Popular Iranian Cinema Before the Revolution: Family and Nation in Filmfarsi

ISBN-13: 9781138230538 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 244 str.

Pedram Partovi

Opis

Critics and academics have generally dismissed the commercial productions of the late Pahlavi era, best known for their songs and melodramatic plots, as shallow, derivative entertainment . Instead, they have concentrated on the more recent internationally acclaimed art films, claiming that these constitute Iranian national' cinema, despite few Iranians having seen them. Film discourse, and even fan talk, have long attempted to marginalize these movies with the moniker filmfarsi, ironically asserting that such popular favorites were culturally inauthentic. This book challenges the idea that filmfarsi is detached from the past and present of Iranians. Far from being escapist Hollywood fare merely translated into Persian, it claims that the better films of this supposed genre must be taken as both a subject of, and source for, modern Iranian history. It argues that they have an appeal that relies on their ability to rearticulate traditional courtly and religious ideas and forms to problematize in unexpectedly complex and sophisticated ways the modernist agenda that secular nationalist elites wished to impose on their viewers. Taken seriously, these films raise questions about standard treatments of Iran's modern history. By writing popular films into Iranian history, this book advocates both a fresh approach to the study of Iranian cinema, as well as a rethinking of the modernity/tradition binary that has organized the historiography of the recent past. It will therefore appeal to those dissatisfied with a dichotomous approach to modernity, and will also be a valuable resource for anyone studying Iranian cinema and Iranian history and culture."

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O autorze

Pedram Partovi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the American University