4 - “Film-Farsi”

Summary

The Iranian popular film industry that emerged in the late 1940s and boomed in the 1950s has been almost fully dismissed in both pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary literature on Iranian cinema. Viewed as “immoral,” “vulgar” and “imitative” of Hollywood, Indian and Egyptian films, the national products of this industry came under heavy criticism in the 1950s, and eventually came to be derogatively categorised as “Film-Farsi” or “Persian-Films.” In the nationalist cinematic discourse that called for a serious, philosophical or art-house cinema that was befitting of a futural Iran, there was no place for hotchpotch “Film-Farsi” productions. In the post-revolutionary literature, “Film-Farsi” is also regarded as a debased, cheap and obscene industry, and remains maligned in official and most unofficial milieus. In a move to distance the “moral” cinema of post-revolutionary Iran from that of its predecessor, “Film-Farsi” cinema has been almost fully overlooked, if not incriminated. This chapter will aim to discuss in detail the often-unnoticed aspects of this industry, namely, its internal conflicts, social implications, cosmopolitan aspirations and general reception.