literature and Society, at
Columbia University in the US. He received a dual PhD in sociology of culture
and Islamic studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. His research
interests include the comparative study of cultures, the Islamic intellectual
history, and the social and intellectual history of Iran, both modern and
medieval. Dabashi's previous publications include Authority in Islam: From the
Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads (1989), Theology of
Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran
(1993), Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of Ayn Al-Qudat Al-Hamadhani
(1999), Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of
Iran (with Peter Chelkowski, 1999), and Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past,
Present, Future (2001).
Side bar 2:
"Hamid Dabashi’s learned
book on Iranian cinema in the era of globalisation sparkles with verve and a
sometimes punishing wit. Encyclopedic in its scope, informal in tone, shrewd in
its interpretation, it is the indispensable work on one of the most
extraordinary artistic and social adventures of our time. Dabashi is the
perfect guide," Edward Said