No one better personifies Iranian cinema today than Mohsen Makhmalbaf,
a filmmaker whose life and career have been shaped—indeed
defined—by the 1979 Islamic revolution and the complex forces
surrounding it. Vividly and at times almost pitilessly, his films
mirror Iranian culture in the years leading up to the revolution
and following it. From the start, Makhmalbaf has explored the
relationship between the individual and a larger social and political
environment. As a result, his work serves as an extended commentary
on the history of the Iranian state and its people. But if Makhmalbaf’s
films are at times polemic, he nonetheless brings an artist’s
sensibility to central issues of the human condition: God, love,
regret, suffering, and injustice.
In The Films of Makhmalbaf Eric Egan examines the close and volatile
relationship between a highly popular art form and the politics
of power in Iranian society. Through a critical analysis of Mohsen
Makhmalbaf’s films, the book traces the development of Iran’s
national cinema both before and under the Islamic Republic. An
artist whose work is provocative and never far from controversy,
Makhmalbaf’s films have always been reflexive meditations
on the nature of cinema and art within a society. As Iranian society
has changed so his films have progressed, from ardently advocating
the declared ideals of the Islamic regime to criticizing the failures
of the revolution and examining difficult topics, all the while
elucidating the social and political role of art and the artist.
The Films of Makhmalbaf is a vivid, informative, and valuable
contribution to the unique world of this great filmmaker. Eric
Egan’s discussions are intelligent and reveal an exhaustive
study of the haunted and haunting cinema of Mohsen Makhmalbaf;
this book should be read by anyone seriously involved with Iranian
cinema.—Bahman Maghsoudlou, author of Iranian
Cinema
It’s hard to imagine a contemporary Iranian filmmaker who
has embodied as many of his country’s struggles and issues
as Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose adventurous and ever-changing career
and unquenchable spirit over the past couple of decades has probably
done more to teach and enlighten us about Iranian culture than
any other. We’ve been sorely in need of a guide through
his constantly evolving work and moral intelligence, and Eric
Egan’s comprehensive study provides it.—Jonathan
Rosenbaum, author of Abbas Kiarostami and Movie Wars: How Hollywood
& the Media Limit What Movies We Can See
A landmark study of a seminal Iranian filmmaker. Egan creates
an exceedingly competent and illuminating narrative in which the
birth and breeding of an Islamic Republic is brought to bear on
the rise and celebration of an extraordinary force in world cinema.
At once social history of contemporary Iran and critical commentary
on one of its most significant filmmakers, The Films of Makhmalbaf
will for a long time define the way social history of contemporary
Iranian cinema ought to be written.—Hamid
Dabashi, author of Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, &
Future and Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema
An engaging account of the career of l’enfant terrible
of Iranian cinema, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose life and films have
reflected the bizzare twists and turns of a revolutionry milieu
he helped to create, and later denouced. An insightful analysis
of Makhmalbaf’s films, the book also attempts to address
the key issues of Iranian cinema and society before and after
the revolution. Mr. Egan deftly places the films within the context
of Iranian history and culture, giving the book relevance and
resonance beyond film circles.”—Jamsheed
Akrami, director of the films Friendly Persuasion: Iranian Cinema
after the Revolution and A Walk with Kiarostami
foreword by Ali Mohammadi 9
Introduction 15 Mohsen Makhmalbaf: The Anxious Eye of the Revolution
15 / Cinema in the Islamic Republic 18 / Cinema Reborn 19 /
Cinema, Culture and Conflict 20 / The Basis of a New Wave? 22
/ Structure of the Book 23
From New Way to New Wave 25 Cinema in Iran, 1900–1979 26
/ The New Way 29 / The Legacy and Influence of the New Wave 32
/ Case Study: Gav 34 / The Commercial Film Industry 38 / Iranian
Cinema on the Eve of the Revolution 41
the iranian revolution & a new society 45 The Iranian
Revolution as Cultural Praxis 46 / New Paradigms of Ideological
Discourse 48 / The Revolutionary Use of Shia Symbolism 50 / The
Karbala Paradigm 52 / The Hope of a New Order 57 / Iran’s
Internal Revolution: Clerical Rule and Official Religious Discourse
59 / Media in the Revolutionary Aftermath 60 / The New Political
and Cultural Arena 64
a new cinema emerges 67 Toward an Islamic Cinema 68 / The Concept
of Islamic Art 70 / Persia and Islam, the Golden Age 72 / Islam,
Representation and the Cinematic Image 75 / The First Step toward
a New Cinema 77 / The “Islamic Man” 80 / An Islamic
Quartet: Nasuh’s Repentance, Two Sightless Eyes, Fleeing
from Evil to God and Boycott 81 / Cinema in the Name of God, the
Compassionate, the Merciful—the Path to God 82 / Boycott
85 / Islamicization and the Attack on the Left 85 / The Ideological
Use of the Media 88
the state of the nation 91 Nation versus Islam 92 / The Changing
Class Orientation of the Islamic State 94 / The Media: Control
and Interpellation 96 / Cinema at War 98 / The Mostazafin Trilogy
100 / The Evolution of an Artist 101 / The Peddler 102 / The Changing
Face of God 104 / The Cyclist 106 / Marriage of the Blessed 109
/ The Interrogation of the Image 110 / The Insider as Outsider
113 / The Politics of Criticizing the System 114
The Poetics of Contemplation 117 Khomeini’s Legacy 117 /
The Second Republic 118 / Cinema in the Era of Reconstruction
119 / Makhmalbaf’s Third Period 121 / The 1989 Constitution
and the New Power Structure 121 / Cultural Glasnost? 123 / Economic
Reconstruction, Ideological Reorientation 124 / Culture and Ideology
Refocused 125 / The Media and the Export of the Revolution 126
/ Iranian Cinema on the World Stage 126 / Censorship and the International
Market 128 / Controlling the Voices of Dissent 130 / Time of Love
and Nights of the Zayandeh-Rud 131 / Moral Perspectives 132 /
Poetic Symbolism 132 / A Third Way 135 / Nights of the Zayandeh-Rud
135 / The Personal and the Political 136 / The Disillusioned Generation
138 / Once Upon a Time, Cinema, The Actor and Salaam Cinema 139
/ Dictates of the State 141 / The Influence of Pre-Revolutionary
Cinema 143 / The Actor 145 / The Essence of the Artist 146 / Salaam
Cinema 148 / The Social Power of Cinema 149 / The Distance between
Hope and Despair 150 / A Moment of Innocence 152 / Idealism, Realism,
Cinema and Reality 152 / Gabbeh 155 / The Artistic Template of
the Persian Carpet 157 / The Search for God 157 / Life Is Color
158 / The Notion of the Beloved 160
The Aesthetics of Reform 163 Cinema in an Era of Reform 164 /
Realigning the Politics of Change 165 / The Elements of a Civil
Society 167 / The Politics of Change? 168 / The Question of Velayat-e
Faqih 169 / The Intellectual and Cultural Debate 171 / The New
Intelligentsia 172 / The Religious and Historical Basis of Debate
172 / Cinema and the Cultural Debate 173 / One Step Forward, Two
Steps Back 175 / The State of the Industry 176 / The Silence 177
/ Art and Life: A Changing Relationship 178 / The Khayyamic Vision
179 / The Search for the Self in a Poetics of the Personal 181
/ The Nature of God 182 / Kandahar 184 / Limbs of the Same Body
185 / The Voice of Despair 186 / The Importance of the Local 187
conclusion 189
filmography 195
bibliography 213
INTRODUCTION
Cinema as a mode of cultural expression acts as both a product
and document of a society. As such it derives its immediate existence
and relevance from a localized context of social institutions,
events, upheavals and, most particularly, a culture that is reflected
in the lives and aspirations of all people living within a society.
Film situates itself within this cultural milieu as an art form
that “reflects, directly or indirectly, both the components
and the historical process of society.”1 The starting point
for a critical engagement with cinema in Iran must begin with
an interrogation of the processes involved in the formulation
and use of cultural images as elements of differing ideological
struggles.
This book sets out to examine the development of cinema in Iran
since the 1979 revolution as a reflection of the social, political
and cultural development of the Islamic Republic, as illustrated
through a critical case study of the films of Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
To understand Iranian cinema is to understand the complex society
from which it comes, the unique cultural elements from which it
is derived and the particular ideological circumstances in which
it operates. To understand the cinema of the most controversial
film director to emerge under the Islamic regime is to stand in
the eye of a storm in which these elements collide in a body of
work that is provocative, committed and challenging, and that
stands as a cultural document and testimony to one man’s
attempt to make sense of his society, his art and himself.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf: The Anxious Eye of the Revolution
In attempting to document and critically evaluate the Islamic
Republic of Iran and its cinema from the 1979 revolution to the
present day, one figure stands out as a living embodiment of the
social, cultural and political contradictions and upheavals that
have taken place in the country over the past twenty-five years.
Since his feature-film debut in 1982, Mohsen Makhmalbaf has continuously
produced work that stirs controversy, provokes debate and is critically
acclaimed both inside Iran and around the world.
Makhmalbaf was born 28 May 1957 in Tehran. Makhmalbaf’s
father, who already had another wife and two daughters, divorced
Makhmalbaf’s mother after only six days of marriage—long
enough to conceive Mohsen—and returned to his other family.
Working to support her family, Makhmalbaf’s mother left
her young son in the care of his grandmother, a devout woman,
who raised him. Growing up in the politically charged atmosphere
of the 1960s and 1970s, and under the influence of his stepfather,
a lawyer, he became a supporter of the militant religious and
political ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini, and began to agitate
against the shah’s regime.* In 1972 he formed his own urban
guerrilla group and was jailed two years later for attacking a
policeman. He remained in jail until 1978 when he was released
during the revolutionary fervor that toppled the shah. Following
his release he began to turn his attention from armed action to
cultural activities in support of the new Islamic regime, and
he helped found the Center for the Propagation of Islamic Thought,
a semi-governmental center that promoted artistic projects, and
described as “an outfit of avowed militancy.”2 It
was here that he began his cinematic career, directing his first
film, a poorly made piece of Islamic propaganda entitled Tobeh
Nasuh (Nasuh’s Repentance), in 1982. However, since this
inauspicious beginning, his work has matured and taken on a chameleon-like
quality in dealing with a host of complex and controversial themes—poverty,
disillusionment with revolutionary ideals, forbidden love and
the role of the artist in society. It is this desire to constantly
stretch himself as an artist and to explore difficult and often
highly contentious issues in his work that has made Makhmalbaf’s
films exhilarating and incendiary.
Indeed, it is the constant self-examination implicit in Makhmalbaf’s
art that has helped it to evolve toward maturity through a series
of different stages governed by similarities of theme, a preoccupation
with certain issues and a particular aesthetic approach.†
The first such phase may be referred to as the “Islamic”
period, 1982–85, and covers his first four films. These
were propagandist in nature, reflecting the idealism and faith
in the Islamic utopia promised by the revolution and its leaders.
The unifying theme is one of looking to God, a belief in the miraculous
and the simplistic division of the world into good and evil. His
second period forms a trilogy of films—Dastforush (The Peddler,
1987), Bicycleran (The Cyclist, 1989), and Arusi-ye Khuban (Marriage
of the Blessed, 1989)—that were impassioned social and political
commentaries. These works were concerned with documenting the
state of the nation and the course and development of the revolution
in its first decade. The subject matter is dark and religiously
inflected, but God and religion are portrayed as more forgiving,
understanding and less pedantic, yet still firmly located within
the mores of Shia Islamic doctrine. In explaining The Peddler
Makhmalbaf has said that the film intended to convey the message
that God is the light and therefore the source of all life. Furthermore,
death is seen as an eventual return to the light, with a person’s
actions during the course of his life acting as the main factor
in determining the quality of one’s life after death.3 In
these films he is trying to distance himself from intolerance
and focus instead on the human aspects of everyday life and humankind’s
relationship with God.
Makhmalbaf’s third period, beginning with Nobat-e Asheghi
(Time of Love, 1991) and ending with Nun-o Goldun (A Moment of
Innocence, 1996), is one of doubt. Here, Makhmalbaf moves toward
a more reflective, philosophical and tranquil cinema. A time of
prolific if problematic output, he also set out during at this
time to examine and question, in films such as Nassereddin Shah,
Actor-e Cinema (Once Upon a Time, Cinema, 1992) and Salaam Cinema
(1995), the very basis of film as a form of representation, its
power of persuasion and perversion, as well as the responsibilities
of the artist to his art form and to society. Finally, his current
phase of development reveals a more personal poetics of culture,
the position of the individual in society, and a preoccupation
with form, revealed in the films Gabbeh (1996) and Sokut (The
Silence, 1998). Certain critics have decried this change in Makhmalbaf’s
work, seeing it as the somewhat empty predominance “of the
aesthetic over the political, an escape into the obsession of
beautiful images.”4 However, such sentiments are somewhat
disingenuous in that they deny Makhmalbaf (and Iranian cinema
as a whole) the opportunity to develop outside the narrow and
didactic notion of “political art,” and ignore the
sociocultural context in which artistic developments take place.
Addionally, foreign critics seek elements and signs that ratify
their subjective images and preconceived notions of different
cultures and as a consequence “do not expect to like a film
by a Third World filmmaker, for example, on the crisis in the
relationship of a couple, unless this relationship derives from
a social or political background.”5
The concept of the political is a much broader and complex phenomenon
in Iranian cinema, and arises from a study of the human condition
and an interrogation of cinematic form. Makhmalbaf’s cinema
has at different times and to varying degrees been an attempt
to save humanity, to save his country and to save himself by attempting
to present the simplicity, joy, beauty and poetry of everyday
life. In this respect, his work is very close to Jorge Sanjines’*
broad categorization of “revolutionary art.” According
to Sanjines, revolutionary art “will always be distinguished
by what it shows of a people’s way of being, and of the
spirit of popular cultures which embraces whole communities of
people with their own particular ways of thinking, of conceiving
reality and of loving life.”6 This is very much in keeping
with the general ideological thrust of Makhmalbaf’s work
and indeed much Iranian cinema since the revolution. This kind
of undertaking has given rise to the emergence of one of the worlds
most exciting and engaging cinematic movements, in which Iranian
filmmakers are constantly striving to combine their own interests
and aspirations with a popular discontent while at the same time
questioning film’s ability to express these desires. However,
such an endeavor is by no means unique to recent Iranian cinema.
Indeed, in adopting this attitude Iranian filmmakers have placed
themselves firmly within a developmental and experimental Persian
cultural tradition, one that “has shown the slow but steady
rise of a rebellious stance framed by such seemingly discordant
ideals as the vision of an egalitarian future, a greater artistic
freedom and an undertone of nostalgia all clad in an esoteric
language at odds with objective reality.”7
Cinema in the Islamic Republic
The media and, more particularly, cinema, have been the central
cultural elements to have adopted a rebellious stance to the “objectively”
created realities of nation and society that emerged after the
1979 revolution. In many respects (but not all, for example the
theme of realism) cinema, like the country itself, returned to
year zero, being remolded to fit and reflect the changed ideological
requirements of the new regime and to serve the needs of a “hierocratic
state.”* The cinema came to play a vital role, arising from
what was essentially a media-influenced cultural revolution, in
operating under a system of government in the Islamic Republic
that has shown itself high on rhetoric and more interested in
“changing cultural and educational institutions than in
overthrowing the modes of production and distribution” that
existed under the shah.8 As such, cinema has at times found itself
used as an ideological weapon in the struggle to maintain power
in response to shifting sociopolitical contexts. The result has
been the operation of what might be termed a dual revolutionary
cinema. The first is defined as that employed by the government,
serving the goals of the revolution and acting as a form of Islamic
propaganda, specifically, the concept of an “Islamic cinema.”
According to Mohsen Tabatabai, director of the government department
for Islamic film production, “The best definition of Islamic
cinema is that the cinema must play its role in propagating Islam,
just like the mosque.”9 In contrast, and as a type of reaction
to this format, there has emerged a socially committed cinema
comprised of “non-believing” directors who act as
the “anxious eyes of the revolution,”* creating a
cinema that politically and philosophically reflect the complexities
of Iran and its society. In this regard it is inevitable that
cinema has become a key element in highlighting and intervening
in these problems that, as Makhmalbaf has noted, have “their
roots in history and were of a cultural rather than a political
nature.”10 Makhmalbaf, having been at one time a zealous
supporter of the Islamic regime before becoming one of its most
vocal criticsm, is perhaps unique in the sense that he has created
examples of a revolutionary cinema both for and against the rhetoric
of official ideology.
This use of cinema in articulating contrasting ideological positions
sees Iranian cinema in one sense being defined as a cinema of
reaction. The Islamic Republic has reacted against the “prostitution
cinema” of the shah’s era by redefining it for its
own ends as an “Islamic cinema.” Likewise, the uneasy
development toward a “quality cinema” (with the re-emergence
of a number of pre-revolutionary and so-called non-believing directors)
could be read as a reaction against the failure of a superficially
Islamic cinema and an attempt by artists to regain and maintain
control of the cultural landscape. Defining it as such allows
for an explanation of the oft-cited simplicity of Iranian cinema
as it has constantly had to remake itself to present a cultural
form that, due to institutional pressures, has had to, in appearance
at least, erase all forms of ambiguity. In the case of many Iranian
directors this led to a superficially simple form and narrative
style to which layers have been constantly added in order to achieve
as much density as possible. This helps to explain the universal
significance of a cinema located in and addressed to the local.
The importance of the national is emphasized within Iranian cinema
as it attempts to question the complex nature of Iran, its people
and their problems, while simultaneously engaged in an exploration
of the vicissitudes of the project of cinema itself.
Cinema Reborn
The 1979 revolution, the ensuing struggle for power in the country
and the clerics’ subsequent attempts to Islamicize all aspects
of life had a devastating effect on the film industry in Iran.
Associated with the ills of the former regime and seen as a symbol
of Western modernization cinema became a prime target of revolutionary
zeal. Indeed, the spiritual leader of the revolution and Islamic
state, Ayatollah Khomeini, decreed in a rather obscure statement
that “We are not against cinema, we are against prostitution,”11
the interpretation of which Iran’s film industry has been
trying to establish ever since.12 By the time the Islamic government
was installed in power in the early 1980s, the industry was in
ruins, production had become nonexistent, some 180 cinemas nationwide
had been destroyed and an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty pervaded
as to what was permissible in the changed ideological system.
The situation was made even worse by the exile and departure of
many of those who had worked in the industry during the time of
the shah. It seemed at one point that the cinema would not be
part of the cultural landscape of the new regime when the Ministry
of Art announced the closure of all the country’s cinemas
in 1980.13 However, once the clerics had gained power their task
was to set about consolidating their position. Political consolidation
meant cultural consolidation and as a result, the role of cinema
changed. It soon became one of the most important elements in
promoting the revolutionary Islamic ideology of the new regime.
As a result, the medium was brought under the control of a central
government and placed under a restrictive set of regulations designed
to create a cinematic form in the service of Islam and the revolution.
This situation has succeeded in creating a complex, fractious
and uncertain relationship between the state and cinema. In the
highly centralized and ideologically governed system of the Islamic
Republic all institutions are designed to be at the service of
consolidating and reproducing the clerical interpretation of Islamic
ideology. Under such restrictive circumstances cultural norms
are seen to have a greater and more direct influence on peoples’
daily lives and how they evaluate their social world. In this
sense culture and political development have a large influence
on one another and are sensitive to and defined by the changes
that occur in both fields. The ideologues in the Islamic Republic
have attempted to control all aspects of Iranian society in order
to create a Shia-influenced political culture, infused with, when
deemed necessary, elements of nationalism, revolutionary populism
and concepts of social justice. As a key element in such an undertaking
the cinema has served as both the legitimator of those in power
as well as the voice of criticism in attempting to open a critical
space whereby cinema can articulate the social realities of the
country.
Cinema, Culture and Conflict
Once the Islamic regime had succeeded in eliminating its enemies,
silencing internal dissent and monopolizing the reigns of power,
attention quickly turned to cultural matters. Buoyed up by the
belief of the revolution as a unifying cause, the charisma and
stature of Khomeini as a leader and the possibility of a utopian
society, cinema began to emerge in its new Islamic format. The
desire to construct a visual art form based on and in the service
of Islamic revolutionary ideology led to the appearance of three
new genres of mass cinema in Iran. These can be broadly summarized
as the miraculous, which attempts, through depictions of piety
and divine intervention, to justify an Islamic philosophical outlook
on life; the “crime does not pay category”; and finally
the war genre.14 The latter genre was also known as “Cinema
for the Scared Defense” and played a key role as part of
the 1980–88 war with Iraq. Jingoistic and propagandist in
nature these films were forged out of the political dedication
and fervor of that conflict. They were intended to promote action
rather than contemplation, to convince the populace of the righteousness
of the war and to promulgate the ideology of the Islamic Republic.
These features were by no means unique to cinema, but were defining
features of much Iranian art during this period. The literature
of the time showed similar tendencies and was seen as “mechanical
in flow and metallic in flavor…too propagandistic—i.e.
chanting, revolutionary slogans, etc.—to contain any engaging
intellectual reflections on the meaning of the revolution.”15
Thematically, much of this work was enacted in the language and
symbols of the Shia themes of sacrifice, dispossession and mourning,
and portrayed—in the simplistic division between good and
evil—the oppressed versus the oppressors. Mohsen Makhmalbaf,
commenting on his own work during this period, stated that on
reflection the Manichean division between good and evil was too
simplistic and superficial, and that ideological positions are
much too complex to defend in blind faith.16 However, it was not
until the war had ended and the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah
Khomeini, had died that filmmakers began to question and analyze
the complexity of the conflict and the first decade of the revolution
and its effects on the populace (although Makhmalbaf’s fiction
of this time, while Khomeini was still alive, was highly critical
of the Islamic Republic). In films like Makhmalbaf’s Marriage
of the Blessed (1989) and Ebrahim Hatamikia’s From Karkheh
to Rhine (1993), a more critical, personal and humanistic form
of filmmaking began to emerge. It was this humanist message that
was a key characteristic of much of the “new” Iranian
cinema that appeared on the international stage after 1989. Indeed,
the rise to world prominence of Iranian cinema has been quite
remarkable and unprecedented. Its presence in international film
festivals mushroomed from eighty-eight films in 1989 to 744 in
1995, with a concomitant rise in the number of awards won: eleven
in 1989 to forty-one in 1995.17 However, these figures should
not be considered in isolation, because they were the result of
a number of different factors.
Despite the lack of artistry in many of the films made during
the first decade of Islamic rule this period did succeed in establishing
an industrial and economic base capable of supporting and sustaining
a production capacity that rose from seventeen features in 1981
to a high of sixty-six in 1992 and that currently averages around
fifty productions per year.* Of equal importance was the emergence
of an atmosphere of increased artistic freedom, which obtained
as part of a larger drive to create a more liberal society following
the war, allowing artists to explore a greater range of sensitive,
controversial and hitherto taboo subjects. Furthermore, the regime,
wishing to open up to the outside world and to present a more
humane façade, saw the cinema, through the film festival
and art cinema circuits of the West, as a means of counteracting
negative stereotypical images of mad mullahs, terrorists and revolutionary
zealots. However, given the multitude of meanings that a film
generates and the friction that arises from a government intent
on strictly controlling the medium—against the filmmakers’
desire to surmount these restrictions in an attempt to meaningfully
engage with their art form—such developments only serve
to highlight the fact that in Iran cinema is a cultural form at
the vanguard of Iran’s unique social, political and cultural
milieu. In this regard one of the main unifying themes of the
films made in Iran since the revolution has been the restless
journey of constant discovery, curiosity and search intimately
connected to the immediate world.
The Basis of a New Wave?
This notion of search is a prevalent preoccupation of much of
Iranian cinema, and it illustrates films’ ardent social
engagement. The first decade under the new regime could be seen
as a belief in and a search for the utopia promised by the revolution,
followed in turn by disillusionment, a reappraisal of its broken
promises and failures, and another search for a better social
and economic life. This search continues following the post-1989
changes and is focused more on political issues—calls for
a more liberal and tolerant society, a desire to open up to the
outside world and an attempt to understand the role and position
of the individual within a changing society. Following the election
of President Khatami in 1997 a new phase began in which culture,
cinema in particular, formed the main factor in the search for
greater freedom, liberalism and the establishment of a civil society.
The notion of search is a crucial aspect of Iranian cinema’s
active intervention in social and cultural discussions for it
allows the possibility of opening up a space of engaged debate
that acts as a “guide to action rather than a specific or
easily achieved solution.”18 Instructive in attempting to
articulate such a space and standing as a manifestation, both
personally and artistically, of the development of the Islamic
state is Mohsen Makhmalbaf. He more than anyone has embraced this
notion of search in attempting to find himself and Iran through
cinema.
Structure of the Book
This book devotes a chapter to each of the different stages of
Makhmalbaf’s cinematic development. Each of these chapters
begins with an examination of the social and political situation
in Iran at that particular time, followed by its effect and influence
on the cinema industry as a whole, before situating and analyzing
a number of Makhmalbaf’s films within these developments.
Chapters 1 and 2 establish a workable theoretical framework for
critically analyzing, and understanding, the development of cinema
in the Islamic Republic. The former seeks to understand it from
within a reconstituted Third Cinema frame of reference as well
as within the history of indigenous cinematic development. The
latter examines the cultural and ideological foundations of the
new Islamic state, showing that its founding principles comprised
a number of competing intellectual traditions. Chapter 3 examines
the claims for the establishment of a new form of cinema as the
new regime sought to create an “Islamic cinema” that
reflected the changed ideological circumstances. This new cultural
form is evaluated by placing it within the historical development
of Islamic art as a whole and the clergy’s attempts to instigate
a form of cultural revolution by Islamicizing all aspects of society.
This chapter will also assess the efficacy of this process and
the claims of a new and unique cinematic form. Chapter 4 looks
at the development—through a decade of war and revolution—
of Iranian cinema, and also at culture as an official propagandist
tool and the beginnings of more socially engaged cultural forms.
Chapter 5 evaluates the development of a “quality”
cinema in the era of reconstruction when Iranian films began to
emerge in large numbers and gain recognition on the international
stage. The final chapter looks at the current development of cinema
in Iran as part of the power struggle that is attempting to introduce
reforms and elements of civil society into the Islamic system.
Throughout its twenty-five year history the Islamic Republic has
constantly sought to create a society (based on the teachings
of the Qur’an and the writings of its spiritual leader,
Ayatollah Khomeini, as enshrined in its constitution) devoted
to the service of Islam and the perpetuation of the revolution.
Under such ideological conditions culture has become the main
sphere of social transformation as the clerical rulers have sought
to Islamicize all aspects of society. In such a context, culture,
and in particular the media, have become the main method and means
of disseminating the new regime’s message to the populace
and instructing them of their expected role in the new society.
Such an undertaking, which sees the Islamic state defined on the
basis of a universal religious allegiance, has in effect abolished
the mediation of culture. Under this highly centralized and repressive
system culture and politics are intimately linked in a volatile
and unstable relationship, holding a mirror up to official discourse.
In this respect, the development of the Islamic state in Iran
over the past two decades has been reflected in, documented by
and developed in tandem with cultural modes of representation,
which have, intentionally or not, functioned in the realm of the
political. Because the new regime has sought to remove all traces
of political opposition and abolish the notion of a civil society
by enforcing its own all-pervasive notion of a religious society
they have paradoxically succeeded in creating a situation where,
having attempted to control or abolish all forms of oppositional
discourses, have merely built a social environment in which every
field of cultural production has become “a potential site
for the expression of dissent.”19 Nowhere is this more relevant
than in the cinema, given its popularity and universal appeal,
and nowhere has its volatility and dissent been more evident than
in the work of Mohsen Makhmalbaf.
From ardently advocating the Islamic system to casting a critical
eye on the shortcomings and failures of the revolution, from an
exploration of controversial social issues to an examination of
the cinematic medium itself, Makhmalbaf’s films are indicative
of, and serve as commentaries on, the historical progression of
the Iranian state and its people. Placed within the social and
political developments of the past twenty-five years‚ Makhmalbaf’s
films provide cultural documents with which to understand, evaluate
and critically assess the development of the Islamic Republic
and the significance of Iranian cinema.
Eric Egan studied communications at Trinity College, Dublin,
and earned an MA in Cinema Studies and a PhD in Iranian Cinema
at Nottingham Trent University in England. He has published articles
on the cinema of Iran, Pakistan, India, and Egypt, as well as
on cultural policy and media in developing countries. He lives
in Dublin, Ireland, where he teaches film studies at University
College Dublin.
