Cinematic Revolution: Cosmopolitan Alter-cinema of Pre-revolutionary Iran

Abstract

In the late 1950s, when Iran was witness to the withering away of social norms and everyday practices concomitant with the country's rapid urbanization, a group of young Iranian film directors embarked upon a new cinematic trend, in attempts to screen the ethereal quotidian of Iranian life. Defining itself against what was perceived to be the “cheap” and “repetitive” commercial “Film Farsi” industry of the time, this alternative (alter-)cinema fused the local and global, by incorporating international cinematic elements in socially and politically conscious national films, and projecting them on local and international screens. Problematizing a homogeneous conception of historical time that subsumes the history of cinema into a conventionalized grand narrative of the Iranian 1979 revolution, this article works with a conception of heterogeneous historical time that first interrogates cinematic temporality autonomously and then in relation to the political history of Iran, especially the events of the 1978–79 revolution. This article explores how the distinct cosmopolitan alter-cinema of pre-revolutionary Iran was born from a cinematic rupture in the 1950s, prompted by series of critiques and professional expectations that colored the attention paid to the vernacular and quotidian in film production.