Crossing Borders: Iran, Nation and Cinema
On the New Conditions of National Cinema in the Case of Iran
R.M. Korrel Supervisor: Dr. Blandine Joret 10253238 Second reader: Dr. Amir Vudka Roos.korrel@live.nl Media Studies: Film Studies Word count: 20.836 University of Amsterdam
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ABSTRACT
This thesis “Crossing borders: Iran, Nation and Cinema” provides an overview of the key concepts and debates within the still-developing field of the national cinema in film studies, taking the contemporary censored and uncensored Iranian films as case study. The main question is: What new insights do censored and uncensored Iranian films of the twenty-first century provide concerning the national identity of Iran? The films Tambourine (Parisa Bakhtavar, 2008), About Elly (Asghar Farhadi, 2009), Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat, 2009) and Taxi Tehran (Jafar Panahi, 2015) will be discussed in depth in terms of how they convey contemporary Iranian national identity. This research is a literature study of national and global aspects of cinema in the case of twenty-first century Iranian film industry with guidance of four film analyses.
Keywords: Iranian cinema, national identity, national cinema, globalisation, auteur theory
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT………. 3
INTRODUCTION………. 4
CHAPTER 1. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
National Identity and Cinema
1.1 The Origins of National Identity……….…. 81.2 National Cinema………... 14
1.3 National Cinema in the Twenty-First Century………...16
1.3 Conclusion….……….………23
CHAPTER 2. CASE STUDY IRAN – LITERATURE REVIEW:
The Islamic Republic of Iran and Its Film Industry
2.1 The Origins of Iranian Censorship………. 242.2 The New Iranian Cinema………29
2.3 General Themes……….. 33
2.4 Conclusion………... 36
CHAPTER 3. CASE STUDY IRAN - FILMANALYSES:
The Global Auteur and Splitted National Identity
3.1 Methodology……… 373.2 Film 1: Tambourine (Parisa Bakhtavar, 2008) ……… 37
3.3 Film 2: About Elly (Asghar Farhadi, 2009) ………..45
3.4 Film 3: Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat, 2009) ………. 50
3.5 Film 4: Taxi Tehran (Jafar Panahi, 2015)………. 51
3.6 Conclusion………. 54
CONCLUSION………..…… 55
BIBLIOGRAPHY……….. 60
FILM LIST………..………… 63
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INTRODUCTION
This Is Not A Film (Jafar Panahi, 2011) tells the story of the Iranian director Jafar
Panahi in expatriation by recording him during a ‘typical’ day in Iran. Panahi had to smuggle this politically charged film out of Iran by sending the film on a USB stick, hidden in a pie, to the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. Hereby he gained his goal: to present his controversial film to the world. The film is blur between documentary and fiction, and shows the moviegoer an insight of Iran’s contemporary status of film censorship.
This example of Panahi shows (1) multiple difficulties of Iranian directors living in Iran due to the cinematic censorship rules and (2) multiple facets of globalisation that has impacted national cinema. On the one hand, the difficulties of Iranian film directors to tell their story to the world. It gives a concerning example of the repression of free cinematic expression in the contemporary nation state of Iran. These Iranian cinematic modesty rules such and political control derive from the Iranian (Islamic) Revolution in 1978-9 and are still present today in Iran. Several internationally known Iranian filmmakers have left Iran because of the strict regime of Iran’s government, including Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Bahman Ghobadi. In contrast with his fellow directors, Panahi still lives in Iran (EYE Film Institute, “This Is Not a Film”). On the other hand, Panahi’s film shows the facets of the globalisation and new digital improvements in the film industry, such as digital format, DVD, digital screening, and home screening, makes it easier for the Iranian director to deliver their film to the distributor company and for the distributor to distribute the film worldwide. Although the political charged film from Panahi is prohibited for showing in Iranian theatres, the film can be shown at Iranian homes with DVD and the World Wide Web such as Home screening. Thusly, the Iranian government wants to create an independent Iranian national cinema, but Iranian filmmakers want to create films that are also open and accessible to the global market. Therefore, the current situation in the Iranian film industry is a split in national identity for the Iranian exiled
5 filmmakers. Jafar Panahi is an example of an Iranian exiled filmmaker, that
expresses the national identity of Iran by using a ‘diasporic’ film style1.
This thesis examines national identity and the way it is constructed in contemporary Iranian films which are situated in different circulation of the national or global market. This may give a new model for national identity and national cinema in the twenty-first century. By considering the narrative structures of the four Iranian films (Tambourine, About Elly, Women Without
Men and Taxi Tehran) and the legal context of the directors I hope to give new
insights about the national identity in the twenty-first century. This leads me to my main question of this research: What new insight do censored and uncensored Iranian films of twenty-first century reveal concerning the national identity of Iran?
In this thesis, I will improve previous research about the new conditions national cinema enters in the twenty-first century. Previous research have stated this new link and relationships between the globalisation and national cinema and the new ontology for national cinema (Esfandiary 62). Moreover, the tension between Iranian state and new wave Iranian directors have risen scholarly attention2 since the Iranian Revolution in 1978-9. Most notably
papers are about the new wave - censored - Iranian cinema. However, I will add information - to the existing literature on Iranian national identity and cinema - by using both categories of contemporary Iranian cinema: censored and uncensored Iranian films. I will examine four films. Two uncensored films in Iran: Tambourine (Parisa Bakhtavar, 2008) and About Elly (Asghar Farhadi, 2009); and two censored films in Iran: Women Without Men (Shirin Neshat, 2009) and Taxi Tehran (Jafar Panahi, 2015). The Iranian uncensored films are based on UNESCO statistics on films popular among Iranian moviegoers in film theatres in Iran. The internationally known Iranian films are based on prize-winning films from film festivals, including Berlinale. The second reason for
1 Hamid Naficy has studied exiled and diasporic filmmaking and describes the current trend of ‘accented cinema’. This means a certain style of film style by directors who are banned or exiled from their home country (Naficy ‘Accented Cinema’ 4-6).
2 Most renowned three books on new Iranian cinema are as follows. Firstly, Shahab Esfandiary has researched in his book Iranian Cinema and Globalization the national identity of new wave Iranian cinema to the current phenomenon of globalization. Secondly, Richard Tapper has edited a book – The New Iranian Cinema – with different essays on the developments of the strict regime of Iran upon cinema since the Revolution, the themes of new wave Iranian cinema, the development to new wave Iranian cinema genre and the national identity by new wave Iranian cinema. This book was a result of the conference held on new wave Iranian cinema in 1999. Thirdly, Hamid Naficy has researched in his book An Accented Cinema the new wave Iranian cinema from exiled Iranian filmmakers and their ‘accented’ style.
6 this research, I refer to the statement of cinema history and media
archaeologists Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault: "Theory has History"3.
This means that in the contemporary society, cinema has adjusted and changed to the new phenomena of globalization and seeks for new and old theories (Van Den Oever et al. 13-16). In this matter, the theory of imagined community from Benedict Anderson in 1983 and the theory of national cinema from Andrew Higson in 1989 are still relevant in contemporary film research and practices. The third reason for this research is the still existing barrier, obstacle and border between the West and “the Other”4 that needs to be crossed. With this
research, I provide more observations and theories for anyone interested in learning about Iranian culture, a niche in Middle Eastern culture and particularly in Islamic culture. Not only is it a culture that is or was treated as “the Other” or as counterpart of Western culture, it is also a culture that is in transformation by the new conditions of the capitalist-globalisation and medium-digitalisation.
To conduct my research, I have structured my thesis in three chapters. The first chapter is a theoretical framework of the two essential concepts: national identity and national cinema. I will use literature as research method. In this chapter I will try to combine these two essential concepts from two different disciplines by asking the question: What is cinema’s capacity of containing structures and symbols of national identity? Therefore, I need to identify what the concepts national identity, national cinema and the auteur involves from the its early beginnings until the early twenty-first century. The first step – section 1.1 – is examining the essence of national identity from its early beginnings until now by theorists David Hume, Benedict Anderson , Anthony Smith and Montserrat Guibernau. This leads to a list of theories, to answer my sub-research questions: What do the theories have in common in approaching national identity? More specific: How do these prospects of national identity apply to exiled Iranian filmmakers? The second step – section
3 “Theory has History” means that ideas an theories are part of a certain time: they contain traces of the time and context they were developed. Theories that have been forgotten a century ago can be useful in a later century within changed society with new conditions. This means old theories can be reused for new phenomena in film studies: they get a different practical value then wherefore they were developed.
4 There are still big cultural differences that exist between Western culture and Islamic culture. According to UNESCO, the best prospects for continuation of peace in the world come from knowing more about ‘the Other’ (UNESCO no pag.). For example, Middle East studies and Orientalism studies provide knowledge about different cultures, particularly the Middle East.
7 1.2 – is examining the link between national identity and cinema. What are the
first developments of cinema from its early beginning till now related to nation? What is the essence of the concept national cinema according to Andrew Higson, Stephan Crofts and Hamid Naficy? The third step – section 1.3 – is examining the new concept of the global auteur. What are the new prospects by theorists for the auteur theory by considering the effect of the globalisation - new conditions of crossing borders with cultural communication? How is cinema’s capacity of containing structures of national identities changed? How is the auteur theory developed? What is the essence of the concept global auteur? How does the auteur theory apply to Iranian cinema? What kind of narrative structures and aesthetical formats does apply to national cinema? In the second chapter, I will discuss Iran’s film censorship – the state’s film regulation and I will use literature as research method. In first section of the chapter the focus will be on the national authorities and directors on how they want to express Iran’s national identity. The first step is examining the history of the Iranian Revolution. What is the impact of the Iranian Revolution on the film industry? When and how does the Iranian Revolution developed? And what does the post-revolution Iranian government want to accomplish as national identity in the media culture? The second step is examining the effect of the Iranian Revolution on the Iranian film industry for the film director. The main sub-question of this chapter is as follows: What is the effect of the Iranian Revolution on the film industry for expressing the national identity in the twenty-first century un- and censored Iranian films? In the third chapter, I will discuss four censored an uncensored Iranian films of the twenty-first century. I will use David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s formalist method of narrative analysis. All-together, these chapters will clarify cinema’s capacity of producing narrative structures – locate the space - of national identity in the case of twenty-first century Iranian films which are situated in the opposite of national and global market.
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1. NATIONAL IDENTITY AND CINEMA
National identity and national cinema upsurge of scholarly attention in in the early 1990s and continued till now. In this chapter I will try to combine these two essential concepts national identity and national cinema from two different disciplines by asking the main sub-research question: What is national cinema’s capacity of containing structures and symbols of national identity in the twenty-first century? In the first section, I will explain the origins (‘essence’) of the concept ‘national identity’ rooted in political philosophy5 by
asking the questions: What can be categorized as the first theories on national identity; or: how and when did the first theories of nationalism in academic scope appeared and what does involve these theories? Moving on, in the second section, I will explain the origins (‘essence’) of the concept national cinema by asking the sub-question: What are the first prospects of national cinema in film studies and what do these theories involve? Thirdly, I will explain the concept national cinema in the twenty-first century by asking the sub-questions: What are the new theories of national cinema that encounter the new conditions of the twenty-first century? All-together, this clarifies what the link is between national identity and national cinema, and what course it takes - the debate - towards the twenty-first century.
1.1 The Origins of National Identity
National Identity’s Roots
The topic of nationalism and nation finds it roots in political philosophy. Up till mid- 1750s and 18th century the differences between nations and people were
constructed upon the factors of the climate circumstances (Jensen 9-10). For instance, people in south of Europe were different than the people in the north of Europe on the grounds of different climate living circumstances. The climate theory was the ruling paradigm from antiquity until eighteenth century in Europe (9, 23).
5 On the origins of national identity, see the Oxford Bibliographies (Miscevic no pag.). This is a list with the most cited and relevant research-papers written about the topic Nationalism in the academic scope.
9 In 1748, philosopher David Hume6 attacked this theory, by arguing that
differences between nations and people were constructed upon the “social-political” and “moral factors” (Jensen 9; Hume 207). David Hume stated that differences between nations and people is constructed by the manner and characters of people; and with ‘people’, Hume stresses the people in higher circles - “nobles” -, with power - “landed gentry” – and the religious leaders – “the genius of a particular sect or religion” (207). These people are, according to Hume, leading the nation to a particular set of manners, instead of the climate living circumstances:
We may often remark a wonderful mixture of manner and characters in the same nation, speaking the same language, and subject to the same government [..] Where the government of nation is altogether republican, it is apt to beget a peculiar set of manners. Where it is altogether monarchical it is more apt to have the same effect; the imitation of superiors spreading the national manners faster among the people. If the governing part of state consist altogether of merchants, as in Holland, their uniform way of life will fix their character. If it consist chiefly of nobels and landed gentry, like Germany, France, and Spain, the same effect follows. The Genius of a particular sect or religion is also apt to mould the manner of people (David Hume 207).
In historical context for national identities, Hume’s statement was important start for thinking in national identities. Because in the theory of Hume, the differences between nations is set on the factors of manners of people – the “social-political” and “moral factors” instead of climate factors (Jensen 9). Lotte Jensen7 clarifies that “the way [Hume] reflects upon ‘nation’ and ‘national
character’ reveals that these terms had become ingrained in common speech, but were historically charged and contested ” (9). Thusly, the essay of Hume in 1748, was not the start of the terms, but a new approach and start of theorizing
6 David Hume (1711-1776), a philosopher in times of Enlightenment, was great thinker during these times: he influences thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Popper, Russel, Adam Smith and Einstein. But Hume was not rewarded by everyone for his sceptical thinking about religion, as Antheïst (Vink no pag). For instance, the phrase of “particular sect or religion is also apt to mould” shows his atheist and his analytical vision of “getting knowledge by experience”. His most-cited article about ‘Nationalism’ is “On National Characters”. In this article, the terms nation and national characters got problematized. Jensen clarifies that “Hume’s essays is part of a long tradition of texts about national stereotypes and character that can be traced back to the Middle Ages. The way he reflects upon ‘nation’ and ‘national character’ reveals that these terms had become ingrained in common speech, but were historically charged and contested” (Jensen 9).
7 Lotte Jensen (1972) , professor specialized in Dutch literature, History and Philosophy, has edited the book The Roots
of Nationalism: National Identity Formation In Early Modern Europe, 1600-1815. This book is a result of a two-day
conference, titled ‘The Roots of Nationalism. Early Modern Identity Formation in Early Modern Europe, 1600-1815’, which was held in January 2015. This book is the first volume and well-structured about scholars who have written or examined on the subject of nations and nationalism.
10 about nations in subjective – social - factors instead of objective factors. This
trend8 continued after Hume.
In 1983, the concept ‘nation’ as “imagined community” got introduced by Benedict Anderson9. In his paper, “Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism”, he stated that the elements of capitalism and printing is the foundation for nationalism (Cheah and Culler 2; Chaudhuri 2). According to Anderson’s research, the concept of a nation can be defined as an imagined community. This means, that although a citizen does not know his or her fellow countrymen, they feel connected to each other by sharing the same media objects (Chaudhuri 2; Anderson 135). In this matter, Anderson’s research, has given rise to increased scholarly attention to the concept of nation in film studies. Through his statement, that of a nation as an imagined community, national cinema has been examined and identified as a media object that can be considered as an element of structuring the national identity of a country. Anderson states: “[…] all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined. Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity-genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6). In such contexts, the nation – national identity - is still a powerful entity despite that is ‘imagined’ – a social construct - because it has a strong belief by the inhabitants of the nation.
In 1991, the term ‘national identity’ got introduced by Anthony Smith10
for his identification – ontology – of a nation. Smits theory of national identity is an ethno symbolist approach. This means the subjective components are based on the sociological collective cultural identities (Smith National Identity 9; Guibernau 133). Smith clarifies that national identity involves “some sense of political community, history, territory, patria, citizenship, common values and traditions” (Smith National Identity 9). This means that “nations must have a measure of common culture and a civic ideology, a set of common
8 The trend of thinking in subjective (social and moral) factors for the identification – ontology – of the concept nation by theorists. This means that the nation exists upon the social factors and that these social factors are getting prominent role in the academic scope according to Nenad Miscevic. As stated by Nenad Miscevic8: “it seems that for a nation to exist, a certain number of people have to have relevant beliefs, and other mental attitudes” (no pag.).
9 Benedict Anderson is a professor in social science and a constructivist. He has influenced the academic scope for his breaking through research, for his ontological statement that a nation is a imagined community (Miscevic no pag.) 10 Antohony Smith is one of the first professors in ethnic and national identities at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He brought nationalism as value research-topic in the academic scope on world basis. He retired in 2004. For his intellectual achievement, the department and linked parties (scholars in this department, the journal of the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism Nations and Nationalism and many editors such as Smith himself) devoted the book Nations and Nationalism for the problems he addressed and helped defined in the field (Smith et al. Preface Nations and Nationalism. Vol. 10 Part ½ January/April. 2004).
11 understandings and aspirations, sentiments and ideas, that bind the population
together in their homeland” (11). He adds the statement of Ernst Gellner’s theory of nationalism, from 1983, which is that the agencies of the socialization11 are holding this common culture – national identity – by the
public educational system and the media. Smith lists the following features of national identity: (1) an historic territory or homeland; (2) common myths and historical memories; (3) a common, mass public culture; (4) common legal rights and duties for all members; and (5) a common economy with territorial mobility for members (Smith 14). Smith’s theory of national identity in 1991 is based upon a common mass public culture. From 2002 Smith includes citizenship as criteria for defining national identity as follows: “common legal rights and duties for all members” (Smith “When is a Nation?” 15).
In 2004, Montserrat Guibernau attacked this last statement, by arguing that there is no difference between ‘nation-states’ and ‘nations without states’ for defining the concept national identity. Guibernau critiques Smith’s definition that national identity is bound to citizenship of the nation-state. Smith defines “national identity as a quality shared by the citizen of a state and he completely ignores that, in many cases, nation and state are coextensive” (134). This means, that in Smith theory, the identities without legal states are not existence. Guibernau states that instead of approaching the three terms ‘nation12’, ‘state13’ and ‘nation-state’” as one, as in the theory of Smith, a
“clear-cut distinction needs to be drawn between three main concepts. She adds a new phenomenon and concept: “nation without a state” (132). Montserrat Guibernau states, that “there are other cases [..] where national identity is shared among individuals belonging to a nation without a state of their own. Memories of a time when the nation was independent [..]” (134).
Montserrat Guibernau defines national identity as follows:
“[..] national identity is a modern phenomenon of a fluid and dynamic nature, one by means of which a community sharing a particular set of characteristics is led to the subjective belief that its members are
11 Socialization is a concept for “the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained” (Clausen 5). It stands for the civilization with a continuity by its set of norms and values. A concept that is introduced in the field of Social Sciences and in more fields such as Political Science in the late 1980s (5-9).
12 See Montserrat Guibernau defention of a nation in 1996: “human group conscious of forming a community, sharing a common culture, attached to a clearly demarcated territory, having common past and a common project for the future and claiming the right to rule itself (47-48; Guibernau 2004 132).
13 See Max Weber’ definition of a state in 1991: “a human community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (78).
12 ancestrally related. Belief in a shared culture, history, traditions,
symbols, kinship, language, religion, territory, founding moment, and destiny have been invoked, with varying intensity at different times and places, by peoples claiming to share a particular national identity” (Montserrat Guibernau 134).
Guibernau states, that national identity is a “modern phenomenon” that has to adjust itself to the new conditions of the society. In her theory, a new facet of the twenty-first century is added: a person from a state without have the legal papers of being the citizen of the nation (or the country is not legally admitted as country) can have the national identity of that concerning country. In my case study, the Iranian directors who are banned from their country of origin do not have the legal Iranian citizenship, but can still have the Iranian national identity – the feeling of belonging and being member of the imagined community of Iran.
National Identity in the Twenty-First Century
Now, with the theoretical overview, I can answer my sub-research-questions: What is the ‘essence’ of the concept national identity in the twenty-first century? What do the theories have in common in approaching national identity? More specific: How do these prospects of national identity apply to exiled Iranian directors?
In the twenty-first century, the essence of the concept national identity did not change. It is a fluid, transformable concept, that shapes to the new facets of the twenty-first century society of globalisation. Just as Montserrat Guibernau defined, the concept of national identity is a “modern phenomenon” that adjust itself to the new conditions of the society.
The theories have in common that the theorists are all defining national identity on the differences between nations on the basis of cultural differences implied by people themselves. Just as David Hume formulated in the early definitions of national identities: people are different from each other by the way they are imposed by the people’s standards of culture habits in higher circles. And as stated by Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith, in the essence, national identity is the difference between nations by cultural rules of the community. In short: the subjective socials factors are the key for the
13 proliferation of national identities, which are transformative. Just as Monserrat
Guibernau stated that national identity is a modern fluid phenomenon. I argued, that Montserrat Guibernau’s theory is a good adjustment for the new complexities of national identity of the Iranian director in the current, twenty-first century society. Because, in the theory of Guibernau, the citizen of nations without state is included for having a national identity. This new condition is lacking in the Smiths theory, due to the time of his studies14. In
Guibernau’s theory exiled Iranian former citizens can have a feeling of belonging to Iran – having a Iranian national identity. They are being banned or illegal in the country but they still have the same ‘feeling of imagined community’15 and ‘belonging’ to the nation state (Gauibernau 133). In the case
of my research object, Iranian filmmakers, who are in exile, want to express their national identity more than ever in their films. In such contexts, Guibernau’s theory includes – the new category - exiled or outlawed Iranian filmmakers for having a Iranian national identity, because the national identity is not bounded to the legal status of the “nation-state”. How do Iranian directors express their national identity – the feeling of being an Iranian citizen and feeling of belonging to the community of Iran – in line with the post-revolutionary Iranian cinematic censorship rules? These structures will explained later on in the second chapter and in the close readings of the four films.
14 Smith’s theory in 1995 and 2002 was written in the begin phase of the new phenomena of “states” and “nations”. The theory of Guibernau is a continuation of Smith’s research upon national identity in modern times (twenty-first century). The research of Smith has to be considered, according to Guibernau and Smith et al. as a finished product, non-finished definitions of national identity, that has to be continued and adjusted.
15 On the feeling of a “imagined community” for defining national identities, see book Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson.
14 1.2 The Origins of National Cinema
National Cinema’s Roots
In order to understand the national and global aspects of cinema in the twenty-first century, I will twenty-firstly explain the historical background of the concept national cinema and its scholarship. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson clarify in their book Film History that the idea or development of cinema from a nation’s perspective16 developed during the first World War. Before WW I,
cinema was considered as an internationally oriented medium. The authors clarify, that national cinema emerged because of the increasingly importance of national identities during this so called ‘Great War’ (Bordwell and Thomson 45). Many nations developed their own independent films, accompanied by their own film trends, styles, and culture. Such as German, American, Italian, Danish, Swedish, French, Soviet, Dutch and American national cinema (45). The American national cinema, Hollywood, became the biggest producer of cinema of the world. For this reason, the term national cinema was “generally used as a marketing strategy to distinguish the limited number of films in circulation that were not from Hollywood” (Esfandiary 39). However, it was not until after the second World War that national cinema and art cinema in academic scholarship became a subjects of matter. Shahab Esfandiaryclarifies that “the term of national cinema did not seem to require any further scrutiny [in academic scholarship]” (39). Thusly, both terms national cinema and art cinema terms already occurred as marketing strategy or in the film journals, and from the mid-1980s national cinema became a problematic concept in line with developments of the concept nation. Till 1989 there was not one single accepted definition or consensus of the term national cinema.
Andrew Higson is one of the first scholars who did a full assessment on the term national cinema in the academic scope. He wrote the well-known article titled “The concept of National Cinema” as part of his PhD thesis in 1989. He acknowledges the work of Thomas Elsaesser, which enabled him to develop his arguments in advance. Higson explores and problematizes the usage of the term ‘national’ in the discourse about cinema in the film industry and film
16 In addition: the interwar movements led not only to establishment of film as national product, it also established and helped to legitimate film as an artistic product. Alex Lykidis clarifies that “the interwar movements such as German Expressionism and French surrealism led to the establishment of film journals, clubs, and archives that helped to legitimate cinema as an art form” (no pag).
15 culture. He defines ‘national cinema’ in two ways: first, national cinema as the
opposite of Hollywood and how it differs from other cinema, a semiotic definition; and second, cinema in terms of the historic, economic, political, and cultural elements of the ‘nation’ (Higson 40–42).
Higson states that the term national has been used in variety of ways, on the grounds there is not a single universally accepted consensus on the use the term national cinema. According to Higson, the following four approaches are hitherto used to define national cinema: economic, text-based, exhibition-led or consumption-based, and criticism-led. Higson asserts that the four approaches are incorrect and have their shortcomings; they are prescriptive rather than descriptive. The economic approach defines national cinema in terms of the ‘domestic film industry’, which includes the following survey questions: Who owns and controls the production, distribution, and exhibition of the film industry of the concerning country? In the second approach, national cinema is defined in terms of the content of the film, which poses questions such as: What are these films about? Do they share a common style or world view? What sort of projections of the national character do they offer? (Higson 36). The third approach defines national cinema in terms of film audiences, which poses questions such as: Who is watching the film? Who is are the moviegoers, the film audience, and are they foreign? According to Higson, this approach led to a concept and theory concerning the cultural imperialism of American film owing to its high-profile audience. The fourth approach defines national cinema in terms of high-cultural mode and the ‘modernist’ heritage of a particular nation state. According to Higson, this approach reduces national cinema in terms of a quality art cinema, the opposite of the desires and fantasies of the popular audiences (Higson 36–37).
In order to define national cinema, Higson claims that we have to take a descriptive approach: the ontology of a nation. This means that national cinema is connected to the ontology of the ‘nation’: What is a nation or national identity? (Higson 37). According to Higson the term ‘national’ is in itself problematic: it implicates what the national cinema films ‘are’ and ‘how’ we have to watch the films. For this reason, we have to change our perspective: in order to define national cinema, we must first define ‘nation’. To define ‘nation’, Higson refers to Anderson’s vision of national identity as a mode of cultural production (Higson 37). Consequently, in this manner, national cinema is capable of producing ideological processes, which Higson criticizes again on
16 the grounds of its aspect of homogenizing and methodological processes. In
conclusion, Higson recommends approaching national cinema as a part of the political, economic, cultural and historical context of the ‘nation’, that is as a part of the nation for the creation of a cultural identity and presentation of a worldview (46–47).
In 1993, Stephen Crofts has articulated national cinema as “the other” of Hollywood in his oft-cited article “Reconceptualising National Cinema/s”. He formulated seven types or categories of cinemas that emerged in historical circumstances. Crofts has proposed the following types of national cinemas or taxonomies or models that are related to the different political, economic and cultural context of nation states. The first category is “European-model art cinemas”. In this category, or model, are cinemas which have a target in the “elitist” market sector of “art house” film circuit. These cinemas differentiate themselves from Hollywood but they are not competitive. The films are mostly funded by public parties, because they are representing the national pride and art culture. The key-terms are “elitist” and “art-cinema”. The second category is “Third Cinema”. This model represent cinema that differentiate themselves from Hollywood, they do not compete directly, but counteract Hollywood by theme and form with “distinct aesthetic models from Hollywood and European art cinema” (Crofts 47). The third category is “European and Third World entertainment and commercial cinemas”. The fourth category is “National cinema that manage to ignore”. The fifth category is “Cinemas that attempt to imitate Hollywood”. The sixth category is “Totalitarian cinemas”. The last category is “Regional and ethnic cinemas”. Through this article, it is generally accepted that there are divers national cinemas besides Hollywood and that they are counted just as important as Hollywood.
1.3 National Cinema in the Twenty-First Century
The current trend of digitalisation and globalisation has impact on the debate of national and international aspects in film studies: a shift in the conception of national cinema.
In the twenty-first century there is a shift in format and circulation of the medium: from national to global level. Films can be produced and distributed outside the domestic surroundings of a nation (Higson “The Limitation of the
17 Nation” 73). The new improvements of the medium in the late nineteenth
century and transport and communication inventions such as the World Wide Web, the airplane made it possible that films can circulate globally and cross borders. For instance, the screens of films smaller screens for films on the smartphone makes it possible to watch films everywhere, the airplane makes it possible to travel more easily for directors and the World Wide Web makes it possible to circulate films in digital format globally (Van den Oever 13). This results in new possibilities for smaller film industries from the Third World (Naficy 3).
The Global Auteur
To remain profitable, cinema had to respond to the following changes in the twenty-first century: the capitalist globalisation and the post-medium digitalisation. According to Seung-hoon Jeong and Jeremi Szaniawski, editors of the recent book The Global Auteur: The Politics of Authorship in the 21st
Century Cinema, the (art) cinema had to undergo transitions and crises
precipitated by these new phenomena. They draw attention to the concept of the auteur, which by their reassessment of the film auteur on the grounds of the new changes cinema had to face in the twenty-first century, can be redefined as global auteur. They call the redefinition global auteur a new fourth phase of auteur theory: the film director as film auteur. Until their reassessment, the auteur theory consisted of three phases (Jeong and Szaniawski 1).
The first phase occurred around 1950 with the statement of the Cahiers du
Cinema critics. They ranked the auteur of a film equal to the auteur of other
media, for example books or prose. They “initiated the political positioning of filmmakers’ authenticity as equivalent to artists’ authorship in other media” (Jeong and Szaniawski 2). After the second World War, the French national art house cinema from the 1920 rose again. In Paris, the cinema culture developed as well, with the publications such as journals concerning film critical interviews and essays (Pisters 38). In 1948 Alexandre Astruc, famous for his journal publication “La camera-stylo” concerning ‘auteur theory’, published in the L’Ecran Francais his statement concerning the film auteur on the grounds of addressing cinema as a piece of art (Pisters 38). He proposed a new approach for cinema on the grounds that cinema had developed its own language of
18 expressions: “a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts”.
For the reason, the director is a writer and by extension an auteur (17). The concept of the auteur was explored and extended by the writers of the journal
Cahiers du Cinema (Pisters 39). The journal personal approach fit well in the
‘auteur theory’ including interviews with chosen directors and its dynamic orientation (Baecque and Toubiana 99). Defender of the ‘auteur theory’, French filmmaker and critic François Truffaut wrote for Cahiers du Cinema. He proposed that the mise-en-scène is the only thing that is beautiful in movies and this alone defines an auteur such as Hitchcock: “[the mise-en-scène] has meaning unto itself, both moral and easthetic” (Baecque and Toubiana 100). Therefore, directors such as Hitchcock make us discover the depth of a moral idea a way of seeing the world (Baecque and Toubiana 100). So, while François Truffaut praised the auteur of cinema, he despised auteurs of the
metteurs-en-scène (i.e., stages), films that are made in order to honor the writer of the novel
(Jeong and Szaniawski 2). Nevertheless, the Cahier du Cinema critics still praised film directors who made their own version of a filmed novel with filmic originality, in order to present the aesthetic program with the best cinema.
This is why literature was ‘that obscure object of desire’ for cinema, at once a counter-model to avoid and yet an ideal model to emulate. The authenticity of literary originals was not to be politically co-opted or visually truncated, but to be cinematically absorbed and elevated over all the limitations of literature (Jeong and Szaniawski 2).
The Cahiers du Cinema critics’ main point of difference between praised and despised filmed literature, the dichotomy between auteur and
metteur-en-scène, is based on the “transcendent potential of cinematic materiality” (Jeong
and Szaniawski 2).
The second phase of the auteur theory developed around the linguistic and structuralism heyday from early 1950s through the mid-1970s and is called auteur-structuralism: “negotiating the individualism of authorship with the collectivity of myth” (Jeogn and Szaniawski 2, Murphy 1). The third phase took place during the 1970s and 1980s, with the rise of poststructuralism and postmodernism. It all started with the observation of Michel Foucault: The text consists, without the auteur permission, an anonymous discourse of the ‘thickening’; function on the grounds of the texts duration in the past and future (Jeong and Szaniawski 3). Even Roland Barthes described the auteur’s function as ‘the death of the author’ wherein the auteur is a by-product of his or her
19 writings (Jeong and Szaniawski 3). Nevertheless, this phase was purely
rhetorical thinking. It did not kill the auteur in real-life; rather, the auteur is more famous than ever and this new transformation leads to a new transformation of the position of the spectator. This shift is, according to Jeong and Szaniawski, the newest phase in thinking in terms of auteur theory (Jeon and Szaniawski 4).
The newest, fourth phase occurred around the turn of the twenty-first century with the new circumstances of the auteur caused by capitalist globalisation and post-medium-digitalisation. Auteurs are nowadays just as famous as stars. “Cinema’s ‘hall of fame’ has been shining with ever more directors as stars” (Jeong and Szaniawski 4). This has influenced the perception of film; audiences want to watch films because of who directs them (‘name value’). “The auteur is now a critical concept indispensable for distribution and marketing purposes [...]” (Jeong and Szaniawski 4). So the auteur is now used as a goal for distribution and marketing of cinema, and national cinema is generated by one typical auteur. The auteur as concept now has a different meaning: nowadays it has influence on a film’s value and perception on global scale.
Transnational cinema
Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden examined the transnational aspect of cinema in Transnational Cinema, the Film Reader, a collection of essays by film scholars. They claim that the concept of national cinema can be replaced by the concept transnational cinema. Due to new phenomena and factors, national cinema as a category is an issue that is outdated, and therefore they consider transnational cinema to be a new ‘critical’ concept to follow the current transitions in the field of film studies.
The first factor or new phenomenon they mention is the increasing openness of national borders that began in the nineties: “This phenomenon is being generated by the acceleration of global flows of capital and a shifting geopolitical climate that includes, notably, the end of the Cold War and the creation of the European Union” (Ezra and Rowden 1). The second factor they observe is the increasing circulation of films enabled by technology, such as video, DVD, and new digital media, and the new possibilities, “ [..] heightened accessibility of such technologies”, for an exchange to occur in both directions:
20 between the director (filmmaker) and the spectator (Ezra and Rowden 1). The
third factor, which is not necessarily a ‘new’ phenomenon, is the success of Hollywood cinema and its hegemonic influence. This phenomenon refers to the definition of Hollywood used by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam in their research in 1994. Shohat and Stam claim that in the discourse about transnational cinema, the term Hollywood is used as follows: “not to covey a kneejerk rejection of all commercial cinema, but rather as a kind of shorthand for a massively industrial, ideologically reactionary and stylistically conservative form of ‘dominant’ cinema” (Shohat and Stam 7, Ezra and Rowden 1).
In order to recognize the new successful national cinema, which has its own globalizing imperatives like Hollywood, Ezra and Rowden introduce the term transnational cinema (Ezra and Rowden 2). They claim that this term “allows us to recognize the hybridity of much new Hollywood cinema” (Ezra and Rowden 1). For this reason, they replace the term national cinema with the term transnational cinema, which “transcends the national as autonomous cultural particularity while respecting it as a powerful symbolic force” (Ezra and Rowden 2).
In conclusion, according to Ezra and Rowden, the concept of transnational cinema is the new concept of national cinema. Due to this new phenomenon and factors, the category of national cinema is an issue. Transnational cinema respects the national as an “autonomous cultural particularity, while respecting both it as a powerful symbolic force” in our new age of globalisation and digitalisation (Ezra and Rowden 2). Ezra and Rowden have, like the authors of the book The Global Auteur examined the impact of these new developments on cinema. Both books introduce new concepts to understand the value of the current national cinema and the current auteur in the context of the new developments of globalisation and digitalisation. Overall, they examine the meaning of national cinema and auteur in the new facets of the society.
The Accented filmmakers of the Third World
Before the globalization the cinema screens were monopolized by the Western films and industry, particularly American films. Hamid Naficy clarifies that “a radical shift that has occurred in the globalization of cinema since [his Iranian/Persian] childhood” (3). The Third World citizen were more
21 consumers than producers. But, nowadays, Third World films, such as Iranian
films, are playing in the Western cinemas. Third World people are now producers of their own narratives. They are “making and exhibiting films not only in their own countries but also increasingly across national boundaries, finding receptive audiences in Western film festivals and commercial theaters and on Television” (3). Thusly, the Third World filmmakers (auteurs) such as Iranian filmmakers are now producing and depicting their own national identity in their films, instead of Western auteurs depicting their nations and cultures. Iranian and cultural studies’ scholar Hamid Naficy has introduced a concept for this new group of Third World filmmakers (that is made possible by the globalisation): accented filmmakers.
Accented filmmakers is a category of Third World filmmakers that have the common features and identity of cinematic production from divers originating and receiving countries (3). This category has three types of Third World auteurs: exilic, diasporic and ethnic (11). The first accent is the subjectivity aspect of the auteur/the filmmaker is subjective outside the narrative of the film. They “are not just a textual structures or fictions within their films; they are imperials subjects, situated in the interstices of cultures and film practices, who exist outside and prior to the films” (4). This means that the accented filmmaker has an important role for the film outside the narrative; the filmmakers have and produce a narrative outside the film. The second accent is the style aspect of the films. The accented films have the following components: they “[..] are open-form and closed form visual style; fragmented, multilingual, epistolary, self-reflexive, and critically juxtaposed narrative structure; amphibole, doubled, crossed an lost characters; subject matter and themes that involve journeying, historicity, identity, and displacement; dysphoric, euphoric, nostalgic, synesthetic, liminal, and politicized structures of feeling; interstitial and collective modes of production; and inscription of the biographical, social and cinematic (dis)location of the filmmakers”(4).
22
Andrew Higson’s new conception
In today’s context – cinema in relation to the nation in age of globalisation17 -,
Higson critical assessment from 1989 of the concept national cinema needs consideration. In his essay “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema”, he critiques his former essay on national cinema and ask himself the main question: is national cinema still a needed or accurate concept in today’s context, or is the concept dead? He states: “Ten years on, much of what I wrote still seems valid, but there are also some issues I would want to reconsider. [..]”. He acknowledge the shortcomings of his first essay because it is based on only one national cinema – the British national cinema –, while there are “immense diversity of world cinemas” as stated by Crofts (Higson 63). This means that there is an Eurocentric perspective for his assessment of national cinema.
Higson states that national cinema is changed into a more global production of cinema. He revised his earlier essay on national cinema. It needs reconsideration for three reasons. First, he states that the traditional idea of the nation as a ‘self-contained experience’ needs reconsideration. For the current film industry, with multiple nations working together (due to the globalization), it is better to approach cinema more from a global perspective. He critiques his former idea of analyzing the cinema on the nation as self-contained experience. He adds the notion that even though films are watched elsewhere, in other countries of distribution, it is interpreted differently by the spectator. Secondly, he revised that national cinema is still has value for the national policies for promoting of cultural diversity. He argued that it is good to label certain cinemas as national cinema; but the way of labeling, in national perspective, gives tautologies. So his first advice to analyze cinema on the perspective of the nation needs to happen in global perspective.
17 Several books and articles has been published about cinema in relation to the nation in the age of globalisation. Such as Cinema and Nation, Film and Nationalism, Theorizing National Cinema, Iranian Cinema
and Globalisation and so on. This shows the growing attention toward the relation between film and nation
23 1.4 Conclusion
I argue, that the concept of national cinema is not that much valuable anymore as it was in earlier debates in film studies and cultural studies. It is rather changed into a national cinema with a global auteur.
As it has shown, national cinema has in production and distribution changed from national to global settings. As Higson stated, there is a shift from cinema to television (Higson “The Limitation of National Cinema” 63). Thusly, the theaters are not the basis setting anymore for films (and film studies). The globalization has changed the settings for contemporary cinema in general and in particular the concept of national cinema. Just as Higson stated, the circulation of films and information is not bounded to the nation state of policies of the nation state: “many films are distributed far more widely than simple within their country of production“ (Higson “The Limitation of National Cinema” 86). Higson proposed to analyze from national into a more transnational perspective. I agree, with his argument, that the concept of national cinema is outdated. In the twenty-first century, national cinema are promoted with a global auteur. I argue that with the current conditions, it would be better to link the concept of national identity to cinema, instead of using the concept national cinema. Still, off course national cinema as concept is already too far ingrained in the debates, that it would be unwise to remove the concept (Higson “The Limitation of National Cinema” 73). But it clearly necessary to conclude that cinema is changed from national to global settings in production and distribution, and therefore it is not bound to the policies of the state. Like the Iranian films from Iranian directors are ‘national films’ but without the public support of Iran. These film are in the grey area if we take the earlier conception of ‘national cinema’. I suggest and argue that national cinema as Iran which are banned and without public support of the state or shown in Iranian theaters can be better analyzed with the concept of national identity. These films still have Iranian topics and cultural identity – they promote and produce the Iranian national, cultural identity. These ‘national cinema’ of Iran are censored in Iran, but still part of the community. Because with the transitions of the globalization, the context of cinema in theaters is moved to the TV, mobile screens and laptop screens which cannot all be controlled by the state as the theaters.
24
2. The Islamic Republic of Iran and Its Film Industry
In this chapter, I will discuss Iran’s film censorship national authorities and directors on how they want to express Iran’s national identity. The first step is examining the origins of the Iranian cinematic censorship. How is the Iranian film industry regulated? Regulation is always based on an ethos, or ideological idea, through which the authorities wish to inform and lead their people (Hague and Harrop 19). For this, I will discuss the Iranian Revolution. What was the ideological ethos of the Iranian Revolution? And what was the impact of the Iranian Revolution on the film industry? What does the post-revolution Iranian government want to accomplish as national identity in the media culture? The second step is examining the effect of the Iranian Revolution on the Iranian film industry for the film director. How is the director avoiding the cinematic censorship rules to distribute their film legally in Iran? The main sub-question of this chapter is as follows: What is the effect of the Iranian Revolution on the film industry for expressing the national identity in the twenty-first censored Iranian films?
2.1 The Origins of the Iranian Censorship
From the start of the introduction of the technical device of the film Iran, the government wanted to control the cinemas (Tapper 2; Naficy, “Islamizing Film Culture in Iran” 27). The religious community argued that there was a need for public control on the basis that film is an ideological apparatus imported from the West (Naficy 28).
Before the Revolution, the Iranian society was a Western-orientated dynastic monarchy. During the Islamic Revolution Iranian society changed from a monarchy into a Islamic Shii regime. The Shii has been the state religion since the 16th century, but the political relationship between the clerics and the
state varied from corporation to competition of opposition (Esposito 17). The fall of the Shah government led a growing political and social force of the Shii believers and the ability of the Shii clerics belief to mobilize their opposition to revolt on the basis of religious symbols and ideology (Esposisto 17).
25 The clerics adhere to the hypodermic theory of ideology, which is
comparable with the thoughts of Marxist thinker Louis Althusser’s18 vision of hegemony19 by the mass media (Naficy 27). The hypodermic theory of ideology, similar to Althusser’s formulation, says that an autonomous and ethical ‘individual’ can be transformed by the injection of ideology into a dependent, corrupt ‘subject’. However, the clerics have interpreted the theory differently, perhaps even incorrectly, according to Hamid Naficy20:
“condemned cinema as a morally offensive and ethically corrupting Western influence […]” (27). Naficy, who has examined the Islamizing aspect of film culture in Iran, bases this statement on the grounds of (1) a report of a major clerical figure of that time Sheykh Fazlollah Nuri, who treats westernization as a ‘fatal, killer disease’, (2) the words of Mojtaba Navab-Safavi, who called cinema a ‘smelting furnace’, a metaphor for direct effects of cinema and other Western imports of media (novels and music) on society, and (3) two pre-revolutionary works of Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini links cinema directly to corruption, licentiousness, prostitution, moral cowardice, and cultural independence, saying that cinema “rape[s] the youth of our country and stifle[s] in them the spirit of virtue and bravery” (Naficy, Islamizing Film Culture
in Iran 27). In conclusion, the anti-cinema attitude of Iranian clerics
(governmental bureaucrats) and the religious Iranian clerics was established before the Islamic Revolution. They consider cinema to be a cultural injection of Western ideology, “filled with Western mores of sex and violence” as a part of the imperialist strategy to “corrupt Iranian people’s thought and ethics” (Naficy 27).
18 Louis Althusser (1918-1990) was a student of Antonio Gramsci and a Marxist thinkers. Louis Althusser’s Marxist interpretations of mass media in function of ideology by the state – ideological state apparatuses – are compiled in the book On the Production of Capitalism Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus with the preface of Jacques Bidet, translated by G.M. Goshgarian and published in 2014.
19 Louis Althusser formulated the concept hegemony, original from Antonio Gramsci, as follows: all the institutions are in service of the dominant ideology. For this reason, the media gives indirect and hidden forward the message of the leading ideology. This ideology derives from the ‘leading classes’ in the society. Thus media, presents indirect their definition of reality – their view of the world (Althusser 29-30).
20 Hamid Naficy is a scholar of cultural studies of diaspora, exile, and postcolonial cinema and media, Iranian and Middle Eastern cinemas and media in particular (School of Communication, Northwestern University).
26 The anti-cinema attitude21 of the religious community and clerics in Iran
resulted in regulation, harshly called ‘censorship’, when the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi fell in 1978 which is the start of the Islamic Revolution in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Before the Iranian revolution, the Iranian society was a Western-orientated dynastic monarchy.
The Iranian Revolution was an ideological worldview based on the religious interpretations of Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution, who earned the title Ayatollah of the Shii Muslim community, a “religiously rooted brand of Iranian nationalism with belief in transnational mission to spread their version of the Revolutionary Islam” (Rajaee 63, Esposito and Piscatori 3). Ruhollah Khomeini, emerged as an anti-government spokesman in the early 1960s. He and the growing minority of the Shii’s believers (clerics) considered the Shah’s modernization program, which involves land reform and women’s rights, and Iran’s bond with United States (with included multinational companies) as a threat to the Islam, to Iranian Muslim Life, and to national indepence (Esposito 21). This opposition to the Shah reached a broad spectrum of the Iranian society, including writers, poets, journalists, university professors and students, liberal nationalists and Marxists, secularists, traditionalists, and Islamic modernists” (Esposito 22). Progressive Western-orientated educated people shared concerns about the conditions that occurred after the Islamic Revolution, such as an absence of political participation, a decrease in national autonomy, and the reduction of religiocultural identities in an a greater extent (increasingly) Westernized society (Esposito 22). The Iranian Revolution, or the Khomeini regime, had two main goals: institutionalization of the revolution on national and international levels (Esposito and Piscatori 2-3). The Iranian government wants to spread the ideology of the Islamic culture and citizenship in the nation of Iran and abroad.
Due to the Islamic revolution, the Iranian society changed from a monarchy into a Islamic-orietated Shii regime. This implementation of a
21 Hamid Naficy calls the ethos that underline the transitions of the Iranian cinema by the Islamic Revolution:
anti-cinema attitude (Naficy 27). Secondly, Naficy calls the destruction of Iranian anti-cinemas during the Islamic Revolution a
key symbolic act against the ruling government at that moment (Naficy 27). Agnès Devictor defines these transitions differently: under the name of an ideological project. According to Devictor, the religious folk and clerics, do not want to exterminate cinema as whole; they rather want an independent, non-Western cinema, moral correct cinema (Devictor 66).
27 comprehensive public system for organizing national cinema was neither an
artistic nor economic goal, but it was rather the achievement of an ideological project (Devictor 66). This ideological project involves an Islamic, independent, and morally correct cinema: “The goal of the cultural leaders was to create a new national style: a purified cinema from which ‘immorality’ would be erased, both in the making of the films and in the films themselves.” (Devictor 67). So, after the Islamic Revolution, the sector became highly regulated on the grounds of the mind-set that film is an important part of their ideological project. The ‘new’ authorities wanted a new national style for Iranian cinema and the producer became responsible for this ideological project.
Nevertheless, the cultural authorities remained silent about the cinematic censorship rules regarding what was allowed and forbidden were vague (Devictor 70). The cinematic sector was under strict supervision and control on the grounds of unwritten rules. To avoid becoming their target, the professionals (of the cinematic sector) knew that the unwritten rules of the controlling authorities were in line with the Islamic norm, such as male-female relationships, behaviour, and the image of women. So, due to the unwritten rules it was difficult to work in the cinematic sector. The political scholar of Iranian cinema Agnès Devictor22 stated that nothing was clarified until 1984
(70). In 1984 the first rules were written down, and after that every year more rules were added concerning the production, distribution, and screening of films (Devictor 70). By 1996, the booklet of written restrictions on cinema became the most detailed book as what is forbidden (Devictor 70). To sum up some examples of these strict restrictions of what is forbidden: ‘it is not allowed for women to be filmed in close-up, to use makeup, to wear tight-fitting or colorful clothing; men must not wear ties or short-sleeved shirts unless they are negative characters; no Western music is allowed [...]” (Devictor 70). Because of these restrictions, the process of completing a film could last a long time. The filmmaker or producer had to have permission to complete and publish the film. The films had to go through several stages of control, in the beginning, during shooting, and in the end that could last for two years. Even if a film was approved in the beginning, in the end it could be rejected on the basis of the implementation of new regulations in (Devictor 70).
22 Agnès Devictor did between 1994 and 1998 field research in the cultural politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran with regards to cinema 1979-1997 (Tapper x).
28 Furthermore, cinema and films are treated as two different goods in Iran,
two separate categories: “in order to determine in which theatres a film will be shown and for how long” (Devictor 70). Not only has the director and producer responsibilities to the state, but the owner of a movie theater has no right to sell the place as a restaurant or shop, even if the theater is not economical. The movie theater operates in the service of “preserving a place of [Iranian] culture” (Devictor 71). In other words, the movie theaters and the time-period of screening is highly regulated by the Iranian authorities as part of serving the ideology of the Revolution. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (MCIG) determines the release-dates of Iranian national films and determines when and for how long the films are allowed to be screened in theatres. The time period of screening can be a disadvantage for a film; if it is released during a time period when fewer movie-goers see films, it will not be successful (Devictor 71). Ticket prices are not fixed. The prices are determined by the type of film. Lastly, the inside of theatres must are regulated (e.g., the interior, uniform of the workers, the lights, etc.) (Devictor 71).
In order to create a national, independent Iranian cinema, the state created institutions, such as Foundation of the Oppressed in 1979, Farabi Cinema Foundation (FCF) in 1983, and Experimental Cinema in 1983 (Devictor 68). The initial function of these institutions was to (1) care for the equipment, (2) support projects, and (3) deal with the monopoly of imports and exports. Due to the weakness of the national film industry, the institutions began producing and co-producing films on their own; this was not the original intention. In other words, to fulfil its aim, cinema as ideological project, the state created several institutions that had strong political and financial links to the state (Devictor 68–69).
The Foundation of the Oppressed, founded by Khomeini, was a religious independent institution, which took care of equipment and ran most of the cinemas until the 1990s. From 1990s on, cinema was controlled by the Arts Centre of the Organization of Islamic Propaganda. This was an independent institution, which produced the following types of films that embodied the ideology: (1) war films during the 1980s and (2) propaganda films during the mid-1980s. During the 1990s, the Centre produced comedies and social dramas, which were less related to the “ideology of the revolution” (Devictor 69). A few companies in the private sector survived after the Revolution and produced films that reflected the ideology of the state, in line with the measures that were
