Persian Cinema Resources

Iran's first commercial film exhibitor viewed film in Great Britain in 1897; three years later, films were introduced in Iran. An artisanal cinema industry sponsored by the ruling shahs and other elites soon emerged. The presence of women, both on the screen and in moviehouses, proved controversial until 1925, when Reza Shah Pahlavi dissolved the Qajar dynasty. Ruling until 1941, Shah Pahlavi was an aggressive modernizer. The state implemented a Westernization program intended to unite and secularize the multicultural, multilingual, and multiethnic country. Cinematic representations of a fast-modernizing Iran were encouraged, the veil was outlawed, and dandies flourished. At the same time, photography, movie production, and movie houses were tightly controlled. Film production ultimately proved marginal to state formation. Only one silent feature film was produced in Iran; the few sound feature films shown in the country before 1941 were made by an Iranian expatriate in India.

Gow examines how the success of this cinema and the films of Abbas Kiarostami, its foremost proponent, can be accounted for by the extent to which they fit into a pre-established notion of art cinema. Gow also expands understanding of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema by examining the links between the New Iranian Cinema and emigre Iranian filmmaking. Print version is also available here.

Despite critical acclaim and a recent surge of popularity with Western audiences, Iranian cinema has been the subject of lamentably few academic studies—and those have by and large been limited to the films and filmmakers most visible on the international film circuit.Iranian Cinema and Globalizationseeks to broaden readers’ exposure to other dimensions of Iranian cinema, including the works of the many prolific filmmakers whose films have received little outside attention despite being widely popular within Iran. Combining theories of globalization and national cinema with in-depth, interdisciplinary analyses of individual films, this volume expands the current literature on Iranian cinema with insights into the social, and religious political contexts involved.

This volume examines the two waves of modern Iranian cinema: before and after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Topics discussed include the effect of cultural mores on cinematic growth, the development of Iranian cinema as a reaction against commercial cinema and the effect of politics on the film industry. Foreign influence (largely American and Indian) on Iranian films is also examined.