The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation And Identity

The New Iranian Cinema THE NEW IRANIAN CINEMA Politics, Representation and Identity Edited by Richard Tapper I.B.Tauris Publishers L O N D O N • N E W YO R K Published in 2002 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd London and New York www.ibtauris.com In the United States and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan a division of St. Martin’s Press 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © the authors, 2002 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN hardback 1 86064 803 7 paperback 1 86064 804 5 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Garamond by Dexter Haven Associates, London Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgements ix Notes on Contributors x A Note on Transliteration and Style 1 Introduction Richard Tapper xv 1 2 Islamizing Film Culture in Iran: A Post-Khatami Update Hamid Naficy 26 3 Classic Tools, Original Goals: Cinema and Public Policy in the Islamic Republic of Iran (1979–97) Agnès Devictor 66 4 The Crisis in the Iranian Film Industry and the Role of Government Hossein Ghazian 77 5 Perspectives on Recent (International Acclaim for) Iranian Cinema Azadeh Farahmand 86 6 Politics and Cinema in Post-revolutionary Iran: An Uneasy Relationship Ali Reza Haghighi 109 7 Dead Certainties: The Early Makhmalbaf Hamid Dabashi 117 8 A Ghost in the Machine: The Cinema of the Iranian Sacred Defence Roxanne Varzi 154 9 Negotiating the Politics of Gender in Iran: An Ethnography of a Documentary Ziba Mir-Hosseini 167 10 Location (Physical Space) and Cultural Identity in Iranian Films Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa 200 11 Chaste Dolls and Unchaste Dolls: Women in Iranian Cinema since 1979 Shahla Lahiji 215 12 Children in Contemporary Iranian Cinema: When we were Children Hamid Reza Sadr 227 13 Marking Gender and Difference in the Myth of the Nation: A Post-revolutionary Iranian Film Nasrin Rahimieh 238 14 Afterword Laura Mulvey 254 Filmography 262 Index of Films 271 General Index 275 List of Illustrations 1. Mohsen Makhmalbaf ’s Gabbeh 2 2. Abbas Kiarostami’s The Taste of Cherry 74 3. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s The May Lady 102 4. Mohsen Makhmalbaf 118 5. Mohsen Makhmalbaf ’s Nasuh’s Repentance (1982) featured his own mother, Esmat Jampour 6. Ebrahim Hatamikia’s The Scent of Yusef ’s Shirt 128 156 7. Paniz, daughter of Mrs Maher, the court secretary, from Divorce Iranian Style 184 8. Rakhshan Bani-Etemad’s Nargess