Iranian Movies Research Articles

Entering Iranian Homes: Privacy Borders and Hospitality in Iranian Movies

The architecture of homes in Iran has changed significantly over the past four decades since the 1979 Iranian revolution. We ask how these architectural changes shift neighborhood relationships and how they transform the Iranians’ hospitality rituals and practices. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of eighteen Iranian movies filmed after the 1979 revolution. They allowed us to make comparisons among various dwelling patterns and neighborhood relationships. We argue that the representations of neighborhood relationships reflect these changes, demonstrating the impact of architecture on interactions. Our focus in this article is on borders of privacy, power dynamics in the neighborhoods and among families, and communication forms to better understand the impact of changing architecture on hospitality through the lens of cinema. Additionally, we engage with Goffman’s (1956) concepts of frontstage and backstage, demonstrating that these are not dichotomous, although they are opposites, and there can be a thinning of frontstage along with a thickening of backstage. Entrances to homes are often gradual, and visitors may gradually penetrate through layers of the frontstage as they become closer (emotionally and in space) to the heart of the home’s (and its occupants’) backstage.

Islamic Fundamentalism and Gender: The Portrayal of Women in Iranian Movies

Various political groups were involved in the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran, which led to the downfall of the Pahlavi regime. However, Islamic Fundamentalists gradually seized power and eliminated rival ideologies in the 1980s. In the late 1990s, Iranian Reformers won the elections and oversaw the management of the film industry for two four-year administrations until 2005. As liberals and religious democrats, the Reformers supported a modern portrayal of Iranian women in movies. The findings of this research challenge the previous studies that voiced optimism about the new individualistic portrayal of women in Iranian movies. The research methodology is based on Theresa de Lauretis's technologies of gender involving a narrative analysis of sixty-eight Iranian movies produced from 2001 to 2005. Given the political defeat of the Reformers in 2005, the main research question is to what extent has the portrayal of Iranian women gone beyond (or remained under) the ideological domination of Islamic Fundamentalism.

Tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship in entertainment media: a phenomenon requiring stronger controls in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

Tobacco use and placement of tobacco products in television (TV) productions and movies is a way to promote tobacco use while avoiding tobacco advertising bans that exist in most countries. The fact that such productions are broadcast widely and viewed by millions, including children and young people, is of concern. This paper reviews the evidence on the use of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship (TAPS) in TV and films in the Eastern Mediterranean Region and the ways to combat it. Evidence from Egypt shows considerable and increasing use of tobacco products by actors on screen, including female actors, in programmes aired during Ramadan in 2015-2017. A study of Iranian movies in 2015 showed that tobacco scenes in Iranian movies were increasing. In 2014, the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean held a consultative meeting on TAPS in drama. The consultation recommended regulating the tobacco presence in movies and TV through complete implementation of Article 13 of the WHO FCTC, and raising the issue to the WHO FCTC Conference of the Parties. In 2016, the Conference of the Parties called on parties to consider scaling up the implementation of WHO FCTC Article 13 and monitoring the use of TAPS in entertainment media in accordance with national legislation. A comprehensive approach is essential to end the tobacco industry's use of TV productions and movies to promote their products.

Utopia and censorship: Iranian cinema at the crossroads of love, sex and tradition

Abstract Iranian censorship forbids depictions of unrelated men and women touching one another. Given this, western scholars generally view Iranian cinema as poor territory for exploring love, sex and desire, with some even suggesting that pornography and Iranian cinema are two contrasting entities. Granted, it is difficult to find a direct representation of love and sex in Iranian movies but this limitation does not mean that Iranian cinema is devoid of such topics. In fact, as Hamid Naficy and Shahla Haeri both argue, Iranian directors have proposed very sophisticated, complex and ingenious methods for discussing eroticism, love and passion in their movies. When faced with strict censorship and social and moral barriers, what methods have Iranian directors developed in order to address love, desire and passion? In what ways do these methods emancipate or emasculate Iranian artists in their quest to express love and eroticism? This article attempts to answer these questions, arguing that it makes little sense to say that any authoritative system with a system of hegemony could prevent its citizens from expressing this impulse in their works since the sexual instinct is life’s drive and only at the moment of death can humans deny its existence. What is essential, radical and utopian is to read the meaning of eroticism in Iranian cinema through the specific culture in which the drive has been developed and shaped.

Conversational Maxim View of Politeness: Focus on Politeness Implicatures Raised in Performing Persian Offers and Invitations

This study reviewed the criticisms against Brown and Levinson’s (1987) claim about necessity of violation of cooperative principles (CP) in giving rise to politeness implicatures. To support these critiques, evidences from Persian offers and invitations were provided from the texts of 10 Iranian movies. As no alternative framework for analysing the content of these implicatures has been proposed so far, the researchers adopted two politeness principles namely ‘tact’ and ‘generosity’ maxims as well as the cost-benefit and directness-indirectness scales proposed by Leech (1983) to fill this gap in the area of Persian pragmatics. The results of this study showed that both generosity and tact maxims are the main reasons behind both direct and indirect offers and invitations. Besides, the results showed that cost-benefit scale can explain the politeness implicatures raised in performing these speech acts better than directness-indirectness scale.

Cine iraní en España

This study is an effort to analyse how Spanish cinephilia have received Iranian movies, which reached the commercial screens of Spain since their success on International film festivals. The interest in the Iranian Cinema in Spain arose not only out of their formal differences from the mainstream cinema but also from their status as Iranian cultural products, for being considered as culturally “other.” The visual style of directors like Kiarostami has been observed by the western coordinates in order to shed light on, and in some occasions to force, the influences by European film styles like Neorealism. As the resources of research and in order to approach to the cinephilia reactions, the points of view of critics and academics as well as opinions and news, which were reflected on press and on specialized magazines have been studied.

Smoking Display-Time Trends in Iranian Movies

Smoking Display-Time Trends in Iranian Movies

Time trend of smoking scenes in Iranian movies during the past three decades (1982–2011): a historical analysis

BackgroundEvidence from the USA and elsewhere has linked smoking depictions in movies with youth smoking initiation. Prior research has not focused on depictions in films produced in the Middle East,...

Los niños errantes del cine iraní del mito a la historia

Este estudio es un esfuerzo por analizar la imagen de los niños y adolescentes en el cine iraní y su relación con la imagen de infancia que existe en la mitología y la literatura persa. El niño sabio aparece en los momentos de crisis, cuando la lógica de los adultos basada en la experiencia y control patriarcal es incapaz de resolver un problema social y todas las líneas de comunicación y diálogo entre el pueblo y los opositores -o bien como una amenaza externa o bien como un tirano gobernante- han llegado a un callejón sin salida. En este momento crucial la inteligencia no contaminada por la lógica del beneficio mediante una estrategia dotada por un alto grado de flexibilidad salva a la identidad colectiva de la crisis y resuelve el problema.En el cine, este mito aparece en un momento crítico del contacto de los iraníes con la modernidad y se convierte en el protagonista de una serie de películas en un determinado contexto histórico-social. La imagen del niño errante construye una perfecta relación microcósmica con las realidades sociales en una imagen alegórica de una sociedad en el pleno proceso de cambio del sistema de valores, y por lo tanto en una profunda crisis de identidad.

Sacred Canopy: Love and Sex under the Veil

In this article I describe what I see as the subliminal messages of desire and intimacy in the following Iranian movies: Gabbeh (1995), The Blue Scarf (1994), May Lady (1997), and Born in the Month of Mihr (2000). I argue that although the Islamic legal discourse has reasserted itself after the revolution of 1979 and appears to have become dominant, the “erotic” discourse that is ever so subtly embedded in Persian poetry and popular culture is alive and possibly thriving. Taking a light-hearted approach, I discuss representations of love and sex in these four films within the context of the dynamic tension between the legal discourse that regulates the gaze, ahkam-i nigah, and the erotic discourse that subverts the very same regulations, nazar-bazi. This paper was first presented at the conference on “Women in Iranian Cinema,” held at University of Virginia at Charlottesville, 30 March–2 April 2000. It is intended to be light hearted and tongue-in-cheek. A version of it has been translated into Persian and published in Iran Nameh: A Persian Journal of Iranian Studies, XIX, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 337–347.