Alwan for the Arts and 3rd i Collaborative Monthly Series Presents:
Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema: Book Discussion and
Signing with Hamid Dabashi
And Screening of
The House Is Black (Khaneh Siah Ast) by Forugh Farrokhzad/ Iran/
1964/ 22 min
The Cow (Gaav) by Dariush Mehrjui/ Iran/ 1969/100 min
Tuesday, November 20, 2007. 6:30 PM Two Boots Pioneer Theater
155 East 3rd Street (at Avenue A)
Subway: F to 2nd Ave; 6 to Bleecker
Tickets: $10 Adults / $6.50 Pioneer Members
The House Is Black by Forugh Farrokhzad/ Iran/ 1962/ 22 min/ Farsi
with English Subtitles
A classic in Iranian New Wave filmmaking from poet/ director Forugh
Farrokhzad presents a haunting and sympathetic examination of life in
a Tabriz leper colony. Through powerful imagery and a striking voice-
over by Farrokhzad, a startling glimpse into a hidden aspect of
humanity is revealed. A film of staggering force, lyrically composed
by one of the 20th century's leading poets, The House Is Black is a
revelation. In the 1960s, poet Forough Farrokhzad directed her first
and only film. It depicts the lives and bodies of people tragically
deformed by leprosy. This is a film of stirring and powerful images,
and a beautifully tragic poetic narration. The House Is Black has
heavily influenced the modern Iranian cinema of such great filmmakers
as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who called it "the best
Iranian film." It provides, in the film's own words, "a vision of
pain no caring human being should ignore."
Forugh Farrokhzad (1935-1967) was born in Tehran into a middle class
family of seven children. Author of several volumes of poetry that
are hallmarks of contemporary Persian literature. In 1967 she
tragically died in a car accident. She was associated with the film
industry in Iran through the filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan, House is
Black is the only film she directed.
The Cow by Dariush Mehrjui/ Iran/ 1969/100 min Farsi with English
Subtitles
This highly symbolic Iranian drama (shot in black-and-white) revolves
around the most important figure in a remote rural village. That
figure is the village's sole cow, owned by Mashdi Hassan (Ezat
Entezani). The beginning of the film makes clear just how vital the
cow is to the life of the village and how much Mashdi and his
neighbors cherish it. When the cow is threatened and then killed by
members of a nearby clan, Mashdi becomes so distraught that he is
gradually transformed into a cow himself.
The Cow (Gaw), Dariush Mehrjui/'s second feature brought him national
and international recognition and it is one of the films that
signalled the emergence of Iranian New Cinema. The Cow was among the
very first projects to receives state funding, however, it was banned
by the Shah's censors for the dark images of Iranian rural society.
The film was smuggled to 1971 Venice Film Festival and not officially
in the festival's program and unsubtitled, it turned out to be the
event of festival that year. The Cow received the Critics' Award in
Venice and toured the festival circuit the world over.
Dariush Mehrjui was born on December 8, 1939 in Tehran. As a child,
he was deeply involved in music and painting, playing piano and
santoor and drawing miniatures. In 1959, he left for California to
study cinema with Renoir but then he switched to Philosophy and
graduated from UCLA in 1964 and became one Iran's most influential
directors, with more than 20 films to his credit.
Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema by Hamid Dabashi/ Mage
Publishers/ 456 Pages/ 2007
The rise of Iranian cinema to world prominence over the last few
decades is one of the most fascinating cultural stories of our time.
There is scarcely an international film festival anywhere that does
not honor the aesthetic and political explorations of Iranian
artists. Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema celebrates this
remarkable emergence. It focuses on twelve of the most important
Iranian filmmakers of the past half-century—among them, such pioneers
as Forugh Farrokhzad, Dariush Mehrjui, Abbas Kiarostami, and Jafar
Panahi. In his examination of their lives and their greatest works,
Hamid Dabashi explains how, despite the censorship of both the
Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic, the creativity of these
filmmakers has transcended national and cultural borders. His account
traces the ascendancy of Iranian cinema in modern Iranian
intellectual history and also probes its links to Persian poetry,
fiction, art, and philosophy.
In Europe and in North America, in Asia and in Latin America, in
Australia and Africa, the thematic and narrative richness of Iranian
cinema has met with tremendous acclaim. Indeed, its particular modes
of realism—building on such cinematic antecedents as Italian, French
and German neorealism—have become truly transnational, contributing a
new visual vocabulary to filmmaking everywhere. Masters &
Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema studies the role that prominent film
festivals have played in fostering the global success of Iranian
cinema, and investigates the reception of these films within Iran, an
intriguing story in its own right. This is a book that will reward
not only the scholar and the film aficionado but also anyone
interested in the cultural history of modern Iran.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and
Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest
and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies. Professor Dabashi has
written 12 critically acclaimed books, edited 4, and contributed
chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays,
articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed
journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, Shi'ism, Medieval
and Modern Islamic Intellectual History, Comparative Literature,
World Cinema, Trans-aesthetics, Trans-national Art, Philosophy,
Mysticism, Theology, Post-colonial Theory and Cultural Studies.
Reviews:
Iran's cinematic evolution, before and after the revolution of 1979,
is as rich as any country's; however, despite boasting numerous film
awards and international critical acclaim, the country's output
remains relatively unknown—even to cineastes. "What is Iranian
cinema?" is as logical a question as "Why is it underexposed?" This
book by Dabashi (Iranian studies & comparative literature, Columbia
Univ.) takes the form of a letter to a young filmmaker but eschews
the colloquial for a scholarly approach. He chronologically
highlights directors, discussing a key work in each person's oeuvre
and its place in Iranian and world cinema. Dabashi also explores the
development of Iranian cinema objectively and subjectively via the
people who created it, without the need for restrictive answers. He
considers Iranian cinema representative of a living world cinema and
will let "the bored historians of the future worry about its dead
certainties." Given its academic approach, Dabashi's book is highly
recommended for universities, large public libraries, and those with
extensive focuses in film or cultural history."
``
--Library Journal
To anyone with a knowledge of Iranian cinema, the 12 film-makers
covered here will come as no surprise, with perhaps only Ebrahim
Golestan, Arby Ovanessian and Bahman Famanara unfamiliar in the west.
Hamid Dabashi devotes a chapter to each director and the film he
considers best represents their work, each written in the form of a
letter addressed to a young Iranian born after the 1979 revolution.
Taken together, the essays outline Dabashi’s view of the evolution of
Iranian cinematic realism and in the process provide a highly
readable narrative.
The book was prompted by Dabashi’s reflections on the nihilism of
many of today’s young film-makers in comparison with the earlier
Iranian cinema with which he grew up. He recognises that important
cinematic movements often arise out of moments of national trauma but
thought that the standard question of how the Islamic Republic has
produced so many visionary film-makers needed more exploration. “What
is it about [this] realism, which is neither reducible to its
European counterparts nor limited to its colonial origins?” he asks.
“Where were its origins, whence its disposition, how had it come
about, who were its best representatives and why?”
This leads him to postulate an evolution of realist forms from
Forough Fanokhzad, the pioneering female poet whose The House Is
Black (1961) he describes as poetic realism, through Ebrahim Golestan
(whose 1965 Mud Brick and Mirror is labelled affective realism) and
the “psychedelic realism” of Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow (1968).
All
three, he demonstrates, are directly influenced by classical writers.
He then investigates Arby Ovanessian (spatial realism), whose 1972
film Spring he recommends his readers to watch with the sound off,
Bahram Farmanara (Prince Ehtejab, 1974; narrative realism). Sohrab
Shahidsales (Still Life, 1974; transparent realism). Amir Naderi (The
Runner, 1985; visual realism), Bahram Beizai (Bashu, the Little
Stranger, 1990; mythical realism), Abbas Kiarostami (Through the
Olive Trees, 1994; actual realism). Mohsen Makhmalbaf (A Moment of
Innocence, 1995; virtual realism), Marziyeh Meshkini (The Day I
Became a Woman, 2000;parabolic realism) and Jafar Panahi (Crimson
Gold, 2003; visual realism). He classes Panahi as one of the
beneficiaries of “an opulent visual vocabulary delivered to them on a
silver platter... surpassing the lone and illustrious history of our
verbal memories,” So the evolution of visual realism is now complete.
Dabashi’s analysis and description of these realisms, via Persian
poetry, literature sad philosophy, the globalising influence of
European modernity “through the gun barrel of colonialism”, Reza
Shah
Pahlavi, a (failed) revolution, Kubrick, the Cannes film festival,
western critics, walks in New York and much else, make for a complex
and witty account. And his theory is for the most part convincing:
his contention that Iranian realism “is rooted in the particularity
of our cultural modernity” is surely proven. He is critical of
western writing that, he insists, “has generated and sustained an
entirely false conception of Iranian cinema around the world.” French
critics in particular, he contends. “have cut and pasted the nature
of Iranian cinematic aesthetics according to some abstract notion of
cinema they have cooked up at Cahiers du cinéma.”
Masters & Masterpieces should make us review our assumptions next
time we view an Iranian film and whet our curiosity as to how
contemporary film-makers might take this visual heritage forward.
--Sheila Whitaker, Sight & Sound
“Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema offers a remarkable
overview of Iranian cinema and the directors who have transformed the
shape of Iranian culture in modern history. With his superb authority
on the social and political history of the region, Dabashi provides a
tour de force of the artistic developments in Iran over the past half
a century and thus beautifully lays out the alluring dynamic between
Iranian art and politics. Perhaps the most significant accomplishment
of this marvelous book is Dabashi’s refusal to limit the importance
of Iranian cinema to its regional domain, as he consistently
cultivates its global prominence.”
—Shirin Neshat, film & video artist,
director of Women without Men
“For over a decade Hamid Dabashi’s revelations have been as
instrumental in the fashioning of my own cinema as Naderi,
Kiarostami, Bresson, or Rossellini. Dabashi brilliantly weaves
together Iranian cinema, literature, history, philosophy, and
politics in a national and global setting, and lovingly and
masterfully guides his readers to cultural and aesthetic insights. If
Iranian cinema brought the world a “poetic” vision of modern Iran,
Dabashi has done no less in this piercing analysis.”
—Ramin Bahrani, filmmaker,
director of Man Push Cart
From: Babak <bt3030@yahoo.com>