Duke University Press
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 1
The Artisanal Era, 18971941“Only a skilled historian who is on the inside of his story could convey so vividly the cinema’s symbolic significance for twentieth-century Iran and the depth with which it is interwoven with its national culture and politics.” ―Laura Mulvey, author of Death 24× a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image
“A Social History of Iranian Cinema is essential reading not only for the cinephile interested in Iran’s unique and rich cinematic history but also for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the cataclysmic events and metamorphoses that have shaped Iran.” ―Shirin Neshat, director of Women Without Men
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.
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2
The Industrializing Years, 1941-1979Under the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah, from 1941 until 1979, Iranian cinema flourished and became industrialized. At its height, the industry produced more than ninety films each year. The state was instrumental in building the infrastructures of the cinema and television industries, and it instituted a vast apparatus of censorship and patronage. During the Second World War, the Allied powers competed to control the movies shown in Iran. In the following decades, two parallel cinemas emerged: commercial filmfarsi movies exemplified by the entertaining stewpot and tough-guy genres and a smaller but influential cinema of dissent, the new-wave cinema. Ironically, the state funded and censored much of the new-wave cinema, which grew bolder in its criticism as Pahlavi authoritarianism consolidated. Produced by Westernized filmmakers in collaboration with dissident writers, the new-wave cinema did well in international film festivals, beginning the globalization of Iranian cinema.
+info:
http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/catalogue.asp?ex=fitem&target=9781822347750&fmt=f
