Review of Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance

Negar Taymoorzadeh

doi:10.5195/cinej.2020.292

Abstract

Michelle Langford, Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance . London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019. xiii + 278 pp. ISBN 9781780762982

Highlights

Michelle Langford’s compelling study provides a welcome and much needed addition to the existing scholarship on Iranian Cinema as well as on allegorical aesthetics beyond the Iranian case
Going beyond an understanding of allegory as an artistic strategy to evade censorship, Langford develops an understanding of allegorical aesthetics as both, a mode of expression and a mode of interpretation
Throughout six chapters, beginning with the early silent days of Iranian Cinema and ending with Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly (2009), Langford mobilizes theoretical concepts developed by a wide range of thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Gilles Deleuze, Vivian Sobchack, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, while drawing on the rich tradition of allegorical aesthetics in Persian literature and poetry

Summary

Introduction

Michelle Langford’s compelling study provides a welcome and much needed addition to the existing scholarship on Iranian Cinema as well as on allegorical aesthetics beyond the Iranian case. Book Review Michelle Langford, Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance.

Results

Conclusion