Screening Iran: new approaches to contemporary Iranian film and television

Since the late mid 1990s the phenomenal success of Iranian films at major film festivals has attracted a great deal of attention to the study of Iranian screen culture. Much of the research in the discipline has so far concentrated mainly on cinematic texts, in particular with reference to representation of women, textual analysis of the works of major directors such as Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf as well as political readings of films. While the above are worthwhile pursuits, many areas in Iranian screen culture remain unexplored. Some of these include: How do Iranian audiences make sense of the politics of Iranian films? How does television function to negotiate Iran’s much-disputed popular culture? How do emerging filmmakers operate in a film market that is saturated by state guidelines and established film-makers? Addressing gaps in existing research, the papers on the panel take new approaches to Iranian film and television studies and place it in the domestic context. The panel’s contributions aim not only to contextualise Iranian screen culture but also to shed light on the complexities of both production and reception of film and television in the country. The panel benefits from various research expertise and experiences of the panel members which include: decades of involvement with Iranian cinema as a critic, recent ethnographic work on Iranian cinema, and innovative ongoing research on Iranian television and film. The panel will contribute to new understandings of the rich of  tapestry of Iranian screen culture. (Panel convenor Taraneh Dadar)

Chair
name: 
Nasrin Rahimieh
Institutional Affiliation : 
University of California, Irvine
Academic Bio: 
Nasrin Rahimieh is professor of comparative literature as well as Chair and Director of Center for Persian Studies and Culture at University of California, Irvine. In her research she has focused on intercultural encounters between Iran and the West, modern Persian literature, literature of exile and displacement, womens writing, and post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. Her publications include Oriental Responses to the West: Comparative Essays on Muslim Writers from the Middle East (Brill, 1990) and Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural Heritage (Syracuse University Press, 2001). Her reviews and articles have appeared in Iranian Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Iran Nameh, The Middle East Journal, The Comparatist, Thamyris, Edebiyat, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Canadian Literature, and New Comparison.
Discussant
Name: 
Nasrin Rahimieh
Institutional Affiliation : 
University of California, Irvine
Academic Bio : 
Nasrin Rahimieh is professor of comparative literature as well as Chair and Director of Center for Persian Studies and Culture at University of California, Irvine. In her research she has focused on intercultural encounters between Iran and the West, modern Persian literature, literature of exile and displacement, womens writing, and post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. Her publications include Oriental Responses to the West: Comparative Essays on Muslim Writers from the Middle East (Brill, 1990) and Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural Heritage (Syracuse University Press, 2001). Her reviews and articles have appeared in Iranian Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Iran Nameh, The Middle East Journal, The Comparatist, Thamyris, Edebiyat, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Canadian Literature, and New Comparison.
First Presenter
Name: 
Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad
Institutional Affiliation : 
School of Oriental and Afrian Studies, University of London
Academic Bio : 
Saeed did his undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Queensland, Australia in the field of anthropology. He later completed a PhD at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His groundbreaking research on the reception of Iranian cinema reveals how cinema is a socio-cultural and hence political practice in Iran. He is the author of a forthcoming book to be published by Routledge (2009) entitled, “The politics of Iranian cinema: films and society in the Islamic Republic”. Based on groundbreaking ethnographic research on the practices of regulation and reception of films in Iran, the book explores the politics of Iranian cinema in relation to its (post)revolutionary context. It draws on first-hand interviews with the authorities, filmmakers and audiences to examine how cinema is engaged in the dynamics of change in cotemporary Iran. The book not only discusses the reception of films from major award winning directors but also important mainstream filmmakers such as Hatamikia and Tabizi. Saeed teaches at SOAS’s Centre for Media and Film Studies and the Institute of Ismaili Studies. His postdoctoral research has been focused on the examination of the BBC World Service as a diasporic contact zone.
Concise Paper Title : 
Film censorship and the problem of reception
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
The apparent contradiction between strict state control of filmmaking in Iran on the one hand and a large number of politically critical films from Iran on another has created much interest in censorship in Iranian cinema. According to research so far, the state’s ideological censorship machinery is a barrier that filmmakers can only get through by means of symbolism, metaphor and allegory. However, this reading tells us about only a small part of the complex relationship between filmmakers and state control much of which is through face to face negotiations. These negotiations are a part of the reception of the film. Addressing the gap in the literature, the paper uses data from face-to-face interviews and focus groups with Iranian audience members to discuss film reception in Iran. The paper aims to contribute to reception studies. Currently reception studies only consider the cinema and video audiences as their subject of study. However, both in the West and in Iran, films go through various stages of being ‘seen’ as scripts, rushes and later as completed films before they are ever released. Drawing on illustrative examples from Iranian cinema, this paper argues that the problematic of reception starts much earlier, before film audiences see the film. It demonstrates how Iranian audiences watch films in the light of the films having been screened and censored by the authorities earlier. Finally, the paper explores the parallels between cinema and the reception of Iranian television.
Second Presenter
Name: 
Saeed Talajooy
Institutional Affiliation : 
University College London
Academic Bio : 
Saeed Talajooy received his BA and MA in English Literature from the University of Tehran. For a number of years he wrote for Iranian theatre journals and taught English literature and drama at Tehran and Allameh Tabatabaee Universities. In 2003 he came to the UK to do his PhD at the University of Leeds. At the moment he is a Post-doctoral Mellon Fellow at University College London. His research is focused on the point of convergence between film, performance and translation studies with a particular interest in the changing patterns of Iranian identity as reflected in Iranian literature, theatre and cinema. As a teacher, he teaches a module on Iranian Cinema and contributes to the translation and comparative literature courses at SOAS and UCL.
Concise Paper Title : 
Iranian Cinema and Intercultural Adaptation: The Case of Dariush Mehrjui
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Modern translation theories define the film adaptations of literary and dramatic texts as intersemiotic translations and categorize them according to their structural, inter-historical, intercultural and inter-paradigmatic qualities. They also hail the practice as a major way of intensifying or expanding the cultural impacts and functions of the cultural discourses promoted in literary texts. In Iran, Dariush Mehrjui is celebrated as the foremost filmmaker engaged in adapting Iranian and western novels and plays. His early masterpiece, The Cow (1970), took the symbolic realism of Iranian art cinema to a new level by transforming Gholmahosein Saed’i’s The Mourners of the Baial into a memorable film on the poverty of Iranian villages and the psychology of human identity as defined within the circle of his/her dependencies. Most of his later films were also inspired by or adapted from Iranian and foreign novels and plays. My presentation will be based on the paper that I am currently writing on Mehrjui’s intercultural adaptations. The purpose of the paper is to offer new perspective on Mehrjui’s contribution to Iranian culture in the light of contemporary translation and reception theories. I will, therefore, present a summary of my paper that compares the structural qualities and the social functions of The Postman (1971) with Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck (1836), Hamoon (1990) with Saul Bellow’s Herzog (1964), Sara (1993) with Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, (1879), Pari (1995) with J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey (1961), and Santoori (2007) with Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts (1881).
Thid Presenter
Name: 
Taraneh Dadar
Institutional Affiliation : 
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
Academic Bio : 
After completing her undergraduate studies in Ferdowsi University, Mashad, Taraneh moved to India to do a master's degree in Cultural Studies. Upon Returning to Iran, she worked at the Tehran office of United Nation's High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2007, she started doing her PhD in Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. Her PhD is on the construction of gender identity in the popular cinema of post-revolutionary Iran. Her research interests include popular culture, identity politics in popular cinema, gender, ideology and cultural politics in cinemas of the developing world particularly Iranian cinema.
Concise Paper Title : 
To Laugh or Not to Laugh: a Discussion of Hegemony and Television Comedy in Post-revolutionary Iran
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
My paper seeks to study the development of television comedy as a powerful mode of negotiating popular culture in Iran. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, the Islamization of Iran involved a re-appropriation of popular culture in the country. Within the official discourse of the Islamic Republic, popular culture was initially equated with the populist culture that the government was propagating. In the absence of satellite television, the production and propagation of this populist culture was exclusively in the hands of national television, IRIB ( Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting). Over the past 30 years, the cultural policies incorporated in television production have undergone profound changes , in an attempt to accommodate the changing needs of the cultural consumers of today’s post-revolutionary generation. This paper is interested in investigating the ways in which television comedy has been successful in facilitating a negotiation between the cultural policies of the Islamic Republic and the demands of the consumers of this culture. My argument here is mainly informed by the Gramscian notion of hegemony. Such a notion will enable us to observe how the dominant ideology is able to accommodate and find some space for opposing class cultures and values. Expanding that notion, I would like to draw on Stuart Hall in examining popular culture as the locus of continuing tension between dominant and subordinate classes. In his influential study, ‘Notes on deconstructing the popular’ (1981), Hall encourages an understanding of popular culture in terms of a “dialectic of cultural struggle” and considers it to be a process where points of resistance and moments of suppression occur simultaneously. Popular culture, thus, becomes a site of negotiation of the relations of dominance and subordination. This paper seeks to explore how such negotiation disrupts and probelmatizes the boundaries of ‘popular’ and ‘populist’. To elaborate my arguments in this discussion, I shall be making various references to a number of sitcoms, directed by Mehran Modiri. An established actor and director, Modiri is perhaps best-known for his direction of several television comedies, most of which have been extremely popular and controversial at the same time. I have chosen to focus on Modiri’s work as I believe they clearly embody negotiated spaces within the dominant Islamic discourse.
Fourth Presenter
Name: 
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Academic Bio : 
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Concise Paper Title : 
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Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
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