Dr Michael Abecassis
War Iranian Cinema: Between Reality and Fiction
The fascination for the Western world with Iranian cinema lies primarily with the fable-like developments of its stories which often plunge us into a world of exoticism and lured us with its singularity. Iranian war cinema born during the war between Iran and Irak is not as well distributed in Europe and films with English subtitles are difficult to get hold of. Whether it is interpreted as an anthropological document which opens a dialogue between the protagonist and the spectators, the ‘I’ and the other, Iranian war cinema by Tabrizi, Sinayi, Hatamikia and Ghobadi, among many others, can be seen as a spiritual voyage where the soul hovers between absence and presence. In the wake of war cinema, in general, one can draw parallels with mythology, Judeo-Christian tradition, literature and art. Its function is not only didactic but cathartic, and the particularity of Iranian war cinema like no other is that it participates into the mourning process of a whole nation fighting against its own ghosts and in search of its identity. The purpose of this presentation will be to attempt in deciphering the myths hidden behind the images presented by Iranian war cinema, paradoxically interweaving the traumatic with the aesthetic.
Prof Ali Behdad
Contact Visions: On Photography and Modernity in Iran
In this talk, I will be focusing on two photographers whose works and lives were products of actual contacts between cultures, nations, and people not surprisingly, the photographic archives they produced actually came into contact with each other, creating what I wish to describe as a contact vision of Iran during the second half of nineteenth century. These are Antoin Sevruguin, a European photographer of Georgian origin resident in Iran during the late nineteenth century, and Nasir-al-Din Shah, the Qajar monarch who, as the first serious photographer of Iran, almost single-handedly developed the art and technology of photography in Iran soon after its introduction in Europe. These photographers are products of contact zones and their photographic vision, I want to show, is marked by the effects of colonial contact between the West and the East.
Prof William O. Beeman
Visual Representation and Cultural Truth in Iranian Traditional Theatre—Ta’ziyeh and Ru-hozi
The two dominant traditional theatre forms of Iran, Ta’ziyeh and Ru-hozi are complementary in their visual imagery. Both forms are highly stylized in their representation of time, place, social hierarchy and conventionalized gender representation. Both deal with dominant cultural themes in Iranian life, and both rely on a strong interactional tie with their audience. The methods of visual representation for these dimensions differ contrastively between the two forms. Ta’ziyeh uses color differentiation and spatial conventions to indicate affinities between identifiable groups in conflict in specific locations. Ru-hozi is both timeless and indeterminate in location, but relies on stock roles not tied to individual personages. In both cases, however, the dramatic representations present truths that are universal to their respective audiences. The visual cues provided in the representations help guide the viewers in the cultural stance they are presumed to take with regard to the performances.
Prof Peter I. Crawford
Transcending the other: visual anthropology and the observation and construction of another ‘other’
Malinowski’s phrase ‘the native’s point of view’ is probably one of the most quoted phrases in the history of anthropology and has certainly often been quoted in the work of many a visual anthropology student I have taught over the past twenty years. This presentation will challenge the notion of ‘the native’s point of view’, deconstructing it in an attempt to demonstrate how it is firmly embedded in a dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’ that has formed an intrinsic mode of conception in anthropology in particular and Western thinking in general. Referring to filmic examples, as well as theoretical discourse, the presentation will focus on ways in which visual anthropology and ethnographic film may help us understand the wider issue of cross-cultural representation and ways in which the theories and practices of these may help us develop more sensorially based forms of understanding ‘otherness’.
Ms Ingvild Flaskerud
Audiovisual Representation of Piety and Ritual: Integrating Research Perspectives and Local Perceptions
The discussion in this paper is based on the production of an ethnographic film, Standard-bearers of Hussein. Women commemorating Karbala (35 min. 2003), based on field research conducted in Shiraz between 1999 and 2003. The film introduces examples of Shi´i women’s commemoration rituals during Muharram and Safar. It focuses on the symbolic meaning of ritual performance and its expression of belief and piety, and the various roles women hold in preparing and organising rituals. In agreement with main participants in the film, it was produced as a teaching tool. The visual narrative is framed between scholarly interests in the performance of commemoration rituals, as identified by the researcher, and ideas of self-representation and ritual meaning, as understood and identified by local agents. In the paper, I discuss the nature of collaboration between a non-Iranian, non-Muslim female researcher, and local female agents, and how our various positions effected the visual representation of the rituals. In addition, I discuss how the recording of ritual performance in audiovisual media may enhance the researcher’s understanding of how local agents translate religious belief into ritual performance in explicit and subtle ways.
Prof M R Ghanoonparvar
Cinema as Literature, Literature as Cinema
Iranian filmmakers have kept an eye on Persian literature from the inception of the Iranian cinema and have borrowed not only stories but narrative techniques from literary artists. The relationship between these two media of storytelling began with the early adaptations of classical Persian literature by Abdolhoseyn Sepanta and continued with the work of such renowned filmmakers as Daryush Mehrju'i and Amir Naderi who have based some of their films on the short stories and novels of modern fiction writers such as Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi and Sadeq Chubak prior to the Islamic Revolution and the more recent adaptations based on the stories by Hushang Moradi-Kermani and others following the Revolution. This paper argues that while in earlier years Iranian cinema was to some extent influenced by the work of literary artists, gradually starting from the second half of the 20th century, this relationship was reversed and fiction writers began, wittingly or unwittingly, to imitate, especially in their narrative techniques, the work of filmmakers.
Prof Shahla Haeri
Making "Mrs. President": A film by S. Haeri
In this paper, I cover the grounds for making my documentary, "Mrs. President: Women and Political Leadership in Iran." I use an audiovisual approach to ethnography to communicate knowledge of other people other cultures in a way that may be more effective with some audiences than a textual ethnography. My target audience was primarily young students – and also the general public - in the United States. The assumption of a causal relationship between veiling and victimization/passivity of "Muslim women" is so deeply etched in the collective consciousness of many non-Muslims that I thought an effective way to challenge such stereotypes is to let them see what some women say and do in their own cultural/political set up. In making "Mrs. President" I aimed to make my taping of women presidential contenders a shared creation, a "shared ethnography," in which women presidential contenders – not just the anthropologist - reflected, represented, and reinterpreted issues surrounding their society, politics, religion, and gender.
Dr Rolf Husmann
In or Out? Visual Ethnography and the Ethics of Consent
As much as any ethnographic fieldwork, visual ethnography – the shooting, editing and publishing of an ethnographic film – is an activity based on forms of co-operation between the ethnographer-filmmaker and his/her informants or protagonists. Without the consent of those filmed, no anthropological filmmaking is thinkable. Forms of consent include permissions for filming on an official level, active participation in the filming process, co-operation in the post-production process. It can be a written document, or a silent nodding of the head. But it may also be denied: How to deal with that? And how to protect those who gave their consent, if the publication of the images may be dangerous for them? Based on a number of short film excerpts, this presentation shows examples of ethnographic films which do or do not include ethically acceptable forms of representation. It describes ways of co-operation in filmmaking which allow the protagonists to decide about the inclusion or exclusion in the film, and by taking the example of a film on contemporary Iran, discusses potential dangers for the film protagonists and how to avoid them.
Ms Maryam Kashani
A Visual Anthropology of Iran: The Ethnographer, the Adventurer, and the Spy
In my presentation I will incorporate an examination of the 1925 film, GRASS, A Nation’s Battle for Life by Cooper, Schoedsack, and Harrison with an experimental/performative approach to ethnographic work in Iran. Grass is an early ethnographic film of the Bakhtiari tribes of Iran, tracing the arduous annual migration across the Zardeh Kuh. Cooper and Schoedsack went on to complete another "ethnographic" film, Chang in Thailand (Siam at the time) before creating the infamous King Kong in 1933. Harrison was a journalist and spy, having spent time in Russian prisons previous to her trip with the Bakhtiari. I will explore these filmmakers approach to ethnography as a capturing of "the Forgotten People," within a context of the call to adventure and its location in the East. The filmic text of Grass and its problematic representations is the starting off point for my own ethnographic project in Iran. I will discuss the idea of anthropologist as adventurer and spy in the current post 9/11 era of Western presence in the Middle East.
Mr Ahmad Kiarostami
Missing Myth in the Mainstream
The transmission of cultural discourse in Iran and throughout the Diaspora has changed in recent years to rely more and more on media. This presentation chronicles changes in means and modes of cultural transfer in the years before, during and after the Iranian revolution, paying closest attention to current discourse shifts through music and especially music videos. Cultural discourse in Iran did not take place through visual means since the beginning; ours was not a visual culture, but rather an oral culture, constructing cultural narratives and memory through stories, literature and poetry. For many years, cultural discourse took place in homes, at story time, or through poems and written stories. Poems and literature that during the time of Hafez and Sadi had ripples of resistance throughout their narratives were later transformed in the years before and during the revolution into a literary movement that overtly expressed opinions and sought to communicate messages and discourse throughout the nation. As Iranian cinema began its popularization internationally, Iranian cinema took its place as a cinema of philosophy and literature, with literary themes running throughout Iranian films the way that dance dominated Bollywood or action dominated Hollywood. As cultural discourse took shape in film, the presence of philosophical and literary approaches was palpable . Literary messages were sent throughout the nation using this new medium of communication. In recent years, we have seen the birth of the internet, and in Iran, the ever-increasing popularization of "blogging" (public narratives written in diary form online). Again, these blogs show written expressions of our story-telling culture, and incorporate poetry, literature and narrative in their writings. In this presentation, through the use of multi-media, these themes and others are explored, paying close attention to the birth of music and music videos as the newest project of modernity, a new cultural discourse.
Dr Michelle Langford
Practical Melodrama: Private Lives and Public Space in Tahmineh Milani’s "Fereshteh Trilogy"
This paper will explore some of the complex uses of melodrama in three films by Iranian director Tahmineh Milani. In particular I will focus on how the melodramatic mode allows her to break through the traditional distinctions between public and private in contemporary Iran. Set at various moments in post-revolutionary Iran, her films effectively hint at the history of organised Iranian women's movements (and perhaps lament their failures). Through her use of what I shall call "practical" melodrama, I will argue that Milani advocates a kind of "practical" feminism to be practised in women¹s everyday lives.
Dr Maziyar Lotfalian
Autoethnography as Documentary in Iranian Films and Videos
In recent years a number of visual cultural productions among Iranian artists that mixes personal experiences with self-reflexive stories about Iran, politics, and culture have emerged. Among these are visual arts such as video, photography, and graphic novels. Among the more noteworthy, one can talk about Shirin Neshat’s photographic work and how she uses her own body as the site of inscription, Mania Akbari’s video art with herself both as its subject and object, and Marjane Satrape’s Persopolis as a graphic novel, and now animated film, about story of her childhood. In this paper I explore the place of autoethnography in recent Iranian films and videos. Anthropologists, who have in past decades insisted on personal voices as ethnography, have coined the word "autoethography" as a category that engenders writing on self and society. This genre refers to a range of strategies of writing from autobiography to self-reflexive stories. Authors often situate the self within society through self-narrative in socio-political context. Authors of autoethnography often conduct their practice across multiple social and cultural identities, exploring their different identities creatively through experimentation with technology and through playing with different mediation styles. A range of recent Iranian films and videos have used aesthetic forms and personal experiences as form of representation. Here I focus on Reza Bahraminezhad’s autoethnogrpahic films (Mr. Art and other films) which mediates between cultural forms, ideological norms, and ethnographic production. I am interested in the question of to what extent his autoethnographic explorations offer a new opening for self expression and cultural critique? To what extent they act as forms of either mediation or representation and to what extent it is a form of "reality" staging? Extending the notion of autoethnography to films and videos of Iranian artists and cultural producers puts into sharp relief how, as a genre of exploring one’s own culture, autoethnography does not only tell a personal story but explores the ambiguity of telling story and difficulty of giving voice to one’s self and others. This often involves mixing genres; it is often a political resistance (as in the underground production); and it is often about creating distinction in the face of social and political despair.
Dr Pardis Mahdavi
The Politics of Pornography in the Islamic Republic of Iran
A new sexual culture is emerging amongst urban Iranian youth which requires further scrutiny. This presentation examines sexual and social practices and gendered experiences of young people (ages 18-25) in contemporary Iran. How do young adults understand and enact their erotic and sexual lives within the laws and restrictions of the Islamic Republic? In particular, this talk focuses on how young Iranians’ sexualities are shaped and affected by their access to visual media such as pornographic films and the internet. The goal of the presentation is to describe how visual representations of sexuality and sexual behavior impact the emerging sexual culture in the context of the current regime. Fieldwork conducted between 2000 and 2007 used qualitative, ethnographic methods such as participant observation (with young people, in internet cafes and in cyberspaces such as chat rooms), in-depth interviews and group discussions to describe Iranian young people’s formation of a new sexual culture. In this presentation, I will describe the emergence of this new sexual culture, paying close attention to ways in which young people’s access to pornography and cybersexual encounters has shaped what they call Iran’s Sexual Revolution (enghelab-I jensi).
Prof Hamid Naficy
The Anthropological Unconscious of Iranian Ethnographic Films
Ethnographic filmmaking emerged strongly in the 1960s partly because the rapid modernization and its resulting population displacements and
social restructuring brought urgency to the task of documenting and analyzing the country’s traditions and ways of life before their disappearance and partly because of institutional support by the state. Nationalism was also a factor, both in its religious manifestations—particularly Islamic—and its secular manifestations. Most ethnographic documentaries in Iran were not made by anthropologists or filmmakers trained in anthropology or ethnography. Neither were they deeply linked to university anthropology departments or research centers—all of them state funded. As such, few films were part of larger academic anthropological studies or organically informed by anthropological or ethnographic concerns. Nevertheless, the majority of the filmmakers were supported by powerful national governmental cultural and media organizations, such as the Pahlavi era’s Ministry of Culture and Art and National Iranian Radio and Television and the postrevolution era’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and Voice and Vision of the Islamic Republic. Some of them were freelance filmmakers commissioned by the state, private sector, or non-governmental agencies to make ethnographic documentaries and some were civil servants employed by state organizations. Because of these structural and contextual features, the ethnographic documentaries were often embedded in politics, from their conception to reception. Textually, they tended to be straightforward, linear films that relied heavily on a wordy voice-of God narration; however, there were many that experimented with visual, musical, lyrical, and structural innovations. They can be divided into several thematic types, which evolved over time and in particular with the 1978-79 Revolution and the subsequent eight year war with Iraq.
Dr Kamran Rastegar
Bashu and The Runner: War, Trauma and Maturation
This paper examines the question how two Iranian films of the mid-1980s addressed the traumas of the post-revolutionary period, including the Iran-Iraq war, through the motif of maturation, and through the representation of ethnically and socially marginalised characters. The films "Davandeh" and "Bashu: Gharibeye Kuchak" both function as war-time texts (even if the former does not directly reference the war itself) but are unique in their exploration of questions of post-revolutionary traumas as they draw their narratives along the arc of the maturation of their child characters. In this sense they function to represent a more complex approach to Iranian nationalism, produced at a moment when concepts of nationalism were undergoing profound transformation – as visual cultural texts they anticipate a move to reconfigure Iranian nationalist tropes away from the prior ethnic particularism, but also away from the pan-Islamist nationalism promoted by the war-time Iranian government and its cultural organs.
Mrs Persheng Sadegh-Vaziri
Problems of Representing Iranian Women on Film
My experience of showing my documentary film Women Like Us in order to counter some of the skewed views of Iranian women led me to explore some of the problems of representation. After viewing the film, audiences persisted to see Iranian women as helpless and victimized, despite what they saw on the screen. Here I explore the reasons why this view of the Iranian female is so entrenched in the western mind and show clips of films by Iranian filmmakers that reinforce this view and those that break it. Prevalent images of Iranian women in American film/art world show Iranian women from the western point of view as victims in prison or their prison-like lives, terrorized by their environment and by men. Some of these films are: The Circle, by Jafar Panahi, about women in prison; Two Women by Tahmineh Milani, about a talented university student oppressed by her husband; Divorce Iranian Style by Kim Longinotto, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, about tragic divorce proceedings in Iranian courts; Shirin Neshat photographs/films on Iranian women, including Women of Allah series, showing women in veil bearing guns and faces painted with calligraphy, and Turbulant (1998) video installation of a woman singing, while her voice is muted. "Neshat’s concerns have often coincided with those of the evening news." (Lauren Collins, New Yorker 10/22/07) While many of these films show truths of the patriarchal Iranian society, by focusing only on this aspect of women’s lives, western audiences have been led to a one dimensional understanding of women’s lives in Iran.
Mr Hamidreza Sadr
Alienation of Intellectuals: Anti-Intellectualism in Iranian Films
There is a long history of anti-intellectualism in Iran, particularly evident in cinema. Repeatedly through the decades, Iranian films ignored the intellectuals and the ideal man of the films was usually the strong or the violent one. This is linked to a kind of hidden xenophobia, since the intellectuals is seen as ca Westernized presence. Each generation has habitually made fun of those with intellectuals pretensions, creating an absolute and value-laden division between ordinary people and intellectuals, who is the negative against which traditions are measured. This paper is about the fabrication of ignoring intellectuals in Iranian films and examines the key films of Iranian film from this perspective.
Visual Representations of Transgenders in Iran
I would like to give a paper on my personal experiences researching visual representation of the transgender situation and community as well as the reasons, namely the gender segregation and clearly defined gender roles in Iranian society, that render the legal, religious and social attitudes towards transsexuals in Iran somewhat unique. Furthermore, in view of the large number of films dedicated to the subject of transgenders in Iran, I would like to dedicate one section of my paper to the discussion of how films commissioned outside of Iran differ hugely with those produced within the country. Does an element of orientalism persist in the work of Iranians living abroad, or are they simply more conditioned by the demands of broadcasting, which after all, is simply an economic matter? Iranians inside the country on the other hand have no guarantee that their films will ever receive television or cinema audiences, yet they make films for the art of film and the truth of the message, and in this are far closer to the anthropological standards we should expect from documentaries commissioned everywhere. This is an interesting dichotomy, which I have repeatedly been confronted with as a result of my current research and one which raises questions about visual standards, about who has the right to represent, and how representation should take place.
Dr Faegheh Shirazi
Protectors of Chastity, Promoters of War: Images of Iranian Women in Poster Arts and Graffiti
The Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) began almost 6 months after the Islamic Republic of Iran was established. These two historical events have made a drastic change not only in terms of political power but also in the daily social lives of the populace. Ever since these events, there has been a struggle as how to represent images of women in public. Rigid rules, regulations, and censorship were set by the Islamic Republic of Iran to protect the dignity and chastity of Muslim Iranians and return them to the "right" path. Posters, banners, and even postage stamps taught the Iranian women the "correct" way of public dress. The semantic fusion of hejab (veiling, a symbol of return to Islam) and jihad (holy war, a symbol of sacrifice to defend the country and the religion) in the context of martyrdom is evident from the public visual campaigns. Women’s public portrayers of defenders of Islam and supporters of martyrdom in various forms are visually presented. In addition to the pictorial images, this study will also looks at a host of intense campaign for chastity and hiiab propagated through textual documentations of Graffiti. I will be looking at various role assignments expected of women as evident from both the visual campaigns and Graffiti during this historical era of modern Iranian history. In this paper, hejab is a reference to its customary form of contemporary Iranian style of coverage of head and entire body without covering the face.
Prof Sussan Siavoshi
20 Fingers and Elite Factionalism
Recent studies of Iranian cinema have highlighted the connection between the cultural traditions and the contemporary Iranian films. Many of these studies address the broad social, political, economic, and religious outlines in their analysis of the cultural traditions in connections to films. This study is more specific. It draws parallels between a 2004 film "Twenty Fingers" and the post-revolutionary transitional polity with a focus on the factional nature of its elite. The movie, directed by Mania Akbari, consists of seven vignettes and follows the prolonged and rocky relationship between a man and a woman from courtship to marriage and then to some more. As such it lends itself, easily and consciously, to study of gender. What at first glance might seem odd or farfetched, however, is to employ the film as a metaphor for understanding the dynamic of factional politics of a transitional polity. This study is an attempt to go beyond such initial reactions and to make a case for a multilayered and comprehensive connection (involving technical, organizational, and substantive aspects) between the film and the character of the Iranian polity. The story of Twenty Fingers is also the story of the contemporary and transitional Iranian polity.
Prof Annabelle Sreberny
De-exoticizing the Image: The Representation of Everyday life in Iran
Images of Iran often suffer from exoticization, both inside and outside Iran. Concerned with “wow” factor and big issues, representations of Iran often cluster around increasingly well-worn themes such as war and women. But with the increasing accessibility to and acceptance of the means of visual production, a greater range of imagery is being produced. As “small media” helped the revolutionary process itself, so blogging is said to be the continuation of politics by other means. But there is also emerging a humourous and playful imagery that reflexively interrogates the dynamics of everyday life in Iran, especially in Tehran, and that projects a different kind of politics. I am interested in exploring images that focus on the ordinary, the everyday and that work to democratise the representations of Iran.
Mr Mohammad Tahaminejad
Iranian Patterns and Experiences of Anthropological Films
Anthropological aspects of Iranian documentary films will be explored in my representational history of the phenomenon. So my interest is to work on history of our director’s anthropological approaches to culture and life . How we have recorded and represented our cultural world during the time? I have tried to research and portray the modes of representation and rhetoric aspects of A. films e.g. expository , observational and reflective mode of Iranian doc films .But what makes an anthropological survey different ? How we can find out that we are confronting with reality without the matter of reference ? I hope that I can present a kind of criticism (discipline) of our ethnographic films creation stages. I think that generalisation of this issue _ as an approach will help to distinct , recognise and produce ethnographic films about culture and life better.
Mr Farhad Varahram
Anthropological Cinema Without Anthropology
The first Iranian documentaries date back to the first days of introduction of cinema into Iran. Like their western counterpart, they have looked at the everyday life of society, using an observational mode. In the West, the anthropologic film, soon after defining itself as an independent genre different from documentary cinema in general, got in touch with academic circles and institutions of social science and as a means of study and documentation, provided valuable services to the anthropology as a scientific discipline. In Iran, contrary to what happened in the west, with a remarkable yet unique exception (the subject of “Film and Anthropology” in the faculty of Social Sciences of Tehran University in 1973-76), the anthropologic film was sponsored by Iranian national TV and other state institutions and continued its way independently, without any systematic link to the universities and centers of anthropologic studies and research. Thus, in our country, anthropologic film developed without knowledge about anthropology as a science, by some filmmakers inclined to documentary cinema. So it can justly be called “anthropologic cinema without anthropology”. With only a small number of films about anthropologic subjects, which would be correct to be called ethnographic films, one can conclude that no major documentary work has been created in Iran worthy of the title of anthropologic film, in cooperation with anthropologists or scientific centers, analyzed or interpreted by anthropologists or of any practical use.
Post-doctorate and graduate speakers
Ms Asal Bagheri (University of Sorbonne)
Red Ribbon: taboos and implicit relations between men and women
This work is a semiological analysis of Red ribbon (1998), a film by Ebrahim Hatamikia. Our starting hypothesis will consist in showing how the director managed to avoid censorship and taboos while describing love relations and how the war and after war conditions can become love instruments in our imagination. The methodology we have adopted is a semiological model proposed by Anne-Marie Houdebine named “indices semoilogy”. This semiotic is based on flexible structuring and indefinite objects. Our analysis is a 2-step one: the first one is the “systemic analysis” which consists in looking for a structure. We will isolate all the sequences involving any kind of relation between a woman and a man. We will then compare them to determine what are the similarities and the differences in order to get a relevant corpus. After a formal lecture, the second step will consist in analyzing the content. This part concentrates on meaning’s effects and significations processes. The Interpretation of the corpus elements is done at the internal level of our Object and also at the external level when cultural, social, encyclopedical and historical references are mobilized to analyze the meaning. Showing that in this film there’s acoding and a hidden language allow us to reveal the methods put in place by many Iranian directors to show what can not be shown in the Iranian post-revolution Islamic cinema.
Ms Narges Bajoghli (University of Chicago)
The Outcasts: Reforming the Internal “Other” by Returning to the Ideals of the Revolution
Following its 2007 release, the war comedy The Outcasts (Ekhrajiha) became the highest grossing film in Iranian cinematic history. Directed by Masoud Dehnamaki, the former General Commander of Ansar-e Hezbollah, the film positions the Iran-Iraq war as the idyllic moment when the values of the Revolution were most evidently alive and where the "Majid's" were reformed, in both spirit and body, by sacrificing themselves in the minefields. Through a socio-semiotic analysis of The Outcasts, I will point to the ways in which the film collapses temporal and generational boundaries in representing the Iran-Iraq War for the particular political purpose of "returning to the ideals of the Revolution," and reforming members of today's younger generation who have gone "astray” from these ideals. Given the personal history of the director and the timing of the film, nearly twenty years since the end of the war, The Outcasts points to the wider debate in Iran today among the supporters of the Revolution: namely, how to instill the revolutionary values in the younger generation. Thus, implicit throughout the film, and explicit in Dehnamaki's interviews about it, is the theme of reforming "the other" within society and teaching him/her the "right" Islamic (revolutionary) values. The war is brought back in The Outcasts not solely to remember that time, but to register the essential moment of the Sacred Defense and to consciously re-work it for political and social purposes. The film’s setting revolves around an idyllic chronotope in which the mixing of songs from different time periods since the 1979 Revolution (war songs, pop music from L.A., the appropriation of opposition protest songs such as "Yare Dabestanie Man") allows "time and space [to] stand in a unique relationship, such that a unity of place makes possible a cyclical blurring of temporal and generational boundaries" (Goodman 2005).
Ms Neda Bolourchi (Colombia University)
Visual Imagery, Self Expression, and the Formation of a New Iranian Identity
As the machinations being mobilized to launch a war against Iran have intensified, Iranians generated a new type of artistic response through the low-grade but mass reach arena of YouTube. In some fashion parallel to the massive staging of sacred symbolics that occurred during the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the selected videos coalesce politically apposite symbolics to evoke emotive responses for universal defensive purposes. In contrast to the Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War that were or became largely located within the context of the Shi’i political culture, nationalist convictions conveyed herein addresses the multiple political fissures within Iranian society by laying claim to them as deeply rooted, surviving cultural paradigms that subsequently expose the dominant and vast moral matters of the political arena. In turn, the self-revelatory, reconstructed images of past, present, and future cooperate in giving an enduring sense of identity that forms the basis of a new national consciousness. Thus, current Iranian nationalism appears to increasingly meld pre-Islamic and Shi’i Islamic references as well as the “sacred defence” to constitute a new, “modern” identity known as “Iranian” and its attachment to, nay fetishization of, the land called Iran.
Dr Gay Breyley (Monash University)
‘Islamic cool’ in 21st-century Tehran: Visual representations of a pop Madah
Since the advent of online media such as YouTube, the music video has become one of the most widely circulated forms of visual representation. In the case of Iran, this has enabled not only the circulation of ‘underground’ music, but also the decontextualised visual representation of Islamic musical forms such as nohe khani, or elegiac singing. Since the Iran-Iraq War, nohe khani has had an especially significant place in Iranian commemoration. Only a minority of Iran’s postrevolutionary generation would claim to be nohe khani fans, but that minority plays an important role in Iran’s collective memory. This paper examines the ways visual representations of one young Tehrani Madah , or professional religious singer, are used by his fans, his management and his detractors. Based on fieldwork in Tehran, it argues that young fans respond to images that evoke a fashionable romanticism and a sense of spiritual superiority or ‘Islamic cool’. The Madah’s management promotes such images, online and elsewhere. Meanwhile, detractors of this ‘pop Madah’ point to the perceived paradoxes of representations they see as flippant and essentially commercial. This paper investigates the significance of these possibilities of visual representation, especially as forms of remembrance, in today’s urban Iranian popular culture.
Mr Shahab Esfandiary (University of Nottingham)
Mehrjui’s Social Comedy and the Representation of the Nation in the Age of Globalization; A Comparative analysis of The Lodgers (1986) and Mum’s Guests (2004)
Despite being one of the first Iranian directors to be awarded at a major international film festival, Daryush Mehrjui remains a locally influential figure within Iranian national cinema. With a career that has extended over four decades, he still is capable of making films which are simultaneously popular among public audiences and highly acclaimed by Iranian critics. Mehman-e Maman (Mum’s Guests) -a social comedy he made in 2005- is one example of such films which has received little critical attention outside Iran. In this paper the representation of the nation in Mum’s Guests is put in contrast to that of Ejare Neshin-ha (The Lodgers, 1986), the other popular social comedy which Mehrjui made almost two decades earlier. The aim here, is to consider whether the differences between the two films’ modes of representation can be explained in the light of more general transformations and developments in the age of globalization. It is argued that Mehrjui’s representation of the nation in Mum’s Guests demonstrates a conscious acknowledgment of differences based on class, gender, ethnicity and religion, and a more inclusive approach to marginalized sections of Iranian society. The possibility of solidarity among a diversified nation, particularly at moments of crisis, however, is also recognized in the film. The collapse of boundaries between ‘the local’ and ‘the global’, as well that of ‘high-art’ and ‘low-art’ are also key elements of his more recent film. More over, the two films differ in terms of their portrayal of issues such as happiness, political/ideological conflict, scientific progress and consumerism, all of which can be seen in relation to the new conditions of the age of globalization.
Ms Sara Ganjaei (University of East Anglia)
Representation of the Iranian Revolution in the BBC documentary "People's Century"
The Iranian revolution has been the subject of many British documentary films since the 1980s. The first comprehensive account of the revolution was made by the BBC in 1995 as an episode of People’s Century, one of the highly acclaimed TV series, which won many national and international awards. On its own, the film incorporates all the major themes associated with the story of the Iranian revolution and post-revolutionary Iran in as represented in British documentary since 1980. Not only that, but the basic assumptions and presuppositions of the film reveal the thought patterns informing the more general representation of Iran over a period of several decades. This paper argues that the discourse of the film, underpinned by the binaries of modernization/Westernization vs. revolution/Islamization, and secularization/progress vs. religion/backwardness, puts the story of the Iranian Revolution in the general context of a global religious revival, 'a turning back to the fundamentals' of religious beliefs. Thus the revolution comes to be represented as an anti-modern uprising aimed at drawing the country backwards in time to the Middle Ages. This paper discusses how this message is constructed through the rhetoric and the formal structures of the film.
Ms Christine Horz (University of Erfurt)
Creating Diasporic Public Spheres: Iranian Immigrants in Public Access TV- Channels in Germany
The presentation will pick up the political and academic discussion about media participation of immigrants in European nation- states. From the viewpoint of communications studies it stresses how Iranian immigrant TV-Producers in Germany create diasporic public spheres on both local and translocal level. In Germany 15 million of the inhabitants have migrant backgrounds, about 120 000 are of Iranian descent. Nevertheless, immigrants are almost invisible in mainstream television or represented inappropriately, face difficulties of professional access to TV industry and have scarcely any political influence on broadcasting boards. As a consequence of this marginalization active Iranian groups are producing TV-shows in Public Access Channels to share their cultural and political debate. The currently 54 so called “Open Channels” in 9 out of 16 federal states are financed through public licence fees. Although free of access for everybody in the local narrowcasting area the aftermath of 9/11 has led to strict regularities for mother tongue programmes like limited air-time and translations into German. Iranian TV-Producers invent different strategies to deal with these and other obstacles. This exemplary case-study based on qualitative research methods examines for the first time the opportunities and restrictions of authentic Iranian programming in Open Access TV-Channels in Germany.
Ms Mehrzad Karimabadi (San José State University)
Manifesto of Martyrdom: Similarities and differences between Avini’s Ravaayat e Fath (Chronicles of Victory) and claimed manifestos
In what ways do Avini’s words and voice of narration works as a manifesto in Ravaayat e Fath? Is it their presence and modern nature, or the way in which they guide the audience into the world of martyrdom? What does this manifesto tell us through its oppositions and fascinations? Unlike most manifestoes that are created as mere written documents, Avini’s Ravaayat e Fath is a manifesto in motion. The voice over is a manifesto of martyrdom woven together with laments and a poetic account of what is happening in and around the battlefields in about seventy episodes. Although Ravaayat e Fathis in film format, it aligns itself with the characteristics of a formal manifesto. It brings up the idea of martyrdom in a striking manner. The documentary stands out from other manifestos because it is distinguished with Avini’s signature ideas expressed in voice over. In every episode, he reinforces the ideology of martyrs who have gone ahead and left the rest of us earthbound. Ravaayat e Fath is aligned with Janet Lyon’s account of Manifesto in Manifestoes: Provocation of the Modern. It is “the testimony of a historical present tense spoken in the impassioned voice of its participants” and “embellishes the urgency of struggle through a variety of conventions”.
Ms Vanessa Langer (University of Neuchâtel)
When the artists of Teheran are performing: an experimental video project
Contributions and limitations of an experimental research device, based on audiovisual medium, constitute the main topic of this paper. In Spring 2005, I invited eighteen young Iranian artists (painters, graphic designers, photographers, etc.) to film their daily life using the camera as a diary. My investigation, which extended over a period of a year, focused on what images these young artists use to express themselves and to present their daily life as well as on which filmic form they use. In addition, I conducted a great number of interviews on the topic of the representation of the self. Putting questions about the cinematographic form the artists have chosen to represent their reality as well as about the subjects tackled allowed me to understand their position, whether conscious or unconscious, in the context of contemporary Iranian society. Their images are rooted in a type of filmic narration, which transgresses the official values and are very revealing of the representation they have of their own identity. In the course of the research, to narrow the analysis, I proposed to five artists, who participated in the initial project, to edit their own short film, which represented at the end the corpus of images on which this study is based. Finally, the research enabled me to reflect on the use of a camera as a research’s tool and as a new way of constructing and distributing anthropological knowledge.
Ms Amy Malek (University of California)
Grass and People of the Wind: A Re-Assessment of Context, Ideology, and Ethnography
In an attempt to surpass the genre of travelogue, three Americans – Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, and Marguerite Harrison – traveled to southwestern Iran to film the bi-annual migration of the Bakhtiari tribes and their flocks from winter to summer pastures. In Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925), Schoedsack’s exquisite framing of long shots captured the vast movement of an estimated 50,000 people and 500,000 animals in desert caravans, grassy plains, icy river crossings, and snowy mountain vistas. The technical requirements of Grass alone suggest its importance in early ethnographic and documentary film, but problematic elements, such as its flimsily contrived storyline and melodramatic and essentializing intertitles, have presented problems for its perceived importance in ethnographic film history and as a representation of Iran. In 1976, Anthony Howarth (with consulting anthropologist David M. Brooks and narrator James Mason) filmed People of the Wind, again following the Bakhtiari tribes along their migration, and employed cinematography emphasizing the great color and sounds of the movement of people en masse. In this paper, I will use theoretical frameworks from visual anthropology and film theory to complicate the reading of these films, first by placing Grass within the context of the intentions and ideological imperatives of its filmmakers. I will then argue that, although People of the Wind is often visually captivating, it too has problematic elements as an ethnographic film of the Bakhtiari, including a missed opportunity for visual repatriation of Grass to its source community.
Ms Serazer Pekerman (University of St-Andrews)
Visual Patterns as Spiritual Passages: The Becoming-Indiscernible of the Hero in Iranian Cinema
Contemporary Iranian Cinema has a considerable amount of heroes who are re-framed in front or behind a window of a vehicle in long takes and medium close-up. In this pattern, the car, the bus or minibus, serves as a space in motion in a fixed frame, creating a re-framing tool, a barrier or a border between the protagonist and the city and/or the society. This paper intends to question the parallels between the car window used as a tool of re-framing the characters, and the repetition of the geometric patterns in Islamic arts and architecture. In Islamic decorative arts, pattern brings the disappearance of a beginning, an end, and a point of view, represents the existence beyond time and space, loss of the individual identity in order to become an indiscernible part of a unified whole. In many Iranian films a car or a bus is preferable to an ordinary interior of a house for framing the space of intimacy of the hero/heroine versus the images of Iran in constant motion. Exploring the pattern as a spiritual passage in connection with the Deleuze and Guattarian concept of becoming, this paper will comment on the border between public and private places, the society and the individual, the gendered identity of the transnational filmic space in motion and the conflict/trauma of the hero as an individual becoming-indiscernible.
