Book contents
- Iranian Cosmopolitanism
- The Global Middle East
- Iranian Cosmopolitanism
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Transliteration, Citation, Translation and Dates
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Cinematic Imaginaries and Cosmopolitanism in the Early Twentieth Century
- 2 Cinematic Education, Cinematic Sovereignty
- 3 Industrial Professionalisation
- 4 “Film-Farsi”
- 5 Cinematic Revolution
- Conclusion
- Index
5 - Cinematic Revolution
Cosmopolitan Alter-Cinema of Pre-Revolutionary Iran
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2019
- Iranian Cosmopolitanism
- The Global Middle East
- Iranian Cosmopolitanism
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Notes on Transliteration, Citation, Translation and Dates
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Cinematic Imaginaries and Cosmopolitanism in the Early Twentieth Century
- 2 Cinematic Education, Cinematic Sovereignty
- 3 Industrial Professionalisation
- 4 “Film-Farsi”
- 5 Cinematic Revolution
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
“Our age is a martyred age” (sinn-i mā sinn-i shahīd shudah īst), claimed Masʻūd Kīmīyāyī, a prominent pre- and post-revolutionary Iranian filmmaker in an interview in 1978; “[v]ery soon, those which we knew, recognised and had aged with, were swept away and were instead replaced by dance, car brands and jeans … we were the ones most affected by moving from [houses with large] backyards to apartment buildings.” Although popular cinema drew on the quotidian of Iranian life, its “entertaining” cinematic form was disapproved by many. Objections to “Film-Farsi,” which gave rise to a cinematic horizon of expectation, paved the way for the emergence of an artistic counter-culture. By the late 1950s, there was a nostalgic consensus among many filmmakers to record on celluloid a “real” image of Iran; to resuscitate the disappearing cultural norms and social relations in a rapidly changing society, also observed by Kīmīyāyī above, in a social realist cinematic language. The attempts of a group of internationally educated filmmakers to create a visual repository of the changing conditions of the country facilitated the engendering of a cinematic movement in the late 1950s that was socially and politically charged – a cinematic revolution that presaged the political Revolution of 1979.
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- Iranian CosmopolitanismA Cinematic History, pp. 234 - 282Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019