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2 Public Aesthetics and Artistic Value in Iranian Cinema

      Khatereh Sheibani

Cinema, as an artistic form of expression with viewership, affects cultural constituents of a society, thus it is a valuable cultural capital.¹ Motion pictures, worldwide, have artistic and aesthetic values, along with communal, psychological, intellectual, political, and historical values. Iranian cinema is known for its particular artistic and aesthetic value. Many outstanding Iranian films that were made in the past 40 years seem to display a subtle, ambient, and unobtrusive sphere. Less is said in their narratives and more could be “felt” or “read” by audiences in between the lines of narrative. What are the intellectual, artistic, and aesthetic sources of this cinema? How could these low budget, auteur-based movies attract global audiences? To answer these questions, this chapter explores the public aesthetic and artistic values that motion pictures have brought to Iranian society, and to the global community. It investigates some of the most significant individuals, cultural movements, and trends that affected the public aesthetic and artistic values of Iranian cinema.

My case study on Iranian cinema demonstrates that the aesthetic and artistic value of Iranian cinema is closely tied to the intellectual, artistic, and aesthetic values of the cross-cultural values of the Persianate world in the past and present time. This chapter examines some of the most fundamental features of such values. Herein is an overview of the aesthetic evolution of Iranian cinema. The formation of a unique aesthetics in Iranian cinema helped to make it a major non-western cinema and facilitated its favorable reception in national and international film festivals and theatre houses.

      Take One: The Private Artistic Value of a Royal Cinema

      Iranian cinema has a rich and controversial history. In 1900, cinema was brought to Iran by two separate parties seeking totally opposing goals. The aim of the first party was private leisure and viewership among the royal elite of Tehran. The second party brought the cinematograph for public viewership and entertainment in Tabriz. This section explores cinema as a private form of leisure, acting, and spectatorship. The very first productions of local cinematic works in Iran were not meant for public interest; instead, the art of filmmaking was initiated in the secluded privacy of royal palaces.

      The year 1900 also marked the dawn of modernity in Iranian society, culture, and politics. The public was getting primed to make the first Middle Eastern constitutional revolution happen in 1905. The Iranian nation was becoming more conscious of its civil rights. The changes in the sociopolitical spheres were also evident in the cultural scene. Persian arts, including theatre, fiction writing, and poetry, were reconstructed to embrace modern thoughts, ideas, and literary forms. The artists and writers of the time were preoccupied with creating socially concerned, evocative art forms in order to better reach out to public audiences (see Mirabedini 2000, 17–26). Ironically, the royal palace was concurrently obsessed with getting the latest forms of art and machinery to be used exclusively within the confines of the haram (royal residence).

In 1900, during a European tour, Mozaffar al-din shah was offered a private presentation of the cinematograph, which was invented five years before by the Lumière brothers. The shah was instantly smitten by the device. In his memoir, he talks about his unique experience of watching the “moving pictures” of rain falling on Parisian streets and the boats on the Seine (quoted in Omid 1996, 21). By the second time he was exposed to cinema, the shah was convinced that the royal haram should be equipped with a cinematograph to produce and view motion pictures. He didn’t want to be a mere consumer of the new invention. In his memoir, he emphasized that the royal palace should be able to produce movies. Thus, he ordered Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkas Bashi (the royal photographer) to buy the equipment in France to “hopefully make such [moving] pictures and show them to the subjects in the palace” (quoted in Omid 1996, 21). One month later, in August 1900, Akkas Bashi captured his first short film or actualité, featuring the shah in a flower festival in Ostend, Belgium. This is how the royal photographer, Akkas Bashi became the first filmmaker in Iran and the Middle East. The first “actor” of Iranian cinema was the ailing shah, gazing at the camera, utterly conscious of the tenacity of the motion pictures that were to outlive his reign and his life. In the second actualité, during a parade in Tehran, the shah stares at Akkas Bashi’s camera with the same zealous interest. Mozaffar al-din shah could not compete with his royal father in making creative arts,² but he made history by ordering the production of movies in the Middle East for the first time. The first audiences of Iranian-made short films were the royal family and the ministers. Akkas Bashi made shorts about the royals and for the royals, to be enjoyed in a private theater house at the haram .

      We know that the first “actors” of French cinema were a number of French female factory workers; ordinary people from working-class society. In the country of its origins, cinema was initially shown to public audiences. Producing cinematic shorts for the Lumières was about competition with the Americans for profitable ends. In order to make profit, they needed public audiences to consume their products. On the other hand, for Iranians, producing films was a frivolous majestic affair. In 1991, when Professor Shahryar Adl discovered the first Iranian actualités in the Golestan Palace, Iranian researchers were stunned by a body of films that captured life inside, and then gradually outside of the haram. All of the films that were found were shot on location and had a documentary sensibility. However, the filmic subjects were staged to “perform” in the 50-second short movies.

      Among subjects that were filmed are women and children of the haram, the royal entertainers, clowns, and servants. Based on Mozaffar al-din shah’s memoir, there were also records of lions that were kept in captivity at Dushan Tappeh (a resort outside of Tehran), as well as the Ta’zieh (Shiite passion play) performances on the streets of Tehran. These short films were not screened for the public until 91 years later. In its limited royal setting, the original cinema was not considered a public good, and did not widely contribute to the cultural capital of the nation. Before 1991 and the discovery of the Qajar film archives at the Golestan Palace, Mozaffar al-din shah’s account of the recorded motion pictures inside and outside of the haram was received with skepticism.

      In 1992, Mohsen Makhmalbaf made a fictive film, titled Once Upon a Time Cinema, based on the story of the initiation of filmmaking in Iran by Akkas Bashi. Makhmalbaf changed the setting to the reign of Nasser al-din shah of 19th century Iran (which was a more illustrious reign). He crafted a surrealist film about the Qajars’ infatuation with cinema and how they wanted to keep the power of filmmaking in an inner circle. The narrative concludes that when the true social power of cinema is unleashed by Akkas Bashi—who sadly awaits the execution of his death sentence—the court is blown away. In real life, outside of the filmic world, motion pictures found their way to reach out to public audiences in the same year. History