Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance

Description

Iranian filmmakers have long been recognised for creating a vibrant, aesthetically rich cinema whilst working under strict state censorship regulations. As Michelle Langford reveals, many have found indirect, allegorical ways of expressing forbidden topics and issues in their films. But for many, allegory is much more than a foil against haphazardly applied censorship rules. Drawing on a long history of allegorical expression in Persian poetry and the arts, allegory has become an integral part of the poetics of Iranian cinema. Allegory in Iranian Cinema explores the allegorical aesthetics of Iranian cinema, explaining how it has emerged from deep cultural traditions and how it functions as a strategy for both supporting and resisting dominant ideology. As well as tracing the roots of allegory in Iranian cinema before and after the 1979 revolution, Langford also theorizes this cinematic mode. She draws on a range of cinematic, philosophical and cultural concepts - developed by thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Christian Metz and Vivian Sobchack - to provide a theoretical framework for detailed analyses of films by renowned directors of the pre-and post-revolutionary eras including Masoud Kimiai, Dariush Mehrjui, Ebrahim Golestan, Kamran Shirdel, Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi, Marziyeh Meshkini, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, and Asghar Farhadi. Allegory in Iranian Cinemaexplains how a centuries-old means of expression, interpretation, encoding and decoding becomes, in the hands of Iran’s most skilled cineastes, a powerful tool with which to critique and challenge social and cultural norms. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Figures Acknowledgements Note on Transliteration Introduction: Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance Chapter 1: Locating Allegory in Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema Self-reflexivity and the birth of Iranian film allegory Allegory in popular genre films: Masoud Kimiai’s Qeysar (1969) The allegorical turn: Iranian New Wave cinema Cycles of corruption in Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cycle (1978) Ebrahim Golestan’s The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley (1972) Conclusion Chapter 2: The Allegorical Children of Iranian Cinema The allegorical palimpsest: Kamran Shirdel’s The Night It Rained … or the Epic of the Gorgan Village Boy (1967) Children as emblems of a new society: Majid Majidi’s Children of Heaven (1997) Cracks in time: Jafar Panahi’s The Mirror (1997) Mina through the looking glass Close listening to disembodied voices National allegory and the revolutionary geography of Tehran Conclusion Some thoughts on the ideological effects of child-centredIranian films Chapter 3: Allegory and the Aesthetics of Becoming-Woman Towards an allegorical poetics Horizontal negotiations Havva – Negotiating continuity Ahu – Negotiating narrative agency and the male gaze Hura – Negotiating the domestic mise en scène On the way to becoming Vertical explorations No conclusion: Towards a molecular becoming-woman Chapter 4: Allegories of Love: The Cinematic Ghazal From a cinema of poetry to the cinematic ghazal Seeking the cinematic beloved: Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s A Time for Love (1990) Majid Majidi’s Baran (1999) and the cinesthetic ghazal Conclusion Chapter 5: Tending the Wounds of the Nation: Gender in Iranian War Cinema The Sacred Defence genre and the logic of the wound Gender, Vatan and the Sacred Defence genre Vatan as woman in need of protection: The Third Day (2007) Returning to the sacred Earth: He Who Sails (2007) The scattered wounds of war: Gilaneh (2005) A crippled nation Gilaneh as 6,000-year-old dying mother Conclusion Chapter 6: Between Laughter and Mourning: About Elly as Trauerspiel of a Generation Establishing a group dynamic: The collective protagonist Akhar-e khandeh geryast: A dialectics of laughter and mourning12 From the dissimulating camera to the dissimulating character Elly as emblematic other Pensive moments and equivocal images Elly disappears The descent into melancholy About Elly as Trauerspiel Coda: Allegory Spills into the Streets Notes Chapter Introduction – Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter Coda: Allegory Spills into the Streets Bibliography Index