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to carry a serious message is more feasible by using the more entertaining filmfarsi sensibilities. Mani Haghighi, a filmmaker who has made art-house films as Men at Work (2006) and Canaan (2007), also made a light comedy, 50 Kilos of Sour Cherries (2016), in order to make money for his next film project. Tahmineh Milani who made her internationally acclaimed Fereshteh Trilogy between 1998 and 2003 (Two Women, 1999, The Hidden Half, 2001, and The Fifth Reaction, 2003), made a light comedy sequel, Ceasefire I (2006) and Ceasefire II (2014) to criticize serious gender issues in Iran’s patriarchal system. Ceasefire I also managed to depict the stigma around the LGBT community in Iran by using a comic tone. It was one of the best-selling films in the history of Iranian cinema. Although Ceasefire movies employed filmfarsi sensibilities, Milani’s masterful writing and cinematic technique enhanced the narrative and technical quality of her movies.
The Evolution of Public Aesthetic and Artistic Values: Metaphorical Language in “New Wave” Films and “Poetic Cinema”
In a political climate with limited individual and social freedom, cinema in the late 1960s and onward became a vehicle to express ideas and opinions. Inspired by the “committed literature” and Persian “New Poetry,” Iranian New Wave cinema was born in response to the tyrannical dominance of the Pahlavi regime in the social scene, and also in response to filmfarsi sensibilities in cinema. Khachikian’s legacy, even if unacknowledged, is evident in the New Wave cinema. New Wave cinema was quintessentially auteuristic with a meticulous attention to form. Films such as Downpour (1972, dir. Bahram Bayzai), Deer (1974, dir. Masud Kimiai), and Secrets of the Treasure of the Jinni Valley (1974, dir. Ebrahim Golestan) had sociopolitical concerns, but they did not attract mass audiences. To evade censorship, the language that New Wave directors chose was a metaphorical language. (The metaphorical language of New Wave cinema was also employed in the poetic cinema that was formed in the post-revolutionary era.)
In 1979, a massive revolution transformed Iran’s cultural, socio-political, legal, and educational infrastructures. The revolution abruptly changed the cinematic conventions, upon which there had been a common understanding among filmmakers, producers, studio owners, and governmental agents who facilitated film productions and/or oversaw the national film industry. The accepted directorial and performing conventions of Iranian cinema were criticized, questioned, and subdued by the new regime to meet the new Islamized standards. The new regulations were meant to normalize and assert the militant, political Islam in the sociocultural domain.
In the new mode of Islamized cinema, unveiled women could not be screened, even if the female character was to be shown in her bedroom. Sufficient distance had to be preserved among male and female actors, even if they were playing in a romantic sequence, or were married couples in real life. Male makeup artists were not allowed to do the makeup for actresses. Erotic scenes had to be withdrawn. Instead, romance and sensual moments between characters were to be “implied” by alternative and creative ways. Before 1979, music and dance numbers had been integral parts of many Iranian movies. In less than a few weeks after the revolution and the establishing of the Islamic regime, music and dancing were considered emblems of the western “decadent” lifestyle; hence they were forbidden to be screened in theater houses. Popular superstars and renowned filmmakers either left the country or were prohibited to take part in the national cinema. In short, the Iranian film industry, both in the mainstream commercial sector and the art-house sector, was threatened with extinction right after its most prosperous period in the late 1970s (see Naficy 2012).
The political revolution subsequently expanded to be a substantial cultural and social makeover. In early part of 1980, new film institutions such as Farabi Film Foundation, Sima Film (under the auspices of the National Television, renamed as the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting [IRIB]), and The Arts Centre of the Islamic Propaganda Organization (Hozeh Honari Tablighat Eslami) were established to train young “committed and revolutionary” filmmakers. Such establishments were also investing in the production of Islamized and revolutionary films. When the Iran-Iraq war broke out in 1980, the government started making propagandist war movies under the canopy of the “Holy Defense Cinema.” The Iranian film community did not, however, wish to succumb completely to the Islamized model of cinema. In fact, Iranian cinema maintained high standards of cinematic production, against all odds. The national cinema took a direction that was not initially predicted by the Islamic government. At home, local productions dominated the national market with art-house films and commercial mainstream movies, mainly because American movies could not be shown in theaters. The foreign movies, i.e., non-American, that were screened were also limited to revolutionary films such as Battle of Algiers (1966, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo).
The thriving of Iranian cinema over the past four decades is more impressive if it is contextualized within the multiple impeding factors that could have negatively affected the national arts and culture. Some of the major political events in the past 40 years include:
1 A massive revolution that shattered the country’s progressive secular infrastructure;
2 A crippling 8-year war that left a million people dead and many more wounded and dislocated;
3 Mass executions of the opposition groups in the 1980s;
4 The continuing political unrest in the first two decades of the 21st century (one led to the formation of the Green Movement in 2008, and the other led to massive Aban Protests, known as the Bloody November and a subsequent crackdown on the working-class in 2019–2020);
5 The Iranian government’s intervention in the Middle Eastern civil wars and sectarian disputes in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and the Palestinian Territories;
6 Economic corruption among the authorities; and
7 The persistent antagonistic approaches between the Iranian regime and the United States government, resulting in sanctions against the Iranian people, the shrinking of the Iranian middle-class, and further economic disparity and social inequity.
Yet, arts in general and cinema in particular continued to thrive in the nation’s cultural scene. Iranian cinema has even found its niche among viewers outside of its national borders. Since Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987) found major international attention in the late 1980s, Iranian films have been featured annually in international film festivals. What is the drive behind Iranian cinema that has made it the dominant form of artistic expression in the post-revolutionary years? Why have many Iranians turned into ardent cinephiles? What is the value behind a national cinema that was able to offer some of the finest examples of art-house movies, ranking Iranian cinema among major non-western cinemas? How is it feasible to build a successful film culture when so many unfortunate events are happening in the national economic, political, and social realms? In recent years, as political activities were further suppressed, cinema took the burden of voicing people’s concerns and their aspirations. Therefore, Iranian cinema is not merely a form of escapist entertainment. It is a subversive art, transgressing the social, gendered, and political regulations of the Islamic regime. This chapter argues that the aesthetic and artistic values behind Iranian cinema made it possible for the national cinema to endure and even thrive against all odds. The last two sections of this chapter explore the aesthetic and artistic value of Iran’s post-revolutionary cinema from a cultural perspective.
The Aesthetics of the Curved Sarv and Its Public Artistic Value in Cinema
Iranian post-revolutionary art-house cinema evolved as a subversive and intellectually independent art form. It has resisted the ideological directives that were imposed on filmmakers by the Islamic regime. Yet, Iranian art-house cinema did not take the radical approach of the “Third Cinema” (Solanas and Getino 1970) in its response to suppression. In other words, the majority of art-house films produced by auteur filmmakers such as Kiarostami, Dariush Merhjui, and Rakhshan Banietemad, did not shape a counter-cinema. Art-house productions are not blatantly anti-establishment and most of them are not ostensibly political. The revolutionary and suppressive discourse of the Islamic regime that aimed to cripple liberal arts, individuality, and creativity was not met with an equally radical and