A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 9780822393016

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A Social History of Iranian Cinema volume 2

Hamid Naficy

a soci a l his t ory of ir a ni a n cinem a Volume 2 The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 Duke University Press  Durham and London  2011

© 2011 Duke University Press All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ Designed and typeset in Scala by Julie Allred, BW&A Books, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the School of Communication at Northwestern University, Northwestern University in Qatar, and the School of Humanities at Rice University, which provided funds toward the production of this book.

To my parents, who instilled in me the love and pleasure of knowledge and arts To my country of birth, Iran, and its extraordinary culture and history To my adopted country, the United States, and its cherished democratic ideals

con t en t s

Illustrations, ix Acknowledgments, xiii Organization of the Volumes, xxi A Word about Illustrations, xxvii Abbreviations, xxix

1 International Haggling over Iranian Public Screens, 1



2 The Statist Documentary Cinema and Its Alternatives, 49



3  Commercial Cinema’s Evolution: From Artisanal Mode to Hybrid Production, 147



4  Family Melodramas and Comedies: The Stewpot Movie Genre, 197



5  Males, Masculinity, and Power: The Tough-Guy Movie Genre and Its Evolution, 261



6 A Dissident Cinema: New-Wave Films and the End of an Era, 325

Notes, 433 Bibliography, 473 Index, 497

il lus t r at ions

1 Nilla Cram Cook, 6 2 Production still from Ralph Keene’s Persian Story, 33 3 A typical usis mobile film unit, 42 4 Adapting a visual medium to an oral culture: an Iranian expert provides live narration for a usis film, 42 5 Enthusiasm for usis films at a school, 45 6 Mohammad Ali Issari filming Education Corps, 56 7 Ebrahim Golestan (left) with the author, 79 8 Forugh Farrokhzad smoking a pipe, 82 9 A female leper applies eye makeup for a wedding in Farrokhzad’s The House Is Black, 83 10 “I am like scattered water,” intones Farrokhzad’s voice-over in The House Is Black, 84 11 A pupil completes the sentence at the bottom of the blackboard, 85 12 Hossein Mansouri, 86 13 The inevitable march of modernity and modernization destroys native cultures in Alan Pendry’s and Neilson Baxter’s Wave, Coral, and Rock, 90 14 The poet and filmmaker Feraidun Rahnema, 94 15 Naser Taqvai’s The Sorcerer’s Wind claims that African slaves brought with them this ill wind to Iranian shores, 103 16 Exorcising the sorcerer’s wind, 103 17 Concentric circles of chest-beating men in a Shiite religious ritual in Taqvai’s Arba’in, 104 18 A Qaderi dervish is about to swallow a large stone in Manuchehr Tabari’s A Few Moments with Qaderi Dervishes, 105

19 Esmail Emami filming a pilgrim for O’ Deer Savior, while the director Parviz Kimiavi looks on, 106 20 Production still from Arlene Dallalfar’s and Feraidun Safizadeh’s The Shahsavan Nomads of Iran, 109 21 A family eating a meal that includes bread made from acorns, 111 22 Tribal women dancing in Afshar Naderi’s Acorn, 111 23a, 23b, 23c  Three frames of the animated logo designed by the British artist Ronald Jackson for the films of Daneshgah-e Azad-e Iran (Free University of Iran), 112 24 A young prostitute in Kamran Shirdel’s Fortress: The Red Light District, 121 25a, 25b  Contrapuntal filming: contrasting rosy classroom dictation with visuals of social ills, 123 26 Shirdel directing the cameraman in The Night It Rained, 131 27 A letter from the director of The Night It Rained to the Ministry of Culture and Art, 132 28 The heroic village boy running away on the railway track, 132 29a, 29b  Michigan State University students, including some from Iran, demonstrate their opposition to Mohammad Ali Issari’s Ancient Iran film series, 142 30 A cartoon titled “Farsi Cinema,” 150 31 A poster for Reza Safai’s One Golden-Voiced, One Golden Hand, 151 32 The poster for Samuel Khachikian’s patriotic action movie Blood and Honor, 153 33 The poster for Farrokh Gaffary’s heavily censored South of the City, 189 34 Male bonding over a meal of abgusht, 199 35 Shirin (Foruzan) does a sexy jaheli song and dance by the pool, 201 36 Banu Mahvash, 210 37 The poster for Ismail Kushan’s We’re Your Servant, Master Karim, 218 38 Movie Set (2004) by Soody Sharifi, 227 39 Hosain Tormozi (Nosratollah Vahdat) with his potential “foreign bride,” 243 40 The poster for Fereidun Zhurak’s Salome, 249 41 Dubbing Masud Kimiai’s The Deer, 256 42 Veteran dubbers, 257 43a A blackface Kaka Rostam (Bahman Mofid) berates Dash Akol, 272 43b Dash Akol (Behrouz Vossoughi), 272 44 The gaze of a nubile Marjan (Mary Apik) transforms Dash Akol, 273 45 Marjan’s handkerchief as a fetishized object of transgression and transition, 273 46 Dash Akol on his deathbed, 275 47 Film and literature intertextuality, 275 48 Qaisar’s title sequence, 296

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49 Farman (Naser Malekmotii) is compelled to seek revenge for the dishonor and suicide of his sister in Qaisar, 297 50 Masud Kimiai quoting Hitchcock’s Psycho in his Qaisar, 298 51 Qaisar (Behrouz Vossoughi), 298 52 The café dancer Shahrzad (Sohaila Ferdows) performs a sexualized dance in Qaisar, 299 53 Poster for Kimiai’s film Snake Fang, 313 54 A luti doll in a car, 316 55a, 55b  Bahman Mofid in Beyond Laughter, 319 56 The pop singer Jaklyn (Jaklyn Dardarian) in her music video Mafia, 321 57 Morteza’s music video Heart to Heart, 322 58 Young women dancers from the Beshkan Dance Academy, 323 59 Love and tenderness between man, Mash Hasan (Ezatollah Entezami), and animal in Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow, 337 60 The shadowy figures, Boluriha, representing feared outsiders, in The Cow, 338 61 Fear and anxiety undermine intimacy in Ebrahim Golestan’s Mudbrick and Mirror, 359 62 Poster for Bahman Farmanara’s Prince Ehtejab, designed by Farshid Mesghali, 369 63 Villagers celebrate a rich farmer’s wedding next to the phallic tower of his new home in Golestan’s The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley, 381 64 The phoenix-like rise and transformation of a heroin addict (Behrouz Vossoughi) into a revolutionary hero in Masud Kimiai’s The Deer, 384 65 Security forces amass for the ending shootout, which helped turn The Deer into a “guerrilla movie,” 385 66 In Parviz Kimiavi’s experimental documentary, P as in Pelican, Aqa Seyyed Ali Mirza’s life in a ruin is enriched by imagination and poetry, 388 67a, 67b  In Kimiavi’s Stone Garden, a saintly vision induces the deaf-mute shepherd to create an alternative surrealist reality by assembling a garden of stones, 389 68a, 68b  Modernity, symbolized by television, invades villagers’ traditional curtainreciting session in Kimiavi’s The Mongols, 392 69a, 69b  A darkly comic representation of film censorship and of media’s power to deracinate, 392 70a, 70b  Sohrab Shahid Saless’s minimalist and formalist style in Still Life, 395 71 Poster for Shahid Saless’s Far from Home, 397 72a, 72b  A military show trial of dissidents and filmmakers that electrified the nation in 1973, 411

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ack now l edgmen t s

D

uring the three decades spent researching and writing this book, I accrued debts to many people who helped me in various ways big and small, which are briefly acknowledged here. First of all I thank all the film directors, producers, camerapersons, actors, critics, and television producers who supplied me with copies of their films, videos, and biographies, and sometimes with stills of their films. Many of them also granted me interviews, in person or by telephone, mail, e-mail, and even tape recording. Underscoring the globalization and diasporization of Iranians—including mediamakers—these interviews spanned the globe, from Iran to various European countries, and from New Zealand to the United States. And underscoring the duration of the project, they extended in time from the mid-1970s to the late 2000s. The interviewees and filmmakers were Abbas (Abbas Attar), Nader Afshar Naderi, Jamsheed Akrami, Mohammad Reza Allamehzadeh, Farshad Aminian, Amir Amirani, Taghi Amirani, Jahanshah Ardalan, Shoja Azari, Fuad Badie, Ramin Bahrani, Bahram Baizai, Rakhshan Banietemad, Manuchehr Bibian, Arlene Dallalfar, Mahmud Dorudian, Ghasem Ebrahimian, Esmail Emami, Tanaz Eshaghian, Shirin Etessam, Anna Fahr, Golshifteh Farahani, Shahriar Farah­vashi, Simin Farkhondeh, Bahman Farmanara, Aryana Farshad, Jalal Fatemi, Tina Gharavi, Ali Ghelichi, Ebrahim Golestan, Shahla Haeri, Mohammad Reza Haeri, Khosrow Haritash, Melissa Hibbard, Mohammad Ali Issari, Erica Jordan, Pirooz Kalantari, Shahram Karimi, Maryam Kashani, Mehrdad Kashani, Maryam Keshavarz, Laleh Khadivi, Hossein Khandan, Fakhri Khorvash, Abbas Kiarostami, Bahman Kiarostami, Masud Kimiai, Parviz Kimiavi, Kim Longinotto, Bahman Maghsoudlou, Moslem Mansouri,

Dariush Mehrjui, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Bahman Mofid, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Behnaz A. Mirzai, Ebrahim Mokhtari, Ali Mortazavi, Manuchehr Moshiri, Fatemeh Motamed Aria, Marva Nabili, Amir Naderi, Shirin Neshat, Asadollah Niknejad, Sara Nodjumi, Annette Mari Olsen, Mehrdad Oskoui, Soudabeh Oskui-Babcock, Faramarz Otan, Katia Forbert Petersen, Rafigh Pooya, Ghazel Radpay, Hamid Rahmanian, Hosain Rajaiyan, Neda Razavipour, Persheng Sadegh-Vaziri, Robert Safarian, Fereydoun Safizadeh, Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, Marjan Safinia, Bigan Saliani, Mohammad Shahba, Sohrab Shahid Saless, Mahvash Sheikholeslami, Amir Shervan, Kam­ran Shirdel, Khosrow Sinai, Manuchehr Tabari, Nasrin Tabatabai, Mitra Tabrizian, Parisa Taghizadeh, Mohammad Tahaminejad, Barbod Taheri, Hosain Taheridoust, Mohammad Tehrani, Susumo Tokomo, Shahin Yazdani, Abbas Yousefpour, and Caveh Zahedi. Each volume’s bibliography provides details of the interviews. I interviewed several cinema and television administrators in Iran during the Pahlavi and Islamic Republic periods to gain insight into official procedures and perspectives. Those interviewed included Gholamhosain Alaqeh­band, Mohammad Beheshti, Mohammad Hasan Khoshnevis, Kambiz Mahmoudi, and Alireza Shojanoori. To gain insight into the movies’ sociohistorical contexts of production and reception I interviewed spectators, witnesses, relatives, and scholars. These included Mehrdad Amanat, Zia Ashraf Nasr, Hamid Khan Bakhtiari, Cosroe Chaqueri, Mohammad Ali Djamal­ zadeh, Houshang Golmakani, Faezeh Golshan, Jalal Golshan, Shusha Guppy, Ahmet Gurata, Latifeh Haghighi, Jafar Hakimzadeh, Amir Hassanpour, Badi’eh Misaqiyeh (Eshraghian), Reza Nafisi (my uncle), Parviz Navi, Alaviyeh Okhovat (my grandmother), Batul Okhovat (my mother), Amir Bahman Samsam, Emmanuel Sevrugian, and Ali Shakeri. The Foundation for Iranian Studies in Washington kindly supplied me with transcripts of interviews with major cinema, television, and culture industry leaders of the Pahlavi era, including transcripts of lengthy interviews with Farrokh Gaffary, Shahrokh Golestan, Kambiz Mahmoudi, Mohammad Naficy, Arby Ovanessian, and Mehrdad Pahlbod. Likewise, the Boroumand Foundation in Washington, which documents human rights violations in Iran, provided me with newspaper clippings on the Rex Cinema fire in Abadan and political persecutions in Iran. Poori Soltani, a senior research librarian at the National Library of Iran, graciously supplied me with data on film periodicals. Hosain Tousi, the director general of mcig’s Research and Cinematic Relations immediately after the revolution, provided me with the early, unpublished regulations and xiv

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guidelines governing film review and censorship under the Islamic Republic. Hasan Khoshnevis, director of the National Film Archive of Iran, facilitated my research and film viewing at the archive in Tehran and sat for interviews with me. I also benefited from discussions with other colleagues at the national film archive, namely Gholam Haidari, Fereydoun Khameneipour, and Ladan Taheri. To examine nonfiction films about Iran, I visited the United States National Archives and Records Services and the Library of Congress’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, both in Washington, to examine records of usia/usis films and other documentaries. A visit to the Defense Audiovisual Agency at Norton Air Force Base, San Bernardino, California, produced information on military newsreels and raw footage shot by U.S. military units inside Iran after the Second World War. The ucla Film and Television Archive helped me with information on Hearst News and Hearst Metrotone News newsreels. A visit to the University of South Carolina helped with materials on the following newsreels about Iran: Fox News, Fox Movietone, Paramount News, Pathé News, Universal Newsreel, UPITN, Visnews, and Pathé Sound News. The British National Film Archives and the British Film Institute in London were helpful on various newsreels and documentaries on Iran. I also visited the British Public Records Office to examine the files of the British Council’s cultural activities in Iran. In the United States I obtained the Confidential United States Central Files on Iran’s Internal Affairs and the Foreign Affairs Records of the Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs of Iran for the Second World War and the Cold War through microfilm and Internet research. These British and American diplomatic files are rich in documents relating to Iran’s sociopolitical and cultural conditions, if one persists long enough in sifting through thousands of pages of unrelated materials. They proved invaluable in my charting the rivalry among the former allies after the Second World War to influence the hearts and minds of Iranians through cinema. At the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen, the archivist Mikael Braae helped me with screening and translating the railway film Iran, the New Persia. Another archivist, Palle Bøgelund Petterson, supplied additional printed information and films. Professor I. B. Bondebjerg, head of the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication, facilitated my visit and research in the Danish capital. In Washington I was able to examine the collection of Antoin Sevruguin’s photographs at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery thanks to Massumeh Farhad, the chief curator and the curator of Islamic art. In Heidelberg I interviewed Sevruguin’s grandson, Emmanuel ac kno wled gments

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Sevrugian, for further insight into his grandfather’s photographic and filmic career. At the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, I examined the M. Eleanor Fitzgerald Papers for materials on Nilla Cram Cook, with assistance from the archivist Christel Maass. Finally, I visited the Brigham Young University Archives to examine Merian C. Cooper’s papers on Grass and King Kong, and I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York to view the original blackand-white and tinted versions of Grass, as well as footage shot for its remake. I gained further information about films on Iran by corresponding with the Imperial War Museum in London (for wartime newsreels), the Scottish Film Archive and the British Petroleum Company Limited (for oil films), the United Nations Visual Material Library (for un films on Iran), the Sherman Grinberg Film Library (for various newsreels), the John E. Allen Inc. Film Library (for Kinogram and Telenews newsreels), and the Abraham F. Rad Contemporary Jewish Film Archive in Jerusalem. For television newscasts and documentaries on Iran, I visited and corresponded with various television archives, including the abc News Television Archive, the cbs News Film/Tape Documentary Archive, the nbc News Television Archive, the pbs News Tape Archive, the bbc News Television Archive, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the ctv Television Network (Canada), and the Vanderbilt Television News Archive in Nashville. Abazar Sepehri, head Middle Eastern librarian at the University of Texas, Austin, helped me many times to track down Persian-language sources and articles. Likewise, Jet Prendeville, the art and architecture librarian at Rice University, assisted me in tracking down English and foreign-language film sources. Academic colleagues in various disciplines in the United States were very helpful. Paula Amad and Peter Bloom provided me with copies of the film Yellow Cruise and with relevant materials on it; Jennifer Fey commented on my paper on Rakhshan Banietemad, as did Janet Afary on the chapters on Reza Shah and the preface, Marianne Hopmann on my discussion of the oral tradition, and Majid Naficy on parts of chapter 6 (vol. 2) and the preface (vol. 1). George Marcus, Chuck Kleinhans, Mehdy Naficy, Nahal Naficy, Azar Nafisi, and Mohammad Nafissi commented on the preface. Philip Lutgendorf shared with me his unpublished paper on Indian cinema, and Natasa Durovicova shared her articles on sound and dubbing. Camron Michael Amin provided information on U.S. government files on Iran, and Amir Hassanpour provided information on Kurdish cinema and satellite television. Jalil Doostkhah helped with the names of the Isfahan circle of intellectuals. Mehrnaz SaeedVafa was extremely helpful throughout my research, supplying me with films xvi

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and assisting me in tracking down information on Iranian cinema and filmmakers. Colleagues in Iran were also very helpful. Houshang Golmakani, editor in chief of Mahnameh-ye Sinemai-ye Film, made sure that I received issues of the journal, sent me stills that I requested, and assisted with other inquiries. Mohammad Atebbai of Iranian Independents put several documentaries at my disposal. The documentarian Pirooz Kalantari was conscientious and generous in supplying me with documents, books, films, photographs, and other research materials from Iran, far beyond his own works. Shahin Kharazmi of Tehran’s Industrial Management Institute supplied me with data on media uses and audience demography in Iran. Esmail Emami facilitated my meeting with members of the Iranian Society of Documentary Filmmakers in Tehran. Mohammad Tahaminejad and Homayun Emami also helped with information on documentary cinema. Elsewhere, the art curator Rose Issa in London shared with me videos and posters of Iranian movies. The journalist Homa Sarshar and the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History in Los Angeles kindly supplied me with a copy of the film A Mother for Shamsi. Mehdi Zamani facilitated my interview in Los Angeles with the actor Bahman Mofid, while Mohammad Ali Yazdi did the same for my interview with Sohrab Shahid Saless. The photographer and artist Soody Sharifi kindly put at my disposal her photograph of the “movie set.” Sima Shakhsari of the University of California, Berkeley, helped to identify Iranian blogs and movie blogs. Debra Zimmerman of Women Make Movies made Iranian films available for my viewing, as did Barbara Scharess, the director of programming at Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center. I helped launch two long-lasting annual film festivals at universities in the United States. I worked with Geoffrey Gilmore in 1990, then of the ucla Film and Television Archive, to curate one of the first and longest-running festivals of Iranian cinema in the United States. In Houston I worked with Marian Luntz, the film curator of the Museum of Fine Art, and Charles Dove, cinema director at Rice University, to organize an annual festival of Iranian films there. Programming and curating these festivals, which still continue, provided me with important venues and opportunities for further research, film viewing, interviews with filmmakers, and the promotion of Iranian cinema. At Rice University my research assistant Danny Stuyck and the visual resource assistant Kathleen Hamilton scanned still images for the book. Michael Dyrby Jensen translated a Danish text for me. The anthropology doctoral student Nahal Naficy was a valuable, resourceful, and cheerful help as my primary bilingual research assistant. She wrote the draft of the caption on Sharifi’s “movie set” artwork (chapter 4, vol. 2). At Northwestern University ac kno wled gments

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my research assistants Neha Kamdar, Daniel Bashara, John Nicolau, Jason Roberts, and Racquel Gates helped with the book’s images and bibliography. The research phases of the book were funded in large part by summer research grants that I received from the deans of humanities at Rice University, Gayle Stokes and Gary Wihl, which allowed me to take research trips and to visit archives in various countries, as well as to write. The Art History Department’s Segal Fund at Rice University paid for my research assistants and equipment. A travel-to-collection grant from ucla’s Von Gruenbaum Center for Middle East Studies made possible my research visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The writing phase of the book was primarily funded by major national grants from the National Endowment for Humanities Fellowship (neh05020401) and the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the National Endowment for Humanities International and Area Studies Fellowship (r14820–363000, neh fa-51979, osr 05020401), which Rice University matched, thus allowing me to spend the academic year 2004–5 entirely on writing the bulk of the manuscript. Gary Wihl also kindly provided subvention funds for the publication of this multivolume book, as did Barbara O’Keefe, Northwestern University’s dean of the School of Communication. Northwestern University in Qatar also contributed. I thank all these institutions and individuals for their generous assistance. My editor Ann Klefstad went through the manuscript as usual with a finetoothed comb, helping to sculpt the text. Ken Wissoker, editorial director at Duke University Press, was a delight to work with; he guided the project with openness, patience, wisdom, and élan. A project as extensive as this naturally involves not only professional colleagues but also family and friends in various witting and unwitting capacities. My siblings—Naficeh, Nahid, Nasrin, Nooshin, Mehdy, and Majid—all helped in one way or another with research, information gathering, and the mailing of films and other materials for the book. I interviewed my mother and my paternal grandmother about their social lives and experiences with cinema. I learned to appreciate Iranian popular culture, perhaps initially from the joyful and lilting manner in which my mother sang the popular songs of her youth, songs that her strict Muslim parents had forbidden to her. My father’s research-mindedness and intellectual curiosity, which turned our childhood outings into lessons in local botany and medical anthropology, became a model for my commitment to academic research and education. During my research travels many family members and friends in various places xviii

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provided me with a home away from home: Mehdy Naficy and Fariba JafarShaghaghi in Heidelberg; Mohammad Nafissi and Georgiana Parry-Crooke in London; Fatemeh Ebtehaj and Hamid Hakimzadeh in London; Azar Nafisi and Bijan Naderi in Washington; Nastaran and Vahid Naficy in Tehran; and Paul and Helen Edwards in Helena, Montana. Montana’s majestic and enduring natural world offered an implacable contrast against which human history, particularly one as recent and as marred with moral and political ambiguities as that of the cinema and entertainment fields, found its proper perspective. This book has been with me for so long that it feels like a third child, older than my two biological children, Cameron and Shayda, both of whom are now thriving, idealistic young people close to the age at which I unknowingly began this project. My life partner Carol (Kelly) Edwards has been with me every step of the way, through thick and thin, in Iran, in the United States, and in many other places in between. All three have been unconditionally supportive of my life choices, my career and its demands, including this book project (Kelly scanned many of the stills). I hope that I have, in the end, been deserving of their respect, love, and trust.

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orga niz at ion of t he volumes

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he book is divided into four volumes, covering the social history of over a century of Iranian cinema, from around 1897 to about 2010. The history of Iranian society and the cinema it produced in this period is bookended by two revolutions: the 1905–11 Constitutional Revolution, which brought in a constitutional monarchy, and the 1978–79 Islamic Revolution, which installed a republican theocratic state. While the impact of the first revolution on cinema and film culture was apparently limited and inchoate, the latter revolution profoundly affected them, resulting in their unprecedented efflorescence. As a work of social history and theory, these volumes deal not only with such chronological developments in society and in the film industry but also with the synchronic contexts, formations, dispositions, and maneuvers that overdetermined modernity in Iran and a dynamically evolving film industry and its unique products. I locate the film industry and its mode of production, narratives, aesthetics, and generic forms in the interplay of deeply rooted Iranian performative and visual arts and what was imported, adopted, adapted, translated, mistranslated, and hybridized from the West. The interplay between Iranian and Islamic philosophies and aesthetics complicated and channeled cinema, particularly that involving women, in ways unique to Iran, which are discussed throughout the volumes. Likewise, the contribution of Iranian ethnoreligious minorities, both widespread and profound, gave Iranian cinema additional specificity. The volumes also situate Iranian cinema at the intersection of state-driven authoritarian modernization, nationalist and Islamist politics, and geopolitics

during its tumultuous century, charting the manner in which local, national, regional, and international powers competed for ascendancy in Iran, affecting what Iranians saw on screens, what they produced, and the technologies they adopted. The logic of dividing the work into four volumes is driven by both sociopolitical developments and the evolution of the film industry. While these volumes are autonomous, each contributes to the understanding and appreciation of the others, as certain theoretical, stylistic, industrial, commercial, cultural, religious, sociopolitical, biographical, authorial, and governmental elements form lines of inquiry pursued throughout, gathering momentum and weight. Each volume has a table of contents, a bibliography, an index, and, when needed, appendices.

Volume 1: The Artisanal Era, 1897–1941 This volume offers a theory linking Iranian modernity and national identity with the emergence of an inchoate artisanal cinema and with an othered cinematic subjectivity. Qajar-era cinema consisted of the exhibition of foreign actualities and narratives and the production of a limited number of domestic actualities and comic skits by pioneer exhibitors and producers, all of whom are featured. The image of women on the screens and the presence of women as spectators in movie houses proved controversial, resulting in the first act of film censorship. Borrowing from the curtain reciting tradition, live movie translators (dilmaj) helped increase narrative comprehension and the enjoyment of Western movies. Reza Shah Pahlavi dissolved the Qajar dynasty in 1925 and ruled until 1941. During his rule, the first Pahlavi period, the state implemented an authoritarian syncretic Westernization program that attempted to modernize and secularize the multicultural, multilingual, and multiethnic Iranians into a homogenous modern nation. Cinematic representations of a fast modernizing Iran in documentaries and fiction movies were encouraged, photography and movie production were tightly controlled, movie houses were regulated, and perceived affronts to Iran in Western documentaries were taken seriously. The veil was outlawed and dandies flourished. All these developments receive extensive coverage in this volume. Despite efforts to centralize and control cinema, film production proved marginal to state formation and remained artisanal. Only one silent feature film was produced domestically, while all sound features were produced by an Iranian expatriate in India. This xxii

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latter fact and others discussed in the volume show Iranian cinema’s transnational nature from the start.

Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 During the second Pahlavi period (Mohammad Reza Shah, 1941–79), cinema flourished and became industrialized, producing at its height over ninety films a year. The state was instrumental in building the infrastructures of the cinema and television industries, and it instituted a vast apparatus of censorship and patronage. During the Second World War and its aftermath, the three major Allied powers—the United Kingdom, the United States, and the ussr—competed with each other to control what Iranians saw on movie screens. One chapter examines this fascinating history. In the subsequent decades, two major parallel cinemas emerged: the commercial filmfarsi movies, popular with average spectators, forming the bulk of the output, and a smaller but influential cinema of dissent, the new-wave cinema. The commercial filmfarsi movies, exemplified by the stewpot and tough-guy genres discussed extensively in two chapters, were for entertainment purposes and drew their power and charm from their stars and their rootedness in Iranian traditions, which were juxtaposed favorably and often comically or melodramatically with modern Western traditions. A dynamic nonfiction cinema evolved, which receives a chapter. Ironically, the state both funded and censored much of the new-wave cinema, which grew bolder in its criticism and impact as Pahlavi authoritarianism consolidated. The new-wave films, produced by the collaboration of Westernized filmmakers with modernist dissident writers, did well in international film festivals, starting the globalization of Iranian cinema. The impending revolution could retrospectively be read in the fear-driven narratives of the new-wave films and in the various cultural struggles around official culture and arts festivals, the censorship of films, religious sermons on audiocassettes, poetry reading nights, television trials and confessions, and underground filming, all of which I discuss at length.

Volume 3: The Islamicate Period, 1978–1984 Identified toward the end of the Shah’s rule as one of the agents of moral corruption in the country, movies and movie houses became targets of a risorg a n izatio n o f the vo lumes

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ing anti-Shah movement, resulting in the destruction of a third of all movie houses nationwide. This volume charts both such revolutionary destruction and the subsequent rebuilding and evolution of the film and media industries. Many above-the-line personnel in these industries found themselves sidelined, banned, arrested, deprived of property, or exiled. The star system, a major attraction of filmfarsi cinema, was thus dismantled. Movies were banned, cut, redubbed, and painted over to remove offending features. After such iconoclastic destructions and purification the new Islamic regime undertook a wide-ranging effort to institutionalize a new film industry whose values would be commensurate with the newly formulated Islamicate values. The first rules and regulations governing film production and exhibition were adopted in 1982. Like the second Pahlavi regime, the ayatollahs’ regime put into place a strong, centralized, and draconian system of state regu­ lation and patronage to encourage politically correct movies. The import of foreign movies oscillated but was eventually banned, leaving the field open for a new domestic cinema. The long war with Iraq, the gendered segregation of space, and the imposition of the veil on women encouraged certain ideological and aesthetic trends. Foremost was the reconceptualization of cinema from a despised agent of corruption and othering to an agent of nation building and selfing. However, the resulting Islamicate cinema and culture were neither homogeneous nor static. They evolved with considerable personal, institutional, and ideological struggles.

Volume 4: The Globalizing Era, 1984–2010 The revolutionary experience, the bloody eight-year war with Iraq, and the perceived Western cultural invasion of Iran all encouraged soul searching, national epistemophilia, and a desire for self-representation, resulting in an array of documentary films and film forms about the revolution, war, and the various social ills and inequalities that accumulated under the Islamist regime. The state-run television and fiction film industries, too, funded and supported filmmakers committed to Islam who made powerful “imposed war” movies in which sacred subjectivity replaced modernist subjectivity. Women’s presence both on camera and behind the camera increased significantly in all genres and types of films, in both the television and movie industries, leading to a veritable “women’s cinema.” The veil evolved from a repressive social institution to a dynamic social practice and critical aesthetics. A deepening sociopolitical and cultural struggle over cinema, media, and xxiv

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culture, and ultimately the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic, emerged in the country. This was reflected in, and shaped by, a new form of public diplomacy, chiefly between Iran and the United States, during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, which intensified under his successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a new “cultural turn” the antagonistic governments began to recruit all sorts of mutual domestic, diasporic, and international film, television, radio, and Internet media and formations to serve this diplomacy, sometimes with dire consequences for the participants. Foreign and exile videos and satellite televisions were officially banned, but enforcement was chaotic, encouraging a thriving culture of resistance that continues to date. With the rise of opposition to the Islamic Republic regime a dissident Internet cinema emerged. The postrevolution era bred its own dissident art-house parallel cinema, involving some of the best Pahlavi-era new-wave directors and a new crop of innovative postrevolution directors, placing Iranian cinema on the map of the vital world cinemas. They brought self-respect and prestige for Iranians at home and abroad. The displacement, dispersion, and exile of a massive number of Iranians, many in the visual and performing arts and cinema and television, resulted in new formations in Iran’s social history and cinematic history—a diasporic formation of people with a complex subjectivity and an “accented cinema,” made by first-generation émigrés and their second- and third-generation descendants. Both the wide circulation of Iran-made films and those Iranians made in the diaspora, as well as the vast diasporic dispersion of Iranians helped globalize Iranian cinema. One chapter deals with each of these developments.

org a n izatio n o f the vo lumes

xxv

a wor d a bou t il lus t r at ions

I

  have used several types of illustration here, each providing supplementary or complementary material to the text. Production stills show something of the behind-the-scenes process. Frame enlargements, taken directly from films or videos, offer visuals for textual analyses of the films’ aesthetic and generic systems. Posters offer not only an encapsulated rendition of the film by artists other than filmmakers but also showcase the art of poster design and production, which form important components of the movies’ publicity, exhibition, and reception. Like the movies themselves, this art also evolved over time, an evolution discernable in the posters included in the present volumes. Cartoons and other material objects about cinema demonstrate the wider circulation of things filmic among Iranians. The flyers announcing film screenings and cultural and political events featuring screenings served as important vehicles in exile for advertising, political agitprop, and film exhibition immediately after the 1978–79 revolution. They provide a good sense of the films, of the political culture of the time, and of the sponsoring groups. Finally, the many tables in the book offer other forms of data for the analysis of the films’ cultural contexts, such as audience demography, production output, film export and import, organizations involved in production, and the regulations concerning censorship and banning of movies. Because of the diversity of sources and the deterioration of some films and videos, the quality of the pictorial illustrations varies.

a bbr e v i at ions

api Anglo Persian Institute bc British Council c idcya Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults faa Fine Arts Administration fidci Film Industry Development Corporation of Iran

ff Filmfarsi (Farsi-language films)



gfw Golestan Film Workshop



mca Ministry of Culture and Art

mcig Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance

mos Mithout (without) sound, filming without sound

nefc National Educational Film Circuit nioc National Iranian Oil Company nirt National Iranian Radio and Television

pfc Progressive Filmmakers’ Cooperative (Kanun-e Sinemagaran-e Pishro)

pfoi People’s Fadaian Organization of Iran pmoi People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran pogo Public Opinion Guidance Organization savak Sazman Ettela’at va Amniat-e Keshvar (Homeland Intelligence and Security Organization) usia United States Information Agency usis United States Information Service voks All-Union Society for Cultural Relations (Soviet Union)

1 in t er nat iona l h ag gl ing ov er ir a ni a n publ ic scr eens

O

n 25 August 1941 (3 Shahrivar 1320) at 8 p.m. the electricity in Tehran was cut, plunging the entire city, including the Shah’s palaces, into dark‑ ness and forcing panic‑stricken spectators to rush out of movie houses. They soon learned the reason for the electrical outage: Iran’s invasion by the Al‑ lied powers, despite Iran’s official neutrality in the Second World War. Within three weeks Reza Shah abdicated and left the country for a permanent exile, replaced by his son Mohammad Reza Shah. Between 1941 and 1947, when the country remained occupied by the Allies and under various Iranian mar‑ tial law regimes, there was an intense struggle over what types of documen‑ tary and fiction films Iranians could see on public screens, a struggle in which not only the Iranian state but also the major Allied powers participated through their embassies, official cultural organizations, and commercial film companies. While occupying Iran and riding roughshod over the country’s affairs and institutions, the major Allied powers—­the United States, the United King‑ dom, and the Soviet Union—­treated Iran like a partial ally, allowing domestic forces to act with relative impunity. A period of unprecedented freedom and chaos ensued in which interested parties vied to shape public opinion and achieve political ascendancy. The new young Shah, though inexperienced,

was interested in reestablishing the state’s hegemony over the vast, war‑torn country. The various prime ministers used the age‑old strategy of equilib‑ rium (movazeneh) to involve the Allies in Iranian affairs and to balance those interests against each other to ensure the country’s independence (McFarland 1981:6). Many traditions that Reza Shah had banned returned, but in modi‑ fied form. For example, after his abdication, Tehran Radio began a daily reci‑ tation of the Quran, reduced to weekly broadcasts by 1943. Religious schools returned. The chador for women and the turban and religious attire for men also returned in some areas. However, many of the women who did don the chador—­­for example, in Tehran and Isfahan—shunned the somber and official black chador (chador siah) of the past in favor of wearing the lighter colored prayer chador (chador namaz). The face mask that some women had worn previously was not restored. Religious holidays were observed again and religious lamentation, self‑flagellation, processions, and taziyeh performances returned. Many religious periodicals began publication. At the same time, Westernization was propelled forward by the presence of occupying forces and their languages, cultures, and social norms and practices. Dissident in‑ tellectuals and writers, such as Sadeq Hedayat, returned from exile, while imprisoned intellectuals, such as the Group-­53 communists arrested by Reza Shah, were released, and dandies proliferated. Differences among the Allies ensured that domestic factions—­the Shah, communists, Islamists, the secular intelligentsia, students, armed forces, ba‑ zaar merchants, and the press—­could each find foreign backing of one sort or another. Thus a cacophony of voices could be heard across the land. The socalled golden age of the Iranian press was afoot, as both the numbers and the circulation of published periodicals rose as never before (or perhaps since). Of 464 periodicals published in Iran between 1941 and 1947, only 41 had been in existence at the time of the invasion. These periodicals were published in eight languages: 433 in Persian, 10 in Turkish, 7 in Polish, 5 in Armenian, 3 in Kurdish, 3 in French, 2 in English, and 1 in Russian. The majority served as mouthpieces of various political factions, providing less information than the representation of sectarian views in the marketplace of ideas. Eighteen of the periodicals were published by foreign occupying powers: seven Polish, six Soviet, four British, and one American (McFarland 1981:158). During this pe‑ riod, Baba Shamal, a satirical periodical, frequently published cartoons—­full page on the cover and smaller caricatures, stories, and jokes inside—­in which it used popular films and actors, such as King Kong and the Marx Brothers, to critique anything from domestic and foreign politicians to the unhygienic conditions in Iranian movie houses. 2

i nt e r nat i o n a l ha g g li n g

The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union published periodicals both in their national languages and in Iranian languages as part of their public diplomacy strategy to influence Iran (Poland, a fourth Allied power, published only in Polish). Starting in February 1946 the Iran-­America Rela‑ tions Society (also known as the Iran-­America Society) began publishing an illustrated bilingual monthly magazine in Persian, Majalleh‑ye Iran va Amrika (Iran and the U.S.A.).1 In the first year, it carried advertisements for Iranian film companies, such as Caravan Film Corporation, and for American media conglomerates, such as the Radio Corporation of America. The latter adver‑ tised the arrival of the latest radio receivers, phonographs, musical recordings, film projectors, television sets, and household appliances, giving evidence of American commerce with Iran and the rise of Iranian interest in film and en‑ tertainment fields. The British legation in Tehran published one periodical in English, Tehran Daily News, and three in Persian. The Soviets were the most active, publishing one periodical in Russian and four in Persian. Like the Iran-­America Relations Society, the Iran and Soviet Cultural Relations Soci‑ ety in Tehran published a monthly magazine, Payam‑e No (New Message) (later Payam‑e Novin), which unlike the American monthly was a literary journal run by communist and leftist intellectuals, including Karim Keshavarz and Bozorg Alavi (Alavi 1997:261–62). Taqi Arani edited the short-­lived but influ‑ ential leftist literary and political journal Doniya (World), only twelve issues of which appeared between 1934 and 1935. It covered cinema under two main categories, as an industry (a modern medium of communication and trans‑ portation, along with radio, photography, and airplanes) and as an art form (a modern medium of materialist expression, along with theater, art, music, lit‑ erature, and translation) (Momeni 2005/1384:16). The Allied powers’ interjection into the Iranian public sphere extended to radio broadcasting, as did the influence of Iranian ethnic groups, the airing of whose languages had been discouraged under Reza Shah in the name of modern nationalism. Tehran Radio’s broadcast schedule for 1941, for exam‑ ple, shows that nightly news programs of fifteen to thirty minutes in Persian, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, and English dominated (the only other programs aired every night were the national anthem, Iranian and Western music, and a hygiene program). By 1944, the schedule of foreign-­language newscasts had grown to include news in French, while other foreign programs had also been added, including an Indian army program, the Voice of England program, a So‑ viet program, and a dance music program (McFarland 1981:517). The world’s leading broadcasting organization, the bbc, competed with a fledgling Ameri‑ can Forces Radio Network (Morley 2001). i nter natio nal haggling

3

The Allies’ cultural arms competed to woo Iran into their particular spheres not only by publishing periodicals and broadcasting radio news but also by controlling what Iranians saw on movie screens. Their commercial film distributors in Iran, some of whom also ran commercial movie houses, contended with each other. Initially, the United States and the United King‑ dom collaborated in preparing and screening newsreels, but in the war’s after‑ math this collaboration turned into intense competition. That cooperation on cinematic matters during the war turned into confrontation in its aftermath was emblematic. The British felt that screening their films abroad benefited them ideologically, because movies “projected Britain” to the world, as well as economically, because “trade follows the film” (Jarvie 1992:110). The British and the Americans also competed against the Soviet Union, increasingly so during the Cold War. The public screening of educational, propaganda, and entertainment mov‑ ies was one arena in which Cold War ideological struggles played out most vis‑ ibly. The earliest significant instance of this four-­way power struggle involv‑ ing Americans, Britons, Soviets, and Iranians occurred with the formation of a government-­controlled film circuit for showing nontheatrical movies to Ira‑ nians nationwide (documentaries and short films). Iran and the United States were most involved in this endeavor.

American Involvement: The National Educational Film Circuit and Nilla Cram Cook (1910–1982) In 1945, the Iranian government established the National Educational Film Circuit (nefc) as a nationwide, nontheatrical film exhibition circuit for edu‑ cational movies. Although it was short lived, the complex form that it took and the diverse national, political, diplomatic, military, and commercial play‑ ers, film types, and film formats (16mm and 35mm) involved in this attempt at controlling what Iranians saw on the screen, makes a detailed examina‑ tion of the nefc worthwhile as a case study of complex negotiations over pub‑ lic diplomacy and national identity involving cinema. Iranian ministries and armed forces cooperated with the U.S. embassy, particularly its press attaché in Tehran, to run the nefc. Three of the committee’s eight members came from the Ministry of Education, who scheduled films for schools in Tehran. Three others came from the Ministry of the Interior’s Department of Theaters (Edareh‑ye Namayeshat). One of these was an American woman, Nilla Cram Cook, who headed the nefc. The other two members from the Ministry of 4

i nt e r nat i o n a l ha g g li n g

the Interior were the legal advisor and lieutenant Mehdi Golsorkhi, the head of the Iranian army’s film unit, who played an instrumental role in the oper‑ ation of both the film circuit and in establishing the Artesh (Armed Forces) Film Studio. The remaining two nefc committee members were university professors responsible for the Persian-­language film scripts and commentar‑ ies that were delivered by live narrators during the screenings.2 The U.S. em‑ bassy in Tehran supplied all the noncommercial, nontheatrical films that the nefc showed. By a decree from the Iranian cabinet, the Ministry of the Interi‑ or’s Department of Theaters and the Ministry of Education shared the charge of censoring films and plays.3 The involvement of the ministries for internal security and public education in film censorship points to the role of propa‑ ganda and education in Iranian cinema. The placement of Cook at the head of the Department of Theaters and of the nefc meant that an American diplomat was in charge of censoring not only all the performing arts but also all nontheatrical and educational films in the country. Cook thus emerged as the censorship czar of the performing arts. Her involvement with the Iranian government had started in 1943, when the Ministry of the Interior hired her to run the Department of Theaters and a dance studio called the National Opera and Ballet (Cook 1949:406).4 A bo‑ hemian poet, dancer, and dramatist whose father, George Cram Cook, was a founder of the Provincetown Players in Massachusetts, Cook, like many Ira‑ nian film pioneers, was a complicated chameleon. She loved Eastern mysti‑ cism, Persian arts and poetry, and Indian mythology, religion, and culture, and she had experimented with different lifestyles (figure 1). She had “re‑ claimed” Hinduism, adopting the name Nagini, and spent some months in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, a controversial experience she wrote about mov‑ ingly in My Road to India (1939). She was a mysterious, multilingual hybrid who had lived in Greece, India, and Iran and who knew English, modern Greek, Italian, Turkish, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Persian. She converted to Islam, spent twelve years translating the Quran, and wrote an unpublished novel set in Iran. She disappeared in the 1950s only to resurface in 1982, when her death was announced in Austria (she had been living in Aspang near Vi‑ enna).5 While she was an official of the Iranian government, who signed all the exhibition licenses for movies and theater performances in the country, she was also a U.S. diplomat, who bore the title of “assistant to the press at‑ taché” of the U.S. embassy and who gave regular reports to the U.S. embassy about nefc operations, some of which I have used in writing this section.6 Newspapers in the United States gave accounts of her exploits in Iran. The Des Moines Register reported on her efforts as the “director of state theaters and i nter natio nal haggling

5

1  Nilla Cram Cook, Iran’s first censorship czar for cinema and the performing arts after the Second World War. Still courtesy of M. Eleanor Fitzgerald (1877–1955) Papers, 1915–1974, Manuscript Collection 13, Archives, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

censor of all theatrical and movie productions” sent to Iran to help transform it into “a modern, independent state.”7 The full reasons for appointing an American to this sensitive national and political position are unknown. Some Iranians, such as the film historian Ja‑ mal Omid, claim that the young Shah’s government was too weak and naive to resist Allied pressure. The implication here is that the Americans imposed Cook on the Iranians. However, it may also have been Iranian cleverness to agree to Cook’s appointment to lure the United States into Iran as part of the country’s strategy of equilibrium, which allowed it to safeguard itself against the two traditional meddling powers, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. Other reasons may also have been involved, ones that require contextuali­ zation. Some time after the occupation of Iran, on 29 January 1942, the Brit‑ ish, Soviet, and Iranian governments signed the tripartite Treaty of Alliance governing their relationships and conduct in Iran during wartime, promising to evacuate the country six months after the termination of hostilities. Article III 2b of the treaty allowed the Allies to commandeer “all the means of com‑ munication throughout Iran, including railways, roads, rivers, aerodromes, 6

i nt e r nat i o n a l ha g g li n g

ports, pipe lines and telephone, telegraph and wireless installations,” while Article III 2d gave them ”such measures of censorship control as they may require for all the means of communication” specified above. Granting the occupying foreign powers such total control of the country’s means of trans‑ portation and communication, while supposedly respecting its “territorial in‑ tegrity,” “sovereignty,” and “political independence,” was an unprecedented privilege in modern times (Shamim 1971:15–16). Although the list of Iranian media that the Allies were to commandeer did not include film, it likely was a silent partner in the agreement (note that radio was named). Soon, the Ameri­ cans became the chief supplier of lend-­lease war equipment and material to the Soviet Union through the Iranian transportation system, particularly the railway. It is probable that Cook was appointed as the czar of film and theater censorship in Iran to satisfy the Treaty of Alliance’s provisions. In the first half of the twentieth century a tradition of appointing foreign‑ ers as heads of sensitive government departments in Iran had been estab‑ lished as a means of creating, streamlining, and modernizing government bureaucracies. In the 1900s, for example, the Belgian Joseph Naus served as the country’s director of general customs, and the Russian colonel Vladimir Liakhov was head of the Iranian Cossack Brigade; in the 1910s, the American Morgan Shuster reorganized the country’s tax administration, the British na‑ tionals Hart and Henson were, respectively, the Ministry of Finance inspector and the director of customs, the Frenchman Moultire served as the director of the postal service, and the Swedish Colonel Jahrmalssen created the gen‑ darmerie force; and in the 1920s, the American financier Arthur Millspaugh was the treasurer general of Iran. Some of these people, as well as others not named here, served admirably in modernizing the administrative structures of the country, and some of them served the politics of their own countries, of other powers, or of their own and became pawns in political rivalries of vari‑ ous kinds. They formed what following Abdollah Mostofi we may call a “se‑ cret republic” of foreigners within Iran (1997:1036). In the context of this long list of foreign appointees, Cook’s hiring as the head of film censorship does not appear as such an anomaly. Her appointment merely fortified this foreign republic that worked both to modernize and Westernize Iran—­one of the ear‑ liest attempts at Western public diplomacy in Iran. Still, the appointment of a foreigner to such a high and sensitive position did create rancor. Cook claimed that the minister of the interior had “left the actual censorship of the cinema and the theater entirely up to me.” However, she had to expend much time and energy to fight off the “intrigues” orga‑ nized against her by local commercial exhibitors whose movies she censored. i nter natio nal haggling

7

For example, in 1945 on order of the minister of the interior, she banned the screening of Hollywood gangster movies, a lucrative genre. One reason was to appease the Soviets. Another was that a study by the interior minister, a jurist and a former prosecuting attorney, had turned up evidence that gang‑ ster movies had inspired juvenile delinquency in Iran. Cook contended that in places where Iranian taste was not yet “corrupted” by Hollywood movies, documentaries were greeted with more enthusiasm than gangster movies. 8 To combat negative influences, the minister of the interior ordered Cook to re‑ view all motion picture licenses that the police had issued. He also instructed her to draft new regulations that would stiffen the punishment for the exhibi‑ tors of movies and shows that were “subversive to public morality” by subject‑ ing them to one year mandatory imprisonment. Previous regulations had al‑ lowed exhibitors convicted of such practices to get out of a three-­month jail term by paying a fine (Cook 1949:408–9). Harsher regulations and punishments, as well as the banning of popu‑ lar movies and genres, may have been the real causes of exhibitors’ dissatis‑ faction. If these were the reasons, they were not publicized, but others were: the previous censor in a petition to the interior minister questioned the ca‑ pabilities of Cook, “a female foreigner,” to deal with the subtleties of the Per‑ sian language and to properly conduct movie-­house inspections when she was spending her evenings rehearsing ballets (Cook 1949:409–11). Years later Omid claimed that “Cook’s sympathies were limited to safeguarding the Allies’ interests in Iran, and she paid no attention to, or had little knowl‑ edge of, the traditions and cultural values of Iranian society” (1995/1374:872). However, Cook was not as ignorant of Iranian history, culture, and art as critics claimed. She also headed the National Opera and Ballet, for whose performances she borrowed not only from Western theater but also from Ira‑ nian performing arts traditions, including mythology, poetry, tribal dances, and zurkhaneh (house of strength) performances, which she had studied. In search of discovering what she called a “Persian lyric stage,” she also experi‑ mented with choruses, chants, processions, and war dances, whose postures, attire, makeup, hairstyle, movements, and lyrics she borrowed from sculp‑ tured friezes of Persepolis, images on the coins recovered from the ruins of Susa, and classical Persian poetry (Cook 1949:412–19). Nesta Ramazani, who danced in Cook’s company, testifies in her memoirs to Cook’s deep love for Persian poetry and performance arts and to the way it inspired her ballet ideas and choreography (2002:164–236). In describing her efforts at creating and performing Iranian ballets for foreign audiences abroad, Cook’s identification with Persian culture comes through, as she includes herself in phrases such 8

i nt e r nat i o n a l ha g g li n g

as “It is essential, if we would be truly Iranian, to satirize ourselves on the forestage.” Her mining of ancient Persian arts traditions, based on the belief that “you must first find yourself,” countered what most Iranian dramatists and modernists, who looked mainly to the West for inspiration, were doing—­ with the exception of Abdolhosain Sepanta. Some of the protests against Cook may have been aimed at the Ministry of the Interior and at the police, which the critics could not attack directly for fear of reprisal. Others criticized her mostly because they wanted the line of authority in censorship changed. For example, the pro-­Hollywood and pro-­ Allies film magazine Holivud (Hollywood) wanted Cook ousted, suggesting that censorship be transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to the Minis‑ try of Education (Omid 1995/1374:873). But controversy worked to undermine Cook’s authority to the point that police and film exhibitors often reached their own, separate understandings of film censorship, bypassing her operations. Film exhibition thus proved im‑ provisational, echoing the chaos and spontaneity of cinema’s mode of pro‑ duction and narratives. Such chaos had some counterhegemonic effects, as filmmakers and entertainers took advantage of Cook’s situation to criticize the state. The noted actor Ezatollah Entezami, for example, claims that he and others slipped oppositional material past her desk because of her limited knowledge of Persian (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:888).9 Yet what Iranians as‑ cribed to their own cleverness and to Cook’s naiveté was, according to Cook, an “administrative policy” at the time, one meant to court left-­w ing approval by a “display of liberalism.” As a result, comic forestage songwriters and skit performers such as Entezami were given free reign to criticize society, “spar‑ ing neither municipality, nor courts, nor clergy,” as long as no names were used (Cook 1949:410). At any rate, as Ramazani notes, “Under the protection of the minister of the interior, she was able to fight off the intrigues organized against her by commercial and political interests and to lighten considerably the heavy hand of censorship. Numerous satires appeared in the theaters at this time” (2002:7). In 1946 Cook finally stepped down, or was forced to step down, from both her posts as the censorship czar and as the director of the ballet company. Soon, however, she founded the Studio for the Revival of the Classical Arts of Iran, which received funding in 1947 from the Department of Propaganda and Radio to take her Ballet of Azarbaijan on a successful tour of Turkey, Greece, Italy, and the Arab countries.10 Another key figure in nefc operations was Lieutenant Golsorkhi who, while maintaining his position as the head of the Iranian army film unit, i nter natio nal haggling

9

projected nefc films and maintained the film equipment, on loan from the U.S. embassy. The U.S. press attaché praised his technical “ingenuity and resourcefulness.”11 In May 1945, the Iranian army seemed reluctant to con‑ tinue the cooperation of Golsorkhi with the nefc. The U.S. embassy in Teh‑ ran “feigned” an interest in working with the army’s rival, the gendarmerie, a ruse that “quickly changed the army’s attitude” and made it place resources at Golsorkhi’s disposal. His screenings became a regular feature of the Officers’ Club, “one of the finest buildings in Tehran and the center of much of its social life.”12 They were so popular that the army established Artesh (Armed Forces) Cinema on the club grounds, whose inauguration in 1945 was cele‑ brated with the Shah in attendance. The nefc operation primarily involved exhibiting 16mm educational films imported from the United States to Iranians in the Officers’ Club, in the army and gendarmerie barracks, in city schools and clubs, and in villages around Tehran. Golsorkhi carried the 16mm film projectors, which the U.S. embassy owned, in an old weapons carrier, modified to hold a large generator. Yet this equipment proved insufficient for the nefc’s expanding operations, so the new American press attaché, T. Cuyler Young, requested more 16mm sound projectors with microphones and more vehicles to meet the film screening needs of Isfahan, Fars, Hamadan, Kermanshah, and Kurdistan (the U.S. Per‑ sian Gulf Command Special Services Division supplied some of the equip‑ ment).13 Five Iranian operators in training would man the additional projec‑ tors and vehicles. He also requested a 35mm projector with which the film circuit could show entertaining shorts made in Hollywood. In what was a precursor to the usis (United States Information Service) film-­screening pro‑ gram via mobile film units of the 1950s, these projectors were transported in a jeep and a trailer owned by the Iranian army and in a 1942 Chevrolet fur‑ nished by the United States Office of War Information. Iranian technicians operated these makeshift mobile units and showed films not only in Tehran barracks but also in villages. Many of these screenings took place outdoors, where a narrator with a microphone translated and commented. The U.S. embassy supplied the nefc from its own film library in Tehran, which included the erpi (Western Electrical Research Products Inc.) Class‑ room Films.14 These were screened in schools, in adult education classes, and in Iran-­A merica Relations Society classes along with live commentaries read from scripts. By 1946, its third year of operation, the society had screened sixty films at fourteen meetings on subjects of science, education, health, ag‑ riculture, industry, and entertainment and had offered thirty-­three lectures in English and Persian on a variety of topics (Saleh 1946/1325:1).15 No edu­ 10

i nt e r nat i o n a l ha g g li n g

cational films dubbed into Persian were available on a regular basis at this time and Young, who would later become a professor at Princeton University, did not consider this a problem, since “Iranians regard the documentaries in English as quite harmless from a propaganda point of view.” Indeed, if they had been dubbed into Persian they might have come under harsher scrutiny.16 The embassy’s film library also contained many instructional films, such as Fight Syphilis, Livestock and Mankind, People of the Ozarks, Wise Use of Land Pays, The Farmer’s Wife, and Teen Aged Farm Hand, which the press attaché felt were not of sufficient interest to show. A commercial film importer, Iran Cinema, supplied more entertaining fare. Managed by two businessmen, Arnold Jacobson, a Jew, and Ali Vakili, a Muslim, Iran Cinema was the largest cinema chain in the country. It had the exclusive rights to import Paramount and mgm movies and offered to put at the disposal of the Department of Theaters some two hundred theatrical shorts. Among these were the mgm travelogue series The Voice of the Globe, about the forty-­eight contiguous states, which the U.S. press attaché thought suitable for screening at functions organized by both the Iran-­America Re‑ lations Society and the Public Opinion Guidance Organization (pogo). The screening of these theatrical shorts had given the society a new lease on life, so there was reason to believe that entertainment movies could function simi‑ larly in other venues. Cook herself owned the rights to fifty-­t wo Disney mov‑ ies, which she wanted to show via the nefc. Iran Cinema made another novel and grandiose proposal, this time to cre‑ ate a network of at least three hundred 16mm “little cinemas” in towns and villages that up to then had never seen movies. With its network of theatri‑ cal cinemas in the country, its exclusive rights to distribute mgm movies, and its contracts with other film companies, Iran Cinema was in a good position to make this proposal, which according to Cook would have been “a veritable landslide for American film interests.”17 Cook actively championed Iran Cin‑ ema’s proposal in American diplomatic, military, and commercial circles. In a letter to the U.S. press attaché in Tehran, for example, she noted that Jacob‑ son was ready to purchase surplus 16mm projectors of the U.S. army at full value to equip his proposed little cinemas, that he had a proven track record as a manager of a successful chain of theaters, and that he had proved he “cared for nothing but American films.” His quid pro quo in this proposal was that if the Americans helped him equip and supply his little theaters with commer‑ cial movies on 16mm format, he would establish a regular circuit of American documentaries in those theaters.18 In addition to a desire for more diverse programming, there were reasons i nter natio nal haggling

11

for suggesting that 35mm Hollywood movies be added. Films could subtly in‑ culcate an American lifestyle and values. The little cinemas could widen the reach and deepen the impact of these movies among the public at large.

British Involvement: The British Council and the Anglo-­Persian Institute Britain established the Empire Marketing Board (emb) in 1926 to create a sense of unity throughout the empire and to revive imperial trade in vari‑ ous commodities in the colonies through propaganda including posters, pam‑ phlets, and exhibitions. The president of emb, Sir Stephen Tallents, published The Projection of England, which provided the ideological underpinning for this effort. In the book he argued that “if we are to play our part in the new world order, we need to master every means and every art by which we can communicate with other peoples. The need is especially urgent between our‑ selves and the other parts of the Empire. We are experimenting together in a novel political organization, in which are joined together peoples most widely separated from each other in space and character” (Tallents 1932:18). Soon, John Grierson set up the emb Film Unit to make “documentary” films. This unit grew from a staff of two in 1930 to thirty within three years and was later renamed the General Post Office (gpo) Film Unit when the parent institu‑ tion, emb, ceased operations and transferred its function to the gpo. By the start of the Second World War, the British documentary movement, through these government film units and other commercial and industrial producers, had created a sizeable trove of around three hundred films (Barsam 1992:77). Some would find their way to Iran during the war years and after. One conduit for moving these films was the British Council (bc), created in 1934 and chartered in 1940. The institution was set up as an independent body, but because it was to serve the aims of the British Empire, the govern‑ ment served as its primary funder and end user. Its overall aim was (and con‑ tinues to be) to promote a wider knowledge and appreciation of Great Britain in the world by means of cultural, educational, and technical cooperation—­an arm of the British public diplomacy. The British Council created the Anglo-­ Persian Institute (api), with branches in several cities, including Tehran, Shi‑ raz, and Isfahan. In 1944, the institute’s director, J. Sanderson, in a public speech in Shiraz stated the establishment’s goals as contributing to world peace by demonstrating to Iranians by means of English language, literature, film, lecture, music, drama, and the other arts “just what England is like and 12

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what she stands for.”19 Wherever Britain had consulates and api branches, the bc taught English language classes and set up reading rooms, which car‑ ried local and British newspapers, books, and other information. These activ‑ ities were augmented by the screening of British films at bc, api, and other sites with twenty-­five mobile film vans, which in the 1940s traveled to the far reaches of the country.20 The British mobile film units had a long history in Iran, apparently dating back to 1908, when one unit was reported to have screened films in Abadan (Javdani 2002/1381:18), perhaps to the future em‑ ployees of the emerging Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company. According to Moham‑ mad Ali Issari, the British Council’s film officer, the mobile unit program be‑ gan small, with four used units obtained from the British operations in Iraq (Naficy 1982a). These British institutions in Iran, run by British diplomats, Foreign Office personnel, and their staff, were modeled on “lighthouses,” which were to cast the light of Western enlightenment on largely illiterate natives.21 Iranian film exhibitors with connections to the Soviet Union also tapped into this idea, naming many movie houses Mayak, the Russian term for “lighthouse bea‑ con” (later these theaters were called by their Persian name, Didehban). In Tehran, starting in 1941, British films were primarily screened at the bc headquarters in the Victory House on Ferdowsi Avenue, where British diplo‑ mats hosted dignitaries and members of the press. An indication of both the fluidity and the competitiveness of Allied relations with each other and with Iranian intellectuals is provided by Bozorg Alavi, who after his release from internment under Reza Shah for being a communist, worked at the British Victory House, under L. P. Elwell-­Sutton, until the end of the Second World War, when he joined the Iran-­Soviet Cultural Relations Society. The Shah’s regime derisively dubbed him and others as “British Communists.” Alavi was in charge of receiving war news from British sources, editing it, and deliver‑ ing it to Radio Tehran for broadcast on the Allied Radio (Radio Mottafeqin) (Alavi 1997:242–44). The British also screened newsreels and documentary films, some very pro-­Shah, at commercial cinemas, accompanied by Persian narration. Finally, they had a hand in establishing the first newsreel cinema in Tehran in 1943, the 352-­seat Akhbar (News) Cinema, managed by Jacob‑ son. They also helped create the film magazine Holivud, edited by the bc em‑ ployee Alireza Amirmoez. They also made Persian-­language news magazines and magazines for women and children and broadcast radio programs, which matched those of the Soviets in volume. Among the feature documentaries was Roy Boulting’s Desert Victory (1943), “a lucid and breath-­taking exposition” (Barnouw 1993:147) of the El i nter natio nal haggling

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Ala­mein battle in North Africa in which the Allied forces, headed by the Brit‑ ish field marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, defeated the German forces of Erwin Rommel. The intimate coverage of the fighting soldiers in this fero‑ cious battle elicited warm audience responses in Tabriz, Urumieh, Maragheh, and other northeastern cities and did much to “bolster British prestige” (Sadr 2003/1381:80). Akhbar Cinema typically screened five British newsreels a week with a Persian soundtrack, such as War Pictorial and British Movie­tone, received from the British embassy in Cairo. These films were given press screenings; reviews increased audiences, who turned to the films as reliable sources of war news. The cinema also screened The Royal Family of Persia, made by British filmmakers, which was heavily publicized. Holivud featured a still from the film on its cover and devoted five pages to it. By now, rivalry between the former allies was seeping into the realm of cinema: The Royal Family of Persia was made only eight months after Iran, a Soviet film that had featured the Allied lend-­lease war efforts as well as the Shah and his family, including queen Fawziah (Tahaminejad 2004a:27, 32). Reports from British authorities in various cities give a good sense of the movies Iranians saw and of their reactions in 1945. The vice-­consul in Tabriz reported that Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy movies were popular in Azarbaijan. He noted a “consistent demand” for agricultural and medical documentaries, citing among successful examples Pare Lorenz’s Power and the Land (1940) and the newsreel of the Potsdam Conference. The vice-­consul in Hamadan urged that educational documentaries with subjects close to ru‑ ral life be screened for the adult population instead of news films of national leaders who are “almost like fairies to the provincial, and their constant show‑ ing makes films in general seem unreal.” After requesting that his mobile film unit be repaired, the consul in Kermanshah reported that films on ag‑ ricultural, technical, medical, and textile themes were in particular demand. Likewise, the consul in Ahvaz, after reporting that citizens were “weary of war films,” suggested that technical and medical films be shown. Apparently, the film Surgery of Chest Diseases was in high demand in Ahvaz. On the other hand, the consul in Khorramshahr considered that educated people were too few in the city to justify showing any films other than entertainment movies.22 In cities where the Anglo-­Persian Institute operated, film screenings gen‑ erally took place in small theaters on the premises. To feed both the mobile and the stationary film circuits, the British Council imported a substantial number of movies. Young, the U.S. press attaché, who kept tabs on the British imports, reported that in one week in June 1945, Victory House had acquired thirty-­six films from Britain for its documentary circuit, “a typical week’s ac‑ 14

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quisition.”23 The api’s film screenings aimed to cover all age groups and both sexes. In the Iranian year that fell on 1946–47, the api in Tehran screened forty-­seven “film shows,” with each show consisting of one to three films. It screened films on every Saturday, inside during the winter and outdoors in the garden or on the rooftop in the summer, with an average attendance of two hundred people. In summer, films for schoolchildren screened Friday mornings (the Iranian weekend), with “the house always full three quarters of an hour before the program began.” The institute’s “Ladies’ Section,” with 293 members, held regular tea parties, talks, musical recitals, and film shows during the year for women members only. Finally, in addition to these regular programs, the api held many specialized film screenings for professional au‑ diences throughout the year.24 Medical films such as Behind the Doctor (about the diagnosis of diphtheria) were screened by the api branch in Isfahan to forty physicians on the inaugural meeting of the Isfahan Medical Associa‑ tion.25 Most of the films were accompanied by explanatory talks delivered by live narrators in the dilmaj tradition. The screenings were also often followed by question-­and-­answer sessions with audiences.26 For the Iranian year that coincided with 1947–48, the api in Tehran held regular film and filmstrip screenings in its restaurant every Tuesday eve‑ ning accompanied by talks by well-­known British scholars.27 The Ladies’ Sec‑ tion saw two documentary films on water supply.28 “Children’s Holiday Film Shows” were held on Saturday mornings, when more than 250 “specially-­ selected” boys and girls with the average age of fifteen watched the following program on each occasion: one elementary biological film, one sports film, one “life in Britain” film, one scientific film, and one Mickey Mouse movie. In the summer of 1947, “Film Shows in the Garden” were held once a week for members and guests. The institute was creative in enriching and enlivening its educational and documentary fare with specially invited audiences or with invited guests and demonstrations. For example, in one week police films were shown to the Iranian chief of police and his entourage.29 In another week, the api screened The Great Game, on soccer, to a “specially-­invited au‑ dience of well-­known Tehran footballers,” preceded by a half-­hour talk on British soccer, translated into Persian. In April 1947, two sports films were shown; the first, on boxing, had a live demonstration by the welterweight and heavyweight boxing champions of Tehran who showed some of their tech‑ niques and “gave a couple of exhibition rounds.” The second film, on fencing, had a live demonstration by a Miss Tomblin on the techniques of the foil and saber.30 Although British Council film officers programmed the films (under J. H. i nter natio nal haggling

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Grimes’s supervision) and organized the screening events in each location by providing speakers, guests, translators, and live film narrators, the officers of the Foreign Office Embassy Information Department operated the mo‑ bile vans and film projectors until 1950, when the bc absorbed the Informa‑ tion Department’s film unit. Until then, this linkage with the political arm of the embassy further tainted the chartered independence of the bc, which was already under question because the British government funded it and be‑ cause it enlisted some of the British Consul’s employees to act as its agents. The British film endeavor in Iran was more serious in tone, more education‑ ally oriented, and more diverse, and its nationwide reach was wider than the American or Soviet efforts. The British also exhibited much creativity in film presentation and audience preparation, and they took care to document their presentations and audience reactions, as film officers had to fill out film evalu­ ation forms (the above accounts were based on these evaluation reports). Also, unlike the official Soviet film efforts and the official American film effort through the usia, which did not survive the 1940s and the 1960s, respec‑ tively, the British Council’s film program continued to evolve and to serve Ira‑ nians until the revolution of 1978–79.

The Soviet Union’s Involvement: voks and Sovkino Soviet influence through cinema began as early as 1917, with the formation of the Farhang Club in Rasht, an offshoot of Tehran’s Farhang Scientific Com‑ pany. This was in addition to all the exchange relations that existed between Russia and Iran, through Russian nationals and Iranian Russians who im‑ ported films and film equipment to Iran, established movie houses, and had exhibited movies in the country since the beginning of cinema. Founded by Hosain Jowdat and led by the secretary of the Russian consulate, Karim Ke‑ shavarz, the Farhang Club received a monthly subsidy of forty tomans from the Russian legation. The club had a theater, a reading room, and a cinema, whose proceeds were used for welfare purposes. Iranian plays, such as Hasan Moqaddam’s Jafar Khan Is Back from Europe, as well as those by European au‑ thors such as Molière, Racine, Victor Hugo, and Ruy Blas were performed there. The Farhang Club also had a women’s offshoot, which staged plays for women whose performers were also, and unusually, women, such as Fatemeh Nashuri, Parirokh Vahdat, and Banu Khojastegi (Floor 2005:245–46). The club lasted until 1931, but it is not known what movies it screened. In 1941 the Soviet occupation authorities in Gilan Province sent a Caucasian troupe 16

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to the city of Rasht, where Soraya Qajar, the manager of the Russian depart‑ ment store, rented the City Hall auditorium for plays and movies, the latter called East Cinema (279). Soviet cultural inroads were formalized after the Allied occupation. In the 1940s, the Soviet Union maintained branches of its worldwide All-­Union So‑ ciety for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (voks; Vsesoiuznoe Ob‑ shchestvo Kul’turnoi Sviazi s Zagranitsei) in some sixty countries. In Iran it had one of the most extensive programs, with branches in key strategic cities: Tehran, Mashhad, Tabriz, Isfahan, Bandar Pahlavi, Kermanshah, and Ahvaz. Founded in 1925, voks was an arm of the Soviet public diplomacy, charged with “furthering the exchange of ideas and visits between the ussr and the capitalist countries” (F. F. 1954). In 1941 the Tabriz branch of voks organized a theatrical troupe of Iranians and Russians to perform plays, as did the Azari autonomous republic government (Ferqeh‑ye Demokrat), which staged plays in Azari and broadcast them on the radio (Floor 2005:278). voks organized its activities under various committees. Typical was the Cinema Committee, formed in 1944, to which some sixty directors, screen‑ writers, and actors belonged. This committee was “concerned with dissemi‑ nation of information abroad about Soviet films, exchange of ideas and expe‑ rience with foreign film organizations, and providing of material assistance to admirers of the Soviet cinema” (Nemzer 1949:273). According to a report by the Central Intelligence Agency, by 1948 the Soviet Union was exhibiting propaganda films and feature movies throughout Iran by means of its Teh‑ ran embassy, thirteen regional consulates, and several cultural organizations. Only the organizations concerned with films and film screenings as part of the country’s public diplomacy are discussed here. In Tehran, voks opened the House of Culture (Khaneh Farhang) in Jan‑ uary 1945, headed by Grigori Galishian and his assistant Sobhan Qaliov. Within a year the staff grew to twenty. Like the Iranian government’s Public Opinion Guidance Organization (pogo), voks had sections: science, medi‑ cine, sports, music, fine arts, theater, films, rural reconstruction, and indus‑ trial arts. These promoted different aspects of Soviet society. Each was super‑ vised by a Soviet national, and voks’s director in Iran was a member of the board of the Iran-­Soviet Cultural Relations Society, which was also a venue for Soviet film in Mashhad, Isfahan, Rasht, Tabriz, and Rezaiyeh (Urumi‑ yeh). The first director of Persian-­language talkies, Sepanta, served as the society’s secretary in Isfahan. The secretary to the Mashhad branch was the writer Shahid Nurai. The society’s Tabriz branch, established in August 1944, housed several halls for lectures and movie screenings. The fine arts commit‑ i nter natio nal haggling

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tee incorporated many of the existing theatrical troupes to create a new per‑ forming arts venue called the Drama and Opera Performers’ Society, housed in the House of Culture (Haiat‑e Honarpishegan‑e Deram va Opret) (Ranjbar Fakhri 2004/1383:489).31 While the pogo aimed to centralize the Pahlavi stat‑ ist ideology of syncretic Westernization, the Iran-­Soviet Cultural Relations Society’s purpose was to inculcate a statist socialist ideology. Generally, lec‑ tures were held twice a week in two languages (apparently Persian and Az‑ ari), as well as concerts, art exhibitions (including photographs of the Soviet Union), and movie screenings. The Soviet society tapped into Azari nation‑ alism and autonomy, as it recognized Azari as a literary language, unlike the Iranian government, which stifled it, and it provided audio recordings, radio broadcasts, folksongs, poetry readings, and movies in European and Azari languages. These diverse offerings were apparently highly successful because they were among the rare sources of entertainment and enlightenment in the city, available free of charge, which invited local talents to participate and to shine (Abdollahzadeh 1984/1363:5). A film titled Soviet Propaganda Film—­Iran, Tabriz 1945–46, posted on You‑ Tube, documents many of the accomplishments of the Iran-­Soviet Cultural Relations Society in the Azari autonomous republic.32 Its Azari voice-­over ex‑ tols Azari nationalism and the educational and industrial progress achieved under the leadership of Jafar Pishehvari, who is shown in various social func‑ tions. The voice-­over justifies the continued Soviet occupation of Iran to “pro‑ tect Iran from foreigners.” The film shows the excitement about and contribu‑ tions of the population to building roads, schools, electrification, textile and shoe factories, and hospitals. Dancing, poetry, theater, and other forms of cul‑ ture are booming, and for the first time students are taught in their native Az‑ ari language. A teacher asks a female student to name three “beautiful words” that begin with the letter alif (a). Answer: ana (mother), Azarbaijan, and azadi (freedom). Many other short news films about Azari nationalism and the in‑ dependence movement are now posted on YouTube. The majority of the Iran-­Soviet Cultural Relations Society’s board of direc‑ tors in Tehran between 1945 and 1947 were either members of the Commu‑ nist (Tudeh) Party or were pro-­Soviet sympathizers and intellectuals, such as Said Naficy, Alavi, and Keshavarz.33 However, prominent cosmopolitan fig‑ ures like Naficy were members of both the Iran-­Soviet Cultural Relations So‑ ciety and the Iran-­America Relations Society. The Iran-­Soviet Cultural Re‑ lations Society in 1944 had ambitious goals for film: the dissemination of Soviet educational films; the making of documentaries about Iranian arts,

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scenery, and social life to publicize the country’s “greatness” abroad; facilitat‑ ing the insertion into Soviet movies of historical and literary items related to Iran; the training of Iranian film actors; and the creation of the foundations for a film industry in Iran (Tahaminejad 2004a:35). The engine of the Soviet Union’s film effort in Iran was Sovkino, the giant film distribution company, with representatives in Tehran and Tabriz, which imported Soviet films and distributed them throughout the country. The com‑ pany also supplied projectionists and equipment for film screenings that voks and the Iran-­Soviet Cultural Relations Society organized.34 Mobile film units also operated in zones occupied by Soviet forces in the northeast. Sovkino op‑ erated at least one commercial theater in Tehran, Setareh (Star) Cinema, and one in Rasht, Homay Cinema. A cia report notes that in addition to Mayak Cinema, in which the Soviet embassy had a 25 percent share, three to four other commercial movie houses in Tehran were “Soviet controlled,” and all screened Soviet movies.35 Soviet films were screened regularly in the commercial cinemas of Teh‑ ran and in those of large provincial cities (Mashhad, Ahvaz, Isfahan) and of small towns (Borujerd). In February of 1942 (Esfand 1321), one such movie house in the capital city, Tehran Cinema, showed Soviet newsreels to which the Soviet ambassador and the Soviet military attaché in Iran invited domestic and foreign diplomats and dignitaries. A review in the Siasat (Politics) news‑ paper, the official Tudeh Party organ, reported that the scenes of the defense of Moscow against the Nazis were so moving that they “affected the heart of every spectator.” When the Soviets finally took back their cities from the en‑ emy, “the sound of spectator applause echoed throughout the hall” (quoted in Tahaminejad 2004a:30). In April 1943, Iran Cinema showed a documentary about Iran, which the Soviet Union’s press attaché in Tehran had organized, an event that was attended by the prime minister, the leader of the parlia‑ ment, the court minister, and other dignitaries and members of the press. Af‑ ter official speeches in Russian and Persian and the screening of a short film about the battle of Stalingrad (perhaps the same one as that shown at Tehran Cinema), the film about Iran was shown. Directed by Iosif Poselski, the film, which Ettela’at Haftegi (Weekly Information) called Manazer‑e Iran (Views of Iran, 1941) had been shot during the Second World War, and it showed not only the country’s natural scenery but also its historical monuments, its ar‑ tistic achievements, and scenes from modern cities (Tehran, Mashhad, Shi‑ raz, Isfahan) with their new educational, cultural, sports, and public health centers and modern avenues and palaces, including those of the Shah and

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his family. The film bore a soundtrack containing Persian music, Persian-­ language narration, and poems by Ferdowsi, Hafez, and Sadi. Apparently, the Soviets had presented a print of the film to the Shah, who had put it at the dis‑ posal of Iran Cinema, instructing its owner to use the proceeds for aid to the blind (Tahaminejad 2004a:32). Finally, Iran and Mayak Cinemas in Tehran screened a propaganda movie known as Oath (Sowgand), which was praised by the pro-­Soviet Iranian press as emblematic of the socialist victory, whereby a great industrial city is constructed out of nothing by “labor, effort, unity, and faith” (Tahaminejad 2004a:32). In Isfahan, the Soviet consulate invited the town’s dignitaries to a screening in Mayak Cinema of sports documenta‑ ries and a feature film called Republic of Uzbekistan (Jomhuri‑ye Ozbakestan). To accommodate various classes of audiences, Soviet movies were shown by invitation, free of charge or at a discount. The social realism of the movies, screened with Persian or Turkish subtitles, provided a contrast to the gritty realism of Hollywood crime and gangster movies, which were popular. If the American practice of importing morally suspect fiction films, such as gang‑ ster movies, and educationally valuable documentaries on health and devel‑ opment seemed contradictory and perplexing to Iranian jurists, Sovkino’s im‑ portation of movies into Iran appeared consistent and carefully calibrated to Iranian taste. It included not only war movies but also movies about the noble society of patriots, Central Asian fairy tales, or innocent scenes of forest and deep-­sea life (Cook 1949:408–9). These movies were widely available, chiefly because they were screened free of charge (at least in the Soviet zone of in‑ fluence in the northwest), while admittance was charged for Western movies (McFarland 1981:201). Despite their wide availability and the pro-­Soviet exhib‑ itors’ strategies to attract viewers, Soviet movies were apparently not as well attended as U.S.-­made movies due to their “lack of entertainment value.”36 It appears that despite, or perhaps because of, its internal contradictions, Ameri‑ can public diplomacy proved more effective in winning the hearts and minds of Iranians than the homogeneous Soviet public diplomacy. Iranian nationalism, which rose under the Pahlavis, may also have diluted interest in Soviet movies, particularly after the end of the Second World War, when the Soviet Union illegally occupied Iran. An anonymous eyewitness de‑ scribes a scene that demonstrates this popular unease with Soviet cultural in‑ roads at this time: The Soviets had taken over Homay Cinema in Rasht and re‑ named it Sharq (East) Cinema, where they presented performances imported from Leningrad and Azerbaijan, as well as Soviet war and propaganda mov‑ ies. One night, the National Musical Society under the leadership of Ruhollah Khaleqi was to perform at the Sharq, where a crowd had gathered. Uncontrol‑ 20

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lable joy met Khaleqi’s decision to perform for the first time the national‑ istic chorale known as “O Bejeweled Land” (“Ey Marz‑e Porgohar”), which would become the popular national anthem for Iranians, countering the official “King of Kings Anthem.” “The audience was thunderstruck in their seats, listening with amazement and astonishment to the exciting rhythm and the provocative lyrics of this chorale.” When it was over, the spectators gave the troupe a standing ovation, requesting encores, kissing and hugging the per‑ formers; and one wealthy patron threw a wad of paper money onto the stage. To the reporter, the contrast between the hall’s usual fare—­“only, and only, Soviet propaganda and war movies, full of blood and fire, which only spread death and mourning”—­and that night’s performance, which “turned the hall into an expansive garden of light and delight,” was astonishing.37 After the defeat of the Azari autonomy movement and the expulsion of So‑ viet forces, leftist and Soviet cultural centers suffered attacks. The leftist press reported that government forces, “gendarmes, knife-­wielders, and toughs sent by Tehran” attacked the city of Zanjan, killing people and robbing the dead of their goods, even of their gold teeth. They also destroyed property, including Azar Cinema, which had been constructed by the Democratic Government of Azarbaijan under Jafar Pishehvari (jami 1976/1355:405–6). The destruc‑ tion in Tabriz, the seat of the independence movement’s government, was worse. A local newspaper there, Vazifeh (Duty), referred to Western newsreels about Nazi atrocities shown in Iranian movie houses to create a vivid paral‑ lel image of the destruction of Tabriz and the maltreatment of its citizens by government forces (474). This reference shows the powerful impressions that wartime newsreels had left on Iranians, providing a visual vocabulary to be invoked for domestic situations. Communism was popular among the intelligentsia disaffected with capi‑ talism and with the Shah. The release of the notorious Group-­53, consisting of fifty-­t hree communists and intellectuals, led to the formation of the Tudeh (Mass) Party in 1941, perhaps the most intellectually exciting and socially powerful political party. And it was under the sponsorship of the Iran-­Soviet Cultural Relations Society that the first Congress of Iranian Writers took place in Tehran in 1946, featuring a who’s who of writers. However, the edu‑ cated class was small, as borne out by the U.S. State Department’s estimate that 85 to 90 percent of Iran’s population of 15 million was illiterate.38 Un‑ like the American and British cultural efforts, which were designed to reach both the Iranian masses and the elites, ironically, those of the Soviet Union, which championed the world’s toiling masses, seemed to have been either directed primarily at the intelligentsia or they managed to primarily attract i nter natio nal haggling

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them, for the Soviet Union’s success was “greatest among school teachers, col‑ lege students, and young writers.”39 Ervand Abrahamian’s figures corroborate the heavy representation of these strata in the Tudeh Party (1982:330–31). The names of the writers who were either members or sympathizers constitute a who’s who of postwar modern literature and poetry: Mahmud Afrashteh, Jalal Al‑e Ahmad, Ahmad Aram, Taqi Arani, Malek al-­Shoara Bahar, Sadeq Chu‑ bak, Mahmud Etemadzadeh (Behazin), Ebrahim Golestan, Fakhreddin Gor‑ gani, Sadeq Hedayat, Mahmud Javaheri, Morteza Keyvan, Loretta (Varto Tar‑ ian), Khalil Maleki, Naqi Milani, Mohammad Moin, Nader Naderpour, Said Naficy, Abdolhosain Nushin, Rasul Parvizi, Ahmad Shamlu, Mohammad Ta‑ fazzoli, Feraidun Tavalloli, and Nima Yushij (Ali Esfandiari). Several were involved in theater, such as Nushin and Loretta, and at least one, Golestan, later became a prominent new-­wave and documentary filmmaker (Golestan resigned from the party in the late 1940s, along with Khalil Maleki and Al‑e Ahmad). In addition, many Tudeh members went to the movies frequently. The par‑ ty’s success with the urban working classes and workers’ unions also gave it unprecedented political muscle, with the strong participation of Azari and Christians. Of the twelve members of the executive committee of the Union of Cinema Attendants in 1944–46, for example, three were Christians (Abra‑ hamian 1982:336). Before the Tudeh Party was officially banned, members hung out openly at modernist cafés with other members of the intelligentsia and attended movie houses frequently. For example, Morteza Keyvan, an ac‑ tive party member and a gifted writer, in letters to his friend Mostafa Far‑ zaneh in Paris, states that he went to the movies perhaps once or twice a month for relaxation. This was during the two years of his political activism, both clandestine and open, on behalf of the party, which ultimately led to his execution (Farzaneh 2005/1384:102, 104, 109, 118). Nighttime work for the party even interfered with his moviegoing. In a letter to the filmmaker Fe­ raidun Rahnema in Paris, he laments his having missed Orson Welles’s Mac‑ beth (1948) due to “work” every night that the film was on (“You will curse me for having missed it”), but he gives the good news of planning to see Welles’s The Stranger (1946) that night, if “work” does not interfere again. It appears that most of the films he wished to see were highbrow Western movies, some of which he saw in the original language in a Tehran cinema club (Keyvan 2003/1982:232–33). He also went to popular films, such as John Farrows’s The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948) but was critical of it. He states that “the film does not have much except great music and some superb mise-­en-­scène,” but

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that Edward G. Robinson’s “remarkable” acting “is truly watchable” (Keyvan 2003/1982:259). The darkness and anonymity of movie houses continued to make these es‑ tablishments conducive to meetings of the political opposition, particularly Tudeh members and other leftists. Alavi’s sister, for example, reports that she used to drop off packages of books at the Mayak Cinema box office in Tehran to be delivered to her brother, who was in prison as a member of the Group­53 (Alavi’s own account in his novel Her Eyes of using movie houses for left‑ ist gatherings is probably autobiographical) (Alavi 2004/1383:43). At the same time, the Tudeh Party used the auditorium of the Mayak Cinema for less clan‑ destine purposes, like official celebrations. One example was the graduation party for women who had passed literary night classes in 1946 (72). These uses show the integration of movie houses into leftist political and cultural activities. One Tudeh sympathizer drawn to Marxism through cinema and Soviet cultural activities was Bijan Jazani, who in the 1960s would ironically be‑ come both a capitalist filmmaker, making advertising films, and a leader of the Marxist underground guerrillas, Fadaiyan‑e Khalq‑e Iran (People’s Fadai‑ yan of Iran, pfoi). As his wife, Mihan Jazani, tells it, in his youth Bijan was very knowledgeable and eloquent about life in the Soviet Union, the source for which was not only the books and periodicals he read but also the “propa‑ ganda role of voks,” including the movies and the pleasant atmosphere of the House of Culture, in which they were screened. She writes: “One of our inex‑ pensive forms of entertainment was to attend the voks cinema. We used to attend it at least once a week or once a month. Watching films from a country that was our utopia in the beautiful garden of the Society [Iran-­Soviet Cultural Relations Society] located in North Kakh Avenue, was for us a very pleasant experience that fed our imagination” (Jazani 1999/1378:22). That pleasant ex‑ perience fed not only the knowledge and imagination but also the career of the future urban guerrilla. In future years he would open an advertising com‑ pany, Tabli Film (with a partner, Harun Yashayai), which made industrial and advertising films promoting consumer products, making him what his pros‑ ecutor in his political trial of 1967 derisively called a “communist million‑ aire” (45). He led a double life, using his film earnings to underwrite the clan‑ destine activities of the Fadaiyan. These activities led to his arrest, torture, condemnation to a long prison term, and eventual execution—­some called it assassination—­under the pretext that he and eight other comrades had at‑ tempted to escape.40

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A Four-­Partner National Cinema Dance: Film Marketplace or Ideological Battleground? The U.S. embassy had hoped that adding Hollywood travelogues and cartoons to their program would assist the Americans in gaining traction in the politi‑ cal and ideological arena over their wartime allies. As the U.S. press attaché noted, Hollywood movies “are very essential if American films on the Iranian circuit are to compare favorably with those of the British from Victory House and those of the Russians from voks.”41 Showing entertainment movies could have increased the American commercial film companies’ income, were it not for the U.S. government’s policy of providing its allies, such as Britain, with ample negative raw stock while limiting the raw stock supply to its own commercial companies. This curious situation allowed Britain to strike film prints for distribution to Iran, while American companies were unable to do so, thereby losing their toehold in the nascent but growing film market and on ideological battlegrounds in Iran. Because of this policy mgm, for example, was unable to supply Iran Cinema with the number of 16mm film prints that the latter had already purchased for 1945.42 In fact, mgm was so short of raw positive stock that it was unable to supply Iran Cinema with “even a yard of it” on which to print Persian subtitles, while the British readily sold the positive stock through Victory House.43 The U.S. government deemed film distribution important enough to spend considerable sums on film equipment, educational films, the nefc mo‑ bile units, and Nilla Cook’s salary. The U.S. press attaché felt that once the “educational and social benefits” of the educational film circuit had become evident, this cooperative effort between Iran and the United States would re‑ sult in considerable financial savings for the United States and in increased “local good-­w ill” among Iranians.44 In turn, the Iranian government, which was bent on the country’s rapid Westernization and on taking over the ideo‑ logical apparatuses for state-­building and propaganda purposes, was willing to pay the salary of Lieutenant Golsorkhi and other nefc technicians and to take care of some of the mobile units’ transportation costs. In essence, this was not only a four-­partner national dance but also a four-­partner national public diplomacy. The British Council in Iran did not separate 16mm educational films from 35mm entertainment films, and its mobile film units carried both types of projectors and films. As Cook noted, the British documentaries “may be ren‑ dered palatable by Mickey Mouse” and by hundreds of other American enter‑ tainment movies, which they borrowed “from under the nose of the Ameri­ 24

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cans.” She suggested that Americans, too, erase the distinction between theatrical and nontheatrical film types and between 35mm and 16mm for‑ mats. She argued that there were numerous opportunities to show educa‑ tional films at charities to large audiences if they could be spiced up with theatrical movies. She was happy to report that three thousand people had watched the 16mm documentary film on tuberculosis, They Do Come Back, whose screening in the Officers’ Club had been sponsored by the Tuberculo‑ sis Aid Society. However, she was greatly annoyed that because of a lack of a 35mm projector, she could not accede to the society’s request to show an enter‑ tainment feature as well, as American features and documentaries together could “outshine” the British rival.45 Cook argued that if enough film prints could be obtained to feed Iran Cin‑ ema’s proposed network of “little cinemas,” they could nurture “the taste for American films in the new regions before anyone else gets a chance to cre‑ ate other tastes.”46 She openly worried about the Soviet films shown in feu‑ dal rural Iran. To prevent Soviet influence, she prescribed American movies, which in the aftermath of the Second World War could make the world hap‑ pier and loftier: “One Mickey Rooney would cure them of all that [attraction to the Soviet Union]. One Deanna Durbin in I Can’t Help Singing would give them a better picture of America than anything short of a complete transla‑ tion of Whitman.”47 The exclusionary and aggressive promotion of the films of one country, such as Cook’s pushing of American fiction and nonfiction films, was the other side of film censorship, for in relatively closed societies, promotion of one nation’s films often results in the repression of another nation’s films. Cook’s career in Iran consisted of both modalities—­film promotion and film repression. Iran Cinema’s project to create a network of three hundred little cinemas never materialized, but the nefc constituted a first inchoate step toward an official network of nontheatrical, educational, and propaganda films in the country—­something that Reza Shah’s pogo had not attempted. Mohammad Reza Shah’s government’s motivation was apparently to modernize the nation by centralizing culture, by bringing films under its control rather than allow‑ ing them to become tools of foreign governments’ propaganda.48 In practice, however, a complicated dance of political and cinematic equilibrium among Iranian, American, British, and Soviet governments resulted. To prevent motion-­picture operators hired by foreign governments, par‑ ticularly by the Soviet Union, from entering Iranian schools or from circu‑ lating in rural areas, the nefc hired Iranian technicians, whom apparently i nter natio nal haggling

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the Americans trained and whose salaries they initially paid through the Office of War Information. It appears that Iranians did not consider the United States a foreign government for the purpose of this project. To prevent unau‑ thorized foreign films from entering the schools, the Ministry of the Interior forbade showing foreign documentaries without a censorship license from the Department of Theaters, something that up until then had been required only of commercial and theatrical movies. Cook stated categorically that the object of the ban was “of course . . . British and Russian films,” not American movies.49 The ban was apparently instigated because of Soviet efforts to force Mayak Cinema (whose owner had been kidnapped) to distribute Russian pro‑ paganda movies to its provincial circuit. In a clear indication of the tenuous power of the Iranian government after the war, the ministry’s order applied only to the provinces, not to the capital city, where the government, “fearing serious political difficulties,” did not prevent the official Soviet outlet, Setareh Cinema, from showing Soviet propaganda movies.50 Soviet forces were still il‑ legally occupying northwestern Iran and constituted a real internal political contender. Perhaps to appease them, another order from the Ministry of the Interior banned the screening of American “gangster films” in the provinces, a ban that Cook supported. At the same time, the ministry instructed Cook to select “a few artistic and perfectly innocent” Soviet films for inclusion in the nefc school programs “to keep the Russians from coming into the schools themselves.” According to Cook, it was already “too late”51 to root out the Brit‑ ish nontheatrical film circuit from Iran. However, the requirement for licens‑ ing educational films meant that she, as the head of censorship, could subject the British films to censorship or delays. In one case, sixty British films were held up at the British Council in Shiraz for several weeks, awaiting the trans‑ mission of exhibition licenses from the Ministry of the Interior (nefc) to the local police. Because of the dearth of various formations of the film industry and mo‑ dernity, such as modern film labs, studios, and cinema chains, in Cook’s opinion any effort to establish an “independent” Iranian educational film exhibition circuit would ironically have to “depend almost entirely upon the amount of help the Department of Theaters receives from the American Gov‑ ernment.”52 These cinematic measures and countermeasures demonstrate that the operations of the nefc, the British Council, the Anglo-­Persian Insti‑ tute, the Iran-­America Society, and the Soviet Union’s various cultural arms played unequally into the competitive public diplomacy rivalries of the former allies, favoring the American side. Americanization was overdetermined be‑ cause of the ways in which U.S. diplomatic, military, commercial, and intelli‑ 26

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gence entities were involved in all aspects of the nefc’s operations. Cook was well aware of Iran’s desire to create an independent national organization for the controlled exhibition of nontheatrical films, and she warned the U.S. em‑ bassy not to set up a parallel educational film circuit to compete with it. “If the program is to succeed as a long-­term American activity in Iran, the Persians themselves must incorporate the films into their educational systems. . . . The Iranian National Educational Film Circuit has set up a statute which should be taken into consideration.”53 She was correct that setting up a rival Ameri‑ can nontheatrical film exhibition circuit would brand the films shown as for‑ eign propaganda; she was naive to think that inserting the same films into the nefc program would integrate them into Iranian nationalism. The films would bolster state-­sponsored nationalism, not the one that was bubbling up from the people, whose object of hatred was as much the Iranian state itself as foreign governments. The circuit set up by the nefc could only function as part of the new Shah’s ideological state apparatuses. The son had taken his father’s invention of the pogo a step further into film and mass media. Other governmental organizations, such as the Ministry of Education, attempted to set up their own educational film circuits, but these failed for various reasons. The U.S. State Department seemed to have heeded Cook’s advice, for it did not develop a film circuit of its own in Iran. When in the early 1950s it did set up the usis film program to show nontheatrical, educational, propaganda, and newsreel films nationwide in public cinemas and through a network of mobile film units, it was not a parallel network, for by then the nefc had been disbanded. And when, a few years later still, the usis film exhibition circuit became part of the government, forming the Fine Arts Administration, the final step was taken in Cook’s recommendations for integrating the exhibition of American films into Iranian governmental structures.

Western Commercial Newsreels and Documentaries Although officially neutral in the Second World War, Iran became embroiled in it because of its location, which provided a land bridge for Britain and the United States to supply their ally the Soviet Union with matériel from the Per‑ sian Gulf, and because of Iran’s oil reserves, which were necessary to fuel the British and American fleets. This and the pro-­German, even pro-­Nazi, atti‑ tudes of some Iranians made the country an ideal place in which to wage pub‑ lic diplomacy wars involving cinema. i nter natio nal haggling

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Wartime Films During the war, both the Allied and Axis armed forces filmed their activities, including those in Iran, using military or newsreel camerapersons. These films articulated their nations’ interests and circulated a specific vision of Iran and of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi both to Iranians and to the world. For the Allies, this included covering the lend-­lease program, which involved transporting American and British war material from the Persian Gulf to the Soviet Union using the Iranian rail system; the Tehran Conference in which Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill made plans; the plight of Polish refugees stranded in Iran; the expulsion of Soviet forces from Azarbaijan; and the free flow of Iranian oil to the Allied armed forces.54 Much of this footage found its way into either military or commercial newsreels. The American military newsreels included Army Air Force Film Report and Combat Film Report and were shown primarily to military personnel. Iranians did not see these military films in movie houses but Western com‑ mercial newsreels about Iran’s participation in the war and the subsequent oil crisis were screened in public cinemas.55 The British newsreels that carried items on Iran included British Movietone News, British Paramount News, Brit‑ ish Pathé Tone, Gaumont British News, Pathé Sound News, and War Pictorial News. Among the American commercial newsreels with Iranian items were Fox News, Hearst Metrotone News, Paramount News, Screen News Digest, United News, Universal, and Warner Pathé News. German newsreels containing Ira‑ nian materials included Deulig Weekly (Deulig Woche), UFA Schmalfilm Maga‑ zine, and UFA Sound Weekly (UFA Tonwoche). Of the Allies and Axis newsreels screened in Iran, the British Movietone News and the German newsreels were the most popular, perhaps because they were provided free of charge to the exhibitors by the British and German embassies, respectively (occasional Ira‑ nian newsreels were also shown).56 The Allied and Axis newsreels differed. Ernest Rose, a newsreel camera‑ man who later served in Iran with the Syracuse Team, noted that American and German newsreels differed in several ways (the British newsreels were more similar to the American newsreels than to those of the Germans). While the American newsreels were brief one-­reelers (about ten minutes) and used to transition the audience into the movie houses, as they were taking their seats, the German newsreels were two or three times as long, and they were shown only after the spectators had been seated and the doors were closed. American newsreels followed the structure of newspapers, with the biggest stories leading and ending with sports and features; German newsreels fol‑ 28

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lowed the logic of narrative movies, beginning with small events and building up to the most dramatic news item (Rose 1973:311). Among the items that British Movietone News carried were Anglo/Soviet Control (1941), Iran Occupied (22 September 1941), Anglo/Persian Coopera‑ tion (1 September 1942), British and Russian Forces (n.d.), With Our Supplies into Iran (17 November 1941), Lend-­Lease to Russia (8 April 1945), Lend-­Lease to Russia (28 May 1945), and Shah of Iran Reviews Troops (February 1948). Narrated in Persian by a voice-­of-­God male narrator, Abolqasem Taheri, who spoke from the point of view of the Allies, these newsreels lauded the Allied war effort, Iran’s role as both a supply route for war materiel and a supplier of oil, and the new Shah’s Western trajectory. The English version of these com‑ mercial newsreels failed to report on the strong public sentiments in Iran about these issues. In Iran Occupied, for example, the narrator states that Ira‑ nians “don’t seem to resent at all” that the Abadan oil refinery has fallen to the Indian troops “under British protection.” In Anglo/Soviet Control, after noting the expulsion of German diplomats and the exile of Reza Shah, the narrator states that the new Shah is “well disposed towards Britain” and that Britain and the Soviet Union must collaborate to defend him and the country over which they once competed. In Shah of Iran Reviews Troops, the narrator states that the Shah who “controls the oil so badly needed by Western powers” re‑ views his troops and pins a medal on the Iranian flag and salutes it. These news items in British Movietone News and similar items in other newsreels offered a rosy view of the Shah’s stability and of the strength of the British and American ties to Iran, which would shatter within a few years. But there was considerable public resentment against British meddling in Iranian politics and against Britain’s unfair oil policies and practices; the sen‑ timent was strong enough that within a decade it would lead to the national‑ ization of Iranian oil concerns under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, who had participated in the Constitutional Revolution. The letter cited in vol‑ ume 1 critiquing the oil industry films In the Land of the Shah and The Per‑ sian Oil Industry provides one forceful example of such resentment as early as the late 1920s. The newsreels were more expressions of British policy than reflections of reality. Their voice-­over narrations were highly nationalistic and self-­serving. In a Gaumont British News item, The Occupation of Iran (1941), the narrator pointedly declares that the reason for occupying Iran was to pre‑ vent Reza Shah from “sell[ing] his own country to Nazi slavery” and to “res‑ cue a nation too weak to act in its own interest.” Pointing to the footage of the British soldiers apparently talking to Iranians, it continues, “once again there is obviously no resentment by Iranian people against our troops,” whom the i nter natio nal haggling

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narrator thanks at the conclusion of the film for carrying out “a delicate task with tact combined with strength that disposes of the Shah who tried to en‑ rich himself at the expense of his fellow countrymen.”57 Such views were shaped by several factors. Despite their independence from their national governments, the British and American commercial news­ reel companies were deferential to them when it came to foreign news, par‑ ticularly that which dealt with war and national security issues. They also did not want to jeopardize their future film market in Iran, whose population was rapidly increasing. Thus they refrained from any critical portrayal of the Shah. According to the Regulations Governing Taking Motion Picture Films and Photographs, Painting, and Drawing of 1938, to film in Iran, newsreel companies needed government permission and government minders, both of which would have been withdrawn had they been critical either of the Shah or of the country. The German newsreels, which were shown until the Allies invaded Iran in mid-­1941, contained scenes filmed in Iran—­and not necessarily war scenes—­ and a Persian narration, spoken ably by Shah Bahram Shahrokh, an Iranian Zoroastrian expatriate in Berlin.58 Both the local scenes and the Persian voice-­ overs made these newsreels very popular with Iranians who, finding national confirmation in them, went to the movies sometimes solely to see these. In‑ stead of acting as agents of othering, the Persian-­language Nazi newsreels had the opposite effect of selfing. As the documentary and newsreel film‑ maker Mohammad Ali Issari told me, the German newsreels had a “profound impact” on him and the country, for “whenever one of them had an item on Iran, it made us very happy and proud, it puffed up our feathers” (Naficy 1982a). Such cinematic self-­bolstering fed into the pro-­German sentiments both of the government and of the general population.59 Issari claims that the German newsreels were “partly responsible for creating in Iranians a friendly attitude toward Germany, which resulted in the occupation of Iran by the Al‑ lies” (Issari 1989:178). The American News of the Day newsreel also carried Persian narration, but apparently only after the war. Yet when News of the Day, along with Brit‑ ish Movietone News, began charging Iranian exhibitors fees for showing them, the exhibitors lost interest in them. This left a temporary newsreel vacuum, filled in 1945 when the U.S. embassy in Tehran began importing issues of United Newsreel, which were shown in cinemas as part of the nefc program. This, too, soon ended, creating another newsreel vacuum, which the usia newsreels and documentaries filled in the 1950s.

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Oil Nationalization Films After the hot war, the interests of the West shifted to fighting the Cold War, which had its beginnings in Iran with the Soviet Union’s refusal to withdraw its forces from Iran after the Second World War and its support of the pro-­ Soviet “independent” republics in Iranian Kurdistan and Azarbaijan (Cottam 1988; McFarland 1981). The Soviets were finally forced out of Iran in 1946 by a combination of U.S. and United Nations pressure and the astute politics of the Iranian prime minister, Ahmad Qavam. The jubilant liberation of Tabriz and other cities was documented in postwar Iranian newsreels. The rise of nation‑ alism under Prime Minister Mosaddeq, who nationalized the Anglo Iranian Oil Company and tried to curtail the power of the Shah and his family, as well as increasing Soviet influence and the growing popularity of the Tudeh Party, threatened American and British interests and resulted in a coup d’état in Au‑ gust 1953. This coup, funded, engineered, and implemented by the cia, the British secret service, mi6, and Iranian military personnel, removed Mosad‑ deq from power and reinstated the Shah (Roosevelt 1979). This intervention would mar Iranian-­American relations for decades, undermining the legiti‑ macy of the Shah and discrediting the United States as a liberating third force in Iranian politics. Many British and American film and television newsreels covered these developments. A case in point was the eighteen-­minute newsreel titled Crisis in Iran (1950), released by March of Time, which presented the American ver‑ sion of the rise of Iranian nationalism in this period. One sequence shows the Iranian ambassador to the United States, Nasrollah Entezam, delivering a statement on the oil crisis. Considered an unimportant bit of rhetoric then, the statement takes on new meaning and importance when regarded in the light of the later anti-­Shah Islamic Revolution. Entezam said: “For fifty years the oil resources of my country have been exploited by a foreign company whose profits have been sent overseas. . . . The time has now come . . . to put Iranian natural resources to use for the well-­being and benefit of its own peo‑ ple.” The film also contains a brief statement by the U.S. Supreme Court Jus‑ tice William O. Douglas, who had traveled to Iran, in which he acknowledges the antigovernment and antiforeign movements as a “popular revolution” that cannot be stopped by any country. The film remains congruent with Cold War formulas, however, and ends with the claim that Iran’s real enemy is a long-­ standing one, Russia. Many British and American newsreels covered the oil issue, including Brit‑

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ish Paramount News, Gaumont British News, Pathé Sound News, Paramount News, Telenews, Movietone News, Universal, Hearst Metrotone News, World in Film, and In the News (see the oil sections in Naficy 1984c:86–96). These were usually devoted to news events, but there were also many documentaries and television programs, which tended to put the oil issue into a context, albeit from a Western perspective. In this period the Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company (object of the nationaliza‑ tion effort) made several films about the oil industry without referring much to this watershed event in Iran-­British relations. The company’s pro-­British at‑ titude is manifest in the voice-­over narrations, of which I have copies. Among these films was Ralph Keene’s Persian Story (1952), a twenty-­one-­minute doc‑ umentary made for Greenpark Productions, which follows the oil from its source in barren hills to the Abadan refinery, “the greatest oil refinery in the world,” where the company provides many amenities for its workers. Filmed before the nationalization of the oil industry by Mosaddeq, the film propa‑ gates typical Orientalist ideas. It begins: “These barren hills, this country of golden desolation, holds a great treasure—­oil. The shepherds and the tribes‑ men neither knew it, nor needed it. It was left for the strangers to come there, with both the need and knowledge; pitching their camps where no one came but the buzzard and the goat. This sterile wilderness is the beggar’s cloak over a purse of gold.” After showing oil-­industry processes, the film touts the oil company’s contributions to Iranian modernity and to the good life of the residents of Abadan, with “amenities of a modern city” where “the races meet,” including schools, clubs, hospitals, and clinics—­Persian Story makes for a truly institutional film. It ends this way: “All the arguments and un‑ certainties and heartbreaks must not obscure that in this place generations of British people have devoted their lives—­perhaps unconsciously—­to bring benefit to millions they would never see, and never know. For without oil the world as we know it could not exist” (figure 2). 60 Strategic Iran (1952), made for the U.S. Department of Defense for use by armed forces personnel, describes the geography, government, and cultural, economic, and political features of the country and emphasizes the impor‑ tance of oil. Kenneth Richter’s film, Iran: Between Two Worlds (1953), made for Encyclopaedia Britannica, shows the historical roots of Iran and compares the Westernization of the country’s urban centers under the propulsion of the oil industry with the backwardness of rural regions, which the film claims have “remained unchanged for twenty-­five centuries.” CBS Reports presented Iran: Brittle Ally (1959), in which the journalists Edward R. Murrow and Winston Burdett examine the prospects of an oil-­r ich Iran sharing a two thousand– 32

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2  Production still from Ralph Keene’s documentary Persian Story.

mile border with the Soviet Union, a nation faced with the terrible contrasts of oil wealth and entrenched poverty. These films portrayed Iran as a coun‑ try in transition, strategic yet brittle, teetering between cataclysmic options. Like the other films, Iran: Brittle Ally offered Westernization as the only op‑ tion, highlighting the Shah’s westward reforms just before his declaration of the White Revolution. The most important Iranian newsreel of its kind was Ismail Kushan’s color film The Visit of Prime Minister and Envoys to the United States (Mosaferat‑e Nokhostvazir va Haiat‑e E’zami beh Emrika, 1951), which was shown to enthu‑ siastic Majles deputies and dignitaries in Tehran’s Crystal Cinema. It showed Mosaddeq and the Iranian delegates defending the case of Iran before the United Nations’ Security Council and their reception at the White House in the United States and in Egypt. The National Iranian Oil Company and its contractor, Ebrahim Golestan, also filmed some news items of Mosaddeq-­era events, including the day of the coup, discussed elsewhere. Because of the importance of the flow of Iranian oil to Western powers and of the Shah’s move toward capitalist reforms—­including his White Revo‑ lution, urged by the Kennedy administration—­the integrity of Iran and the casting of the Shah as a progressive bulwark against communism constituted primary goals. To preserve the Shah and his image and to bolster American interests, a massive economic and military assistance program and an indus‑ trialized media campaign were deemed necessary (see below). Most docu‑ mentary films in the 1950s and 1960s characterized the Shah as “moderniz‑ ing,” “progressive,” “young,” and “Western-­minded.” In the 1970s, a Pahlavi “circle of influence” comprising influential persons and firms in Iran and the United States would further bolster this image-­building industry. i nter natio nal haggling

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The Ministry of Culture or Culture Inc.? United States Information Agency and Its Films During the early years of the Cold War, the United States followed an official foreign policy of “helping Iranians help themselves” in stemming the threat of communism. Naturally, this goal became part of the U.S. public diplomacy. Charged with meeting it was the United States Information Agency (usia), which came into being in August 1953 from the rubble of what remained from the International Information Administration (iia) after Joseph McCarthy’s hearings in the Senate. According to the Eisenhower administration, the mis‑ sion of the usia was to offer evidence to peoples of other nations by means of communication media that “the objectives and politics of the United States are in harmony with and will advance their legitimate aspirations for freedom, progress and peace.” Similar to the British Council, the usia was to carry out its cultural diplomacy mission primarily by “explaining and interpreting” to foreign peoples the objectives and policies of the U.S. government. It was to do this by “depicting imaginatively” the correlation between U.S. poli­cies and the legitimate aspirations of other peoples of the world, by “unmasking and countering hostile attempts to distort or to frustrate” U.S. objectives and poli‑ cies, and by “delineating those important aspects of the life and culture” of the United States that clarify political objectives (Sandeen 1995:113). In the aftermath of the successful coup against Mosaddeq, the usia’s mis‑ sion in Iran involved enhancing the prestige of the monarchy, bolstering the morale of the Iranian government and military services, and strengthening the confidence of the Iranian government and people in the ability of the armed forces to defend the country. 61 The aim was not just to create a one-­way flow of propaganda from the United States to Iran but also to enhance the flow of propaganda from the Iranian government to its people so as to “strengthen internal cohesiveness and internal security of the nation.”62 This monologic, centralized, top-­down communication structure was part of the new U.S. aid and development assistance program to the third world, which the Iranian government also adopted. It served formations of modernity and of national cinema. Through its arm in Iran, the United States Information Service (usis), the usia trained personnel and produced and distributed films, which invigorated the industrial formations necessary to transform documentary cinema from its artisanal beginnings into hybrid, industrial maturity. But the U.S.-­sponsored coup against an elected Iranian government countered the effects of the elaborate usia/usis propaganda machine. By the mid-­1960s, the usia had grown to a massive organization employ‑ 34

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ing three thousand people in the United States and eight thousand abroad (Sargeant 1965:90). The functions of this unofficial ministry of culture aimed at foreigners, however, were not performed solely by the U.S. government agencies. The usia had an Office of Private Cooperation whose philosophy was to use “private agencies and the private sector to the maximum extent to accomplish usia objectives” (108, emphasis in the original). American pri‑ vate philanthropic organizations, such as the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations, were active abroad and at home in promoting American values and cultural exchange relations with foreign governments and people (Ar‑ nove 1980). Hollywood commercial newsreel companies participated in the “imaginative depiction” of U.S. objectives and policies. By the middle of the 1950s, American broadcast networks were also airing public defense and se‑ curity programming about the Cold War produced by the U.S. government, with the public taking no apparent notice (Bernhard 1999:3). It is this conjoin‑ ing of sectors to propagate U.S. government public diplomacy tenets that cre‑ ated the massive, rhizomatic, and global ministry of culture, or what Herbert Schiller has called “Culture Inc.,” with its vast potential for cultural imperial‑ ism.63 The directors of the usis acted like ministry of culture and information officers. They managed usis libraries and English-­language programs, and they worked with the press, the radio and television industry, news film ser‑ vices, and other informational media of the country; they arranged exhibits and speaking programs and created a network of binational centers; and they reported on attitudes toward the United States. In keeping with the Smith-­ Mundt act’s emphasis on the use of private American media, the program also involved assistance to usia representatives operating in foreign countries (Gordon 1965:37–38). However, this public diplomacy, or what amounted to a global ideological warfare waged through the mass media and culture industry, was inherently contradictory. For at the same time that the “ministry of culture” cum Culture Inc. projected American ideals of freedom, individualism, private enterprise, anticommunism, and democracy, it often supported undemocratic though anticommunist foreign governments such as that in Iran. The messages of the usia products (chiefly newsreels and documentary films for Iran) were thus always already tainted, forcing Iranians into disillusion with U.S. demo­ cratic promises. The usia released its media materials not only under its own imprimatur but also often as unattributed independent productions of local groups unrelated to the U.S. government. This cynical use of attribution fur‑ ther reinforced disillusionment, with disastrous consequences for relations between Iran and the United States. i nter natio nal haggling

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Iran News (Akhbar‑e Iran) and Other USIS Newsreels On 8 July 1954 (17 Tir 1333), after the demise of the American News of the Day and United Newsreel and of the British Movietone News came a new newsreel in Persian, which soon became weekly. It was the first newsreel produced inside Iran in Farsi dealing with Iranian issues. Called Akhbar‑e Iran (Iran News), it was produced by the usis/Tehran. It lasted some ten years. Although, as noted, several foreign embassies were involved in screening their countries’ films in their cultural institutions in Tehran and elsewhere, no other for‑ eign newsreel was produced inside Iran regularly and distributed so widely. At the height of its operation, the usis supplied twenty-­five prints of Iran News on 35mm film free of charge to commercial movie houses throughout Iran—­ten were circulated to Tehran cinemas and the remaining fifteen to cinemas in other major cities. Some of the filmed items, such as those extol‑ ling U.S.-­supported Point IV development programs and the activities of the Shah, were also printed on 16mm stock and shown to villagers and schools by means of the usis network of forty mobile cinemas (Issari 1989:182).64 Ap‑ parently, seven mobile railroad cars were also equipped with “program mate‑ rials” to serve communities near railway lines.65 It is not known whether in addition to lending books and propaganda materials these trains screened films for these communities. If they did, it would have represented an updat‑ ing of the so-­called agitprop trains that roamed the Soviet Union in the hey‑ day of the Russian Revolution. Under the direction of the seminal filmmak‑ ers Dziga Vertov in the 1920s and Alexander Medvedkin in the 1930s, these trains showed films, lent books, and distributed posters, pamphlets, and other propaganda materials on their stops. They also filmed documentary footage or fictional films on their way, which were shown en route and then later ed‑ ited into other films (Leyda 1983). Both the similarities and the differences between these two media vehicles are instructive. If the communist agitprop trains (and ships) agitated for political revolution against the despotic monar‑ chic regime of the czars and for the consolidation of a new communist regime by means of film and other propaganda, the usia agitprop mobile vans (and trains) worked to suppress political dissent against the authoritarian monar‑ chic regime of the Pahlavis and for propping it up. Normally, each Iran News newsreel was between five to seven minutes in length and contained four to five stories, half of which dealt with Iran, in ways that supported the goals of U.S. foreign policy and public diplomacy. The newsreels publicized development projects funded by the United States un‑ der its Point IV program. They supported anti-­Soviet regional pacts, such the 36

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Baghdad Pact and cento (Central Treaty Organization), by featuring films of the meetings, conferences, and joint military maneuvers. They countered communist influence by including items that showcased American democ‑ racy at home, bolstered Iranians’ confidence in U.S. institutions, and under‑ scored the ties that bound Iran to the United States. They highlighted the role of the Iranian armed forces in protecting, securing, and unifying the country. They focused favorably on Mohammad Reza Shah, including his trips abroad. The usia policy here was to emphasize the “American respect for the Shah and his country” and “the Shah’s capabilities as a progressive young mon‑ arch who understands his country’s problems.”66 Finally, Iran News carried other Iranian news events, such as the periodic devastating earthquakes that struck the country; important news events and foreign policy items from the United States; and human interest features, including sports and entertain‑ ment items. A Persian language voice-­over by an unseen voice-­of-­God male narrator accompanied the visuals. Because Iran News was considered an official U.S. government product, an American officer responsible for content oversaw the usis/Tehran unit that produced it. The Iranian staff carried out the newsreels’ production. Such on-­ the-­job training contributed to Iranian documentary cinema. Iran News also sustained the two major Tehran film labs, Badie Film Studio and Iran Film. According to Issari, the usis assistant film officer between 1950 and 1965, these labs “would have gone out of business if it had not been for the addi‑ tional work provided them by the newsreels” (1989:179). This is particularly true of the early 1950s, when the local production of features and documen‑ taries proved meager. The downside of the Iran News operation was that the experience of working for it locked future filmmakers into an “official” style, persisting for decades in industrial and documentary cinema.67 Iran News was an essential component of U.S. policy inside Iran during the Cold War. According to John Hamilton, a usis/Tehran film officer (1950–54), cheaper media were not available to the U.S. government. The usis/Tehran could not get the local press to print “U.S.-­originated materials,” radio broad‑ casting was not sufficiently developed, and the reception of the Voice of Amer‑ ica radio signal was also very poor (quoted in Issari 1989:176–77). By the time Iran News ceased in 1964, 402 issues had been produced and exhibited. Culture Inc.’s project of American projection into Iran by means of film, however, extended beyond these newsreels. The usis/Tehran’s production unit also released an annual newsreel, Iran News Review, a summary of im‑ portant Iranian and American news of the year. It was released at New Year (Noruz, in March), the hottest season for film viewing. Specials, Iran News i nter natio nal haggling

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Special Release, longer than Iran News and Iran News Review, were devoted to single topics. These were documentaries about the Shah and his foreign travels, enhancing his domestic prestige by highlighting the respect he was receiving abroad. The Iran News Special Release of May 1957 was thirty-­nine minutes long, covering the Shah’s visit to Saudi Arabia; the edition of July 1958 showed twenty minutes on the Shah’s state visit to Japan. After the demise of Iran News, the usis/Tehran began exhibiting another usia newsreel, the Iran-­Washington Report (1964–67). It was “to project U.S. objectives, aspirations, and themes,” creating support for the United States as a leader of the “free world” (Naficy 1984c:218). In its three-­year span, at least seventy installments were produced containing first-­person reports on vari‑ ous aspects of life in the United States. This newsreel was designed for tele‑ vision, which by the mid-­1960s was becoming a powerful force in Iran. The Iran-­Washington Report was produced primarily on videotape, although 16mm film kinescope prints were also available. The privately owned Iran Television in Tehran, which started in 1958, and its southern branch in Abadan, which began in 1960, aired these and other usis films (Katz and Shinar 1974:22). The Iran-­Washington Report contained a range of U.S. topics: rural coopera‑ tives, Father Flanagan’s Boys Town, the California Polytechnic College, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, July Fourth celebrations, the U.S. insur‑ ance system, President Johnson’s Great Society, Navajo Indians, and the U.S. sugar cane and date industries. The Iran-­Washington Report also ran several programs on issues concerning both Iran and the United States, such as Ira‑ nian students and professors in the United States (Hormoz Farhat and Ha‑ mid Mowlana), Iranian-­U.S. relations, the Iran-­A merica Society, and cento. In 1968, the title of the Iran-­Washington Report was changed to American Sketches: its aim was “to bring to the people of Iran an intimate glimpse of the American in his everyday life and also to promote understanding of Ameri‑ can goals through the documentation of government and private programs of interest to Iranians” (Naficy 1984c:219). True to this goal, it contained many items concerning life, personalities, issues, and industries in the United States: the election of Carl Stokes as the first black mayor in Cleveland; the Headstart program; the works of the designer Raymond Loewy and the photo­ journalist Ken Heyman; the use of jazz in American classrooms; the many uses of the helicopter; the U.S. Weather Bureau; and water pollution control.68 Iran News, the Iran-­Washington Report, and American Sketches informed and put up mirrors that reflected an idealized projection of both American and Iranian modern lives in which Iranians could imagine themselves. The newsreels served both to other Iranians and to empower them. With other 38

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me­diating institutions, they served to overdetermine modernity in Iran, ide‑ ationally synchronizing Iran with the West at a time when third world libera‑ tion movements and counterculture movements in the West were becoming increasingly critical of capitalism and attracted to communist, socialist, and Islamic alternatives.

USIS Educational, Public Health, and Agricultural Documentaries The contributions of the usia and the usis to Iranian documentary cinema started in the early 1950s, a few years before Iran’s domestic production of Iran News newsreel during the rise of antimonarchy nationalism and the na‑ tionalization of the British-­controlled oil industry under Mosaddeq. As part of its program of winning hearts and minds, the usis had begun in 1951 to show American-­produced newsreels and educational films by means of its network of mobile film units. At first, these films were dubbed into Persian; but it soon became clear that even the dubbed versions were not reaching less-­educated people. Cold War need forbade defeat. Iranian premodern formations—­ cultural habits, oral traditions, social conditions, gender inequality, illiteracy, and collective relations—­were inimical to pleasurable film viewing and to learning from the movies. A lengthy, confidential report by the U.S. State De‑ partment offers the following rare assessment of the primitive film-­culture and spectatorial formation in Iran in 1949: Foreign films are shown in the cities where electric current is avail‑ able. All films are censored by the police in the Central Office in Teh‑ ran. Although the majority of foreign films shown are American, the most popular films are, of course, those in Persian. Attendance at the movies, even in Tehran, has not become the habit for which cinema managers hoped. This is partly because the public cannot afford the expense, partly because the theaters are unattractive. The small atten‑ dance seems to be due principally to the fact that the Iranians by habit and interest prefer to talk. They are perfectly satisfied to sit with friends in conversation and drink tea. Their main interest is concentrated upon local events and gossip that immediately concern them. Country folk whose work day extends from sunrise to sunset have no spare money for the movies, are accustomed to go to bed early, and have little compre‑ hension of the life or world shown on the screen. The movement in the films is too rapid and much of the material represented is too unfamil‑ iar. One of the most welcome films in Iran was Walt Disney’s cartoon of the mosquito, made as propaganda for malaria control.69 i nter natio nal haggling

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Given this assessment, the U.S. embassy in Tehran worked to update its in‑ volvement in the nontheatrical film circuit, the nefc. It began stocking a film library of about 600 titles, 125 of which were dubbed into Persian. These ran from movies on life in the United States to highly technical films on engi‑ neering and public health, and they were lent free of charge to schools, clubs, and civil and military organizations, often using the American mobile film units.70 They reached some two hundred thousand people per month during the second quarter of 1951.71 However, since they were made for Western spec‑ tators in a style that was deemed inappropriate in Iran, the usia decided to use domestically made films. Local documentary films and filmmakers, how‑ ever, proved scarce. Don Williams, the head of Syracuse University’s Audiovisual Center, was engaged in September 1950 to conduct a feasibility study of producing films inside Iran. He met with government ministers, people from the University of Tehran, U.S. embassy officials, and representatives of the Iran-­Rockefeller and Near East Foundations. He also visited agricultural, public health, and teacher-­training institutes. He was impressed by positive and welcoming Ira‑ nians and came to believe that visual education could be an inexpensive con‑ duit for scientific education in a country as vast as Iran.72 He worked out with these officials the outline of a plan for visual education to further modernity in Iran. The plan recommended that an audiovisual center be established at the Ministry of Education and that the usia become directly involved in film‑ making and visual education. Under a contract between the usia and Syra‑ cuse University, Williams headed a team eventually comprising thirty-­eight audiovisual and film production specialists—­known as the Syracuse Team—­ that operated in Iran from March 1951 to June 1959.73 The Syracuse Team produced twenty-­t wo films, many of which dealt with methods for improving the dismal states of public health, sanitation, nutrition, and agriculture.74 With help from Iranian filmmakers it had newly trained, the team produced another sixty documentaries, which appeared in cinemas before feature movies and which were distributed to outlying areas via mobile units.75 Some general documentaries about Iran were also made. Among these was People of Iran, a celebrated series of five half-hour installments that ex‑ tolled the historical sites and major industries of Iran.76 Distributed widely to schools for their geography lessons, these visual segments were perhaps “the first educational films to be made locally and tailored to Iranian needs,” allow‑ ing “millions of students and young adults . . . who had never traveled beyond their home towns,” to learn about their own country (Issari 1989:172–73).77 The Americans regarded these films as instrumental in bringing about “a 40

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feeling of security that will make communist penetration more difficult,”78 and they reached not only a massive urban audience in commercial movie houses but also a large rural audience in villages where mobile film units were active. For example, in the early 1950s, these units made fifty film visits to villages near Tehran and twenty film visits to villages near Isfahan in just one week. In one film visit in the village of Abar, eight hundred men and eight hundred women, seated separately, watched two public health documentaries: Dysentery and Cleanliness Brings Health (with the former repeated a second time) (Warne 1956:97–98). These high local figures added up to a substantial national audience, even in 1951, when only eighteen mobile units were operat‑ ing. According to Issari, the “usis presented an average of 800 separate film shows a month (225 of them in Tehran and vicinity) to a total monthly audi‑ ence of about 350,000 people” (1989:173).79 The mobile units, which at the height of their success numbered forty, were an important means of U.S. public diplomacy and Iranian national pro‑ jection and education at a time when other media technology, including ra‑ dio and 16mm film projectors, were unavailable in most regions and illiteracy was high. 80 Each unit was a jeep or a station wagon equipped with a portable 16mm sound projector, a filmstrip projector, a portable screen, roof-­mounted loudspeakers, a power generator, and other equipment (figure 3). The driver was also the projectionist, and he brought films to villages where local enter‑ tainers worked the crowd before screenings. Sometimes, they took specialists with them, who explained the films as they screened and took questions at the end. The unit visiting Abar, for example, took along an American nurse who explained the two public health films. These interpreters helped the au‑ dience understand not only the films’ topic but also their visual grammar. For example, a unit that visited the village of Falavarjan near Isfahan showed two films on locust control and water sanitation to five hundred men and women. An Iranian public health worker gave an introductory talk before the films in which he not only described the films but also told the audience what to look for. At the films’ end an Iranian nurse further lectured the attendees to reem‑ phasize the important points (Warne 1956:98–99) (figure 4). The usis educational films developed slowly, using straightforward and linear narratives for Iranian audiences, containing recognizable scenes and objects and a persistent voice-­of-­God Persian-­language narration, which rep‑ licated at the textual level the monologic structure of the documentary as a one-­way communication medium, from the government to its subjects. That this omniscient narration was often given from the viewpoints of government officials or other authority figures enhanced the connection between the films’ i nter natio nal haggling

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3  A typical usis mobile film unit with an operator who sometimes acted as a narrator, and his portable 16mm film projector, loudspeakers, and screen. Courtesy of Mohammad Ali Issari. 4  Adapting a visual medium to an oral culture: an Iranian expert provides live narration for a usis film. Courtesy of Mohammad Ali Issari.

sponsor and their texts, both of which encouraged a passive spectatorial for‑ mation. The usis documentaries often used a third-­person singular narrative voice, but sometimes they alternated between this voice and a first-­person plu‑ ral voice, as a way of implicating the spectators in the monologic discourse. The narration of Clean Water (Ab‑e Pak, ca. 1950–59) contained such a voice-­over narration in the third-­person singular and the first-­person plural: “Following the order of the public health official, this woman fills her jug of water from the head of the subterranean stream [qanat]. The head of the stream should be reserved for exactly such a purpose, and no animals should be allowed to drink from here or clothes be washed here. Having taken our drinking water from the head, we can wash our teacups and saucers some ten to fifteen meters downstream. . . . Don’t think that if you rub your dishes with dung and mud they will be clean. No! It is best to wash them with ash, sand, bran, or straw to get them fully cleaned” (quoted in Emami 2003/1382:73–74). At times, these films carried snippets of dialogue and embellished the soundtrack by mix‑ ing in appropriate folk music. Despite these textual variations and strategies, the interpretive work by what amounted to live Point IV screen translators, or dilmaj, was necessary because average villagers were premodern and audio­ 42

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visually unsophisticated. According to William Warne, the first director of the Point IV program in Iran, who witnessed film shows in many villages, “while American audiences understand such camera tricks as close-­ups and super‑ impositions, the villagers of Iran do not.” Using an anecdote, which might be apocryphal but illustrative of the point, he elaborated further that in one Amer‑ ican film, “designed to persuade its viewers to rid themselves of mice, the cam‑ era so focused on a mouse that he filled the whole screen so that the enemy might be dramatically identified. One peasant, seeing this, was heard to say, ‘No wonder they think mice are dangerous in America. So big! The mice in our wheat stores in Aliabad are so little they are harmless’” (Warne 1956:218). These mobile film visits and the film types were tied to specific Point IV health and development programs. During an outbreak of malaria in 1953, when Point IV and Iranian specialists were inoculating villagers and spray‑ ing ddt in affected areas, the mobile units showed films about malaria and its prevention by the insecticide ahead of the spraying teams to educate the villagers. Warne reports that “when they saw the movies the villagers were happy again” (1956:147). A letter written in the early phases of the usis pro‑ gram by the American embassy’s public affairs officer, C. Edward Wells, pro‑ vides anecdotal evidence of effectiveness. It states that in villages where usis films had been shown, “garbage, manure and other filth has been cleaned up, the villagers have become interested in the growing and eating of vegetables, and a certain amount of precaution is taken to prevent insects from polluting foods. In my opinion, these are tremendous strides forward and if the pro‑ gram widens out, a good size cut can be made in the incidents of disease with the result in greater production because of the increased work hours. The sim‑ pler and nearer to the every day experiences of the average peasant farmer our films are, the greater the impact. I know it is an expensive business produc‑ ing films, but when you weigh the results against the cost, it would seem very well worthwhile.”81 Before the official start of the usis film effort, John Humphrey, one of the directors of usia travel films in Iran, had visited the influential Ayatollah Kashani to get his blessings on the project. The astute clerical leader had wel‑ comed the use of film “to improve the country’s health and educational ser‑ vices” on the grounds that Islam condones any form of knowledge that helps social progress (taraqqi) as long as it is accompanied by faith (Tahaminejad 2004b:19). Yet anticinema feelings surfaced among religious Muslims after the films were made, particularly in the form of opposition to the mobile film units, which took films into the remote towns and villages where people re‑ mained entirely naive about the medium and were highly religious. It ap‑ i nter natio nal haggling

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pears that this opposition was not directed against cinema per se. According to a State Department report, religious leaders and village clerics “invariably” opposed the mobile units’ film shows; however, their advance objections fre‑ quently changed to acceptance once they had an opportunity to view an edu‑ cational film on health or agriculture. 82 It appears that in this period religious pragmatism won over religious fundamentalism. The mobile film units also visited city schools, particularly “demonstra‑ tion” (nemuneh) elementary schools, built with Point IV program assistance, where the films were very popular. These schools boasted modern educa‑ tional features unheard of in most Iranian schools, such as functioning open-­ stacks libraries, student-­r un mimeographed newspapers, and the usis film screenings on many Thursday afternoons (the day before the weekend). How the usia and usis films were used in these schools or integrated into their curricula varied (figure 5). For example, as noted in the preface to volume 1, in the Nemuneh Elementary School in Isfahan, which I attended, our third-­ grade teacher required students to write reviews of the films. This unusual and enlightened assignment helped to teach us something about film content and about film literacy and criticism. In addition, the process of viewing and reviewing helped not only consolidate the othering that cinema had initiated decades earlier due to hailing but also arouse counterhailing strategies in us (Naficy 2003c). The monthly magazine Ettela’at‑e Mahaneh reviewed the first year of the program: “The Americans are wise businessmen who know that their massive wheels of industry will continue turning as long as they can trade with the whole world and keep millions of their well-­paid workers fully employed. This is because they have well understood that they cannot make money from poor people. They must first raise the economic level of the poor countries and provide them with what they need so that they can work and be active in a secure environment before they can be of benefit to the United States. At the same time, this will automatically prevent the flood of commu‑ nism.”83 Although the Iranian government leaned toward the Americans, the Board of Censors engaged in a balancing act between U.S. and Soviet film concerns. For example, in 1951 it denied license to screen Twentieth Century– Fox’s Why Korea?, which supported American involvement in the war there. According to one U.S. spokesperson, the denial resulted from a general fear among Iranian officials that anti-­Soviet usis activities “would stir the Soviet propaganda machine to further action,” which might take the form of re‑ questing exhibition permits for such Soviet propaganda films as Victory of the Chinese People. 84 However, such wavering on the part of the censorship board was rare, as American films dominated the screens. 44

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5  Enthusiasm for usis films at a school. Courtesy of Mohammad Ali Issari.

Issari provides an interesting example of using usia films and mobile film units locally to directly challenge Soviet propaganda beamed into Iran. Bitter about being forced out of northwest Iran, the Soviet Union began broadcast‑ ing radio programs against the Iranian regime in Persian. At the same time, it installed public-­address systems on its side of the border near the town of Astara, which frequently (every few hours) blasted similar propaganda mate‑ rial at Iranian border towns and villages. In 1951, when Issari was on one of his mobile film tours in the Astara area, the local gendarmerie authorities, upset at the Soviet propaganda loudspeakers across the river that formed the border, asked for helped in countermeasures. Issari obliged by setting up his portable screen for nighttime open-­air viewing in such a way that it faced the Soviet border and was visible to that country’s soldiers manning guard tow‑ ers. The film he chose was the popular newsreel The Shah of Iran Visits the United States, a choice that ironically emphasized not the independence of the Shah but his dependence on the United States and the imbrication of Cold War superpower geopolitics in Iranian filmic politics. The sound volume was turned up so high that the newsreel’s soundtrack, as well as the loud cheer‑ ing of more than two thousand villagers on seeing the Shah’s image, could be heard by the Soviets across the river. Apparently, the countermeasure worked. The next day the Soviet loudspeakers remained “completely silent” (Issari and Paul 1977:41). Issari stayed in the area several days, showing four to five films each night, including another newsreel, The Funeral of Reza Shah, to some‑ times four thousand people (69–70). In line with the U.S. Cold War policy of bolstering the Iranian armed forces, the usia also made military films for audiences in the Iranian armed forces and in some cases for the general public. These emphasized the role of the armed forces as guarantors of Iranian national unity and territorial in‑ i nter natio nal haggling

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tegrity against both foreign and domestic foes. For example, three films high‑ lighted the “Army’s role in maintaining national independence,”85 while six features were made “on an unattributable basis” to develop in the Iranian Army “fear and hatred of armies to the North” and to “develop confidence on the part of Army personnel in their own country in order that they will fight for it.”86 In this period, American commercial newsreels showed military pa‑ rades (e.g., Movietone News, 1956), maneuvers (Hearst Metrotone News, 1958), the Shah’s reviewing of troops (Movietone News, 1948), and U.S. military as‑ sistance to Iran (Movietone News, 1956). 87 My research in the archives of the Defense Audiovisual Agency at Norton Air Force Base, San Bernardino, Cal‑ ifornia, also turned up a large amount of military footage that documented various Iranian-­American military matters, such as joint military exercises, personnel training, and military hardware purchased from the United States (Naficy 1984c:12–15, 220–32). Designed to connect U.S. military forces and ci‑ vilian consultants to the homeland as well as to provide a window into Amer‑ ican culture for native populations, American Forces Radio and Television (afrts, derisively called Afarts by intellectuals), which started in Tehran in 1959, rebroadcast both American commercial television shows and original shows made by afrts staff. They provided an American discursive oasis for the physical compounds in which U.S. forces, their families, and consultants generally lived. The promotion of peaceful uses of nuclear power, another goal of U.S. for‑ eign policy, received its share of films, which were distributed to thirty-­four countries, including Iran. A series of three twenty-­minute documentaries were made and shown in Iran. Consecrated to Life, the introductory film, pointed up the U.S. president’s international atomic agency plan. Atomic Energy in Medi‑ cine and Atomic Energy Works for Peace focused on the uses of nuclear power in medicine, industry, and agriculture. In addition, peaceful applications of atomic energy were inserted into newsreels on an unattributable basis, so as to downplay the U.S. government’s connection. 88 Iran News carried its share of film footage supporting the Atoms for Peace program. In hindsight, it is ironic that this U.S. program to promote nuclear energy and medical research would in subsequent decades, particularly during George W. Bush’s presidency, come to be regarded as dangerous to U.S. national security interests. “Large quan‑ tities” of weapons-­grade uranium, which the U.S. government had “loaned, leased or sold to dozens of countries” under Atoms for Peace, including to Iran, were found to be “out of U.S. control” (Brinkley and Broad 2004:8). This was just one of many instances in which this U.S. military, industrial, security, and foreign aid program backfired on the aid giver. 46

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In 1957, the State Department sent a team to Iran to evaluate American technical assistance. It reported that the extensive usis audiovisual program there was “probably one of the largest maintained anywhere.” It went on to state that the Audiovisual Center of the Fine Arts Administration had 307 Ira‑ nians on its payroll and planned to establish substantial audiovisual centers in each of the provincial capitals. 89 The team was alarmed at the size of the effort, considering it “grossly out of proportion” with the rest of the assistance program, “leading the government into extravagant expenditures that are en‑ tirely unjustified.”90 Despite this criticism, the team admitted that the audio‑ visual program had met the two chief goals of the communication media in development: complementing other technical programs by providing them with audiovisual services and serving as a nation-­building tool and a public relations organ for the governments. Nevertheless, team members felt that the audiovisual program in Iran was “too large, too expensive and too elabo‑ rate” and that funds “might better be diverted to the agriculture, health and education programs which have the advantage of bringing substantive bene­ fits that are readily understood and appreciated by large elements of the pop‑ ulation without the props on which the av program places so much stress.”91 The media genie, which the usis had helped release from its bottle, was per‑ manently out now that the Shah and his subservient governments had tasted the power of the mass media in shaping both Iranian and foreign opinion. Ironically, in their drive to oppose communism and to Westernize Iran under a powerful Shah, the Americans were instrumental in creating a consumerist culture of spectacle, driven by an autocratic regime surrounded by sycophan‑ tic media, undermining some of their own national ideals of democracy and accountability. Perhaps because of the aforementioned State Department as‑ sessment, the American audiovisual budget for Iran began to drop. In 1956, that budget was $2 million; it was reduced to $285,000 in 1957, to $56,000 in 1958, and to near zero in 1959, the year the Syracuse University contract was terminated.92 Overall U.S. technical assistance to Iran grew exponentially, from $1.3 million in 1951 to $73 million in 1956 (Bill 1988:124).

The Legacy of usia Productions The usia and usis newsreels and documentaries had many, and multifaceted, legacies. These films educated Iranian students and adults about important public health issues, improved agricultural procedures, and introduced mod‑ ern educational methods, technological advances, modern political institu‑ i nter natio nal haggling

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tions, and ways of living—­in short, they aided in modernizing Iranians. They also Americanized Iranians by creating goodwill toward the United States in general and an affinity to its progressive, democratic, technologically ad‑ vanced society. They also bolstered a weak Shah during a time of social un‑ rest in which his authority and legitimacy were severely challenged. From the viewpoint of the film industry, the newsreels proved instrumental in creating the technical and human-­resource infrastructures necessary for a domestic documentary film industry. The usis established a documentary film pro‑ duction center, the first in the country, and formulated an official state-­driven mode of production for documentaries. It trained many future documentary filmmakers (a few of whom moved to feature production). Finally, it helped create an official documentary genre and style, whose conventions surfaced almost immediately in the Iranian government’s own official newsreel, News (Akhbar), and gradually in other documentary films. With the entry of the U.S. government into film production and exhibition in Iran by way of the usis/Tehran, the United States entered Iranian territo‑ rial, ideological, and psychological spaces directly. “America” was no longer a real but far-­off place, an imaginary chronotope, projected by its own movies alone—­a mirror held before Iranians. It had entered Iranian cognitive maps and affected how Iranians told and enjoyed stories. Productions and screen‑ ings by the usia and the usis affected the ideological, industrial, spectatorial, authorial, and textual formations of cinema. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress prohibited the distribution of usia/usis audiovisual materials, including films and Voice of America broadcasts, to the public in the United States. Congress was jealous of the power of the executive branch and weary of its engage­ment in domestic propaganda (MacCann 1973:174). This ban disrupted the circu‑ lation of representations involving Iranian and American publics, limiting it to a one-­way flow, from the United States to Iran. At the same time, Iranians’ own self-­representing documentaries in the 1950s were in their infancy, and no regular mechanism for their foreign distribution existed. Americans thus remained ignorant of their government’s efforts at influencing foreign minds and about what those minds thought about the United States, with surprising, even devastating, consequences for global politics.

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2 t he s tat is t doc umen ta ry cinem a a nd i t s a lt er nat i v es

T

he inchoate, ad hoc patterns of the Reza Shah period, which transformed nonfiction films made by freelance artisanal filmmakers into an ideo‑ logical apparatus to bolster the state ideology and the person of the Shah—­ consolidated during the thirty-­eight-­year reign of his son, Mohammad Reza Shah (1941–79). The artisanal mode of documentary production and exhibition was gradually transformed into a largely statist, hybrid, semi-­industrialized mode thanks to the centralizing and modernizing reforms of the Pahlavi shahs, abetted by the Allied powers’ embassies and cultural attachés. As noted in the previous chapter, the United States Information Agency (usia) and its local arm in Iran, the United States Information Service (usis), contributed the most both to the industrial and to the textual formations of documentary cin‑ ema in Iran. A key legacy of the usis/Tehran in that regard was the creation of a well-­staffed documentary production facility producing scores of newsreels and documentaries annually; it was absorbed into the government-­r un Fine Arts Administration (faa) when the Syracuse Team left Iran. The creation of other government organizations that contributed to this statist, industrializing documentary cinema soon followed. In the 1960s, the massive Ministry of Culture and Art (mca) was established. It absorbed the faa and oversaw the visual, performing, and literary arts throughout the country. National Iranian Radio and Television (nirt) and the Center for the

Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (cidcya) also be‑ came factories for the production, exhibition, and broadcast of nonfiction and short subject films (and of live and animated films in the case of the lat‑ ter). The Iranian military, the National Iranian Oil Company (nioc), vari‑ ous government ministries, and several nongovernmental organizations as well as independent and commercial film studios, also turned to nonfiction films for education, training, propaganda, and publicity purposes. The indus‑ trialization of the documentary process resulted in the production of many films, often characterized by what I have called an “official” style. However, these same government and corporate structures created channels through which filmmakers—­while kowtowing to the state’s official line—­could ex‑ press themselves both artistically and politically to create subversive works. The preconditions for the emergence of an official statist documentary cin‑ ema were nearly the same as those necessary for the development of fictional cinema. The difference was that in documentary cinema, the state had a de‑ termining role because of its involvement in the funding, production, dis‑ tribution, exhibition, and censorship of documentaries during the second Pahlavi period.

Characteristics of the Official Documentary Cinema In the formation of official documentary cinema the state reigned supreme over all aspects of filmmaking from inception to reception. Specifically, it was involved in: —­ Creating film and media production departments, studios, labs, editing, and postproduction facilities within the government —­ Hiring and training below-­t he-­line technical personnel and above-­ the-­line creative personnel, in effect rendering them “civil servant filmmakers” —­ Funding and sponsoring in-­house and commissioned documentaries —­ Creating state-­r un educational institutions (colleges, universities, institutes) to teach film production and film history and to train staff —­ Instituting supervisory and censorship systems to ensure the suitability of final products in terms of themes, subjects, politics, and aesthetics —­ Formulating an “official style” for the documentaries —­ Instituting procedures and structures that result in a high volume of productions

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—­ Facilitating the exhibition, distribution, and broadcasting of nonfiction films both at home and abroad —­ Organizing state-­r un film festivals and awarding prizes and recognition to films and filmmakers —­ Nominating films as “national cinema” products for entry into international film festivals —­ Retaining the legal ownership and rights of the films made under its aegis The genesis of a statist film mode and style must be sought in the early ad hoc government newsreels and documentaries that represented Iran and Iranian life as modern and dynamic. The government newsreels that freelance cam‑ eramen such as Khanbabakhan Motazedi made in the 1920s and 1930s, and the national anthem film that he prepared for mandatory screening in public cinemas, were the first examples of such efforts at influencing Iranian hearts and minds and at self-­empowerment through nonfiction films. In 1934, the increasing flow of foreign tourists into Iran convinced the government to pro‑ mote tourism. To that end, the Ministry of the Interior created a special Tour‑ ism Bureau, headed by Gholamhosain Ebtehaj, who drew up an ambitious plan. Among its provisions was the “dissemination abroad of news of Persia through newspapers, films, and the radio to promote interest in travel to Per‑ sia.”1 The creation of the Public Opinion Guidance Organization (pogo) un‑ der Reza Shah in 1938 was the most far-­reaching and coherent effort at propa‑ gating an official culture, but this short-­lived endeavor did not systematically involve film. The National Education Film Circuit (nefc), begun in 1945, con‑ stituted a significant attempt at creating an official culture by exhibiting ap‑ proved Western movies in commercial and noncommercial venues, but this undertaking, too, was brief. Several more sustained efforts were made during Mohammad Reza Shah’s reign; they are presented in what follows.

Military Film Production: The Artesh (Armed Forces) Film Studio and Lieutenant Mehdi Golsorkhi Around the time that the government created the nefc for nontheatrical film exhibition, it also worked to create an official domestic military film produc‑ tion center to supply films to that circuit. The military’s collaboration with the nefc led to the creation in 1945 of the Artesh Film Studio, run by Major General Ahmad Baharmast, Lieutenant Mehdi Golsorkhi, and Captain Mehdi

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Khaliqi. Apparently, both Golsorkhi and Khaliqi had been trained in film by the U.S. armed forces film production center (Tahaminejad 2001/1380:40– 41). By conjoining the Artesh Film Studio with the nefc, the military became the first official producer and exhibitor of nonfiction films in Iran. The army provided transportation vehicles and supplied fuel for the mo‑ bile film units; it exhibited nefc films in its various barracks and officers’ clubs, including the one in Tehran in which Artesh Cinema was established. Without the army’s involvement with the nefc and the experience gained in the process, it may have been impossible for it to form its own film studio at this time. The linchpin was Golsorkhi, who used his technical ingenuity and dedication to operate and service all types of audiovisual equipment, even though he had limited resources and materials at his disposal. Nilla Cram Cook praised Golsorkhi not only for his technical competence but also for his dedication and ingenuity, stating, “He has spent plenty out of his own pocket to pay for taxis in emergencies, or to buy batteries, cable or other things neces‑ sary for the proper delivery of shows I have scheduled. He is training a num‑ ber of new operators.”2 The Artesh Film Studio may have acquired all or part of the equipment for its production studio and its 16mm black-­and-­white and color film labs from U.S. military surplus through donation or purchase. A fundamental differ‑ ence between the nefc and the Artesh Film Studio was their primary objec‑ tive. While the former was in the business only of exhibiting films, and for‑ eign films at that, the latter was charged with both making and exhibiting local films. The studio ran the Artesh Cinema on the premises of the Officers’ Club in Tehran. Movies were also shown in the officers’ clubs of other cities. When there were no clubs, commercial movie houses were rented, or estab‑ lished, to show films to armed forces personnel. For example, in December 1954, Alborz Cinema began showing films to members of the armed forces and their families on Friday mornings, featuring the Golden Army of Genghis Khan (Javdani 2002/1381:48). In March 1952, the army’s Eighty-­Fourth Divi‑ sion inaugurated the commercial Shahnaz Cinema in Khorramabad (named after the Shah’s daughter), the first cinema in that town. Although the Artesh Film Studio made films primarily for the military—­ about which there is a dearth of information—­a few of its products found their way into public cinemas, giving us some clues about this Iranian-­made official film style. Among these were several newsreels, filmed in 16mm and containing voice-­over narration, that documented royal events after the Sec‑ ond World War, apparently following the newsreel style that Motazedi and usis/faa newsreels had already formulated. Transfer of Reza Shah’s Corpse 52

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from Cairo to Tehran (Enteqal‑e Jenazeh‑ye Reza Shah az Qahereh beh Tehran) documents the repatriation of the Shah’s body from Egypt to Tehran after his death in South African exile. Takestan Day (Ruz‑e Takestan, 1952) focuses on a group of peasants from Takestan who had come to the Shah’s Niavaran Palace in Tehran to receive the ownership documents for the lands that the Shah had “distributed” (sold) to them. The Arrival of HIM the Shah into Ta‑ briz (Tashrif Farmai‑ye Shah beh Tabriz, 1947) documents the entry of the young Shah into Tabriz after the defeat in December 1946 of the Democratic Party of Azarbaijan, headed by Jafar Pishehvari, who had declared the pro-­ Soviet Autonomous Republic of Azarbaijan in northeastern Iran. This de‑ feat became a pillar of pro-­Shah propaganda, as it was celebrated annually for years to come—­on government orders with pomp and circumstance in schools, government offices, the national media, and in officially organized public spectacles. Both the Artesh Film Studio and the usis/Tehran released annual newsreels about this victory. In 1952, the latter issued Azarbaijan Day (Ruz‑e Azarbaijan), a seventeen-­minute documentary about the defeat of the Azari separatists and the expulsion of the Soviets from Iran; it was shown widely in commercial movie houses and by mobile film units nationwide. The usis/Tehran newsreel Iran News #44 (26 January 1956) devoted its entire nine minutes to the Shah’s appearance at the Azarbaijan Day celebrations. Appar‑ ently, no newsreel showed the atrocities that had occurred when the Iranian army “liberated” the provinces of Azarbaijan and Kurdistan. Public hangings of resistance leaders, the jailing of tribal khans, beatings of local teachers, the burning of Azari-­Turkish and Kurdish-­language books, the destruction of printing presses, and the death of reportedly fourteen thousand peasants and workers were all ignored. U.S. diplomats had called this liberation “the return of the vultures from Tehran” (McFarland 1981:480). That the Artesh Film Studio had a larger plan to influence not only mili‑ tary personnel but also the general public is indicated by its production of fea‑ ture movies with nationalistic themes, which supported recent government actions and victories over internal and external enemies. Interestingly, some of these were comedies, possibly in an attempt to gently subvert their patri‑ otic message. One was Noqlali (1954), a comedy directed by Parviz Khatibi and written, filmed, and edited by Golsorkhi. Shot on 16mm stock, the movie was released to commercial theaters. The film’s protagonist, Noqlali, is trans‑ formed from an obese, slow-­w itted country bumpkin (played by the promi‑ nent comic Asghar Tafakkori) into a proper, marriageable person as a result of his enlistment and training in the armed forces. Tafakkori’s popularity gave the film a two-­month run, but critics panned it (Omid 1995/1374:250). Kha­ t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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tibi also directed and wrote the screenplay for Pishehvari’s Uprising (Qiam‑e Pishehvari, 1954), a “political comedy” that made fun of Pishehvari’s auton‑ omy movement in Azarbaijan and lauded the actions of the Iranian armed forces in its suppression; it ran for only a week. Significantly, Khatibi, who had been jailed for communist sympathies, may have made these movies to erase that stigma, which in the 1950s could prove a dangerous liability. Neither film received critical acclaim or real public interest. If these movies did Khatibi any good, they did not do the armed forces much good. In 1953, Colonel Mohammad Shabpareh established Rey Film Studio, which made two historical features promoting Iranian nationalism and supremacy over Arabs and other rival nations. Directed by Nosratollah Mohtasham, The Bride of the Tigris (Arus‑e Dajleh, 1955) deals with love and jealousy in the court of Harun al-­Rashid, as well as with the intrigues that led to the murder of Ja‑ far Barmaki, the Iranian prime minister. Sadeq Bahrami’s Bohlul (1957) is likewise about the rivalry between Arabs and Iranians over both national and poetic supremacy in the era of Harun al-­Rashid. Thereafter, Rey Film Studio produced lowbrow filmfarsi films, some of which were never screened pub‑ licly (Omid 1987b/1366:797–98). The gendarmerie forces also made forays into propaganda. They supported financially and materially The Patriot (Mihanparast, 1953), written and pro‑ duced by Captain Mohammad Derambaksh and directed by Gholamhosain Naqshineh for Shahriar Studio. The celebrated crime-­drama filmmaker, Sam‑ uel Khachikian, an Armenian Iranian, directed Blood and Honor (Khun va Sharaf, 1955), a patriotic movie for Diana Film, which also benefited from gen‑ darmerie support. Inspired by a news report, Khachikian wrote the screen‑ play himself. In it, a group of bandits that kidnaps the village teacher’s sister are defeated when the teacher collaborates with the local gendarmes. While Derambaksh’s movie encouraged war to defend the country from external enemies, Khachikian’s movie urged a military solution to internal banditry. The timing of these pro-­military movies, after the American and British coup had restored the Shah to power, makes it clear that they were designed not only to bolster nationalism but also the Shah, whose legitimacy the coup had compromised. These movies presented security forces in a positive light at a time when the state’s authority and the nation’s autonomy were chal‑ lenged by rising internal dissent and communist sympathies, coupled with the external communist threat from the Soviet Union. The Artesh Film Stu‑ dio and the gendarmerie fiction movies and newsreels attempted to fulfill the goals that the usia had set for documentaries in Iran: to promote the Shah and to strengthen the people’s confidence in the armed forces. They were not 54

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very successful, as these movies were neither of high quality nor popular with audiences. In addition, as Khachikian surmised, those who opposed the gov‑ ernment may have “boycotted them” (quoted in Haidari 1992/1371:38–41).

Civil Servant Official Documentary Filmmakers: Mohammad Ali Issari (b. 1924) and Shahrokh Golestan (b. 1933) The development of an official statist documentary production mode was guaranteed not only by a government policy that institutionalized the docu‑ mentary but also by the involvement of key individuals, such as Golsorkhi, Mohammad Ali Issari, and Shahrokh Golestan. Born in Isfahan, Issari grad‑ uated in general science from Stuart Memorial College, which was managed by British missionaries—­an experience that favorably disposed him toward working with Westerners. His film career began in the waning years of the Second World War. In 1944, he worked as the assistant films officer for the British Embassy Information Department and, later, served as the film officer for the British Council in Tehran, where he organized film screenings and as‑ sociated talks in the council’s Green Room Theater until the mid-­1950s. In 1955, he switched to the usis/Tehran, as this organization offered pro‑ fessional growth opportunities in production and a higher salary. Here he served as the assistant film officer for a decade. In that position, he supervised the exhibition of films by the mobile film units throughout the country and oversaw the production of the 402 issues of Iran News newsreels. According to a complimentary reference letter from his supervisor, Lowell Bennett, Issari filmed more than 90 percent, edited 80 percent, provided sound for 40 per‑ cent, and wrote the screenplays and read the voice-­over narration of as much as 25 percent of the newsreels.3 Although the extent of Issari’s participation in making Iran News newsreels seems exaggerated, he was definitely pivotal to the usis/Tehran film operations. In addition to the newsreels, he directed and codirected many documentaries in support of the official Pahlavi ideology of syncretic Westernization, which were screened in public cinemas.4 Simultaneously, Issari acted as the Shah’s official cinematographer, in which capacity he updated and expanded on what Motazedi had done for the Shah’s father in the 1920s and 1930s (figure 6). Issari accompanied the Shah and his wives—­Empress Soraya and, later, Empress Farah—­on their travels in Iran and on their numerous state visits abroad to Turkey, India, Saudi Ara‑ bia, Italy, and Japan, from which he filed film reports.5 He also filmed official ceremonies in which the Shah opened new facilities, laid cornerstones of fac‑ t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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6  The assistant film officer for the usis in Iran and the royal family’s official cinematographer, Mohammad Ali Issari, filming the usis documentary Education Corps. Courtesy of Mohammad Ali Issari.

tories, handed out land deeds to farmers, switched on the power at generat‑ ing stations, or cut ribbons to inaugurate clinics and hospitals, events from which the Shah claimed he “obtained tremendous satisfaction” because, like his father, he regarded these as “symbols of creative activity in the new Iran” (Pahlavi 1960:319). This news and documentary footage of the Shah was ed‑ ited into the usis newsreel, Iran News, and into the Iranian government’s own official newsreel, News, both of which were widely screened in public cinemas. Portions of these newsreels were also reprinted on 16mm stock for distribution via the mobile film units to villages and smaller towns nation‑ wide. Some of the footage was also cut into documentaries. In addition, us‑ ing the vast trove of footage of the Shah dressed in various official uniforms that he had filmed at different public ceremonies, Issari put together a compi‑ lation film to accompany the national anthem. He claims that he delivered a new film every six months to the movie houses, which they were mandated to screen at every film session (Issari and Paul 1977:150). In covering the Shah’s public activities, Issari epitomized the multifunctional artisanal documen‑ tarian, for he single-­handedly did everything. During the fifties and sixties, he says, “I photographed the Shah’s official state visits with no assistants. I was my own light man, my own sound man, scriptwriter and advance man. I carried my own equipment, which became almost intolerably heavy during a long full day. I was never privileged to enjoy the convenience of the compact lightweight equipment of today’s television newsreel crew—­w ith one or two assistants on hand, and a station wagon full of back-­up equipment” (Issari and Paul 1977:229). He was indefatigable, for according to his curriculum vitae, from 1959 to 1962, Issari was not only an official government cinematographer but also simultaneously a freelance cameraman and reporter for American and Brit‑ 56

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ish commercial newsreel companies such as Telenews, United Press Inter‑ national, and Visnews, feeding them items he had filmed in Iran. He also filmed items for the respected television program CBS News. As he told me in an interview, since by contract he was obligated to furnish these foreign cli‑ ents with undeveloped exposed original negatives, he employed additional cinematographers to film the same event, mostly his brother, Mahmud, who accompanied him on assignments (Naficy 1982a). Issari was a very industrious and prolific cameraman and propagandist. He filmed between three hundred and four hundred newsreel items and doc‑ umentaries that he chose to interpret as patriotic, progressive, and as agents of modernity that laid the “foundation” for the Shah’s “Great Civilization” pro‑ gram (Issari and Paul 1977:182). Despite his partisan, pro-­Shah views, he con‑ sidered himself a “film journalist,” whose guiding principles were alertness, quick decision making, focus, impartiality, knowledge, truth telling, and the representation of the people of Iran (227–29). His tale of filming the uprising of 1963 gives a rare glimpse into both his politics of journalism and into news‑ reel journalism in Iran. On Friday morning, 4 June 1963 (14 Khordad 1342), a friend of his from the Shah’s court asked him to film the planned demon‑ strations spearheaded by Ayatollah Khomeini in response to the Shah’s White Revolution reforms. The friend wanted him to film the demonstration osten‑ sibly to prove to the Shah later that night that his purported orders to the se‑ curity services and the police not to engage in violence were being carried out. Yet it appears that the purpose of the filming assignment was not so much journalism as surveillance, the documentation of the actions of both the po‑ lice and the demonstrators for possible future identification, arrests, and in‑ dictments. When Issari showed reluctance because of the difficulty of using his heavy 35mm camera and the delay in processing the footage, the appar‑ ently well-­connected friend was able to produce a 16mm Bolex camera with a zoom lens for him, as well as the promise of speedy film processing the same day. That filming the event was “a matter of national importance” and that no one else could accomplish the task convinced Issari to put aside his qualms. Thus equipped and convinced, and accompanied by three plainclothesmen and his friend, he went to the mosque from which the demonstrators were to begin their march through the streets of Tehran. In his version of the events, Issari filmed the tumultuous crowd from various vantage points, including from street level, from balconies, and aloft from the shoulder of his friend, but no violence occurred, and the police managed to peacefully channel the dem‑ onstrators from the mosque into the vast hall of the traffic police office, where the officials reasoned with them to stop and disband. Issari concludes his tale t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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by stating with gratification that the processed footage was screened for the Shah that night, documenting that his orders had been obeyed and the po‑ lice “had managed to disperse the crowd without bloodshed” (Issari and Paul 1977:240–41). It was this demonstration, and the subsequent violent police action that killed scores of people, that led to Khomeini’s eventual exile, an ex‑ ile that would end more than a dozen years later with his triumphant return after the Shah himself had been driven into permanent exile in 1979. Issari remains silent about any violence in his published account. In 1961, a controversy arose around a film involving Issari that led to his being banned from filming the Shah’s state functions. In January, the popu‑ lar and mildly leftist magazine Sepid O’ Siah (Black ’n’ White) published an ar‑ ticle by a disgruntled Iranian student in the United States bearing the alarm‑ ist headline: “The Most Disgraceful Film Shown about Iran Abroad.” In it the student complained about a twenty-­six-­minute film, A Mother for Shamsi (1959), which he claimed was made by Issari, about the travels of a Jewish mother and her daughter Shamsi from Tabriz to Tehran’s Jewish neighbor‑ hood. According to the student, the film emphasized such abject poverty and misery that “we cannot look our American schoolmates in the face. . . . After the end of the film we all sat together and cried for our country.” In his desire for a modern Iran, what he wished to see on the screen instead were “nice” films about “the big university we have, the factories, the dams, our engineers and laborers and how they all work together to build up our country” (Issari and Paul 1977:243). Issari did not recognize the film as his own and, appar‑ ently in shock, investigated the matter. He found that the film was made up of footage he had filmed in 1958 as a freelancer for the American-­Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (ajjdc). The committee had then itself produced the film without any further assistance from Issari. The documentary was sup‑ posed to highlight the social services that the committee had rendered Iranian Jews and was to be used for fund-­raising purposes. Highlighting the poverty and dire circumstances of despised minorities was, if not a legitimate, at least an accepted tactic for such purposes. Yet Issari denied that he had filmed any such scenes of misery, and the ajjdc directors in Iran and the United States disputed to have used any images “derogatory to Iran” in the film. The film credits Issari as cinematographer, Samuel Jaffe as a scriptwriter, and Irving R. Dickman as a writer and producer, verifying Issari’s limited contribution as the photographer only. Mysteriously, however, no director is listed. Clearly the footage was filmed without sound, as the voices of the four main characters are all postdubbed in English. Issari’s footage of the Jewish quarter in Tehran, which the film’s voice-­over narrator, Eli Wallach, calls ma‑ 58

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halleh (neighborhood or quarter) in Persian, is rare in its accurate documenta‑ tion of the Jews’ miserable life, muddy alleys under rain, and poverty, as well as of the modern kindergartens, schools, clinics, and hospitals that ajjdc, United Jewish Appeal, and the United States were providing. The film’s con‑ fused and unclear narrative about why Shamsi and her mother left Tabriz for Tehran—­t he latter’s husband died and she is pregnant, somehow needing a hospital in the faraway Tehran to deliver her baby—­also suggests no director at the helm as it tries to shoehorn Issari’s mos (filming without sound) and discontinuous footage into a semblance of coherence about the services ren‑ dered the Iranian Jews. The conceit of the film is that the protagonist, Mr. Hakim (an Iranian actor whose voice is dubbed by Wallach), is a prominent member of the Jewish quarter—­he calls himself a sort of “king of the ma‑ halleh,” who is giving Shamsi and her mother a tour of the neighborhood and of the services that Jewish organizations provide. The film ends on a hope‑ ful note with the announcement of the successful birth of a boy, Shamsi’s brother. Because of the sensationalist and negative media coverage about this film, Savak (secret police) and the police interrogated Issari, and, although they did not withdraw his press card, he could not film any events involving the Shah for about four months. The head of the ajjdc in the United States as‑ sured Issari that he had withdrawn the film from public screenings “to avoid any possible further misunderstandings.” Despite its promise to publish the real story behind the film, the offending magazine in the end refused to do so, and Issari was reinstated as the official photographer only after the Iranian ambassador to the United States, Ardeshir Zahedi, intervened with the Shah. Despite this painful experience, Issari, when reflecting on his life, appeared proud to have been “privileged to mirror in film his [the Shah’s] many activi‑ ties for the betterment of the country,” making nearly four hundred newsreels seen by about 145 million Iranians (Issari and Paul 1977:240–52).6 With many accomplishments behind him, Issari in 1965 took a leave of ab‑ sence from the usis to attend the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema and Television for additional training, during which he made the short film, The American Bazaar. But circumstances pushed him toward a more serious academic involvement. He stayed on and wrote a two-­volume PhD dissertation on the history of Iranian cinema (1979) at the same time that he began teaching film production at Michigan State University (msu). Later, he turned his dissertation into a book (1989), an original contribution to the historiography of Iranian cinema, the first in the English language. His contributions to the official documentary style continued well into the 1970s, t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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but in the United States, where, as a film professor at msu, he produced a multi­part documentary series extolling Iranian dynastic history which be‑ came highly controversial. Another official documentarian, who worked alternately as a civil servant for the faa and the mca and as a freelance contractor with them and with European media companies, was Shahrokh (Esmail) Golestan, the younger brother of the new-­wave writer and filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan. He auda‑ ciously made his first film of the Shah’s and Empress Soraya’s visit to his birth city of Shiraz, The Shah and Soraya’s Trip to Shiraz (Safar‑e Shah va Soraya beh Shiraz, 1952), when he was only seventeen. Soon he became an official court cinematographer, making films of the royal couple’s visits mostly to foreign countries. He also filmed footage of the royal family’s private lives. Proud of being a “government propagandist,” he made between fifty and sixty topi‑ cal and news films about the royal family’s life, travels, and events (Golestan 1983:24). He felt particular pride about three major documentaries, each one made about a key event during the Pahlavi period’s official culture of specta‑ cle. A Crown for the Nation (Taji Bara‑ye Mellat, 1969) covered the coronation of the Shah and Empress Farah; An Undying Fire (Atashi keh Nemimirad, 1975) dealt with the fiftieth anniversary of the Pahlavi dynasty, celebrated through‑ out the country; and Flames of Persia (also known as Eternal Flame; Forugh‑e Javidan, 1972), focused on the twenty-­five hundredth anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Persian Empire. He made the majority of his news films and royal documentaries for the mca, though he simultaneously ran a production company that imported commercial movies, and he owned four cinemas in Shiraz (among them Ariana Cinema), in which he exhibited his own and others’ imports. His position as a regular cinematographer of the Shah, who would often ask for him by name, gave Golestan an elevated sense of self and of invulnerability, which was uncharacteristic of other civil ser‑ vant filmmakers, who were at the mercy of their bureaucratic chiefs (Goles‑ tan 1983:13). He screened A Crown for the Nation for the Shah in his residen‑ tial Niavaran Palace over a private dinner attended by the minister of culture and art, Mehrdad Pahlbod. The Shah applauded Golestan after the movie, called him to his seat, and with a “smile that was extraordinarily sincere, kind, and humane” and an attitude that “relaxed” Golestan, asked about the condi‑ tions of filmmaking. In particular, he asked about the large number of crew members whose names appeared in the credits, using an unusual colloquial phrase: “Where did you get all these creatures [ janevaran]?” Golestan’s forth‑ right answer, “from the jungle of Farsi cinema,” amused the Shah (Golestan 1983:31–32). Golestan’s opulent Ariana Cinema burned to the ground dur‑ 60

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ing the revolution and he was made persona non grata as the “court film‑ maker” (Werba 1979:30). Eventually, Golestan went into exile, settling in Brit‑ ain, where he works as a journalist for the bbc Persian Service, for which he also developed a valuable radio series on the history of Iranian cinema, Magic Lantern (Fanus‑e Khial; see Golestan 1995/1374), which was released as a cas‑ sette set. The Artesh Film Studio represented a modest beginning for official doc‑ umentary cinema, which found its full expression in the faa’s Audiovisual Center, which had absorbed the Syracuse Team’s facilities and personnel. Gol‑ sorkhi, Issari, and Golestan emerged as the first modern official documentary filmmakers, operating very differently from the premodern royal court pho‑ tographers of the Qajar era, such as Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkasbashi Sani al-­ Saltaneh. As an official court photographer, Sani al-­Saltaneh formed part of the court structure. He was hired full time both to photograph and to film the events the court desired, and he screened the results for the pleasure of his patrons only. He appears to have generally worked alone as an artisan without much organization, staff, or facilities, and his film audience remained largely private, elite, and homogenous. Issari, Golestan, and the later government documentarians discussed be‑ low, drew a regular salary and were civil servant filmmakers—­a phenomenon that has persisted in Iranian documentary cinema to this day. While they were required to make films that propagandized the person of the Shah, his family, and his policies (as well as the institutions that hired them), they were not court employees and thus were bureaucratically removed from direct royal control. In addition, they did not have to pay much attention to market forces or to audience tastes, for their films’ success did not depend on box-­office re‑ ceipts but on government largesse and approval. These filmmakers consti‑ tuted a one-­way, top-­town means through which government officials com‑ municated both with their institutional subjects and with citizens at large. Nonetheless, because the filmmakers addressed with their works a large and diverse public, not the closed and rather homogenous circuit of the court and the elite, these modern official documentarians were sensitive to how their films fared and to how the public and their cohorts perceived them pro‑ fessionally. As such, they were not necessarily the mouthpieces of the govern‑ ment. Their “official” documentaries were more complicated than the desig‑ nation would imply, for they worked at the intersection of competing personal and professional interests and had to reconcile different and sometimes an‑ tagonistic publics—­t his led to an authorial formation. Stylistically, most official filmmakers followed certain normative practices, consisting of a limited t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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number of narrative and generic patterns of signification, narration, presen‑ tation, and representation—­the textual formation. Yet as will become clear, their films were not closed texts, for signs of competing loyalties and autho‑ rial tensions and personalities abound in them. Despite their dependence on government affiliation and financing, some official documentarians produced antiofficial or counterhegemonic films, biting the hands that fed them.

Institutionalizing the Documentary in the Civil Government The explosion of investment by American film and television companies abroad after the Second World War had a profound impact on Iranian film and television industries and documentary cinema. These companies’ sub‑ stantial sales abroad in part resulted from spinoffs from various American technical, military, commercial, and development assistance programs, fun‑ neled through such government organizations or programs as the Agency for International Development, the usia, and Point IV, as well as various com‑ mercial companies—­Culture Inc. In the case of Iran, these organizations and programs furnished film projectors, vehicles, films, personnel, and training to the nefc, the Artesh Film Studio, and the faa’s Audiovisual Center. Other factors that contributed to this surge of American cultural activity abroad were tax advantages, low labor costs, expanding foreign markets, the grant‑ ing of educational certification to documentaries that exempted them from tariffs, Cold War politics, and the protection offered American foreign invest‑ ments by U.S. foreign policy under the activist secretary of state John Foster Dulles. The imbrications of foreign policy and global commerce were instrumen‑ tal in the formation and politics of Culture Inc. and had far-­reaching conse‑ quences for both foreign policy and media industries, as one fed the other. In developing countries such as Iran, television stations equipped by Ameri‑ can companies provided a key tool for fighting communism and a powerful venue for exhibiting American culture, commercial movies, usia and usis films, and indigenous official films. Yet the reach of the American media companies, which were becoming global conglomerates, was much wider and deeper than that. As Erik Barnouw notes, “Some of the companies marketing television films also sold receivers and transmitters; some sold consultant ser‑ vices, some invested in foreign stations, production companies, dubbing ser‑ vices, animation studios, theaters” (1970:111). The establishment of lobbying organizations, such as the Motion Picture Export Association (in 1959) and 62

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the Television Program Export Association (in 1960) helped centralize and strengthen these efforts to expand into foreign markets. These external global forces were aided in Iran by certain internal consid‑ erations and structures that institutionalized both the official Pahlavi culture and an official documentary cinema. Studies by unesco had indicated that television could serve as a valuable means for both expanding and enriching the educational system and the national integration of developing nations, providing a motivation for government interest in television.

The Ministry of Culture and Art (mca) One of the most important contributions of the usis and the Syracuse Team in institutionalizing the official production mode was the creation of the Au‑ diovisual Department within the faa in Tehran, which was headed by one of the Shah’s trusted relatives, Mehrdad Pahlbod. Initially housed within the prime minister’s office, the faa and its film department were equipped with up-­to-­date 16mm and 35mm documentary film facilities—­the first in Iran. This government-­owned film studio consisted of sound stages, black-­and-­ white and, later, color film-­processing labs, a recording studio, and graphics, photography, and publications departments. Another important contribution was the training of filmmakers and technical personnel to run the center. From its beginning in 1951 to 1959, when the Syracuse Team left Iran, the center trained about 80 Iranian filmmakers and 195 audiovisual specialists (Issari 1989:177). Many of these trainees became the country’s future docu‑ mentary and fiction filmmakers, among them Houshang Shafti, Abolqasem Rezai, Issari, Mohammad Qoli Sayyar, Mohammad Faijani, Sirus Shabdiz, Parviz Osanlu, Maziyar Partow, Reza Badiyi, and Jamshid Shaibani. Some of these went abroad and led successful and productive film careers, such as Is‑ sari, who made documentaries, and Badiyi, who directed top-­rated television serials like Mission Impossible. As émigré filmmakers they completed the cir‑ cle of exchange relations between Iran and the United States, contributing to the latter country’s culture and media. Significantly, none of these usia-­ trained filmmakers made it big as new-­wave directors in Iran. Between the departure of the Syracuse Team in 1959 and 1965, the faa produced an average of fifteen to twenty-­five documentaries and propaganda films a year, some of which were distributed abroad by Iranian embassies (Is‑ sari 1989:183). While this government studio system proved an important milestone in institutionalizing and industrializing documentary cinema, it t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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produced a negative side effect: the politicization of documentary by a govern‑ ment intent on pressing its filmmakers into servicing its political aims and punishing those who failed to do so. This government studio system, created with assistance from the United States—­the most aggressive proponent of the capitalist system—­was created almost at the expense of the private commer‑ cial film sector in Iran because it served the political interests of both coun‑ tries best. Commercial importers of film and film equipment, such as Ataol‑ lah Moshiri, complained to the U.S. embassy in Tehran that the usis/Tehran’s policy of loaning 16mm educational films and projectors free of charge to medical schools and to social aid agencies, such as the Red Lion and Sun Soci‑ ety (Iranian Red Cross), had made it economically unfeasible for them to rent or to sell films and film equipment. He and other commercial film importers wanted to “reap some of the benefits of the U.S. film program” by either sell‑ ing and renting the films or selling and renting the equipment.7 On the other hand, the State Department team sent to evaluate the usis film effort found a “tendency on the part of the American staff to discount the capabilities of lo‑ cal private film-­producing and processing shops and a corresponding empha‑ sis on establishing complete self-­servicing facilities within the government.”8 In December 1964, parallel with the ascendance of the Shah, the faa was peeled off from the prime minister’s office and, along with other departments from a reorganized Ministry of Education, formed the new and massive Min‑ istry of Culture and Art (mca). It housed, among its various divisions, an au‑ diovisual department and a film production center. The transfer to the mca of the usis/Tehran’s production facilities, trained filmmakers, and experienced technicians entailed the transfer of cinematic paradigms as well—­t he official documentary structure and film style that the mca, in its function as a key producer, censor, and exhibitor of documentaries nationwide, disseminated widely. The usis-­educated filmmakers trained in the style gradually fanned out and took positions throughout the blossoming motion-­picture industry. By making widely distributed official films themselves, they set the standards for the documentary form; as managers of film production in government agencies and elsewhere, they enforced those standards; and as teachers in film schools and colleges, they set a powerful model of style for new practitio‑ ners in training. The return during this period of a large number of European-­and U.S.-­ trained filmmakers, almost all of them male, who worked for the mca and nirt both consolidated the institutional production mode and official film style and rejuvenated and modernized them by inculcating Western profes‑ sional and critical values. Reference to this training background throughout 64

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this book highlights the constitutive function of foreign training in the emer‑ gence and ascendancy of Iranian documentary and fictional cinemas.

National Iranian Radio and Television (nirt) The establishment of television in Iran, which was patterned after Ameri‑ can commercial television, represents another form of technological and cul‑ tural transfer, which disseminated to a wider public American culture and programming and the official style of documentary developed in the usis operation. In 1958, Iraj Sabet Pasal, a wealthy Baha’i and a graduate in busi‑ ness administration from Harvard University, whose father Habibollah was the agent of rca and Pepsi Cola in Iran, “used his contacts in the royal court to obtain permission to establish an American-­model station” (Katz and We‑ dell 1977:94). At first, there was some resistance within the ruling circles to Sabet’s plan for commercial television, particularly from the minister of post, telegraph, and telephone, a resistance that Sabet overcame through his inti‑ mate connections to the Pahlavi court. What seemed to have tipped the bal‑ ance in his favor was his installing a close-­circuit television for the entertain‑ ment of the ailing Queen Mother, which allowed her to watch, among other programs, live coverage of the marriage of her son, the Shah, to Empress Fa­ rah (Katz and Shinar 1974:21–22). Sabet’s commercial station, Iran Television (Televizion‑e Iran), established on 7 October 1958, remained a monopoly for nearly a decade, and it was a thor‑ oughly Americanized operation, from hardware to staffing and from program‑ ming concept to individual programs. It adopted the American ntsc techni‑ cal standards, American advertising agencies imported its programs, and rca technicians trained its technical staff (Tunstall 1977:246).9 The station’s pro‑ gramming concept, which was to provide entertainment, was also patterned after American models, and its schedule contained mainly mgm films and nbc television series, with a few locally produced programs included (Katz and Wedell 1977:94). In addition to these commercial movies and film series, Iran Television aired usis newsreels (such as the Iran-­Washington Report) as well as other usis/Tehran films and usia news films for foreign newscasts, disseminating to a wider home audience both the films and their official style. Sabet opened another private, commercial station in Abadan on 15 March 1960 to air programs primarily to Western oil workers and their families. Privately owned, commercially driven, and designed chiefly to entertain, Iran Television was not particularly concerned with Iranian national iden‑ t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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tity or with projecting the Pahlavi state ideology, although it contributed to the “reawakening of Iranian art, music, theater, and dance” (Katz and Shinar 1974:23). According to Kambiz Mahmoudi, the general manager of Iran Tele‑ vision who later became the deputy director of nirt, Iran Television was an “apolitical organization because of the conservatism of its owners,” and be‑ cause of their minority religious affiliation, it did not engage in any religious programming, so as not to offend anyone, but went off the air during the Muslim religious holidays and mourning periods (Mahmoudi 1982:29–31). In 1960, another television station began in Tehran, this time operated by the United States Armed Forces Radio and Television (afrts), which broadcast imported popular shows from the United States in English and was on the air until just before the revolution of 1978–79. With the promulgation of the Shah’s White Revolution, the state’s take‑ over of the mass media for the purpose of propaganda and national integra‑ tion intensified. Following a study by a French consulting firm, in 1966 the government established National Iranian Television, which in June 1969 ab‑ sorbed Sabet’s Iran Television to form in September 1971 a monolithic na‑ tionwide broadcast network, National Iranian Radio and Television, headed by Reza Ghotbi, a capable European-­trained engineer and a relative of the new empress, Farah. With the acquisition in October 1973 of the educational television channel run by the Ministry of Education, and the inauguration in November that year of an international program, nirt’s consolidation was complete, becoming a public broadcasting monopoly operated as an “autono‑ mous government corporation” that gave Iran the most extensive national net‑ work coverage in Asia after Japan (Mahmoudi 1977:12). It operated four chan‑ nels: First Network, devoted to general programming, had the widest national coverage. It was followed by Second Network, given to highbrow program‑ ming, Educational Television, which aired educational films and instructional programs (the first channel to broadcast in color regularly in 1975), and Inter‑ national Television, which ran foreign-­language news, films, and programs (mostly in English, with some French and German) for the benefit of the large foreign resident communities and of Westernized Iranians. nirt also operated more than a dozen provincial production centers in major cities that buttressed the national materials with local productions. The reasons for the takeover of Sabet’s television are complex and have never been fully revealed, but the Shah’s desire to counteract growing criticism about Baha’i influence was a factor (Sreberny-­Mohammadi and Mohammadi 1994:63–65). nirt ad‑ opted the French television standards (secam).10 It began small, but it grew rapidly into a giant national organization with around eight thousand employ‑ 66

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ees by the time of the revolution and an estimated budget of $112,300,000 for 1977 (Mahmoudi 1977:14). Even as it grew by leaps and bounds, a kind of artisanal mode of produc‑ tion and broadcasting remained at work, similar to the one in the motion-­ picture industry. As Kambiz Mahmoudi, one of nirt’s deputy directors, ex‑ plained it in an interview, I can tell you that there were no principles or procedures on paper, or a model, according to which we were to proceed with our affairs [pro‑ ducing and airing programs]. We discovered these in the process. . . . This was because a group of people had gathered, with different ideas. Each person had traveled a different route and wanted to do something, but these things were not related to each other. If you took the music which nirt broadcast after 5–6 months of operation, you would see all sorts of music, all kinds of shows, and performances, without any con‑ tinuity, any personality (I don’t want to say they were bad; no, actually, some of them were good). Anyway, if you looked at the shows carefully, you’d think that maybe this program was made by the Communists, that one by the nationalists, and this other one by irresponsible artists, that this newscast was made by people who were supervised by Savak, or that news item was the work of an opposition group. If you looked carefully you’d see such a chaotic countenance on the television. (Mah‑ moudi 1982:47–52) At around the same time that the movie industry began industrializing, nirt also put into effect various industrializing measures, which systematized these artisanal tendencies. It created nine program production and research depart‑ ments, or “groups.” These were music, family and children, religion and ethics, Iranzamin (the latter on the history, geography, archaeology, and arts of Iran, headed by the filmmaker Feraidun Rahnema), contests, basic informational programs, serials and entertainment, art and science, and dramatic produc‑ tions. In addition, through its subsidiary company Telfilm, established in 1971 by Malek Sasan Veissi, nirt engaged in quality feature filmmaking, particu‑ larly with new-­wave filmmakers, coproductions with foreign movie companies, serials production, and tv documentaries. With Telfilm’s participation, nirt became a major producer of television serials, almost all of them shot on film: Amir Arsalan (1965, dir. Parviz Kardan), Mr. Officer (Sarkar Ostovar, 1967–69, dir. Parviz Sayyad and Parviz Kardan), Vagabond (Alakhun Valakhun, 1968, dir. Manuchehr Mahjubi), Mrs. Qamar’s House (Khaneh‑ye Qamar Khanom, 1969–71, dir. Mahjubi), Octopus (Okhtapus, 1968–69, dir. Sayyad), Homeless t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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(Khanehbedush, 1973, dir. Kardan), Shelterless Years (Salha‑ye Bipanahi, 1973, dir. Hasan Shahbaz and Shahrokh Zolriasatein), Under the Little Bazaar (Zir‑e Bazarcheh, 1973, dir. Abbas Pahlevan and Hasan Marandi), Samad’s Adventures (Majeraha‑ye Samad, 1974, dir. Sayyad), The Tangestan Braves (Daliran‑e Tang‑ estan, 1974–5, dir. Homayun Shahnavaz), Fire without Smoke (Atash‑e Bedun‑e Dud, 1974–75, dir. Nader Ebrahimi), King of the Universe (Soltan‑e Sahebqeran, 1975, dir. Ali Hatami), Ancient Tales of Iran (Afsanehha‑ye Kohan‑e Iran, 1976, dir. Malekjahan Khazai and Marva Nabili), and My Uncle Napoleon (Daijan Napeleon, 1976, dir. Naser Taqvai). nirt created additional divisions for audi‑ ence research, production, the performing arts, and criticism, which attracted the who’s who of Iranian culture and arts, making nirt an indispensable en‑ gine of film and high culture. Finally, it established research institutes, either autonomously or in collaboration with other entities, such as the Communi‑ cation and Development Institute, headed by the political philosopher Majid Tehranian, and the Center for the Dialogue of Civilizations, directed by the philoso­pher Darisuh Shayegan. With all these divisions and activities, nirt ri‑ valed, even surpassed, the mca in terms of the quality and diversity of its cul‑ tural expression and of the nation­wide reach of its productions and activities. These developments represent a major transformation of the media and cultural structures in Iran, demonstrating the triumph of the statist European model over the private enterprise American model, which suited both the stat‑ ist goal of national integration and the Shah’s autocratic regime. Despite this structural reorientation, however, the programming remained chiefly Ameri‑ can or American-­influenced. This dual structure of media and programming reflected, and contributed to, the dual political economy of the country, which showed hybrid statist and capitalist features. It also pointed to the strong im‑ pact of the globalizing American pop culture and entertainment industries. Overseas sales in the mid-­1960s accounted for some 60 percent of all U.S. telefilm syndication, representing the “difference between profit and loss for the entire industry” (Schiller 1971:85). Iranian imports of American television products offered a case in point. A survey conducted in 1974, for example, showed that 40 percent of television programs were imports, while the rest were domestically produced (Katz and Weddel 1977:156). American serials and films occupied the lion’s share of that 40 percent, as borne out by table 1.11 The immense popularity of domestic programs, such as Morad Barqi (Mo‑ rad the Electrician) and Zir‑e Bazarcheh (Under the Little Bazaar) are notable, as is the preponderance of American-­made products, which points to the deep penetration of American cultural products. Many local shows were made by a small group of Western-­trained professionals who emulated American and 68

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table 1  Popularity of Programs on Iranian Television in Tehran (January 1974)

Program Title and Type Morad Barqi (local comic serial) Days of Our Lives (U.S. import) Zir-e Bazarcheh (local drama serial) Full feature films (mostly imported) Tarzan (U.S. import) Variety show Science program News (locally produced) Ironside (U.S. import) Young Lawyers (U.S. import) Salha-ye Bipanahi (local serial based on U.S. serial Peyton Place) Variety show The Sixth Sense (U.S. import) Marcus Welby, M.D. (U.S. import) Colombo (U.S. import)

Percent Naming Program among Five Best-Liked Programs 75 49 45 30 20 18 15 13.7 12 12 12 12 11 9 8

Source: Katz and Shinar 1974:58.

European shows, helping naturalize these conventions. There were economic reasons for such a penetration as well. As Mohammad Naficy, the head of the family and children’s programming group at nirt, stated, Americans were consummate salespeople with extensive marketing experience, and they ad‑ vertised their products and made them readily accessible. Their prices were lower than those for European programs because of their economy of scale. Finally, they had a diverse range of well-­made programs (Naficy 1983:79–80). Although some domestic productions were highly popular, the ratio of foreign imports to domestic productions increased to three to one by 1976 (Malek and Mohsenian Rad 1994:83). Close relatives of the Shah and his wife, Farah, headed both the mca and nirt, thus consolidating the court’s control of the media and the position of these two giant agencies as purveyors of official ideology and culture. nirt’s reputable College of Cinema and Television, in which future filmmakers and technicians of cinema and television were trained, mostly by foreign-­trained instructors, dispersed its impact further into the culture and media fields. t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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The two major media inroads that the U.S. government and commercial en‑ tertainment companies had made in Iran (documentary film production and television broadcasting) were conjoined into a dominant, integrated signify‑ ing practice that, despite differences between the mca and nirt and institu‑ tional and personal rivalries, consolidated the Americanization not only of Iranian taste, as Nilla Cram Cook had prescribed it more than a decade ear‑ lier, but also of Iranian consciousness-­shaping industries. The state became hegemonic in the realm of media and culture, dominating all other insti‑ tutions, social formations, dispositions, and tendencies in the microphysical struggles of power and knowledge.

Patronage by Nepotism and Cronyism Nepotism and cronyism have been important factors in the formations of Ira‑ nian modernity, national culture and cinema, and official documentary films. The minister of culture and art, Pahlbod, was married to the Shah’s elder sis‑ ter, Shams, while the director general of nirt, Reza Ghotbi, was the empress’s cousin and a close childhood friend whom she called “the brother I never had” (Pahlavi 2004:16). Then there was Laili Amirarjomand, a U.S.-­trained female librarian and a confidante of Empress Farah, who headed the cidcya (established in 1964), which became a third force in the government-­driven effort to industrialize and modernize the film industry, promoting an alter‑ native form of cinema. Finally, Mehdi Bushehri, the husband of the Shah’s twin sister, Ashraf, ran the Film Industry Development Corporation of Iran (fidci) in the 1970s, which engaged in film coproductions with international concerns. Their long tenures at their institutions helped ensure regularity and continuity not only in the organizational and managerial formations of cinema and television but also in the textual and authorial formations of film and television programs in both nonfiction and fiction forms.12 These individ‑ uals and their organizations formed part of the Shah’s inner circle of power, and they contributed greatly to his political consolidation and, ironically, to his eventual downfall. While the enormous petrodollar budgets at the disposal of the mca, nirt, and the cidcya encouraged the proliferation of documentaries and other films by civil servant filmmakers and freelance contractors, these institutions’ financial, administrative, and censorship control over their prod‑ ucts tended to discourage experimentation with the official style. At the same time, however, their intimate links to the center of power gave these court-­ related chiefs a much greater political and financial autonomy than that held 70

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by other governmental and nongovernmental film and media agencies. As a result, some of the most critical and artistic films were also produced in these institutions and under their aegis. Although the mca and nirt were the most prolific and industrialized orga‑ nizations, they were not the country’s sole structures for documentary produc‑ tion, distribution, and exhibition. The Film Center of the cidcya, established in 1969, supported small-­scale, short-­subject, documentary, experimental, and animated films made for, and about, children. Made under the tutelage of the Film Center directors (initially Firouz Shirvanlu and later Ebrahim Foru‑ zesh), these films were exhibited in the cidcya’s branch libraries nationwide. The best of them were also entered in the cidcya’s annual International Chil‑ dren’s Film Festival, which began in 1966 (initiated by Hajir Dariush). The gi‑ ant National Iranian Oil Company (nioc) also produced many documentary, instructional, and institutional films, either through independent film stu‑ dios, such as the Golestan Film Workshop (gfw), or through other film com‑ panies. Established by the modernist short story writer and novelist Ebrahim Golestan, who later became a new-­wave filmmaker, gfw made many films for nioc, some of whose more artistic products found their way onto public screens and into festivals. In addition, various government ministries hired freelance filmmakers to make documentaries, particularly for publicity pur‑ poses. Some commercial film studios, too, such as Mitra Film Studio and Pars Film Studio (both under Ismail Kushan), made nonfiction films. Nongovern‑ mental organizations as varied as the Society for Assistance to Lepers and the Blood Organization of Iran, and commercial and industrial concerns such as automotive and steel manufacturing companies also sponsored documenta‑ ries, some of them memorable. Finally, educational institutions, such as the Fine Arts School of Tehran University, nirt’s College of Cinema and Televi‑ sion, and the nationwide amateur Super 8 film organization Sinema‑ye Azad (Free Cinema), taught film production, history, and aesthetics, and many of their students and participants made experimental nonfictional works that were entered into film festivals, including Free Cinema’s own annual festival. The producers at the Free University of Iran, a nationwide multimedia univer‑ sity, made documentary films, and university faculty made educational televi‑ sion and radio programs with the assistance of nirt’s Educational Television Channel in support of the university’s curriculum, which were aired nation‑ wide (Naficy 1977). Since Sinema‑ye Azad, begun in 1969, was largely funded by nirt, many of its filmmaking members found employment in the latter organizations or were commissioned by it to make films on a freelance basis. After the success of Sinema‑ye Azad, in its rivalry with nirt, the mca in 1974 t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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formed its own society for young and amateur filmmakers, the Young Peo‑ ple’s Cinema Society (Anjoman‑e Sinema‑ye Javanan), headed by Bijan Moha‑ jer. The establishment of local and national film festivals that recognized and gave awards for nonfiction and short-­subject films brought prestige to the art form and enhanced exchanges among filmmakers.

The Official Style of Newsreels and Documentaries The most viable seed of the official style was sown by usia and usis film efforts. The first and most public manifestation of this style in domestic films emerged in the biweekly propaganda newsreel, News (Akhbar), starting in 1959, whose magazine style and pro-­Shah and pro-­military contents dupli‑ cated Iran News. This similarity partly resulted from structural linkages be‑ tween the producers, for the usis/Tehran was the producer of Iran News, while the faa’s Audiovisual Center, formed with the usis/Tehran’s absorp‑ tion into the Iranian government, produced News. Since news events, news sources, and newsreel cameramen were limited in Iran, and since News cop‑ ied Iran News in style, these two newsreels began to resemble each other. One contained more American and international news, the other more domes‑ tic news, particularly about the Shah and his family (Issari 1989:183). This made for a minor difference. The copy had achieved near identity with the original, demonstrating the success of self-­othering and professionalization at profoundly ideological, personal, and authorial levels, rendering the origi‑ nal obsolete. Iran News stopped in 1964, leaving News, and later Weekly Events (Ruydadha‑ye Hafteh), as the unrivaled newsreels of the Pahlavi government into the 1970s. By then, the agency that produced and circulated these official newsreels had itself evolved from the small faa to the massive mca.13 Another way in which the usia-­formulated official documentary style be‑ came naturalized was through one of the least publicized duties of the usia, according to which it annually granted so-­called Certificates of International Educational Character to thousands of American films for the purpose of ex‑ port. Between 1950 and 1983, for example, the usia granted a huge number of such certificates, around sixty-­t hree thousand (Rosenberg 1983:40). Based on the Beirut Agreement of 1948, adopted by the United Nations, which was designed to facilitate the international exchange of educational audiovisual materials, the certification process removed the high import and export tariffs that governments levied against documentary and educational films—­levies that sometimes amounted to 100 percent ad valorem. Films that obtained 72

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edu­cational certificates avoided all import and export duties. On the other hand, films that failed to obtain certification were essentially denied foreign markets because of the high cost of exporting and importing without certifi‑ cation and because of the low budget of most independently made documen‑ tary and educational films. The usia refused to certify films that it judged to be “misrepresentative” or liable to “misinterpretation by foreign audiences lacking adequate American points of reference” (Rosenberg 1980:40). Over the years, this resulted in the denial of certification to scores of films that were critical of U.S. government policies, major industries, and prevailing social conditions. The certification process was thus turned into both a political and an economic form of censorship, and it helped circulate a model of documen‑ tary and educational films that was politically safe.14 The American-­British coup of 1953 that toppled Mosaddeq and reinstated the Shah indirectly helped consolidate the official style as the reigning model of documentary cinema. This statist structure and style proved to be resil‑ ient models of seeing and presenting the factual world, lasting long after the demise of both the usis and the faa. This style had several dimensions—­ political, ideological, structural, and generic. Politically, official documenta‑ ries and newsreels, such as News, tended to idealize the person of the Shah; supported the state ideology, politics, and policies of syncretic Westernization and endorsed the United States’ involvement in Iran’s development. Ideologi‑ cally, they were positivistic, emphasizing benefits instead of criticism; and they tended to revive, sometimes chauvinistically, the glories of a pre-­Islamic past. In line with their propaganda aims, the mca transferred these newsreels and positivist documentaries onto 16mm prints and sent them to Iranian em‑ bassies abroad, “so that foreigners will also see what had been happening [in Iran].” However, as Pahlbod admits, “In regards to the films we sent abroad we were on the whole not very successful,” for they did not find receptive au‑ diences (Pahlbod 1984:34). Pahlavi-­enacted civil laws, Shiite religious laws, and social customs and taboos, which made it difficult to film current social conditions, were also instrumental in consolidating the official style. The regulations of 1938 that limited what could be filmed were still in force. A report prepared by the Soci‑ ety for Applied Anthropology in 1951 for the International Moving Picture Di‑ vision of the U.S. Department of State, which took note of these regulations, helped codify the conventions of the style—­conventions that guided the usis filmmaking effort and that became a blueprint for the official style. The report recommended that the following situations be avoided: the film‑ ing of women, particularly if they are unveiled; religious ceremonies, espe‑ t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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cially official ones; anything that might “suggest that the people of Iran are second-­rate”; and anything that might arouse Iranians’ guilt for their past practices, which may result in the rejection of the new Western procedures. On the other hand, the report recommended that the following practices be followed: making the films interesting and lively; showing whole persons in whole situations, instead of focusing on an isolated individual filmed in close-­ups; making technical procedures understandable by placing them in the context of human relations; emphasizing the benefits obtained by follow‑ ing recommended procedures; using humor and humorous situations, not humorous commentary or sarcasm; incorporating the kind of objections that conservatives have to the new ways, then refuting them; using a very slow pace and a linear narration that avoided sudden transitions; going from general (long shot) to particular (close-­up); showing instead of telling; and, finally, for voice-­overs, employing a “person with a recognizable high-­class or good Per‑ sian accent,” not a person with a minority accent. Noting that “Iranians have a very strong sense of national pride,” the report recommended that, where pos‑ sible, in connection with technical assistance films, materials should be used that “reflect the achievement of Iran” (quoted in Issari 1979:vol. 2:577–91). As a result of incorporating these recommendations, partly inspired by the murder of Robert Imbrie and similar incidents around photography in Iran, the usis and faa films used dramatization, reenactment, and sometimes hu‑ mor to enliven their subjects for the audience, the majority of whom were il‑ literate. To increase audience identification, they often focused on an individ‑ ual or a family by means of which the appropriate lessons were taught. For example, the central figure in almost a dozen educational films was a young boy named Said, whose trials and travails resulted in his learning about new health, safety, and educational issues and practices and the modern ways of dealing with them.15 Others instructed proper methods for building out‑ houses, so that water wells were not contaminated, or offered ways of prevent‑ ing communicable diseases such as malaria and trachoma from spreading. To facilitate comprehension, the films adopted a slow pace and simple and linear narratives. Sometimes they showed sensitivity to Iranians’ cultural ori‑ entation by employing such indigenized aesthetic features as panning from right to left to match the direction in which Persian is written (Issari and Paul 1977:233–34). Finally, a wall-­to-­wall, voice-­of-­God, off-­screen narration, which provided description, gave information, and cued viewers to particular aspects of each scene, became the norm. This practice may partially have been borrowed from the usia films made in the United States, which featured a lot of voice-­ 74

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over narration because in preparing foreign-­language versions of films, dub‑ bing a single narrator’s voice proved easier than dubbing character dialogues. This narrative device incorporated into film texts the traditions both of oral storytelling and of extratextual screen translators (dilmaj), who had previously provided live narration, cueing, and interpretation to spectators. Voice-­over narration also replicated the monologic discourse of the government in the so‑ ciety at large: speaking subjects in official newsreels and documentaries were not the average peasants or urban dwellers depicted, whose speech—­if heard on the soundtrack—­would have manifested different regional and ethnic ac‑ cents, implying premodern formations, diversity, and unapproved viewpoints. Instead, it was the singular, dominant speaking subject outside the text—­t he government—­whose official viewpoint about what was depicted became the voice-­over in an authoritative national accent, uttered by an unseen narrator.

The Taxonomy of Nonfiction Film Styles and Forms High production output, one criterion for the industrialization of cinema, was not limited to major government entities, such as the mca, nirt, and the cidcya. Some smaller, semi-­independent film centers were also quite ac‑ tive. For example, three hundred Sinema‑ye Azad filmmakers, aged between thirteen and forty, produced about one thousand Super 8 shorts, many of them documentaries, in the ten-­year period between 1969 and 1979 (Nassibi 1994:197). Although most of these filmmakers were amateurs, the Sinema‑ye Azad allowed much experimentation with form and content. College film stu‑ dents, too, were prolific and engaged in various formalist, social realist, and critical experimentations. As a result of the diversity of funding sources and the variety of organizations that sponsored, commissioned, or employed civil servant and freelance documentarians, the official documentary style did not remain homogeneous, despite its hegemony, for smart, ambitious, and so‑ cially conscious filmmakers managed to play the system and engage in for‑ mal and generic innovations and counterhegemonic productions.

Institutional and Poetic Realist Documentaries Institutional films tend to bolster, directly or indirectly, the prestige of the sponsoring institutions. Sometimes they accomplish this by documenting and explaining the activities and operations of these institutions; at other t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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times they manage by associating the sponsor’s name with a prestigious doc‑ umentary project unrelated to the institution. The direct form of sponsorship dominated in Iran, often by the state or the agencies under its control. Because their status was at stake and their aim was education—­even propaganda—­not entertainment, the sponsoring institutions tended to hire educated, intellec‑ tual filmmakers for their projects. However, this created a dilemma for these filmmakers because they wanted to make films with relative freedom, which these state institutions allowed, but at the same time they wished to avoid the taint of making propaganda films. The result was the emergence of what I call “poetic realism,” a style through which filmmakers subverted the official style of the documentary and its direct, propagandistic force by various lyrical and symbolic uses of indirection, by contrapuntal strategies of sound and image editing, and by poetic narration. If these were the positive contributions of poetry to documentary cinema and to art cinema, some drawbacks existed as well. Because of the directors’ and screenplay writers’ roots in literature and poetry, the voice-­over narration in these films often acquired a highly lyrical, textured, and sometimes verbose quality, rivaling and overpowering the im‑ ages, sometimes even obfuscating the films’ meanings. From the 1950s to the 1970s, documentaries favored a wall-­to-­wall voice of God in narration, partly because of the technological and practical problems of the synchronized re‑ cording of ordinary speech and partly due to the official style’s formality. As a result, the introduction of poetry into film, particularly of poetic voice-­over narration, ironically encouraged discursive monovocalism and authoritari‑ anism as opposed to the multivocalism that dialogue and ordinary speech would have offered. Even more ironical, this ascendance of authoritarian po‑ etry within the documentary form fit the undemocratic tendencies of the gov‑ ernment, while fortunately and simultaneously the rise of the modern novel and art cinema, which cross-­pollinated each other, injected not only multi­ vocalism but also democratic values into fiction cinema. The output of one seminal independent, commercial studio encapsulated both the promises and the pitfalls of institutional filmmaking and of the po‑ etic realist style.

The Golestan Film Workshop: Ebrahim Golestan and Forugh Farrokhzad Ebrahim Golestan was born in Shiraz in 1922 to a father named Taqi who pub‑ lished the Golestan newspaper and who subsequently changed his last name from Taqavi to Golestan. As he told me in an interview, his mother was late in 76

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gaining formal modern education, but she was adamant: although attendance of married women in schools, let alone one with a child, was frowned on, she not only went to school but also took her four-­year-­old son, Ebrahim, with her (Naficy 2007). His father subscribed to several foreign magazines, including film journals in French. As a result, Ebrahim was immersed in the world of journalism and photography with a horizon reaching well beyond Iran. He himself entered journalism by first writing for and editing two Tudeh Party periodicals, Rahbar and Mardom. Disappointed with party politics, he left the organization (whose treasurer he had been) and turned to writing modernist short stories, taking photographs and making news films with his 8mm Bo‑ lex camera, and working for the Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company (aioc) to prepare news reports and photos for dissemination to the foreign press. He was drawn to cinema from childhood, as his uncle took him to movies of all sorts twice a week from when he was seven years old. He kept the habit of filmgoing for years, even when he became an active member of the Tudeh Party (Jahed 2005/1384:97, 109), which was highly critical of Hollywood cin‑ ema. During the nationalization of the aioc and its transformation into the nioc and during the coup against Mosaddeq, while working for the company Golestan took news photographs and films as a freelancer for foreign news agencies, particularly the American television networks nbc and cbs and the British concerns bbc and itn; he provided a dramatic account of filming un‑ der flying bullets on the day of the coup (Omid 1995/1374:842–43). Soon, he graduated to a 16mm Bolex, sending the exposed footage to the American networks for processing. He recounts one interesting story of filming Aya‑ tollah Kashani, an important figure in the politics of oil and the coup, which shows the openness of some leading clerics to cinema. Golestan had gone to Kashani’s house, where he filmed him performing his ritual Shiite ablution at the yard tank and then praying. After his prayer, the ayatollah asked Goles‑ tan if he was satisfied with what he had filmed, to which he answered that he had had to film him against the light because he was praying toward Mecca. To this the cleric responded: “My dear young man, you tell me in which di‑ rection I should pray and I will. You shouldn’t worry about my facing Mecca.” Then he turned about 90 degrees for proper lighting and pretended to pray, a scene that Golestan filmed (Jahed 2005/1384:111). Golestan realized that he earned far more income from his freelance film‑ ing than from his official nioc employment, particularly as he was paid for the former with U.S. dollars. The big difference between the official exchange rate for dollars (three tomans to a dollar) and the free market exchange rate (eighteen tomans per dollar) made his freelance work highly lucrative. Since t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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the company could not pay him any more without violating its accounting rules, it benefited both sides if Golestan set up an outside production com‑ pany to make films for it—­what became the Golestan Film Workshop (gfw) (Jahed 2005/1384:119–25). With the nationalization of oil, oil films were made domestically. By 1958, with the help of Arthur Elton, who headed the Shell Oil Company Film Unit, a list of the latest equipment was drawn up and pur‑ chased for the gfw. The nioc would pay for the equipment and deduct that amount from the fees the gfw would receive. In addition, the gfw was to work exclusively for the oil consortium until its debt was fully paid, which occurred within a year, indicating how lucrative freelance work was. Goles‑ tan could then make films for himself, for the oil consortium, and for others. Thus the first independent nonfiction film studio was born, one that initially made documentaries but eventually added fiction movies to its roster. In ad‑ dition, over the years, the gfw dubbed around six hundred technical and edu‑ cational movies (Jahed 2005/1384:129). The company was semi-­independent from its main sponsor, not only financially but also ideologically, for although the oil consortium commissioned many of its films, as Golestan relates, it did not interfere with or control either their content or style (162–63). Despite this hands-­off policy, Golestan’s films suffered government censorship. Golestan ensured the independence of his company by assembling a self-­ sufficient group of creative and dedicated film technicians and aficionados, most of whom lacked any film experience but would become prominent in cinema, literature, and journalism. Their work would lead to the creation of a workshop house style, namely, poetic realism. As Golestan told me, Solei‑ man Minasian worked as a day laborer and porter, Samad Purkamali as a gofer for the Associated Press, and Mahmud Hangval as a night watchman at Badie Studio. Golestan hired these novices and trained them to become a competent cinematographer, soundman, and technician, respectively. He also hired Minasian’s brother, Herand, his own brother, Shahrokh, and Ruhollah Emami to do sound, photography, and editing. Najaf Dariabandari did office work, Karim Emami and Feraidun Rahnema served as production assistants, Esmail Ra’in was a gofer, and the poets Forugh Farrokhzad and Sohrab Akha‑ van Saless served as a typist and a dubber, respectively. Of these, Rahnema, Farrokhzad, and Shahrokh Golestan made names for themselves as art cin‑ ema filmmakers, while Ruhollah Emami and Ra’in became prominent writ‑ ers and publishers and Dariabandari became a writer and a translator (trans‑ lating Arthur Knight’s history of cinema, The Liveliest Art). The gfw became a lively intellectual salon where employees and fellow intellectuals, such as Ja‑

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7  Ebrahim Golestan (left) with the author, Northwestern University, outside Block Cinema, where a symposium on Golestan’s films was held, May 2007.

lal Al‑e Ahmad, Sadeq Chubak, and Farrokh Gaffary, would read and discuss poetry and other matters late into the night (figure 7). There was both specialization and artisanal multifunctionality among the gfw staff. This was particularly true of Golestan who not only owned the stu‑ dio but also performed multiple tasks: those of producer, director, screen‑ writer, editor, cameraman, and narrator. His multifunctionality overdeter‑ mined his authority and authorship of the gfw’s products. As he told me, “Art is personal and individual, and film must strive to reach that goal. A film can be made that way if one person’s vision and plans predominate. That is why I brought in competent, flexible, and clever and resourceful [zerang] individu‑ als to the company who could adapt themselves to that idea” (Naficy 2007). This structure allowed the gfw as a unit and its leader as an author much im‑ provisational flexibility, to the point that, as Golestan admitted, he never com‑ pleted a script before filming began. This was true even in the case of fiction movies, as he wrote the dialogues for Mudbrick and Mirror only a day or two before shooting and those for The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley on the day of filming. With the latter film, Golestan claimed he delayed because he wanted to control the information about the film getting around due to its politically sensitive nature. He was the first chief of a modern Iranian film studio; akin to the master craftsman heading the traditional royal painting atelier, he ran the studio’s operations, trained and supervised the craftspeople under him, set the terms for projects, contributed to them himself in diverse ways, and created and maintained the house style. No wonder Golestan never called his production company a studio, as was customary at the time, but a workshop, an atelier. One crucial element of his poetic realist house style was

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the recording of synchronous sound for documentaries and fictional movies, which enhanced the realism of both film types, giving them a gritty punch. That Elton facilitated the formation of the gfw reveals another level of cul‑ tural exchange between Iran and the West. This involved not only importing film technology and equipment for the gfw (mostly German) or cinematic products (films to be dubbed) but also the transfer of know-­how, knowledge, and institutional structures. Elton had been a member of Grierson’s docu‑ mentary units, attached to the British government in the 1930s, which had made documentaries and propaganda films about Britain and British indus‑ tries and colonies. Whether this was done consciously or not, the gfw, itself attached to a major state oil monopoly, transferred a mode of documentary production and a signifying institution (a film studio) from the West to Iran, a significant step toward modernity. The similarities between the gfw and its British counterparts, the General Post Office (gpo) and the Empire Marketing Board (emb) film units, were many, but marked differences existed as well. A majority of the British units’ production personnel were leftists and socialists; many at the gfw also had leftist tendencies. The British film units’ ideologies were both national and individual. They were to create a unified British iden‑ tity and to market that image of “Great Britain” to its disappearing colonies and the world at large. Similarly, the gfw was to create by means of documen‑ tary films a modern imagined nation of Iran for dissemination to both Irani‑ ans and the world. This construction was energized by the thesis of syncretic Westernization, which strove to represent Iran as a modern, industrializing nation and an ancient culture with a distinguished history and meaningful arts. Yet contrary to the output of the British film units, the gfw’s industrial, archaeological, and arts documentaries propagated, thanks to Golestan’s au‑ thorial intervention, a thesis that was often at odds and even critical of the ba‑ sic ideology of its chief sponsors. This criticism manifested itself not only in the films’ poetic narrations but also in the gritty realism of the visuals and the synchronous sound of the profilmic world, which punctuated them. No doubt the differing political systems in Britain in the 1930s and Iran in the 1960s had something to do with this, as one was a liberal democracy with a tradition of press freedom while the other was an authoritarian state intolerant of criti‑ cism. This intolerance, as well as the Iranian history of poetry, was constitu‑ tive of poetic realism, allowing filmmakers to couch their criticism in poetic imagery and in lyrical, philosophical, and pointed narration and commentary. Another difference between the gfw and the gpo and emb film units was that the gfw engaged not only in auteurist documentary productions but also in auteurist fiction filmmaking, with Golestan at the helm. While Grierson had 80

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directed only one film in the film units he spearheaded, Golestan was a one-­ man band, a multifunctional auteur involved in the majority of the produc‑ tions. This multifunctionality and authorial overdetermination was also con‑ stitutive of the gfw’s house style. Even though Golestan reigned supreme, individual studio personnel’s con‑ tributions to the collective work were essential. Farrokhzad’s filmmaking ca‑ reer and output must be seen in terms of her relation to Golestan as well as separate from him. Soon after joining the gfw, she moved beyond secretarial duties (for which she had been hired) and into production, working both be‑ hind and before the cameras. At the same time, her relationship with Goles‑ tan deepened into both a romance and a professional partnership. The gfw sent her to Britain for a short training course in stock shot library archiving, and she edited one of the gfw’s earliest so-­called process films, A Fire (Yek Atash, 1958–61), about a huge oil-­well fire near Ahvaz and the seventy days of relentless efforts to extinguish it in partnership with the American oil fire‑ fighter Myron Kinley. What distinguished the film, shot by Shahrokh Goles‑ tan, was not only the meticulous documentation of the process of extinguish‑ ing the fire by spraying, dynamiting, and capping the well but also the footage of Iranian farmers working in their fields, which provided a human and social context. This intercutting of industrial machinery and development with, on the one hand, the lighter side of laborers’ work, their leisure activities, meals, and times of rest, and, on the other hand, with the life of rural folk affected by encroaching industrialization became a hallmark of the gfw’s industrial documentaries. Farrokhzad also codirected and coedited another oil docu‑ mentary, Water and Heat (Ab va Garma, 1961), about the dizzying heat in the area of Abadan, and an episode of the six-­part series titled A View (Cheshman‑ daz, 1958–61), about the working conditions of oil field employees. The differences between the section she directed on heat and the section on water, which Golestan directed, revealed her keen sense of rhythm and her affin‑ ity for sound, an affinity she amply demonstrated in designing the sound for Water and Heat, which included her own voice singing a lullaby (Golmakani 1995/1374:24). As an actor, Farrokhzad had a walk-­on part in Golestan’s first feature movie, Mudbrick and Mirror (Khesht va Aieneh, 1965), as the fully veiled woman who leaves her baby in the taxi, thereby setting off the whole story. She also acted in a fifteen-­minute episode of the hour-­long documentary Courtship (Kha‑ stegari, 1961), which Golestan filmed for the National Film Board of Can‑ ada and in which Parviz Dariush, Tusi Haeri (Ahmad Shmlu’s then wife), Mahmud Hangval, and Hayedeh Taghavi also acted.16 t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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Farrokhzad, the foremost poet of mid-­twentieth-­century Iran (1935–66), made one of the most notable institutional documentaries filmed in the style of poetic realism in Iran, The House Is Black (Khaneh Siah Ast, 1961), about the lives of the lepers in the Babadaghi Leper Colony near Tabriz (figure 8), one of the few films about disability in Iran.17 This was not a typical institu‑ tional film, however, as it did not laud the services of its sponsor, the Society for Assistance to Lepers, and it did not use the official style (except in a brief medical midsection). In fact, it set the tone and became the model for po‑ etic realist documentaries and their vision of what Mehrnaz Saeed-­Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum aptly called “radical humanism” (2003:5). Farrokhzad filmed The House Is Black in black and white, using a small gfw crew for a pe‑ riod of only twelve days, and she deftly edited it herself. Golestan said to me that he did not have any involvement in the film, neither in its filming nor in its editing. He only contributed two shots, one of pigeons flying and another of stagnant water with floating leaves. Nevertheless, he claimed that “there was a harmony of ideas among the gfw staff,” indicating that his authorial vision and style had imbued this film as well, although he did not take credit for any of it (Naficy 2007). The film begins with scenes of bitter irony in the classroom of the leper colony in which voice and image counterpoint each other to create a power‑ ful third message. A boy whose fingertips have been eaten away by the merci‑ less disease and another whose face and eyes are ravaged read out loud from a textbook: “Lord, I praise thee for having given me hands to work / Eyes to see the beauty of the world” (the boys read the Persian with an Azari accent, giving away the colony’s location). Then, accompanied by touching scenes, Farrokhzad’s poetic and sorrowful off-­camera voice-­over, which quotes rear‑ ranged biblical passages, documents the lepers’ life in the colony and punc‑ tuates their desolate humanity: a woman carefully applies makeup to her ravaged face and kohl to her eyes before a mirror; lepers prepare for a wed‑

8  The poet and documentarian Forugh Farrokhzad smoking a pipe. Frame enlargement from Claus Strigel’s Moon Sun Flower Game.

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ding, and they jubilantly celebrate it with the bride fully made up (figure 9).18 Children of the lepers play about, men wrestle, a woman washes a baby, a man smokes a cigarette, a girl combs the healthy long hair of another, food is prepared—­life goes on. In one scene that provides a commentary on life’s uselessness and repetition, a man compulsively paces the autumn-­struck gar‑ den of the colony alongside a dormitory, while Farrokhzad’s voice counts with each step the days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Fri‑ day, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. But even here, hope is found: as he passes by each dorm window, the film cuts to objects such as a tea kettle and a flower pot on the windowsills or to a person standing inside looking out. Nevertheless, the film’s overall mood is mournfully operatic. In one scene, over the moody autumnal shots of puddles of still water (taken by Golestan), a mother nursing her baby, and a dog picking up its pup with the mouth, punc‑ tuated by the cawing of crows, Farrokhzad’s sad voice intones biblical pas‑ sages: “Like the desert owl I roam the ruins / And like a sparrow I am alone on the roof / I am like scattered water / And like those who are already dead / The shadow of death is on my brows” (figure 10). The film’s middle section, devoted to the medical aspects of leprosy, is filmed in clinical settings that are reinforced by an off-­screen, apparently ob‑ jective male narrator: Golestan himself, whose voice also introduces the film. This section, which disrupts the flow of the diegetic world of the lepers, was put in, as Farrokhzad noted in a postscreening discussion defending the sec‑ tion, to show that “when all is said and done, leprosy is curable, and I think that we have been able to prove this to the spectator.”19 The clash of these two styles in a single film—­t he one lyrical and ambiguous, the other official and positivist—­characteristic of many institutional films and of the poetic real‑ ist style, testifies to the struggle of creative filmmakers to find a personal and

9  A female leper applies eye makeup for a wedding in Farrokhzad’s The House Is Black. Frame enlargement.

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10  “I am like scattered water,” intones Farrokhzad’s voiceover in The House Is Black. Frame enlargement.

truthful documentary voice in a society and a medium driven by an imper‑ sonal official style. It also testifies not only to the gendered and double voicing of the film but also to the double authorship of its narration, for Farrokhzad put the lyrical narration together, while Golestan wrote the text for the other parts. The best poetic realist films also manifest the parallel between writing po‑ etry and film editing. A detailed examination of films edited by Farrokhzad shows that she took a similarly careful approach to film editing as she did to composing poetry. Her written work is characterized by words that are highly evocative, atmospheric, emotional, sensorial, and corporeal. One of her co‑ workers at the gfw, Karim Emami, noted that her choice of words such as hajm (volume, mass), tashannoj (convulsion, tremor), rekhvat (languid), ma‑ fluj (physically paralyzed), and moztareb (anguished, worried), which are re‑ peated in her late poetry, “appertain to senses and the nervous system.”20 She is perhaps the most corporeal and embodied poet of Iran, whose work is full of frank evocations of her nervous system, senses, and body (hence some of the opposition to her work). Her words refer to the physicality of reality in the same way that each shot of a documentary—­t he type of film she made—­ indexes an external reality. In addition, her poetic realism stems from her working with each shot in her films as though it were a word in a poem, with great care and precision. Despite its poetic heights, The House Is Black suffers from heavy-­ handedness, particularly in the contrapuntal uses of sound and image at the film’s beginning and ending, which occur in a classroom. The film’s last scene, containing the following conversation between a teacher and students, provides a bookend to the film’s beginning: 84

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11  A pupil completes the sentence at the bottom of the blackboard that reads, “khaneh siah ast” (the house is black). Frame enlargement.

Teacher: Give me the name of four nice things. Student: Moon, sun, flower, game. Teacher (to another student): You, give me four ugly things. Student: Hands, feet, eyes. . . . Teacher (to a third student at the blackboard): Give me a sentence in which you use the word “The house. . . .” After a moment of hesitation, the boy completes it by adding, “is black” (fig‑ ure 11). The classroom scenes at the head and tail of the film are very touch‑ ing and emotionally loaded, but they seem staged for the camera to produce maximum contrapuntal irony, pity, or compassion, thus reducing the docu‑ mentary authenticity of the whole film project (Naficy 1978b/1357:344). How‑ ever, the honesty of the film’s lyrical vision and of the poet’s empathy, sincer‑ ity, and compassion for her subjects offset this shortcoming. These qualities also set the film apart from Luis Buñuel’s surrealist documentary Land with‑ out Bread (Tierra sin Pan, also known as Las Hurdes, 1932), with which The House Is Black is sometimes compared, including by no less a filmmaker than Chris Marker (2005:8). The film leaves an impression of Farrokhzad’s extreme sympathy, an al‑ most total identification with the lepers. Her on-­screen sympathy results from her off-­screen empathy. She gained their trust by being humane to the lep‑ ers and by treating them like normal people, as she stated in an interview: “Anybody who had gone to see the lepers had in fact looked only at their de‑ fects. But, as God is my witness, I would sit with them at their tablecloth, and I would touch their wounds and their fingerless hands and toeless feet. This is how they learned to trust me. . . . And I tested myself [at the leper colony], t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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from which I returned with a special joy at succeeding in doing something so that people who had never seen kindness could love me and trust me” (quoted in Saba 1995/1374:33–34). Emphasizing her identification with the lepers was Farrokhzad’s adoption of Hossein Mansouri, the son of two colony members, who was not afflicted with leprosy and whom, as Golestan told me, Farrokhzad took care of for three years until her untimely death. When Hossein reached the age of twelve, Mehrdad, Farrokhzad’s younger brother, sent the boy away to England and then Germany, where he is now a poet and a translator em‑ ployed in the legal department of the patent office. Hossein appears in several scenes in The House Is Black. In the classroom scene it is he who responds to the teacher’s request to name four beautiful things by saying, “mah, khoshid, gol, bazi” (moon, sun, flower, game) (figure 12). In this striking lyrical re‑ sponse Farrokhzad seemed to have discovered a soul mate, which motivated her adoption plan. It is also Hossein who in another scene smilingly observes his sister in the colony’s yard playing “horsy” with a broomstick and then runs off to his real-­life father. We learn the identity of the boy and his family (sans mother) in The House Is Black courtesy of a moving film by Claus Stigel about Hossein’s life and his relationship to Farrokhzad. His film’s title quotes Hos‑ sein’s classroom utterance, Moon Sun Flower Game (Mond Sonne Blume Spiel, 2007). It turns out that Farrokhzad was not the only one struck by the boy’s poetic sensibility, for as Hossein tells it in the German film, when she intro‑ duced herself to him at the colony (“Salaam, I am Forugh”), her voice trans‑ fixed and paralyzed the boy. At the end of filming The House Is Black, when Farrokhzad was about to take him with her to Tehran, “She takes my hands,” states the now middle-­age patent officer in Munich. The effect was “more

12  Hossein Mansouri, whom Farrokhzad adopted, in The House Is Black. Frame enlargement.

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powerful than hypnosis, paralysis, or narcosis. It was as though I had been bitten by a dangerous snake.” She did not release his hand until they reached the train station. In retrospect, Hossein’s four poetic words in the classroom changed the lives of both the teller and the listener—­underscoring the power of words and poetry among Iranians. While she was alive, Farrokhzad had forbidden the boy to see the film The House Is Black. However, when at age thirty-­two Hossein underwent a crisis of personal identity and national ori‑ gin, he turned to the film and watched it for the first time. It made him feel reconnected and grounded, a mediatic experience characteristic of exile.21 The mixed sponsorship of The House Is Black was perhaps responsible for the freedom and the style with which it treated its subject. The Society for As‑ sistance to Lepers had funds, around 50,000 tomans, to cover less than half of the film’s budget of 108,000 tomans. Golestan offered to contribute the rest, provided the organization “frees our hand in imparting the humanistic message that we felt should be in this film” (quoted in Saba 1995/1374:33). The tight budget was also responsible for the low 1 to 1.2 shooting ratio, which dic‑ tated its own shape-­forming aesthetics (which means they had to use practi‑ cally every shot they had filmed, leaving little room for editorial control). On the film’s release and its screening at Sa’di Cinema in Tehran, most critics praised The House Is Black, although Shamim Bahar and Parviz Nuri criticized it. As Golestan related in his postscreening discussion at North‑ western University in May 2007, the head of the Society for Assistance to Lep‑ ers, Dr. Raji, arranged a screening of the film for Empress Farah and Princess Ashraf, which both Golestan and Farrokhzad felt obliged to attend, despite their misgivings.22 After the film was over, Golestan “could not recognize Farah and Ashraf because they were both in tears. Ashraf rose to embrace Forugh, and despite her reluctance, Forugh responded.” The film thus re‑ ceived a royal seal of approval, and it became a cause célèbre among intellec‑ tuals as well, a celebrity that was intensified by Farrokhzad’s own great subse‑ quent poetic leaps and her tragic and untimely death at thirty-­t wo in a Tehran car accident in 1966.23 Marker’s pithy remarks succinctly describe her: “Black, brusque, ablaze,” (2005:7).24 The film proved a powerful plea for understanding lepers, and it won the top award at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 1963. It also proved an important fund-­raising vehicle whose income was earmarked for aid to the lepers. It generated at least 27,000 tomans in 1963 (Echo of Iran 1963:448), almost a third of its budget. Golestan states that it did much bet‑ ter than that, generating 2 million tomans with its first screenings (Jahed 2005/1384:152), several times its production costs. Empress Farah, who was t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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the patron of the Society for Assistance to Lepers, also noted that the film “was of great help in influencing public opinion” (Pahlavi 2004:143). However, a decade after the film’s creation, in the heatedly politicized 1970s, driven by the twin engines of official culture and official censorship, all films tended to be read politically or symbolically, even if they were not so coded by the filmmakers.25 The desolate and isolated leper colony could be read as representing the diseased Iranian society under the autocratic Shah. The black and bleak house of the title could be read as referring to the house of Iran, and thus as a criticism of official Pahlavi culture that state-­supported documentaries usually represented in rose-­colored visuals and positivistic rhetoric. These symbolic readings were encouraged by the film’s refusal to identify the location of the leper colony and the date of filming, which seemed to universalize its enclosed society. Such subversive and symbolic interpreta‑ tions may have been partly responsible for the limited distribution of the film in the mid-­1970s. Yet both Farrokhzad and Golestan claimed that in making this film they had “absolutely no intention to criticize [our] society and cir‑ cumstances” (quoted in Haidari 1998/1377:202). Such prevarication by the filmmakers in the hermeneutically rich Iranian society under repressive cen‑ sorship was perhaps a necessary ploy to avoid both becoming entangled with the censors and endangering their personal safety. Farrokhzad herself ad‑ mitted elsewhere to a critical encoding of the film: “This is a film about the lepers’ life and at the same time about life in general. . . . This is a portrayal of any closed and claustrophobic society, an image of uselessness, isolation, and sequestration” (quoted in Saba 1995/1374:35). In this manner, The House Is Black inaugurated in the documentary field the use of claustrophobic spa‑ tiality as social criticism before the new-­wave feature directors employed it, including Golestan himself in his seminal Mudbrick and Mirror. The same holds true of its use of poetry and poetic aesthetics. The House Is Black left an indelible mark on documentary cinema, for henceforth poetry and poetic realism became a subversive style in the hands of creative and oppositional filmmakers. Golestan’s own many documentaries further honed the style of poetic realism, which other directors picked up. In many cases, however, poetic realism resulted in word-­driven films, weighed down by wall-­to-­wall, flowery, voice-­of-­God voice-­over narration, for which the images served only as symbolic illustrations. The House Is Black was an excep‑ tion to what I call “authoritarian lyricism.” The most famous and accomplished of the gfw productions for the oil consortium was a thirty-­six-­minute process documentary titled Wave, Coral, and Rock (Mowj O Marjan O Khara, 1958–61), which Golestan produced, wrote, 88

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and edited, Alan Pendry and Neilson Baxter codirected, and several camera‑ men, including Shahrokh Golestan, filmed.26 It is a highly visual but rather verbose industrial film for the Oil Operating Companies, whose shooting ra‑ tio of one-­to-­six was the highest among the gfw documentaries. It graphi‑ cally documents the three-­year, four-­phase process of drilling, extracting, and exporting oil from wells in Gachsaran some one hundred miles inside the Iranian mainland to the Khark Island terminals in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Phase 1 entailed the construction in Khark of a large jetty for loading oil onto supertankers; phase 2 meant drilling oil wells in Gachsaran to pro‑ duce oil; in phase 3 pipelines were installed to bring that oil onto the shore of the Persian Gulf; and the final phase saw the laying of underwater pipelines to transfer the oil from the shore to Khark Island. These processes, which are narrated mostly in a matter-­of-­fact, descriptive voice-­over (and which Goles‑ tan wrote after the footage was cut), are presented as an inevitable result of the hard work of Iranians and foreign workers to achieve modernization, caus‑ ing the filmmaker Bahram Baizai to state that “someday, this enduring and expensive film will become representative of a nation that did not work but made 2 million–toman epics about labor” (quoted in Naficy 1978b/1357:342). Other critics, such as Amir Houshang Kavusi, called it a “masterpiece” and an “epic” about human labor and the human struggle against nature (Omid 1995/1374:844). This is clearly an institutional industrial documentary that lauds the work of its sponsoring oil companies, but it is also a nationalist documentary that envisions a modern Iran propelled by industrialization. Its emphasis on movement, both within the frame (heavy machinery in constant motion) and of the frame (smooth camera movements), embodied principles of modernity like motion, speed, and change. Yet Wave, Coral, and Rock can‑ not be considered a propaganda film, aware as it is of the social cost of in‑ dustrialization, particularly in its initial sequences, in which the underwater calm and beauty of the sea teaming with colorful fish and coral and the life of the indigenous people is disturbed by the arrival of a slew of modern trans‑ portation vehicles—­helicopters, airplanes, ships, and tractors—­and dynamite explosions (figure 13). The film encapsulates one of the ironic paradoxes of so‑ cially conscious documentarians, almost all of whom were leftist and opposed to the rapacious and repressive state, such as Golestan, who in making the film indirectly promoted the state they opposed. Through the sponsorship of documentaries the state either co-­opted and rewarded its dissidents or alter‑ natively tamed, sidelined, and banned them. Off-­screen narration is deployed differently in The House Is Black and in Wave, Coral, and Rock. Both use poetic language; one is penned primarily t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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13  The inevitable march of modernity and modernization destroys native cultures in Alan Pendry’s and Neilson Baxter’s Wave, Coral, and Rock. Frame enlargement.

by Farrokhzad, the other by Golestan. However, while Farrokhzad’s text and voice-­over, delivered by the poet herself, are lyrical, subjective, and intimate, the narration of Golestan’s film is official, seemingly objective, and officious, and it is delivered by a male voice (the veteran radio announcer Asadollah Paiman) in the poetically rhetorical and impersonal official style.27 Unlike its famous predecessor, Robert Flaherty’s pro-­oil documentary Louisiana Story (1948), which focused on the life of a fictional boy to personalize the story of the oil industry’s arrival and positive impact in rural Louisiana, Wave, Coral, and Rock made no attempt at personification or character development. In‑ stead, it provided a documentary with a historical and philosophical bent, offering an Iranian counterpoint to the American perspective. The heavy dose of poetic narration—­a sign of the director’s authorial presence—­tends to be authoritarian, weighing the film down and competing with the visuals.28 Po‑ etic symbolism was not only an Iranian style of expression but also a means by which filmmakers with higher authorial aspirations attempted to evade perva‑ sive censorship. However, overuse, as in Wave, Coral, and Rock, rendered the lyrical and symbolic language so abstruse in a time-­based medium—­w ithout the ability to readily review the work—­that the film’s meaning escaped not only the censors but also the public. After making his first feature, Mudbrick and Mirror, and the tragic death of Farrokhzad, Golestan closed the gfw and left the country in 1967, but he returned in 1970 to film his second and last feature, The Secrets of the Trea‑ sure of the Jenni Valley. To pay for the film, however, he had to sell his studio with all its equipment (Jahed 2005/1384:200). The buyer was nirt, which was setting up its own film production company, Telfilm. Golestan told me that the 8 million tomans he received for the studio property, located in the 90

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tony area of north Tehran, “was less than the price of a Mitchell camera” (Naficy 2007). With the completion of that second feature film and the sale of the gfw, Golestan left his family and Iran in 1975 for what turned out to be permanent exile in Britain, where he now lives in a 105-­room, 130-­year old château, Wykehurst Park House, near Gatwick airport (Roth 2003). In answer to my questions about how attached he was to the past, to diary writing, and to heritage, he responded emphatically: “No, I do not keep the past, I do not keep my own handwritten manuscripts, or Forugh’s writings. There is no rea‑ son. I never write diary. I am against heritage. It’s comical to leave something behind” (Naficy 2007). This is an ironic statement from someone who, as we will see later, has made films about Iranian national heritage. Like its predecessor, the aioc, the nioc produced a large number of institu‑ tional films, the majority of which were technical and instructional works on oil and petrochemical subjects. Yet the nioc also sponsored general documen‑ taries that, while depicting the importance of the oil industry, also extolled the modernization and industrialization of Iran. Among these more general-­ interest and artistic films were several made by the French-­educated film‑ maker Farrokh Gaffary (1922–2006), whose nephew Abdollah Entezam ran the nioc. Gaffary made fourteen documentaries, six of them for the nioc. Of these, two are notable in terms of their poetic realism: Black Veins (Ragha‑ye Siah, 1961) deals with the pipelines transporting oil from the south of Iran to Tehran as they pass through towns and the countryside, while Light of the Time (Nur‑e Zaman, 1966–67) is about the transformation of lighting from the an‑ cient oil lamps that burned animal fat to giant modern power-­generation fa‑ cilities. Gaffary contends that he made these documentaries to finance his feature movies at the Iran Nama Film Studio (Tahaminejad 2002/1381:51).29 Kamran Shirdel’s Peykan (1970) was an entirely different poetic industrial documentary than Golestan’s Wave, Coral, and Rock, for although it used no words, it still remained lyrical. Shirdel made the film for the automobile as‑ sembly plant, Iran National, that produced the country’s first major popular sedan, Peykan. Apparently, he had made a bold bet with the enlightened film sponsor to create a film according to his own taste and without any narration; if Iran National did not approve of the film, he would make another film ex‑ actly to the company’s liking at his own expense. The story resembles that sur‑ rounding Bert Haanstra’s bet with the sponsor of his famous Oscar-­winning short, Glass (Glas, 1959), acknowledged as “one of the most celebrated of all short films” (Barnouw 1993:193). It was after the appearance of this fluid and delightful film about glass blowing that the term ciné-­poème was applied to a slew of films, which it seemed to have inspired in various European countries, t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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where filmmakers turned industrial machines into abstract poetry. Now, with Iran’s industrialization, the ciné-­poème emerged there too. To Iran National’s credit, it approved of Shirdel’s film. The director, who had studied film and architecture in Italy, had seen Glass during his studies there, but he told me that he learned about Haanstra’s bet only years after his own Peykan, when the two men met at the Tehran International Film Festival in 1974 (Naficy 2005a). Shirdel may thus have been influenced by Haanstra’s style but not by his com‑ missioning process! According to film critic Mohammad Said Mohassesi, Pey‑ kan contains some of Shirdel’s filmic signatures, including fast zooms, imagi‑ native framing and compositions, irony and humor, counterpoint, and creative uses of sound and music, such as cutting the visuals to the rhythm of music and ambient sounds in the film’s last sequence, somewhat similar to today’s music videos (Knun‑e Filmkhaneh‑ye Sinema n.d.:2–3). Peykan was not Shirdel’s last industrial film, for his career includes many documentaries for big industries, particularly after the revolution. Without belaboring the point, he likely was drawn to them because of personal con‑ nections. His father, a European-­educated man, founded and managed one of the first modern industrial plants in Iran, a sugar mill. This may have attracted Shirdel to industrial films. On the other hand, the delicate, lyri‑ cal, ironic, and critical treatment of their subjects may have come from his mother, who was a cultured woman who loved Persian literature and poetry and practiced as an artist. The year 1975 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Pahlavi dynasty, which on government orders was celebrated throughout the year and throughout the country with pomp and circumstance. As part of this authoritarian nation‑ wide celebration, all major ministries and government agencies were required to produce exhibitions, books, reports, films, or celebrations of some kind her‑ alding their achievements under the Pahlavi rule. The nirt networks broad‑ cast these films on weekly, sometimes daily, bases, disseminating widely both the official messages and the official style. The production of such a large number of films strained the resources of the film industry and caused an in‑ flationary rise in the cost of film services and equipment for both fiction and nonfiction films.

Fine Arts, Architectural, Archaeological, and Performing Arts Documentaries The mca was a major sponsor of color documentaries about the fine arts, ar‑ chitecture, archaeology, and the performing arts, commissioning scores of its 92

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own civil servant directors and freelance filmmakers. According to the mca chief, Pahlbod, there were both internal and external markets for such docu‑ mentaries (1984:72). The internal markets were the schools in which mca’s mobile vans screened the films, while external markets comprised the Ira‑ nian embassies in foreign countries, which screened them for embassy staff and foreign nationals, as well as lending them to foreign schools and univer‑ sities. Looking over the list of the mca film archive holdings of the 1970s, one can see that most of the films had versions in various languages: Persian, Eng‑ lish, French, and German. Their subtitles indicate that even the Persian ver‑ sions were designed for foreign consumption. Many of the male ­directors—­no women ranked among them—­had been trained in some aspect of cinema and the arts in Europe, but they could not, or would not want to, be part of the com‑ mercial cinema industry, which they despised, and no parallel art cinema ex‑ isted yet. Working for the mca thus proved the best alternative. Some of the directors were very prolific. For example, Houshang Shafti made at least four‑ teen films on various topics for the mca, and Manuchehr Tayyab made at least fifteen films on architecture and crafts. In the process, they experimented not only with their films’ aesthetic contents, the various arts, but also with their aesthetic form, or style, achieving some stunning results. Mohammad Qoli Sattar directed Isfahan (Esfahan, 1957), which shows historical monuments of this ancient capital city aesthetically and in great detail. The French-­trained filmmaker Mostafa Farzaneh, who had been invited both to head the Film and Photo Production Department of the mca and to teach filmmaking, directed three films, including the award-­winning Persian Miniatures (Miniatorha‑ye Irani, 1958) and Woman and Animal (Zan va Haivan, 1965), both of them using the Iranian visual arts in European museums and collections. Feraidun Rahnema, a gifted French-­educated poet and writer who had spent much of his life abroad, returned to Iran, and while working in the Majles library he directed Persepolis (Takht‑e Jamshid, 1960) with his own funds. This was a lyrical film whose dynamic editing of shots of stone en‑ gravings from the ruins of the Persepolis, accompanied by rhythmic drum‑ beats, recreated the rise, grandeur, and fall of the famous Achaemenid pal‑ ace and dynasty. Short, quick cuts of soldiers, horses, war apparel, and war equipment—­hooves, mouths, hands, feet, faces, spears, and shields—­plus the accompanying sound effects and Persian music dramatized the re-­creations. At the end, the once proud and massive yet fragile monuments are scattered about in ruins, soaked in a lonely rain (figure 14). Yet the ending is not en‑ tirely pessimistic, as the melancholy rain can be interpreted as symbolizing either mourning or renewal. t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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14  The poet and filmmaker Feraidun Rahnema pushing the dolly during the filming of Persepolis. Out-of-focus figures on the stone wall in the background come to life in dynamic editing.

Persepolis also expresses Iranians’ resilience and strong sense of histori‑ cal consciousness. In addition, the film is suffused with nostalgic longing for the homeland and for the past, the type not only motivated by ancient peoples but also felt by those who, like Rahnema, have lived most of their lives in exile and for whom the return to the contemporary homeland seems insufficient, requiring nostalgia for another, earlier time and place to assuage the longing for home. Like many poets, Rahnema, who wrote a French-­language thesis titled “Film and Reality,” later published in Persian as Film va Vaqeiyat, took the Persepolis ruins to ruminate about history, reality, and identity and to answer questions such as, “Who were these? What were these? How much of what we see of these today are real? What is reality? Is this it?” (quoted in Shoai 1976b/2535:76). Later, referring to the Manichaean ideology of Zoroastrian‑ ism during the Achaemenid era when the Persepolis was built, the voice-­over intones: “[this is the site of] the battle of the forces of darkness, which are bad, blind, and chaotic, against the forces of lightness, which are good and bright.” The battle of darkness and light, a perennial paradigm in Iranian lit‑ erature, poetry, and art, had now entered cinema. A reviewer noted that “with this film, we come to sympathize and identify with our own past, we preserve our history like a bittersweet memory, past becomes present, . . . and this en‑ riches our life today” (Omid 1995/1374:857). Naser Movafaghian, who saw the film’s premiere in Paris, lamenting years of wayward development in Iranian cinema, jubilantly praised Rahnema, declaring: “Finally, someone has discov‑ ered the principal veins of the original and untouched mine of Iranian cin‑ ema and has struck the first blow” (1960/1339:25–26). The film was broadcast 94

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nationwide in the United States by cbs’s Camera Three program in the early 1960s, perhaps the first Iranian film to receive such a wide international air‑ ing abroad.30 Rahnema’s deep historical consciousness and his double nostalgia for an‑ cient Persia led him to produce other narrative movies, such as Siavash in Persepolis (Siavash dar Takht‑e Jamdshid, 1965) and The Son of Iran Has No News from His Mother (Pesar‑e Iran az Madarash Bikhabar Ast, 1976), which combined fictional and nonfictional elements, as well as historical and con‑ temporary stories and personalities, including himself, to create complex modernist ruminations on Iranian history, reality, and identity. Within a few years, Rahnema moved to nirt, where he established a dy‑ namic arts and culture film unit whose flagship program, Iranian Homeland (Iranzamin), became influential, commissioning many intellectual filmmak‑ ers, including Basir Nassibi, Manuchehr Asgarinasab, Naser Taqvai, and Par‑ viz Kimiavi to research various aspects of Iranian culture and different re‑ gions of the country to produce rooted nonfictional works. In this way, they exposed Iranians to the variety of cultures that thrived in the country while simultaneously creating for them a unitary identity as a modern nation. In his award-­w inning Broken Column (Sotun‑e Shekasteh 1966), the usis/ Tehran-­trained Shafti used a rapid editing strategy of stone carvings similar to the one Rahnema had employed. He enhanced it with additional special effects involving color filters, nighttime photography, dramatic compositions, and sudden camera movements to give an impression of the construction of the Persepolis and of its destruction by Alexander the Great, but this color film still paled before Rahnema’s black-­and-­white Persepolis. Nonetheless, the film was widely distributed abroad by Iranian embassies and consulates. Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, Tayyab, trained in Vienna in archi‑ tecture and film, made for the mca numerous visually elegant and formalist documentaries on ancient crafts and Islamic monuments, including Ceram‑ ics (Seramik, 1964), Jam-­e’ Mosque (Masjed‑e Jam-­e’, 1970), and Safavid Archi‑ tecture (Me’mari‑ye Safaviyeh, 1974). His stylized camera angles created lovely images, and his smooth and gliding camera movements tenderly caressed the great objects and magnificent buildings, creating an influential genre of fine-­ arts documentaries. Unlike filmmakers who had come to cinema from litera‑ ture and tended to employ voice-­over narration extensively, Tayyab employed it sparingly or not at all (as in Jam-­e’ Mosque). Instead, he used the camera and editing to recreate the three-­dimensional spatiality and visual rhythm of these marvelous structures, what he called their “frozen music.”31 The composer Loris Chaknavarian composed the score for most of the films. t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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Ebrahim Golestan, too, directed a film on historical ruins: The Hills of Mar‑ lik (Tapehha‑ye Marlik, 1963) concentrates on archaeological discoveries in the oldest excavated site in Iran, the five hills of Marlik in Rudbar, near the Cas‑ pian Sea. The film, based on Ezzatollah Negahban’s archaeological research, establishes the continuity of form between ancient artifacts discovered in the hills and contemporary village life. A simple cut from an ancient clay statue of a man plowing to a contemporary peasant in a nearby village using the same single plow establishes this historical continuity. Other cuts from ancient fer‑ tility clay statues of girls and boys with their exposed genitalia to contempo‑ rary peasant girls and boys standing in the fields underscore both historical continuity and human regeneration in the face of adversity. Thanks to So‑ leiman Minasian’s elegant photography and Golestan’s deft editing, spears, arrowheads, axes, and daggers fly through the air simulating the Neolithic warfare (an elaborate variant of Rahnema’s Persepolis) that killed the man whose skeleton is discovered in the excavations. Golestan’s signature poetic voice-­over narration also extols the ancientness of Iran and the hope for a bet‑ ter future, a narration that caused controversy due to its “incomprehensibil‑ ity” (Omid 1995/1374:845–46). However, the film won the first prize, the San Marco Lion, at the Venice International Film Festival in 1964. Khosrow Sinai, who had studied music, architecture, and cinema in Vi‑ enna, made many documentaries for the mca (between 1966 and 1970), for nirt (between 1970 and 1974), and on a freelance basis thereafter for the Par‑ ents and Teachers Association (Anjoman‑e Olia va Morrabian), the most nota‑ ble of which was Haj Mossavar al-­Molky (1970), an emotionally sensitive treat‑ ment of an aging but famous miniature painter whose right arm is paralyzed. Here the director introduced the slow-­paced style that would become the hall‑ mark of postrevolution art cinema, a style he considered to be commensurate with the “slow rhythm of life of a master miniature painter who like his co‑ horts all seemed to belong to a forgotten generation” (quoted in Baqerzadeh 1987/1366:226). Sponsored by government agencies, well-­known modernist poets, writers, and filmmakers documented a variety of local folk dances around the coun‑ try. The renowned poet Ahmad Shamlu, who had written screenplays for B-­ grade movies, directed several dance films, including Turkmen Dance (Raqs‑e Turkaman, 1970) and Dailaman Dance (Raqs‑e Dailaman, 1970). The writer and new-­wave director Taqvai directed Sword Dance (Raqs‑e Shamshir, 1967). Another new-­wave filmmaker, Sohrab Shahid Saless, trained in filmmaking in Vienna and Paris, directed several dance films for the mca: Bojnurd Folk‑ dances (Raqsha‑ye Mahhali‑ye Bojnurdi, 1970), Torbat‑e Jam Folkdances (Raq‑ 96

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sha‑ye Mahhali‑ye Torbate Jam, 1970), and Turkman Folkdances (Raqsha‑ye Mahhali‑ye Turkaman, 1970). Shafti also directed Khorasan Folkdances (Raq‑ sha‑ye Mahhali‑ye Khorasan, 1969), Kurdish Dance (Raqs‑e Kordi, 1971), and Wedding Dance (Raqs‑e Runama, 1971). Most of these were neither investi‑ gative nor particularly artistic. All of them remained short, some less than ten minutes long, and primarily documented the dance events in an observa‑ tional style for posterity. Critics attributed the emergence of the formalist strain in the films on the fine arts and the performing arts to the filmmakers’ strategy of avoiding cen‑ sorship. But this was a facile politicization of art, fashionable at the time as a necessary sign of political commitment, which all intellectuals were expected to exhibit. Their genuine artistic and expressive experimentations were de‑ valued. Yet these films proved political in another way, for they indirectly fed the government-­supported syncretic ideology by linking the present-­day au‑ thoritarian and rapidly modernizing Iran to either its pre-­Islamic roots or to its post-­Islamic Persian and folk manifestations. Islam as a religion and Is‑ lamic religious sites, practices, and rituals were generally aestheticized. As a result, they were depoliticized and rendered socially irrelevant to contempo‑ rary times. This was ironic since radical Islam at the time was beginning to gain a foothold in the political life and psychology of average Iranians as an alter‑ native to the Shah’s authoritarian modernization project. That filmmakers seemed to have missed this brewing radicalism partly resulted from the official production mode, which funded and supervised their projects, from the official style, which formed their cognitive maps of the social world, and from their own modernist and secularist politics, which if not denigrating religion, disregarded it. At the same time, by grounding Iranian nationalism in a pre‑ historic, antiquarian, and artistic past, these art and performance films inad‑ vertently countered the destabilizing effects of rapid Westernization.

Documentaries about Film History Much of the early Qajar-­period films, shot on unstable and inflammable ni‑ trate stock, were thought to have been lost, but in 1982 the archaeologist Shahryar Adl, searching in the photographic archives of the Golestan Pal‑ ace in Tehran, unearthed a cache of these films, which had badly deterio‑ rated. What remained salvageable was sent in the summer of 2000 to Paris to the Centre National de la Cinématographie for repair and restoration (Adl 2000/1379:25). In addition to Iranian films, apparently many European films, t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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particularly French ones, remained among the Qajar-­era actualities in the pal‑ ace archive. Mohsen Makhmalbaf edited some of the Iranian films together (along with some paintings and photographs) under the title Selected Images from the Qajar Era (Gozideh‑ye Tasavir dar Doran‑e Qajar, 1992). Yet his editing of the films is both idiosyncratic and ideological. It does not identify any of the films’ cinematographers, the persons who appear in them, or the films’ titles, locations, or dates (even the few that are known). He also added the annoying, irrelevant, and ideologically motivated sound effect of barking dogs that made heavy-­handed fun of the Qajar kings. While A Selection of Images from the Qa‑ jar Era is valuable in publicizing the existence of these Qajar-­era films, the ed‑ iting thus undermines their status as historical documents. A more informative film is the thirty-­t hree-­minute Lost Reels (Halqehha‑ye Gomshodeh, 2004), produced by Orod Attapour and directed by Mehrdad Za‑ hedian, which focuses on the discovery and restoration of these Qajar-­era films. As part of the Hidden Treasures (Ganj‑e Penhan) television series for Iran’s Channel 4 Network, the program contains some of the same actuali‑ ties and performance films as does Makhmalbaf’s A Selection of Images from the Qajar Era, but without the ideological manipulations. It also contains not only interviews with Adl and Akbar Alami, the head of the Voice and Vision of the Islamic Republic (vvir) film lab, but also additional film footage, most importantly, the [Carnival of Flowers] film shot in Ostend, Belgium, reputed to be the first Iranian film. As Adl correctly warns, the work of fully identifying these early films—­t heir locations, the characters filmed, the year of filming, and the cameraperson—­has yet to be completed, requiring much historical and contextual research. Mohammad Tahaminejad’s one hundred–minute movie, Iranian Cinema, from the Constitution to Sepanta (Sinema‑ye Iran, Mashrutiat ta Sepanta, 1970), is the first serious nonfiction movie on the history of Iranian silent cinema, containing dramatized scenes of the lives of the pioneers of cinema, inter‑ views with them, and numerous examples of their actual films. It is told in the fashion of traditional storytelling called naqqali, using in addition to the above materials shadow theater, oratorial narration, and movie advertisements. Al‑ though it has a political and critical point of view, the film remains true to its documentary material: the dramatizations and naqqali are based on historical records and the historical film clips are not edited indiscriminately. This is a re‑ search film by one of the foremost historians of Iranian cinema and a sad elegy for that cinema, whose emergence from its rise around the time of the Consti‑ tutional Revolution up to the beginning of sound cinema in the early 1930s is recounted with a tone of regret at lost opportunities and unfulfilled promises.32 98

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Makhmalbaf later made a far richer fictional film than his earlier effort, which covers almost the same period as Tahaminejad’s Iranian Cinema, from the Constitution to Sepanta. Called Naser al-­Din Shah, the Movie Actor (also known as Once Upon a Time Cinema; Naser al-­Din Shah, Aktor‑e Sinema, 1992), it offers a comic, insightful, and ultimately loving rumination on the infatua‑ tion with cinema of Sani al-­Saltaneh, the Shah and his harem, and the Iranian general population. This is a highly self-­reflexive and whimsical film, whose title plays on Ohanians’s silent opus, Mr. Haji, the Movie Actor. The historical shah who was involved in bringing cinema to Iran, Mozaffar al-­Din Shah, is here also replaced with his father, Naser al-­Din. The film contains some clips of the early silent and sound films, including those from the Golestan Palace archives and of Irani and Sepanta’s The Lor Girl, the first Persian-­language talkie, which are cleverly interwoven into the fictional story. Another valuable documentary on the history of Iranian cinema is Bah‑ ram Reipur’s The Magic Lantern (Fanus‑e Khial, 1976), produced for the mca, which covers the history of cinema from the beginning to 1976 and includes excerpts from many documentary and fiction films. It effectively documents the rise and consolidation of modern individuality in the characters that ap‑ peared in fiction movies. The film historian Jamal Omid also directed an im‑ portant television series called Pioneers (Aghazgaran, 1974), which contains film clips and interviews with many pioneers. Working for the bbc Persian Service, Shahrokh Golestan produced a valuable series of radio programs on the history of Iranian cinema, Magic Lantern: The Story of Iranian Cinema from the Beginning to the Islamic Revolution According to the BBC (Fanus‑e Khial: Sargozasht‑e Sinema‑ye Iran az Aghaz ta Enqelab‑e Eslami Beh Ravayat‑e Bi‑ bisi, 1995), which was aired by the bbc and sold as a package of audiocassettes. Finally, the film critic Jamsheed Akrami made several feature-­ length documentaries in the United States on Iranian cinemas before and after the revolution, Dreams Betrayed (1986), Friendly Persuasion (2000), and The Lost Cinema: Iranian Political Films in the Seventies (2006), in which he em‑ ployed informative interviews with key filmmakers and judicious extended sequences of their movies to illustrate the various social, political, and cine‑ matic issues, including gender roles and the censorship of films.

Ethnographic Documentaries and Their Anthropological Unconscious Ethnographic filmmaking—­defined as the making of films that represent one culture to another or to itself (Nichols 1994:66)—­emerged strongly in the 1960s in Iran. Several factors drove this emergence. One was modernity, t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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rapid modernization, and their resulting population displacements and psy‑ chic and social restructuring, which brought urgency to the task of docu‑ menting and preserving the country’s traditions, cultural expressions, and ways of life before their disappearance. This resulted in a style of filming that might be called “salvage ethnography.” Another impetus was the state’s institutional support for filmmaking and media making as vehicles for national identity formation and national projec‑ tion. The majority of the so-­called ethnographic filmmakers have been sup‑ ported by powerful state cultural and media organizations. Under the second Pahlavi regime, these were principally the mca and nirt. Later, under the Islamic Republic, these included the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guid‑ ance (mcig), the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization, and the Voice and Vision of the Islamic Republic (vvir). Some of the filmmakers were full-­time civil servants in these state organizations, while others were freelance artists commissioned by them. The commercial private sector and nongovernmen‑ tal agencies, too, contributed to documentary and ethnographic filmmaking, but to a lesser extent. These state institutions were involved not only in fi‑ nancing and sponsoring the films but also in their production and, due to their near monopoly on documentary film venues and television networks, in their distribution and exhibition. Because of these structural underpinnings and the leftist politics of a majority of the filmmakers, ethnographic docu‑ mentaries were always already embedded in politics—­from their conception to their reception. What constituted the “nation,” “culture,” and “tradition” to be salvaged, therefore, became contested categories between the state that funded the films and the filmmakers who wanted funding from it but wished to maintain editorial independence. A third impetus was the presence of a coterie of new filmmakers trained both at home and abroad who came armed with the ideologies of secular mod‑ ernism and salvage ethnography. However, most of these had no training in anthropology and ethnography. Neither were they deeply linked to univer‑ sity anthropology departments or research centers. Few ethnographic films of this period therefore formed part of academic anthropological studies or were organically informed by anthropological or ethnographic concepts and methodologies. Farhad Varharam’s labeling of these films as “anthropological cinema without anthropology” (2008) thus seems appropriate. I have called these “Ethnographic-­lite” films (see volume 4, chapter 1). Yet there is an anthropological unconscious at work in the works of these nonanthropologist filmmakers. It manifests in their choices and treatments of the subjects, rituals, customs, and events they deemed worthy of filming 100

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and salvaging. It is also exhibited in the films’ stylistic features, which were driven by the filmmakers’ ad hoc understanding of anthropological research and filming methodologies and by the technological limitations of cinema. Together, the authorial awareness, the modernist ideologies of anthropology and nationalism, state support of films, the choice and treatment of subject matter, and filming style constituted the political unconscious of the ethno‑ graphic films. This is long before new criticism and theory had entered anthropology and before the works of pioneer postmodernist cultural anthropologists at Rice University and elsewhere—­George Marcus, Michael Fischer, and Steve Tyler—­had revolutionized anthropological fieldwork and ethnographic writ‑ ing and filming (Clifford and Marcus 1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986). As a result, Iranian ethnographic films tended to be straightforward and linear, relying heavily on a descriptive, wordy, and authoritative narration. This style was dictated as much by the difficulty of synch sound recording in the field as by the oral narrative style of storytelling Iranians had internalized and by the anthropological unconscious that necessitated a distance between the anthro‑ pologist and the subject. Yet some films experimented with visual, musical, poetic, and structural innovations in their attempt to reduce this distance and suture the spectators into the text and the diegetic world it contained. Some filmmakers documented dispassionately, others invoked intimately; some re­ created lives, others created total identification. More sophisticated filmmak‑ ers parodied their subjects, the films, and themselves. Based on their contents I divide the ethnographic films into several the‑ matic types, which evolved over time and in particular with the revolution of 1978–79 and the subsequent eight-­year war with Iraq. These types are films about religious culture and rituals, films about tribes and tribal migration, and films about indigenous technologies. Throughout this taxonomy I also note stylistic features. Films about Religious Culture and Rituals Religion, religious culture, and religious rituals and ceremonies, particularly those related to Shiism, made for a major topic in documentary films. An im‑ portant early film in this category is Abolqasem Rezai’s intimate and poetic film on the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, The House of God (Khaneh‑ye Khoda, 1968). Produced by Iran Film Studio, it powerfully imparted the transcen‑ dent force of collective prayer and belief involving massive numbers of the faithful from different nations participating in the annual Muslim pilgrim‑ age, including the impressive circumambulation of the Kaaba. The film em‑ t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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phasized the social and public dimensions of the religious pilgrimage over the personal and private ones. Even though it did not follow a unifying idea, its attention to the details of religious traditions, practices, and locations gave the film ethnographic depth, and its chronological treatment of pilgrimage phases gave it a forward momentum. These factors and its rare and revealing documentary footage made it an important and popular film. Four camera‑ men filmed the images, all of whom are playfully identified in the film as ha‑ jis: Ahmad Shirazi, Nemat Haqiqi, Abbas Dastmalchi, and Mohammad Ali Issari (after all, they had made the pilgrimage, even if only to film it). Twelve commercial movie houses screened the film in Tehran, a rare occurrence for documentaries. In honor of the film’s religious theme, the cinemas decorated their lobbies with posters of the holy religious sites depicted in the film, re‑ moving flamboyant posters of sexy movie stars and coming attractions (Omid 1995/1374:395). In fact, the film proved so popular that it apparently led to the inauguration of the first public movie house in the holy city of Qom, across the river from the Hazrat‑e Masumeh Shrine, the sister of Imam Ali. The House of God led clerics for the first time to accept film as a vehicle of religious expression, paving the way both for the acceptance of the filmmaker by soci‑ ety and for the spectators’ enjoyment of cinema.33 It was dubbed into English and sold by Ashoqa Film to many foreign countries, the first Iranian film to receive such wide distribution. In Iran: The Land of Religions (Iran: Sarzamin‑e Adian, 1971), made for the mca, Manuchehr Tayyab focused on the coexistence of major religious tradi‑ tions in Iran—­Shiism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism; no men‑ tion of Baha’ism—­which he rendered with a deftly moving camera and real‑ istic portrayals without voice-­over narration. These style choices removed the distance between subjects and audience. Particularly spectacular were scenes of Shiite faithful rhythmically beating their bare chests into the camera and in concentric circular formations. The film countered the general impression, and fact, that Shiism predominated in Iran and was intolerant of other reli‑ gions, particularly of Baha’ism. In an interview in Akrami’s The Lost Cin‑ ema: Iranian Political Films in the Seventies, Tayyab states that religious objec‑ tions (which he does not specify) led to the film’s ban; it was never screened in public.34 Sponsored by nirt, Taqvai, a gifted writer from the south, made many short but insightful ethnographic sketches—­ethnographic-­lite films—­about taxis (Taxi Meter/Taximetr, 1967), the telephone (Telephone/Telefon, 1967), street barbers (Barbers in the Sun/Arayeshgah‑e Aftab, 1967), amanuenses (Bread­winners of Illiteracy/Nankhorha‑ye Bisavadi, 1967), the poet Farrokhzad 102

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(Forugh Farrokhzad, 1313–45, 1967), and the traditional bazaars (Minab’s Thurs‑ day Bazaar/Panjshanbeh Bazar‑e Minab, 1969). His most important docu‑ mentaries in this period were two well-­assembled works that explored folk‑ lorist and religious themes with apt uses of visuals, editing, lyrical narration, and native music. The Sorcerer’s Wind (Bad‑e Jen, 1970), narrated by the poet Shamlu, deals with possession and exorcism rituals (called zar) practiced in the coast of the Persian Gulf, particularly in Bandar Langeh.35 The film opens with shots of waves, the seashore, and the town ruins accompanied by Sham‑ lu’s raspy and world-­weary voice, describing the origins of the people, the ritu‑ als, and the wind. As he tells it, zar originated with the African slaves who in ancient times were brought to the southern shores of Persia (figure 15). They brought with them an ill wind, which purportedly decimated the population and left portions of the town in ruins. After this contextual opening, the film proceeds to the site of an exorcism ceremony, which is very private and in‑

15  Naser Taqvai’s The Sorcerer’s Wind claims that African slaves brought with them this ill wind to Iranian shores, including Langeh Port, pictured here. Frame enlargement. 16  Exorcising the sorcerer’s wind. Frame enlargement.

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17  Concentric circles of chest-beating men in a Shiite religious ritual in Taqvai’s Arba’in. Frame enlargement.

volves mixed-­gender dancing and chanting to incessant, rhythmic drumbeats until the participants fall into a trance and evil is expelled. Taqvai filmed these scenes both with a hidden camera and with the fly-­on-­the-­wall direct cinema technique, which countered the distance created in the opening scenes (figure 16). He gained access to these private events because of his familiarity with the region’s cultures and his personal connections with the participants (Naficy 1978b/1357:324–25). His Arba’in (1971), shot in the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr, is also a highly visual documentary in the style of direct cinema on the religious processions and mourning rituals that annually commemorate Arba’in, the fortieth day of Imam Hosain’s martyrdom. Like The Sorcerer’s Wind, this film empha‑ sizes rhythmic action and rhythmic editing, without voice-­over narration, to re-­create the intensity of religious emotions evoked in men and young boys in these public events. It shows the preparation for the mourning, the color‑ ful and sonorous processions, and focuses in the last sequence on the crowds gathered in the Dehdashti and Behbahani Mosques, who move rhythmically in concentric circles and beat their chests to the chants of a Muslim cantor (figure 17). Either very low or very high camera angles beautifully and pow‑ erfully convey the vast dimensions and the intimate frenzied tensions of this occasion. Interspersed throughout the film are shots of farmers working in fields and fishermen going about their business, which both integrates the ceremony into daily lives and demonstrates that these passionate, artistic peo‑ ple are the same ones who ordinarily farm and fish. The film also evokes the 104

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18  A Qaderi dervish is about to swallow a large stone in Manuchehr Tabari’s A Few Moments with Qaderi Dervishes. Frame enlargement.

eerie atmosphere of the empty alleyways of Bushehr, through which scurries a mysterious veiled woman.36 Manuchehr Tabari, a nirt filmmaker, made a shocking short film, A Few Moments with Qaderi Dervishes (Lahazati Chand ba Daravish‑e Qaderi, 1973), in which, using an invasive cinéma vérité camera, he documents, without nar‑ ration or extradiegetic music, the extraordinary acts of faith of dervishes un‑ der trance in Iranian Kurdistan. This includes their swallowing large stones and a handful of razor blades, eating live snakes, drinking kerosene and eat‑ ing the glass chimney of the kerosene lamp, and puncturing their bodies and faces with numerous long skewers, all the while dancing to frenzied drum‑ beats (figure 18). Absolute frenzy rules not only because of the trance dancers’ actions but also because the camera itself seems crazed; no anthropological distance here. As it zooms in and out rapidly with the rhythm of the music, it replicates the trance stylistically, creating what Lotte Hoek in the context of religious inscription in Bangladeshi cinema has called “cinematic zikr [sacred chanting]” (2006), until the camera suddenly goes black in midaction, bring‑ ing the film to an end. As Tabari told me, this was because one of the pos‑ sessed participants lunged forward to swallow the camera lens (Naficy 1977f). This bit of self-­reflexivity constitutes one of the first instances of postmodern‑ ism in ethnographic films in Iran. While it proved powerful and informative in exposing unusual customs and beliefs of a segment of Iranians, the film merely documents a trance session, offering no cultural context and no his‑ torical or ethnographic understanding. To offset these shortcomings, Tabari soon directed The Dancer of Love (Motreb‑e Eshq, 1975–77) about the Qaderi dervishes’ lives and beliefs by focusing on five families in Kurdistan.37 Another noted nirt filmmaker and a key new-­wave director, Kimiavi, trained in filmmaking at the Institut des Hautes-­Études Cinématographiques t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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19  Esmail Emami filming a pilgrim for O’ Deer Savior, while the director Parviz Kimiavi looks on.

(idhec) in Paris, made several films that violated the paradigmatic anthro‑ pological unconscious of ethnographic films: he mixed nonfictional and fic‑ tional stories and styles to create dense, lyrical, and ironic ethnographic texts. His most straightforward documentary, O’ Deer Savior (Ya Zamen‑e Ahu, 1971), is an intimate, ethnographically rich, and cleverly critical portrait of pilgrimage to the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad. According to the cine‑ matographer, Esmail Emami, it was filmed using a handheld and sometimes hidden camera (Naficy 1977c) (figure 19). The film has no voice-­over narrator. His contrapuntal use of voice and vision, which creates a contrast between the film’s visuals and the pilgrims’ voices, allows Kimiavi a critique of the official Shiite institutions for failing to help their religious community (ummat). In these scenes, the visuals highlight the magnificent opulence of the mas‑ sive silver and gold mausoleum and of the shrine’s great halls covered with large, beautiful carpets, whose walls and ceilings are decorated with cut crys‑ tal, glass, mirror, and huge chandeliers. The soundtrack, however, carries the desperate voices of the lowly supplicants requesting mercy, compassion, bet‑ ter health, or redemption. Ali Asgar Asgarian, a Tehran University film student, made The Taziyeh of Martyrdom (Shabih‑e Shahadat, 1976), an ambitious five-­camera coverage of the famous Hor and Abbas taziyeh performances. This film provides an im‑ portant ethnographic documentation of the Shiite passion plays whose public performance under the Shah was on the wane. Films about Tribes and Tribal Migration Tribes and their “exotic” ways of life, colorful customs, and arduous annual migrations, which had been so memorably documented in the 1920s by the American filmmakers Merian Cooper, Ernst Schoedsack, and Marguerite 106

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Harrison in Grass, now became subjects for Iranian documentarians. Sed‑ entarization and modernization, which were eroding tribal customs and the nomadic way of life, seemed to have intensified the cosmopolitan city dwell‑ ers’ nostalgia for, and interest in, the tribes. In a kind of romantic “salvage ethnography,” modern, often foreign-­trained filmmakers who were them‑ selves agents of modernity and change documented the tribes before their disappearance—­attempts that always seemed to refer to Grass as the arche‑ typal progenitor. One notable example was created by Shafti, who at the head of a large film crew filmed the Bakhtiari tribe’s migration in southwestern Iran for the mca. The resulting film, The Flaming Poppies (Shaqayeq‑e Su‑ zan, 1962), was technically well made and superior to its foreign predecessor in terms of its inclusion of color, sound, and multiple camera viewpoints. It won the Silver Bear Prize at the Berlin Film Festival in 1961 and was widely distributed in Iran and abroad through Iranian embassies.38 Yet it lacked the grandeur, drama, and scale of Grass, and it suffered from the shortcomings of the official style of documentary, in which the Syracuse Team had trained Shafti. These included an unimaginative and linear narrative structure and a plodding voice-­of-­God, impersonal narration.39 The anthropologist Fereydoun Safizadeh first saw Grass in 1971 in an un‑ dergraduate ethnographic film class in the United States. He found it so grip‑ ping that it inspired him to retrace the footsteps of the American filmmak‑ ers by filming the Bakhtiari annual migration in the 1970s, something that served as a “catalyst” for the twenty-­eight-minute English-­language documen‑ tary The Shahsavan Nomads of Iran (1983), which he codirected with his so‑ ciologist spouse, Arlene Dallalfar (Safizadeh 2003:1). That viewing of Grass was also instrumental in redirecting his academic interest from engineer‑ ing to visual anthropology. However, logistics, proximity, and familiarity forced another type of redirection: he shifted his attention from the south‑ west Bakhtiari nomads to the northwest Shahsavan pastoral nomads of Azar­ baijan. The colorful, seasonal Shahsavan migration between the Aras River in the Moghan Steppe and the high pastures of Sabalan Mountain provided a dramatic narrative focus, and Safizadeh’s Azari background, his knowledge of the culture and language, as well as personal contacts made a film about the Shahsavan more plausible, particularly during the tumultuous revolution‑ ary period. This project is worth noting here because of the impact of Grass on its in‑ ception, its female-­centered filming, its ethnographically informed narration, and the impact of rising anti-­Shah sentiment on its production and comple‑ tion. By mid-­January 1978, Tabriz had risen to commemorate the “martyrs” t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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of the Qom demonstrations forty days earlier, and antigovernment forces had burned and destroyed banks and cinemas. The three-­week spring tribal mi‑ gration would take place in late winter. There was no time to lose. Safizadeh made a proposal to Nader Afshar Naderi, the director of Tehran University’s Institute for Social Research, to film the Shahsavan camp life and upcom‑ ing migration, a proposal that Afshar Naderi approved, providing the director with five thousand feet of 16mm raw stock and access to nirt’s facilities for lab works and editing. Safizadeh and Dallalfar formed an efficacious mixed-­gender team, for they were able to film not only male-­dominated public events of the Moghanlu lineage of the Shahsavan (shepherding, felt making, the buying and selling of flocks and wool) but also female-­centered private activities inside and out‑ side the women’s alachiq, or tents (fetching water, baking, cooking, churning milk, making butter and yogurt, spinning wool, weaving, nursing babies). The pair also documented the migration over rivers and mountain passes (figure 20). By mid-­September 1978, when they began editing the footage, the Zhaleh Square massacre, known as Black Friday, had shaken the government to its core and emboldened the uprising. nirt employees joined the national strike that eventually brought the Pahlavi regime to an end. When Sadegh Ghotbzadeh became the director general of the postrevolution broadcasting authority, the vvir, he mandated a reevaluation of all projects, bringing all current ones to a halt. Purification purges took their toll, as did chaos and uncertainty, all of which forced Safizadeh and Dallalfar to give up “any hope of being able to complete the film” (Safizadeh 2003:9). Unable to retrieve the original footage from nirt, the couple left Iran with about two thousand feet of their work print (nearly one hour), which Dallalfar subsequently edited into The Shahsavan Nomads of Iran as a sociology graduate student at ucla. Dal‑ lalfar read the voice-­over narration for this rather rough and incomplete but valuable film and provided additional extratextual information about the im‑ pact of agricultural modernization, land reform, sedentarization, large-­scale irrigation systems, and modern transportation on the tribe’s way of life and livelihood (camel caravans were being replaced by automobiles and trucks). In his write-­up about the film, Safizadeh admitted that the romance of authen‑ ticity and the impulse toward salvage ethnography had prevented them from filming “the newly adopted technological ways of doing things, for example using pickup trucks to go and come from the camps, or the use of Mercedes trucks to relocate sheep from the Moghan Steppe to the Sabalan range, or to show the canning factories in Moghan where the Shahsavan worked as day la‑ borers” (2003:11–12). The film’s reception remained limited as Safizadeh and 108

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20  Production still from Arlene Dallalfar’s and Feraidun Safizadeh’s The Shahsavan Nomads of Iran.

Dallalfar did not consign the work to a professional distributor. Several indi‑ viduals and universities acquired it in Britain, Norway, and Turkey. It has not been publicly screened in Iran (Naficy 2006).40 The anthropologist Afshar Naderi and the filmmaker Gholam Hosain Ta‑ heridoust each made a film called Acorn (Balut, 1968 and 1971, respectively), documenting the disappearing process by which bread was made from bit‑ ter acorn. Afshar Naderi made his film for the Institute for Social Research, which he headed, and Taheridoust made his for nirt, for which he worked as a director. Both films were made in the Koh Giluye region of the Zagros Moun‑ tains in the southwest of Iran, where over half of the tribal population was mi‑ gratory, with the remainder settled in small villages. Despite the films’ simi‑ larities in terms of topic, region, subjects, and institutional sponsorship, there were major differences in the directors’ ethnographic and filmic approaches. As an anthropologist, Afshar Naderi made an effort, as he told me in an interview, to “portray the daily life of a nomadic people with emphasis on the division of labor during the three seasons of autumn, winter and spring,” during which he and his German wife and five other researchers lived in the region (Naficy 1977d/1356). This was not something that nonanthropologist filmmakers had done before. The film focuses on the preparation of bread t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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from acorns, whose bitterness is leached by running water of a stream, a pro‑ cess that the film places in the context of the nomads’ daily activities dur‑ ing a nine-­month period. These activities are captured with a static camera and aesthetics that signal Afshar Naderi’s training as a photographer, rather than a cinematographer. While the scenes of daily life are ethnographically informed, accompanied by clear profilmic sounds, they tend to disperse the film’s narrative in all directions, and the lack of voice-­over narration leaves some key details unexplained, such as the color change in stream water that indicates the level of leaching. Taheridoust’s film, on the other hand, shows in graphic detail, and in a more coherent and visual manner, the preparation of acorns for bread mak‑ ing, as re-­created by one family and filmed in just two and a half days. Yet Ta‑ heridoust did not re-­create naively, for he had spent a year and a half of his Knowledge Corps service in the region and was well acquainted with the peo‑ ple and their way of life (Naficy 1977e/1356). He thus had been able to gain both cultural information and the people’s trust before filming (figures 21 and 22). He was also at the time working on his thesis on the topic of “posses‑ sion” (zar) under the venerable ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch. His film ends with a self-­reflexive scene of the family eating their acorn meal, when the male head of the family looks directly into the camera and asks: “Is the film over?” The film freezes on the face of the man and ends with his question, thereby leaving the question about the film’s ontological status as a straight documentary to the viewer. This gesture perhaps constitutes Taheridoust’s small homage to his mentor Rouch and the latter’s partner Edgar Morin; to‑ gether the pair had made a seminal self-­reflexive cinéma vérité film, Chronicle of a Summer (Chronique d’un Été, 1961). The subject’s question at the end of the film also raises a question about the power relations between cosmopolitan ethnographers and filmmakers and their rural native subjects. If the film ethnographers held a position of power because of their access to advanced film technology, anthropological knowledge, government support, and official permission to study and inves‑ tigate their subjects, the natives were armed with suspicion, the traditional weapon of the weak in neocolonial situations. As Afshar Naderi explains, “Al‑ though the tribespeople did not show any particular animosity toward us, nevertheless they did not regard us as benevolent anthropologists. We were similar to the type of soldiers who had recently murdered some of them. As a result we were their potential enemies. We learned of this only after the tribespeople grew close to us. They confessed that at first they were suspicious that we were working for the army” (1987:102). 110

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21  A family eating a meal that includes bread made from acorns. Frame enlargement, from Gholam Hosain Taheridoust’s documentary Acorn. 22  Tribal women dancing in Afshar Naderi’s documentary Acorn. Frame enlargement.

The filmmakers’ different approaches to the same subject reflected their different training, as an anthropologist and a filmmaker, respectively. While Taheridoust’s emerges as the better film and has won several international awards, Afshar Naderi’s film is ethnographically more informative, and the research that undergirded it produced a rich trove of materials, consisting of seven monographs, three ethnographic films, and a tribal atlas of the Koh Gi‑ luyeh region. Films about Indigenous Technologies As the director of the Broadcast and Media Center of the Free University of Iran (Daneshgah‑e Azad‑e Iran), in addition to supervising the television pro‑ grams that accompanied the courses, I began a multipart film project to pro‑ duce investigative documentaries on ancient indigenous technologies now t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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23a, 23b, 23c  Three frames of the animated logo designed by the British artist Ronald Jackson for the films of Daneshgah-e Azad-e Iran (Free University of Iran), which I commissioned. The bird of freedom rises phoenix-like from the burning sun to form the logo. Frame enlargements.

threatened by the increasing pace of modernization and unbridled urban sprawl. Only two films of the series were completed before the revolution of 1978–79 shut down the university. The Qanat Tradition of Iran (Sonnat‑e Qa‑ nat dar Iran, 1976), directed by Reza Mirbaha, provides a history of the an‑ cient indigenous system of underground irrigation canals that carry water all year round without any mechanical propulsion, from mountainous slopes to downstream fields, often across scores of miles.41 Pigeon Towers (Kabutarkhan, 1977), also directed by Mirbaha, investigates the history and the elaborate techniques of constructing massive clay towers, particularly in the Isfahan region, in which the droppings of some six thousand pigeons are gathered. Once a year, these droppings are collected from the towers and used as natu‑ ral fertilizer in nearby fields, where they are thought to be responsible for the region’s tasty fruits and vegetables. These films were so-­called research docu‑ mentaries that relied heavily on historical investigations, voice-­over narration, location filming, and the use of native informants and skilled craftsmen and workers as subjects (all were men). The revolution not only stopped the film‑ ing of the other segments for this series but also of the circulation and broad‑ cast of those already made (figures 23a, 23b, and 23c). 112

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Like the fine-­arts documentaries, many ethnographic films engaged in sal‑ vaging a threatened present or recovering a disappearing past by document‑ ing and making comprehensible contemporary Iran in the light of its tradi‑ tional past. In this they contributed to creating a new national imaginary for Iranians. In addition to elucidating their specific topics, they explored the di‑ versity and antiquity of the peoples who formed ancient Persia, thus estab‑ lishing continuity between that ancient time and place and the modern Iran of the present. Travel Documentaries Travel films tend to flourish in societies in which a number of factors have emerged: a sufficient amount of modernity’s individuality and subjectivity; nostalgia for supposedly authentic, simpler times and places; curiosity about worlds not one’s own; enhanced social mobility and class capital; and ad‑ vanced technological and media capital. Because of the underdevelopment of these features, this category of film did not flourish in Iran until the emer‑ gence both of the middle class and of the television, film, and tourism in‑ dustries in the 1960s. Some rudimentary travel films were made before, and some ethnographic films may be regarded as travel films. Yet the efforts of two adventurous brothers merit an extended discussion as pioneers of this genre. Credited as Iran’s first “world travelers” by the Iranian press ( jahan‑ gard), Issa and Abdullah Omidvar set out in their early twenties on a world‑ wide tour with great publicity and fanfare, during which they filed newspaper reports about their travels and produced color 16mm documentaries of their adventures.42 The two planned their world tour for several years, starting in 1950, dur‑ ing which they traveled by bicycle and motorcycle to neighboring countries to test their own mettle. After gaining their father’s permission for their am‑ bitious and dangerous trip, on the patriotic ground that it would promote the name of their homeland before the world, and after having him write the first entry in their commemorative book, they set off in September 1954 for Afghanistan, with $90 in each brother’s pocket. They went east on their motor­bikes through Asia, Australia, Alaska, North America, Central Amer‑ ica, South America, and Europe, and they trekked south across Africa with a two-­cylinder safari Citroën that the French manufacturer had put at their dis‑ posal as publicity, the same way that it had supplied the Georges-­Marie Haardt expedition through Asia (including Iran) two decades earlier, which had re‑ sulted in Léon Poirier’s travel documentary The Yellow Cruise (La Croisière Jaune, 1931–34). t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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Throughout their trip, wherever Iran had an embassy or a consulate, they put on a photographic and arts and crafts exhibition about Iran, touting both its ancient arts and culture and its emergent modernization, thus support‑ ing the government’s and the intelligentsia’s aim of syncretic Westernization. They met with descendants of Iranian immigrants and with Iranian émigrés and expatriates living in various countries, such as the Parsis in India and Hong Kong, the Isfahani Armenians in Indonesia, and the descendants of the Shirazi Iranians in Zanzibar, who kept their nostalgic flames for their former homeland burning. In addition, they met with many leaders of the countries through which they passed, the photographs and news reports about these meetings adding to their renown. They filed their own journalistic reports about their travels, accompanied by black-­and-­white photos they had taken, which the local press published. Sometimes, as in Nepal, they were inter‑ viewed on local radio, and sometimes, as in Siam (Thailand), Japan, and the United States, they were interviewed on television. In Australia, they purchased a three-­lens 16mm Bolex film camera and re‑ ceived initial training in its use and began to film the Aborigines. Armed with this new technology and knowledge, they began filming, as was customary in travel documentaries of the time, their adventures and the lives and rituals of the “exotic natives” of the various countries they visited. As industrious and enterprising individuals, they processed their footage en route and showed it in subsequent countries, adding both considerable luster to their television appearances and considerable funds toward their expensive travels. For ex‑ ample, in Japan they were interviewed by television stations twice and sold three minutes of the “most exciting segments” of their footage of the Austra‑ lian Aborigines to a major Japanese newsreel company, which screened it in public cinemas throughout the country for days (Omidvar 2001/1380:204–5). This wide publicity in turn created further interview opportunities and news reports in major Japanese newspapers. After passing through the Philippines and Japan, the brothers entered the United States in 1957 through Alaska, where they stayed with the Inuit for three months, sleeping in an igloo and filming their lives near the Hudson Bay. Their descriptions of what they filmed, such as seal hunting, igloo build‑ ing, and migration in search of food, are reminiscent of Robert Flaherty’s seminal Inuit movie, Nanook of the North (1922). While in North America, they gave frequent talks at universities, often thanks to the initiative of Iranian diplomats. This turned into a publicity ma‑ chine both for them and for their home country, countering the othering tra‑ jectory of Western mediawork. At a university in Alaska they gave a talk about 114

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the Inuit, where the university president introduced them by stating that, “It may seem strange, but it is true that two Iranians have come here from thou‑ sands of miles away to inform us of the reality of our own natives” (Omid‑ var 2001:248). In Canada, they gave a talk at the University of Ottawa and screened their Inuit film. In Washington, where they stayed for several days, they gave an illustrated talk at Gallaudet University for deaf students and fac‑ ulty and participated in their social activities and dances. In New York, they participated as guests in the popular nbc television network’s morning pro‑ gram, Today, starring Dave Garroway and his chimpanzee, J. Fred Muggs, which projected their name, fame, and films nationwide, and it led to fur‑ ther invitations by other television stations (273). Iranians living in the United States contacted the travelers. A sense of pride seemed to have been aroused by the Omidvar adventures and their media campaign, as it was the first time that ordinary Iranians (not the royal family or top diplomats) were widely seen on television screens in nonpolitical situations (this was soon after the coup against Mosaddeq). In this, the brothers seemed to have fulfilled their prom‑ ise to their father, to act as goodwill ambassadors for Iran. In Central and South America, they filmed the Amazon jungles and their inhabitants extensively as they prepared poisoned darts for hunting and en‑ gaged in various ceremonies and rituals. They lectured about these adven‑ tures and showed films about them in universities in Chile and elsewhere. Af‑ ter visiting the South Pole, they set off by ship for Europe in 1958. In London, the bbc radio and television interviewed them and purchased film footage from them, “filling our empty pockets with money,” and in Germany, news‑ papers wrote about them extensively and published their articles, for which they were paid handsomely (403). The money they earned in Europe through their journalism, media appearances, and exhibitions paid for much of their expensive Americas trip. In France, they accepted the Citroën car as a gift and returned to Iran to prepare for the African leg of their world adventure. The first leg had taken six years. While in Tehran, they edited some of the 16mm footage they had filmed and screened it in the commercial Feri Cinema to an enthusiastic audience, which had formed a long line in the streets outside. In 1960, they drove their Citroën through Saudi Arabia’s dreaded Empty Quarter and made a hajj, which they filmed and photographed clandestinely at their peril, with the cameras hidden illegally under their white pilgrimage wraparound sheets (nothing sewn or manufactured should be worn). Carrying manufactured objects, particularly cameras, which could be claimed to have been used to photograph women, posed a great risk. Yet the Omidvars justified their ac‑ t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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tions by saying that they wanted to “fulfill the desire of the Muslims who had longed for years to make the pilgrimage to Mecca but could not, due to lack of funds.” Vicarious pilgrimage, like vicarious tourism! When their guide began to suspect them of carrying something underneath their clothing because of metallic sounds emanating from them, they gave him a ludicrous story about an illness that had required them both to replace their real stomachs with arti‑ ficial, presumably metallic ones (424–25). Their footage of the Mecca pilgrim‑ age should be considered the first by an Iranian, preceding Rezai’s famed film of the same event in The House of God by eight years.43 In Africa, where they traveled from Sudan to South Africa, they joined Pyg‑ mies, Masai, and others, and they documented teeth-­sharpening ceremonies, a giraffe’s birth, elephant hunting, and dances and songs performed by di‑ verse African people. As before, they used their lectures and films to educate audiences of one land about the peoples of others. In Dakar, for example, they screened their films about the Amazon regions. Cosmopolitan and liberal in their politics, the brothers criticized both the racism they encountered against blacks in the U.S. Deep South and the racist policies of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Their trip around the world ended almost a decade after it had begun, in 1963, when they returned to Tehran. The Omidvar brothers collected many native objects, samples, specimens, souvenirs, handicrafts, and sacred objects during their travels in hopes of creating a natural history museum. They either carried these with them or mailed and shipped them to Iran. The World Ethnology Museum of Omidvar Brothers was opened in Tehran by Issa years later, in the 1990s.44 His brother had fallen in love with a student who years earlier had seen their talk in Chile and had admired them. He returned to Chile to marry her, where he estab‑ lished a film production company. After the completion of their world tour, the brothers edited some of the footage into travelogues. One of these, the result of their trip to Alaska in win‑ ter, is the English-­titled film On Top of the World, which contains some out‑ standing footage of Inuit life (Tahaminejad 2000/1379:64). Another is Man of the Amazon, a seventeen-­minute color film about their adventures in the Amazon, which features a Persian-­language voice-­over narration by one of the brothers (probably Issa, who did most of the filming). Delivered in a plu‑ ral voice, it is reminiscent of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom television se‑ ries (1963–90), in which thanks to manipulative editing and narration danger seems to lurk behind every bush and every animal emerges as a potential en‑ emy. It also resembles early travel films in which natives are exotic primitives who eat live grubs and engage in wild dances. 116

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In another film, however, Into the Wilderness, thirty-­ four minutes in length, about the African leg of their trip, including the pilgrimage to Mecca, the voice-­over is more nuanced, aware of the politics of travel documentaries and of the impact of Western colonialism on Africa. It takes pains to explain that drumming in Africa constitutes a sophisticated expressive language with precise meanings, that Africa is not homogenous but contains diverse peo‑ ples, cultures, and religions, including Islam (showing scenes of possession with knives), that Africa is fast modernizing, and that many African coun‑ tries wish to free themselves of their colonial masters. Clearly, the filmmak‑ ers were affected by the liberation movements in Africa, some of which they may have witnessed themselves. They were also influenced by their own childhood experiences in Iran and by their father’s style of fantasy-­laden oral storytelling at bedtime. As Abdul‑ lah told a bbc reporter in 2004, when he was five or six years old, he used to go to sleep by listening to the adventure stories that his father related, which “in‑ sinuated the exciting thought of world travel into my mind.” Once, when his father, a manufacturer and exporter of socks to India, read him a news­paper headline about Tibetans looking for God, the son asked if there was more than one God, to which the father answered, “There is no single religion in the world, each country has its own food, clothes, and culture.” Hearing this, Adullah said, “a strange excitement swelled up in me, and I said to myself that if the world is so interesting, I must visit all the darkness of its harrowing jun‑ gles and all its five continents. So, when I was twenty-­one and my brother Issa was twenty-­three we left Iran for our trip.”45 In 1964, a ninety-­minute compilation film was prepared on 35mm about their adventures, The Wonders of Omidvar Brothers’ Travels (Ajayeb‑e Mosaf‑ eratha‑ye Baradaran‑e Omidvar). It featured a lighthearted Persian narration by Asadollah Paiman and was distributed widely throughout the country. Abdullah after emigration to Chile opened Arauco Films in Santiago, special‑ izing in advertising and industrial films. Through it he released An Iranian in Latin America (Yek Irani dar Emrika‑ye Latin, 1973), with a Persian narration, which was screened at Diana Cinema in Tehran. Judging by the enthusias‑ tic responses of listeners worldwide to the interviews that the bbc’s Persian Service conducted with the brothers in 2004, it is clear that the pair’s travel adventures captured the imagination of Iranians not only then, in the 1950s-­ 1960s, when the Iranian domestic media hailed their accomplishments, but also now, in the early years of the twenty-­first century, when the web circu‑ lates their interviews and listeners’ interactions with them. It is appropriate to close this section by citing excerpts from what amounts t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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to a remarkable manifesto about the urge to travel and explore by Issa, which must have been the real impetus for the Omidvar brothers’ single-­minded, worldwide adventures. In a way, this is a manifesto also about the desire for modernity, individuality, speed, and sensory excitement. He wrote this when the two men split, one going to Chile, the other traveling on his own. Danger and I are twins. Both of us are restless. Both love unexpected‑ ness, recklessness, and the dust of fresh arrivals. Both danger and I were born on the same day in the same place. We looked each other in the eyes, and suddenly recognized one another. We were no strangers. Let me tell you of my pains: Remaining in place makes me restless. Re‑ maining in one place, remaining in the city, away from the bosom of danger, bores me, makes me ill. The city is a smoky prison. I love the mysterious terror of the jungles. Staying at home and resting in pain‑ lessness is death for me. I love the unexpected and terrifying excite‑ ments of unknown seas. . . . I reject the similarity of this moment to the next. I am driven mad by sameness. I stare longingly into places that are not here, into paths not taken, into lands unknown, into places that exist but are not here, into everything that is not here but I imagine that can be here. (Omidvar 2001/1380:546–47)

Social Protest Documentaries Despite the Pahlavi era’s official culture and prescribed documentary style, from the mid-­1960s onward, an increasing number of socially conscious documentarians made films critical of things official, although government agencies sponsored most of them and censored the best of them. These pro‑ test films expressed the fears, anxieties, and criticisms not only of the intellec‑ tuals but also of the general population—­sentiments suppressed by a regime that under such official, pseudorevolutionary and nationalistic rubrics as the White Revolution, the Shah-­People Revolution, and the Great Civilization was becoming more authoritarian, autocratic, and arrogant. The violent suppression of the brief uprising of 1963 constituted but one obvious example of the regime’s tendency to coerce its citizens. The perva‑ sive secret police, Savak, perpetrated many more daily indignities and viola‑ tions of human rights and freedoms that the citizens had to endure. Because they critiqued current social conditions, the films under discussion in this section suffered both from prior censorship and from limited public exhibi‑ tion much more than other documentaries. Unlike the poetic documentaries,

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these films used direct and confrontational strategies in terms of the choice of the subject matter and the critical juxtapositions and politicized contrapun‑ talism of verbal and visual elements, which pitted official pronouncements against popular opinions. A case in point is the work of Shirdel (born in Tehran in 1939), one of the country’s foremost documentarians, who like many others of his generation was trained abroad. He studied architecture and urban planning at Rome University in Italy. In the third year of his studies in 1959, he was drawn to filmmaking through his work as a Persian-­language dubber for Alex Aqaba‑ bian’s Dariush Film Studio in Rome, where he, along with other Iranian na‑ tionals, dubbed many of the great Italian movies for the Iranian market. This experience of and exposure to the seminal movies of Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean-­Luc Godard convinced him to switch fields: he enrolled at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia to learn filmmaking. On his return to Iran in 1965, he made numerous documentaries, most of them for the mca, which, ironically, banned and confiscated them or limited their screenings. Among these works were Women’s Prison (Nedamatgah: Zendan‑e Zanan, 1966) and Fortress: The Red Light District (Qaleh, 1967–80), two searing films about in‑ carcerated women and prostitution in Tehran, respectively. The latter focuses on the red-­light district, which at the time was called either Fortress or New City (Shahr‑e no), and comprised houses of prostitution, burlesque theaters, beauty shops, liquor stores, and bars, with only one gate connecting it to the outside world. A report about the district in Khandaniha magazine had in 1959 graphically characterized the New City as a “contained cist, an old wound,” which was visited by thirty thousand to fifty thousand customers a day, with each prostitute taking care of between thirty and fifty clients daily.46 Although both films were made for the mca, they were ostensibly sponsored by the Women’s Organization of Iran, nominally headed by Princess Ashraf Pahlavi (the Shah’s twin) and actually directed by Mahnaz Afkhami, an able manager who later became the first minister of women’s affairs. Instead of celebrating the progress made under these institutions, the films critiqued them because of their failure to improve the lot of ordinary women. In their attention to the lives of ordinary people and in elevating them to the status of subjects worthy of cinema, Shirdel’s films exhibited some of the sensibilities both of the British social realist documentary movement prior to the Second World War and of Italian neorealism. The eleven-­minute film Women’s Prison focuses on a Tehran jail that houses 222 women and girls convicted of the capital crimes of murder, drug addiction, and smug‑ gling. The prison organizes literature, handicraft, and sewing classes for the t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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inmates. But these scenes are filmed with irony, for example, when an old, veiled woman makes a dress for a large blonde doll. Many of the imprisoned women have children, some of whom are kept with them in jail, while oth‑ ers are cared for by relatives on the outside. Official discourse (generally rosy), consisting of interviews with prison teachers and textbooks, is critically jux‑ taposed with popular discourse, including interviews with women prisoners, which paints a picture of desperation. A prisoner named Qamar states that two of her nine children are in prison, but “I always worry about those out‑ side; what can I do, I am in here.” Nargess has four children, one of them is with her in prison, while the others, one of them physically disabled, are be‑ ing taken care of by her husband’s brother, because her husband is also in prison. Because the film was shot in 35mm format, the synch sound record‑ ing of interviews posed major problems, forcing Shirdel to dub the prison‑ ers’ voices with the voices of the women who worked at the mca (Tahamine‑ jad 2003:40). This is essentially a fund-­raising film, for it ends with a plea to the public to help the prisoners by aiding the women’s prisoners’ associa‑ tion through the Women’s Organization of Iran, the film’s sponsor. Women’s Prison broke new ground with its restless, handheld camera, its clear close-­up photography of women’s faces, and its successful public exhibition at one of premiere movie houses of Tehran, the Moulin Rouge.47 Fortress: The Red Light District used the strategy of critical juxtapositions more effectively, but also more programmatically. It contrapuntally and ironi‑ cally opposed the positivist contents of the teacher’s dictation to the prosti‑ tutes in the New City classroom with interviews with them, slyly suggesting that poverty and ignorance cause prostitution. The teacher’s dictation states: “There are factories, offices, and hospitals in large Iranian cities in which peo‑ ple work day and night. Every citizen, whether in cities or villages, is working hard to make a better life. All of us, wherever we live and whatever work we do, we are participating in our country’s progress.” As a woman writes the long dictation on the blackboard, the film cuts to harrowing, stunningly candid in‑ terviews with prostitutes that give the lie to the rosy dictation, as the women describe being beaten by their parents or husbands and being sold to pimps. A woman who had been brought to Tehran and sold eighteen years earlier de‑ scribes a series of fruitless escapes, ending, “I had no place to go, at nights the sky was my quilt and the earth my mattress.” After a dictation that states, “I thank God for creating me,” a beautiful young girl tearfully tells the cam‑ era: “I am twelve years old, and I have an older sister and a younger brother. I’ve also got a wretched mother. Perhaps you can do something for us. My mother thought you might be able to rescue us. She is over there” (figure 24). 120

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24  A young prostitute in Kamran Shirdel’s Fortress: The Red Light District. Frame enlargement.

Another tearful prostitute says: “We do it at night over there behind the hospi‑ tal, while standing. Several of us women are on the job there, in the streets, as people pass. What can we do, we are hungry; we have no other recourse.” The contrapuntal structure of this film again contrasts the official discourse with the popular one—­including street songs—­to undermine the former, high‑ lighting the degradation, poverty, and backwardness of both these particular women and girls and of a large segment of the country. The film’s ending on the scenes of forlorn men and women sleeping in the streets seals the dystopic assessment of the Great Civilization achieved under the Shah. With this editing scheme, which replaced positivism with criticism, Shir­ del harshly critiqued the official ideology and violated a key tenet of the official style, resulting in the film’s censoring. Fortress: The Red Light District was banned during filming in 1966 and its raw material was thought con‑ fiscated by Savak and lost. However, in 1980, after the revolution, the nega‑ tives and soundtracks were rediscovered in the mca’s film lab; apparently, a sympathetic lab employee had buried them years ago for safekeeping. 48 When Shirdel received the call with the good news from the ministry, he almost died of joy. He edited the footage and sound together with dramatic photographs of the New City shot by Kaveh Golestan at the time of the filming to make up for the missing footage. The resulting film, Fortress: The Red Light District, won several national and international awards (Mehrabi 1996/1375:302–3). Its cur‑ rent release print now carries an ending title of “unfinished.”49 Shirdel used the same critical structure of juxtaposing official ideology with lived experience in Tehran Is Iran’s Capital (Tehran, Paietakht‑e Iran Ast, 1966). Here, the critical contrast, or what he calls “counterpoint,” once again occurs between words dictated by a teacher, which praise the country’s prog‑ ress under the Shah—­the exact text quoted in Women’s Prison—­and man-­ t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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on-­the-­street interviews and documentary footage that provide evidence to the contrary. The film, also made for the mca, takes its title from the teach‑ er’s hopeful dictation. As the voice reads, “Tehran Is Iran’s capital. Shahan‑ shah Aryamehr [the King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, the Shah’s official title] lives there,” we see pictures of society’s marginalized members in the capital’s teeming South End—­vagrants, beggars, blood sellers, loiterers, scav‑ engers, workers—­many of whom sleep in hovels, ruins, or dilapidated tem‑ porary structures (figures 25a and 25b). In another section, the head of the National Culture Group of the Women’s Organization of Iran tells the camera of the high rate of unemployment (seven out of ten without work), the lack of sports and educational facilities, and the lack of housing (ten to fifteen peo‑ ple living in one room) that the organization had worked to alleviate. All the while the classroom dictation continues to state that Iran’s political system has from ancient times on been monarchical and names the present Shah and crown prince the rightful continuation of that system. These positivist discourses are countered by interviews with actual residents of the South End who complain of unemployment, of ten-­hour workdays with insufficient pay to feed their families, of no running water, and of bad health care.50 One man tellingly utters his grievances in the past tense, as though he were no longer alive or considered human: “We were Muslim, we were human beings, now we live in this ruin and no one helps us.” The sequence that shows a group of men and boys scouring through heaps of garbage for something to eat or to sell alongside a herd of goats underscores the loss of humanity and dignity. As an index of the film’s modernity, the visuals tend to hold the truth, opposing the official lies delivered verbally. Overly binarist assertions certainly flaw the film, yet its direct questioning of the White Revolution’s tenets constituted a bold move in the stifling 1960s.51 The rushes of Tehran Is Iran’s Capital were confiscated during editing, something Shirdel learned only when one day he arrived at the mca head‑ quarters to discover his editing suite locked. Savak interrogated him. His ne‑ gotiations with the minister of culture and art, Pahlbod, and with his subor‑ dinates about the whereabouts and the release of his footage came to naught, as did his offer to take them to the South End to show them the reality he had filmed there. Pahlbod spoke to Shirdel admiringly, telling him that “I admire your talent and courage; you truly deserve the name you are carrying” (shirdel means “lion-­hearted”). Yet he went on to say that under current conditions he did not foresee screening the footage to anyone (quoted in Tahaminejad 2003:41). As a result, that film, too, never came to a public screening during the Pahlavi period. Its first one occurred only after the revolution, along with 122

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25a, 25b  Contrapuntal filming: contrasting rosy classroom dictation with visuals of social ills. Stills from Tehran Is Iran’s Capital. Courtesy of Kamran Shirdel.

Shirdel’s other banned films, at the Milad Film Festival in 1980, when the Is‑ lamist regime was eager to discredit the Shah’s regime; the film won local and international awards. Like Fortress: The Red Light District, this film now car‑ ries an ending title of “unfinished.” Finally, Shirdel’s Noruz (1967), also made for the mca, unfavorably com‑ pared and contrasted the celebration of Iranian New Year (Noruz) in the poor districts of Tehran with that in tonier areas, including in the Iran-­America Society and the Shah’s Sa’dabad Palace. This film was also confiscated and apparently never screened. Shirdel made only one notable feature movie dur‑ ing the Pahlavi era, The Morning of the Fourth Day (Sobh‑e Ruz‑e Chaharom, 1972), which paid homage to his favorite film by Godard, Breathless (À Bout de Souffle, 1960), and he continued to make institutional documentaries under the Islamic Republic, discussed in another chapter. In relying on visuality to counter orality, his films proved modernist and counterhegemonic. Soon, this approach became a powerful deconstructive strategy for other filmmakers as well, whether they worked in fiction or in t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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documentary, for such a structure allowed them not only to poke holes into the bright official presentations of reality but also to conform to a powerful Iranian ideological orientation, which distrusts manifest meanings (i.e., the world of appearances, zaher) in the interest of uncovering a valued and au‑ thentic core meaning (baten). Years later, Abbas Kiarostami would use this critical structure is his nonfiction film, Homework (Mashq‑e Shab, 1990), and Dariush Mehrjui in his fiction movie, The School We Went To (Madreseh-­i keh Miraftim, 1980–89)—­both involving schools and classrooms—­to offer dev‑ astating critiques of the educational and political systems, this time under the Islamic Republic.52 As a result, official censors banned both these films for years. While they were bold and innovative, the Shirdel films reduced the com‑ plexities of the issues under analysis. He seems to have been largely satisfied with debunking the government and poking his finger into its metaphoric eye. Since the government had seized all meaningful institutions of power and reform and took credit for all victories achieved in society, its critics re‑ acted by ascribing all the problems to it as well, aiming all criticism at it. This situation absolved Iranians of any responsibility for their own failures, fed the discourse of “the people” as victims of the state, and failed to bring to Iranians’ attention their own accomplishments. It also made the socially con‑ scious filmmakers rather lazy, for instead of digging into the deeper and mul‑ tiple causes of social misery and protests, they simply blamed the government (which, of course, was not without blame). In turn, this facile political critique paved the way for filmmakers’ censorship, thus providing them with another reason to demonize the government and thus strengthening a vicious circle that bound an oppressive government to its nagging critics. Ever active in the documentary film through the gfw, Ebrahim Golestan also made several socially engaged documentaries or films about the arts. Yet unlike his work for the oil company, these films faced condemnation and confiscation by their sponsors or by government officials. The sponsor banned Rural Associations (Anjomanha‑ye Rustai, 1965) because, instead of praising the work of the government-­sanctioned rural associations, the film exposed its shortcomings (Mehrabi 1996/1375:59). Likewise, the mca confis‑ cated Golestan’s Iran’s Crown Jewels (Ganjinehha‑ye Gowhar, 1965), in which he traces three hundred years of dynastic history (from Nader Shah Afshar to the Pahlavi shahs) by examining the fate of Iran’s crown jewels, which pro‑ vide important backing for the Iranian currency. This was partly due to the film’s vague but ominous prognostication of the fall of all dynasties, and by implication that of the then current owners of the jewels, the Pahlavi dynasty 124

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(Mehrabi 1996/1375:334). This film also cuts from its ostensible object, the crown jewels, to social context: the Iranian countryside, peasants, farmers, and tribespeople. Several cuts and dissolves, from close-­ups to long shots, of decorative jewels establish a strong connection between the peacock throne and other jewels and Iranian gardens in bloom. In line with the aesthetics of poetic realism, the film’s narration criticizes the decadence of the succes‑ sive kings who, “bedazzled with ornaments,” ruled over “the pompous period of negligence and self-­praise, the era of living with no esteem for the mind,” ending with the “Pahlavi crown like the full stop at the end of the tale.”53 It notes that among a hundred thousand bejeweled pieces in the royal vault, only “three pens” were found. This measured criticism of Iranians’ attraction to glowing trinkets is clearly a precursor to what erupts as anger in Golestan’s final feature film, The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley, in which he cri‑ tiques such shallow infatuations. Made by the gfw for the Central Bank of Iran, the custodian of the jew‑ els, this film was stylistically the most accomplished of all documentaries di‑ rected by Golestan. The beautiful objects are in constant motion within the frame while the camera moves about them, exploring their forms, facets, and designs. Film lab effects, strategic lap dissolves, and animation provide other movements across space and time. Even before its completion, however, the film ran afoul of Pahlbod, whom Golestan disdained. Pahlbod first confiscated a large portion of the footage and narration because of their politics, and perhaps because his own minis‑ try’s filmmakers had not made the film, and finally banned the film outright. He forbade Golestan to take the footage to Britain to complete the soundtrack. Mehdi Samii, the governor of the Central Bank and the crown jewels’ official guardian, interceded with the prime minister, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, who authorized the use of the diplomatic pouch to essentially smuggle the film to London for completion (Milani 2001:335–36). Surprisingly, this film ob‑ tained the royal blessing; in fact, the Shah, who had liked Golestan’s A Fire and Wave, Coral, and Rock, had asked that the assignment for Iran’s Crown Jewels be given to him (Alinezhad 2004:2).54 The film was never shown in Iran in the English-­language version screened at the Golestan retrospective in Chicago in May 2007, which he considers to be definitive, for the mca took out the offending segments of the narration, replacing them with music.55 That his high-­ranking connections could not protect Golestan from this kind of trouble with the film reinforces key points of this chapter, namely, that documentary filmmaking, particularly projects commissioned or sponsored by the state, constituted a highly contingent and negotiated process, and that t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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despite the state’s authoritarian nature, government sponsorship did not au‑ tomatically lead to pro-­regime documentaries. On the other hand, the kind of official help Hoveyda provided for Iran’s Crown Jewels did not necessarily translate into assistance in other situations. For example, as Golestan tells it, the prime minister himself confiscated his The Harvest and the Seed (Kharman O Bazr, 1965), about the government’s land reform program in a village, which criticized the way the reform perpet‑ uated the accumulation of capital first in absentee landlords and then in new owners, who ruled the villages with impunity (Mehrabi 1996/1375:167). Hov‑ eyda apparently liked the film and suggested that Golestan sell it to the gov‑ ernment for an agreed-­on fee. Under that pretense, he took away Golestan’s copy to show to the Shah, but he never returned the film print, nor did he pay for it (Milani 2001:336). The Harvest and the Seed had been screened at the Venice International Film Festival, arousing anger and protest from both Ira‑ nian residents in Italy and the Iranian embassy there (Omid 1995/1374:846). Perhaps that is why the prime minister banned the film and confiscated all its prints. This involvement of the country’s top official in documentary film censorship may seem unusual. Yet these kinds of incident—­and similar ones in the first Pahlavi period—­demonstrate the importance the Pahlavis placed on media images and on documentary film’s public relations value, and that the regimes were not homogenous or monolithic. They also suggest the high value Hoveyda placed on his close relationship with fellow intellectuals, in‑ cluding with some dissenters, such as Golestan. He sought first to appease the dissidents through personal relationships; if that failed, he resorted to official coercion and censorship. His relationship with Golestan soured further after the release of the satirical movie The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley, which made fun of the Shah and his reforms. According to one ac‑ count, Savak shut down Golestan’s studio, forcing him to flee Iran. Other films that criticized the sponsoring institutions, some headed by royal family members or their cronies, also received little or no exhibition. As Iranian critics were fond of saying, their circulation was limited to a one-­ way shuttle from the film lab to the film archive. Three examples are notable. Khosrow Sinai’s Beyond the Barrier of Sound (Ansu‑ye Haiahu, 1968) about the Baghchehban School for the Deaf and Mute, mixes documentary scenes with re-­created ones and critiques the general maltreatment of hearing and visu‑ ally impaired people in the country. Reza Allamehzadeh’s thirty-­minute Eter‑ nal Night (Shab‑e Momtad, 1972) focuses on the Reza Pahlavi School for the Blind, which by means of a rather heavy-­handed filming and editing strategy compares the lives of the students to the lives of prison inmates and to a dog’s 126

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life. Mohammad Hosain Mahini Hasanzadeh’s Work Camp (Ordu‑ye Kar, also known as Kanun, 1974) deals with the difficult life and work environment of inmates of a government work camp. They work and live in squalid and de‑ plorable quarters. One of them, whose face and neck are severely burned due to unsafe work conditions, describes what happened to him; his political anal‑ ysis of the work situation and his defiant manner provide eloquent testimony to the resilience of the human spirit in the midst of the most dire poverty and oppression. He boldly expresses his dissatisfaction not only with camp life but also with the whole social system. Most of the film was shot under the super‑ vision of the camp guards; but portions of it, such as the sequence with the burn victim, were filmed clandestinely through a series of elaborate schemes. This was an unusual technique in those days, for during the rise of the under‑ ground antigovernment guerrillas in the 1970s, any kind of clandestine activ‑ ity was considered political and subversive. The only authorized clandestine activity was that in which the secret police, Savak, engaged. Eternal Night and Work Camp were their directors’ graduation thesis films, and they represented a newly activist political voice in documentary cinema. That voice was soon silenced, however, as Allamehzadeh was tried and con‑ victed within a couple of years in a famous televised trial, along with other intellectuals. With the revolution, both of these directors escaped to Europe, where Allamehzadeh has been making films in the Netherlands and Mahini has been organizing an annual exile film festival in Sweden (Naficy 2001). The regime interpreted these three films’ realistic portrayal of the under‑ side of institutionalized disability and their political contents as direct attacks on the government and its failed social service programs. In the stifling politi‑ cal atmosphere of the time, mere acts of realistic synch-­sound filmmaking by direct cinema and cinéma vérité methodologies became political acts, more so than in those methodologies’ countries of origin, the United States and France. Even implicit social criticism, when spoken by a documentary subject such as in Work Camp, was considered a direct criticism of the government by the filmmakers. The downside of this politicization of the documentary was that it pushed political documentarians toward further laziness and slop‑ piness, for many seemed to think that the mere filming of scenes of poverty and oppression—­w ithout any artistry or analysis—­sufficiently proved their political commitment. Because many of these films were not screened pub‑ licly, they acquired mythic reputations that belied their sometimes low tech‑ nical quality or heavy-­handed rhetorical content. I was able to screen some of these films in my documentary film classes at the nirt College of Cinema and Television, sometimes in the presence of the filmmakers. Although this t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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selective exposure was educationally important and enlightening for the stu‑ dents, perhaps it ended up adding to the films’ mystique. If socially conscious filmmakers were muzzled at home and Western com‑ mercial documentarians treated the social problems of Iran with deference, a few independent European filmmakers did dare to seriously and critically examine the Shah’s regime without fear of reprisals. But these were few and appeared on the scene too late to have any impact on the Iranian population or the country’s filmmakers.56

Avant-­Garde Documentaries Both social protest documentaries and avant-­garde documentaries violated some of the codes of the official style. The social documentaries not only offered a critique of the official institutions and of official culture but also—­by means of their realism and contrapuntal and subjective uses of sound, visu‑ als, and editing—­a critique of the official documentary style. The avant-­garde films extended these subversions through bolder experimentations with form and structure, not only to camouflage their inflammatory content and escape censorship but also to make more formally rigorous and artistic films. The more complex film texts of these auteur filmmakers required more work on behalf of the spectator to comprehend and appreciate. In these ways, the best of the social protest and avant-­garde films advanced the authorial, textual, and spectatorial formations of documentary cinema. Among the strategies of formal, and ultimately political, subversion was experimentation with a hybrid form that involved mixing fictional and docu‑ mentary elements. Again, European-­trained filmmakers were at the forefront here. Ahmad Faruqi Qajar, a Paris-­born grandson of Ahmad Shah Qajar, (his mother was French), in his Dawn of the Capricorn (Tolu‑e Jodai, 1964), mixed documentary footage of Isfahan’s old quarters and historical monuments with an impressionistic story of a budding relationship between two children to create an ode of nostalgic love to that ancient city. The casting of nonactors (particularly of children) in real locations and in realistic situations to enact fictional stories, which became a hallmark of the films of the cidcya around the time of the revolution of 1978–79, perhaps originated with this film and in the works of other avant-­garde filmmakers, such as Kimiavi. These experi‑ mentations with documentary form problematized the official style, particu‑ larly its certainty about what constituted reality, and helped the filmmakers escape censorship because their films could be interpreted as flights of fancy, not straight documentation. This innovative hybridization of the documen‑ 128

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tary, which would in a few years become emblematic of postmodern film‑ making, would in due course, particularly under the Islamic Republic, come to pose a serious ethical dilemma for both nonfiction and fiction filmmakers and a challenge to the reigning Islamist ideology, which invested so much in certainties and absolutism. Experiments with editing timed to musical rhythm, which resulted in breaking the authority of the often-­verbose and literary narration, was an‑ other avant-­garde strategy. I have already mentioned how Taqvai’s rhythmical editing to the music of young men beating their chests and chanting religious songs in his Arba’in, sans narration, effectively recreated the passion, inten‑ sity, and trancelike subjective states of the Shiite participants. In his multi‑ ple award-­w inning film The Sacred Pit (Gowd‑e Moqqadas, 1964), about body‑ building and male bonding and the ancient art of exercises in the house of strength (zurkhaneh), the Paris-­trained filmmaker Hajir Daryoush also ex‑ perimented creatively with rhythmic cutting to re-­create the athlete’s height‑ ened emotional states. The film reiterates the history of the zurkhaneh as a politically subversive Iranian institution throughout the ages. Its literary nar‑ ration, written by the modernist writer Bahman Forsi, however, suffers from the weight of its own verbosity. In his short film Rhythm (Ritm, 1971), Tayyab matches the drumming of the master drummer Hosain Tehrani with the images of a speeding locomotive to create a powerful symbiosis of man and machine, which re-­creates for Tayyab his childhood experience of riding the old train to the city of Rey with his father to visit the family dead. Like many performing arts films, The Sacred Pit and Rhythm were both made for the mca. Formal experiments of an impressionist nature, such as Kyumars Der‑ ambaksh’s Desert Caravans (Sarebanan‑e Jaras, 1974), were also tried. In visu‑ ally elegant images the film focuses on a camel caravan traveling through the sand deserts, carrying a variety of goods, some of which are anathema to the timelessness and silence of the environment, such as a clock and a transis‑ tor radio. The film documents both the desolation of a camel caravan caught in a severe sandstorm and its delight at reaching a watery oasis, which is ren‑ dered in delicious slow motion. Khosrow Haritash, trained at the University of Southern California’s film school, directed the lyrical Reminiscence (Beh Yad, 1977), about old doors and archways, which invokes the deep nostalgic long‑ ing of modern Iranians for the fast disappearing past and their fraying con‑ nection with it. Shirdel’s pathbreaking modernist documentary The Night It Rained . . . or the Epic of a Gorgan Village Boy (Unshab keh Barun Umad . . . Ya Hamaseh‑ye Rustazadeh‑ye Gorgani, 1967) good-­humoredly and cleverly problematizes the t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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notions of “reality” and “documentary truth” in a different way than works by Faruqi Qajar or Kimiavi by self-­reflexively offering multiple, and often con‑ flicting, views on a real-­world event. The event is the heroic action of a boy, Mohammad Esmail Nowdehi, who, in the dark of a stormy night, stops a train before its certain derailment from the washed-­out rails by setting his jacket on fire. Newspapers, such as Kayhan, had written about the boy’s valiant and selfless act that saved nearly two hundred people. Having read these accounts, Pahlbod decided to give Shirdel another chance to redeem himself by offer‑ ing him the opportunity to make a film about the heroic village boy, a film that was to be positive and not critical of the government. Although worried about the terms under which he received the assignment, Shirdel acquiesced and traveled with his mca crew to the site of the incident, the village of Lame‑ lang near the northern city of Gorgan, but without a screenplay or a filming plan. There, he encountered very different versions of the event, causing him to decide to center his film not on the singularity but on the multiplicity of reality; not on a single Truth, but on many truths. As he told me in an inter‑ view, a documentary filmmaker must be equipped with certain characteris‑ tics, such as “sharp insight, open mind, quick reactions, and a blend of humor and irony,” qualities that he mobilized effectively in making this seminal ci‑ néma vérité work—­t he best example in Iranian prerevolution cinema (Naficy 1977a/2536). Filming took thirteen days and editing over a year (due to synching prob‑ lems, as the soundman was inexperienced), with the piece’s narration written by the poet Esmail Nuriala but read effectively by the veteran actor and former dubber Nosrat Karimi. Shirdel exhibited ample evidence of the documentar‑ ian’s characteristics that he considered important (figure 26). He mobilized divergent newspaper accounts of the boy’s celebrated action, along with con‑ flicting interviews with him and with various officials: the Kayhan reporter, the publisher of the Shomal‑e Iran newspaper, Education Corps teachers, and various citizens. Each promoted a different, often self-­serving, version of what had happened. The result was a humorous and incisive social commentary about people’s desire for fame and the complexity and ambiguity of documen‑ tary reality and truth. One person claims that the train was a freight train carry­ing military cargo, not a passenger train; another questions that this par‑ ticular boy had stopped the train; and yet another dismisses the boy’s story by pointing to the difficulty that he would have had setting his jacket on fire dur‑ ing a pouring rain. A railway worker claims that he, not the boy, was the first to see the train and the first to bring it to a halt. The station manager, on the other hand, claims that the train came to a stop because of the vigilance of the 130

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26  Shirdel directing the cameraman in The Night It Rained. Courtesy of Kamran Shirdel.

engineer and the linemen. The governor, who credits the boy for following the example of a similar train-­rescue story in schoolbooks, rewards the boy for his heroic deed, as does the mayor. The boy also credits the story in his book for inspiring his good deed.57 The Night It Rained was one of the few documentaries that self-­consciously deconstructed its own ontology by foregrounding its own production (figure 27). This was accomplished by the voice-­over narrator reading from Shirdel’s official filming report to the ministry, explaining with humor the various ob‑ stacles encountered and the solutions adopted, by showing the slate and the production crew and by highlighting the manner in which conflicting ver‑ sions of reality subverted the heroic narrative of the boy with which it had begun. The film also pokes fun at the pompous style of contemporary docu‑ mentary and ethnographic films by declaring one thing on the soundtrack and showing almost its opposite visually. It ends with the boy running away from the camera on the rail track, while the voice of one of the interviewees is heard repeating, “Pure lies, pure lies, pure lies,” implying that perhaps even Shirdel’s version of the event is a fabrication (figure 28).58 The film was an‑ other iteration of Shirdel’s countering rosy official discourse with sober real‑ ity, yet he had grown more sophisticated and self-­reflexive. Instead of provid‑ ing point-­counterpoint didactic criticism as in his earlier films, he provides a textured, sly, humorous, and incisive indirect form of criticism, not only of officials but also of ordinary people, including himself. In this sense, The Night It Rained most resembled the influential Chronicle of a Summer by Rouch and Morin. The film’s ironic and subjective voice-­over, delivered slyly by Karimi, also broke with the officious and objective narration so characteristic of the t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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27  The letter from the director of The Night It Rained to the Ministry of Culture and Art, reporting on the filming. Frame enlargement. 28  The heroic village boy running away on the railway track, with the subtitled words “pure lies, pure lies” in the lower third of the frame. Frame enlargement from The Night It Rained.

official documentary style. Indeed, because of these narrative and ideological innovations, The Night It Rained represents a complete break with the official style. The editing and mixing of the film had finished by spring 1968, where‑ upon Shirdel screened the result to the minister of culture. Apparently highly disappointed with what he saw, the latter “stormed out of the auditorium with neither a hello nor a goodbye like an ss Guard, with his assistants marching behind him” (Naficy 2005a). Within a few minutes, he had expelled Shirdel 132

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from his civil service film job, setting him on the road to independent, com‑ missioned documentary filmmaking. The film was not released for almost eight years, perhaps not so much be‑ cause of its implicit sociopolitical criticism but because of its stylistic icono‑ clasm. When it was finally screened publicly in the third Tehran International Film Festival in the mid-­1970s, it won the top short-­film prize. This exposure did not last long, however, for as Shirdel tells it, after the distinguished for‑ eign members of the festival jury and the international journalists left the country, the authorities confiscated the film, and it was never shown to the general public again until after the revolution (Farrokh Gaffary organized a few specialized screenings of it). The institutionalization of the official documentary by the state proved a double-­edged sword. On the one hand, it meant steady support for documen‑ tary productions, something difficult to obtain from private enterprises in Iran. On the other hand, it meant that even if at times nontraditional, non‑ official films escaped censorship during the script-­approval phase, there was no guarantee that they would be exhibited once completed. This was because both the mca and nirt, which sponsored and commissioned the bulk of the documentaries, were also in charge of censoring, exhibiting, and broadcast‑ ing all films. They could produce the films and just as surely withhold or hamper their exhibition. Documentary cinema was thus caught in the contra‑ dictions of the system that supported it—­contradictions that also beset new-­ wave fiction cinema. In this period, contradictions and compromise plagued not only individual filmmakers and film styles but also the state institutions concerned with cinema. Homogeneity and hegemony thus remained an official dream and an opposition nightmare.

Coproduction Documentaries From the late 1960s onward, the Shah’s government, seeking to improve and soften its authoritarian image at home and abroad and perhaps to genuinely support the arts, embarked on coproduction projects with Western companies to make fiction movies and documentaries. Iran’s contribution to the fiction film projects seems to have been limited to supplying funds, natural scen‑ ery, and extras. The documentary coproductions, on the other hand, resulted in some high-­quality films about Iran, which received wide recognition and helped circulate self-­empowering representations of the country abroad. The earliest film, and in a way the most celebrated by Iranians, was the French coproduction The Lovers’ Wind (Bad‑e Saba, 1969), a lyrical, feature-­length t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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documentary made by the Oscar-­winning French director Albert Lamor‑ isse under mca auspices. According to its production manager, Gholamho‑ sain Alaqehband, more than 80 percent of this visually stunning work was filmed from a helicopter equipped with a special camera mount called Helivi‑ sion (apparently invented by Lamorisse), which made possible the incredibly smooth shots necessary for the success of the film’s organizing idea (Naficy 1977b/1356). This was to present the diverse Iranian landscape and people from the point of view of the various winds that according to folklore inhabit the land, such as the warm wind, the crimson wind, the evil wind, and the lovers’ wind. The new camera mount was perfect for this purpose. Instead of being forced to look down from its airborne perch, as was customary then, the camera could look ahead and around, filming the approaching scenes in a leisurely fashion. Each scene appeared first in a long shot and then glided gently into a closer view thanks to a combination of smooth zooming and the helicopter’s sweeping turns toward the subject. This visual point of view was reinforced by an English-­language, poetic narration resembling a fable and spoken mellifluously by Manuchehr Anvar from the different winds’ perspectives (accompanied by classical Iranian and ethnic music).59 Defying gravity, the camera, guided by the narrating winds, sweeps viewers from place to place with smoothness and agility, providing them with a birds-­eye view of Iranian landscapes, cityscapes, and historical monuments. It caresses minarets and domes; peeks over and beyond moun‑ taintops to reveal ancient ruins; glides over remote villages to show life in‑ side high mud walls; leaps along with escaping wildlife; follows the rhythmic, sinuous flow of oil pipelines and train tracks; and hovers motionlessly over the mirror-­like mosaic of rice patties reflecting the clouds and sky (Naficy 1978b/1357:345–51). The film admits to the destructive powers of the evil winds and takes credit for the salubrious effects of the good ones. In one se‑ quence, the camera hovers over the ruins of Susa, the site of ancient Persia’s capital, where the narrator, representing an evil wind, intones that on this site fifteen cities have been constructed, one on top of the ruins of another: “We buried every one. . . . We have buried everything. . . . Each time the nomads returned and rebuilt.” In another, over the ruins of the majestic Persepolis, the narrator states: “We burned it all down by fanning the fire that Alexan‑ der had lit.” On the other hand, in one lovely scene at the film’s end, an or‑ dinary wind comes to the aid of two Turkmen lovers who are eloping on fast galloping horses across a verdant field. A group of horsemen, including the bride’s brothers, are pursuing them to prevent their getaway, when suddenly the wind blows strongly, pushing back the pursuers and allowing the lovers 134

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to escape. It is thus that it is transformed from an ordinary wind into the lov‑ ers’ wind. 60 The Lovers’ Wind is a testimonial to the durability of the Iranian landscape and its people, over which many dynasties and kings have ruled and have vanished. Ironically, on the tenth anniversary of the film’s completion, yet another seemingly powerful dynasty fell—­t he Pahlavis—­leaving, as the film points out, only the land and the migrating nomads. In the ending credits the mca thanks the country’s armed forces, the Lion and Sun society, the gen‑ darmerie, the national police forces, the national railway system, and the Na‑ tional Iranian Oil Company, indicating to which degree the state not only fi‑ nanced the film but also facilitated its production. That no Persian language voice-­over was prepared for it in Iran testified to the public relations aims of the film’s sponsor, who wanted to use it for international publicity and tourism—­an enlightened example of Iranian public diplomacy. However, the film’s fabulous narrative also underscored Iranian nationalism by uniting the diverse peoples, landscapes, and ecosystems of the country under the wings of Iranian winds. mca officials expressed dissatisfaction with the film, for they apparently missed its subtle nationalist figuration and felt that although it had represented Iran lovingly, it was a predominantly pastoral and ancient representation that neither matched Iranian reality nor the state’s idea of syn‑ cretic modernity. Lamorisse was recalled to film additional sequences to em‑ phasize the country’s industrialization. He did return, but the project was not completed, for his helicopter crashed in June 1970 while filming the Karaj Dam near Tehran, plunging the director, his crew, and the pilot to their wa‑ tery deaths. The filmmaker Aryana Farshad, then an assistant to the director, states that Lamorisse “was a mystic. He had always had a premonition that he would die in Iran over water, in the Caspian Sea, but instead it was over the Karaj Dam” (Appleton 2004). The dynamically filmed and edited handheld footage of industrialization, including of Tehran University’s research nuclear reactor, and the forlorn footage of the dam that was retrieved from the camera at the lake’s bottom were later edited and added by Mehrdad Azarmi as an eerie seven-­minute si‑ lent preamble to the film in honor of the slain director and his crew.61 Ironi‑ cally, this preamble fits the contrastive binarism of Iranian documentaries of this period in which new and old, contemporary and ancient were compared. 62 The film won a posthumous Oscar. While The Lovers’ Wind was not publicly screened in Iran during the reign of the Shah, perhaps because it was considered incomplete, it became highly influential among Iranian exiles after the revolution of 1978–79.63 In the t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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1980s, those in Los Angeles prepared a video version of The Lovers’ Wind with a Persian-­language soundtrack read by Sasan Kamali, which was sold by Ira‑ nian video and grocery stores. More important, clips from the film were cir‑ culated extensively on exile television shows, in the standard program open‑ ings, and on music videos (Naficy 1993a:154–55). The film’s aestheticized and nationalistic images of Iran, recorded before the disruption of exile, estab‑ lished a cathected, nostalgic hold on the displaced population who had lost its homeland and homes to the destructive winds of a revolution and was forced into what turned out to be a long exile. These images became fetishes that both presented an idealized lost homeland and disavowed the fact of the loss. In this way, the film helped remember and memorialize the old country, su‑ turing the displaced populations to their object of love, their “motherland” (mam‑e vatan). By so doing, the film indeed proved a lovers’ wind for the ex‑ iles.64 The film was also shown in the Islamic Republic, but only after the in‑ dustrialized preamble and the sequence showing entry into the glamorous royal palaces were removed, producing a film that may have been closer to Lamorisse’s original conception and endearing him to its postrevolution au‑ diences in Iran (Tahaminejad 2000/1379:77). 65 Many coproduction documentaries resulted from important public rela‑ tions events of national and international proportions in the 1960s and the 1970s that were designed to create and circulate a culture of spectacle in sup‑ port of state-­driven syncretic Westernization. Syncretism often enters a soci‑ ety through popular spectacles, rituals, and performances. It is both affilia‑ tive and disaffiliative in that it defies foreign elements at the same time that it inscribes and borrows from them. It simultaneously revives certain atavis‑ tic, indigenous cultural formations from before the latest disruption. During the latter half of the second Pahlavi period, bolstered by a sudden and enor‑ mous increase in oil income, international stature, and a largely secular mid‑ dle class, the Shah and his government found themselves at an impasse. At the same time that they were gaining confidence to the point of arrogance, they were sensing a threat from the Shiite religious strata, from leftist stu‑ dent groups, and from massive internal dislocations caused by widespread corruption, rapid industrialization, widespread Westernization, and rural em‑ igration. To deal with these multiple threats and disruptions, they intensified their efforts at constructing and administering a state-­sanctioned syncretic rearchaization, which—­like that of Reza Shah, but on a much larger scale—­ depended on reviving a partly fabricated monarchic genealogy for the Pahla‑ vis that pre-­dated Islam (Naficy 1993a:22). This revival took the form of a se‑

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ries of grandiose state-­sponsored national spectacles and rituals into whose service the mass media and movies were pressed. These included the Shah’s coronation, lavishly staged in 1967, after the Shah’s White Revolution, during which, following his father and Napoleon Bonaparte, he crowned himself and ordered a weeklong national celebra‑ tion.66 The grand celebrations and pageants in 1971 that honored the twenty-­ five hundredth anniversary of the Persian Empire were another spectacular event that took years of preparation and reportedly cost between 200 million (Bill 1988:183) and 300 million dollars (Mottahedeh 1985:327). The budget for this event was included in the national budget for more than a decade, but the celebrations kept getting postponed due to a shortage of funds. All gov‑ ernment ministries and municipalities as well as commercial businesses and industries, big and small, were required to celebrate the event at their own ex‑ pense (Hadidi 1998/1377:112–13). The event centered on locating the origin of the Iranian monarchy in the Achaemenid era and on re-­creating in me‑ ticulous detail in the ruins of the Persepolis that era’s parade of foreign em‑ issaries before the Achaemenid kings (modeled after such parades chiseled on the Persepolis’s stone walls). Dozens of twentieth-­century dignitaries and world leaders were invited to witness this re-­creation, while six hundred jour‑ nalists and camera operators from around the world reported on it, including Barbara Walters of nbc-­t v who hosted the broadcast of the colorful event via satellite to an estimated 10 million American viewers (Bill 1988:184; Hadidi 1998/1377:169). Khomeini sent a message from his Iraqi exile to Iranians, urging them to stay away from the celebrations: “Anyone who organizes or participates in these festivities is a traitor to Islam and the Iranian nation” (quoted in Fischer 1980:189). Due to increased political dissent and fear of antigovernment guerrilla activity, nearly one thousand people were arrested and taken into protective custody. The yearlong festivities in 1975 that celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Pahlavi dynasty were yet another multimedia event and national spec‑ tacle that prompted an unprecedented flurry of pro-­monarchy documentary and propaganda films and television productions by government agencies. Fi‑ nally, the Shiraz Festival of Culture and Arts, a ten-­day annual extravaganza, became the showpiece for the government’s revitalization project. In this dynamic festival the most modern world-­class theatrical productions (Jerzy Growtowski and Peter Brook) and European and American ballet and dance troupes (Maurice Bejar and Merce Cunningham) were placed side by side in syncretic tension with the most ancient indigenous productions from Africa,

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India, and Iran (taziyeh passion plays, siahbazi performances, ruhozi tradi‑ tional theater, and classical Persian music)—­all performed at the Persepo‑ lis, in other ancient sites, and in the streets of Shiraz. This innovative festival proved controversial because some of its performances involved nudity and pornographic behavior, but it was the most far-­reaching and visionary of all of the events, which Arby Ovanessian claims influenced “all the important cultural movements of the last two decades of the twentieth century,” and not just in Iran (1983:25). Farrokh Gaffary, who as the deputy director of nirt for culture was also responsible for the Shiraz festival, which lasted eleven years, called it “the most successful and prosperous festival of its kind in the world,” and Akbar Etemad, the former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, aptly called it an “arts bath” in which one could immerse oneself for ten days. The festival had a profoundly positive impact on cosmopolitan Iranians’ self-­worth and national identity. Its audience, consisting primarily of young, educated, and Westernized Iranians grew to between 70,000 and 125,000 in the final years. It was an arena in which self and other did not oppose each other in the irreconcilable binary fashion of the past but were mixed and hy‑ bridized to create the best product of the montage culture. For one thing, it helped destroy Iranians’ “superiority complex” toward the third world, as they witnessed that other developing countries also had advanced, ancient civili‑ zations and performing arts no less sophisticated than those in Iran. For an‑ other, they learned to appreciate both their own indigenous and ancient arts and performances and their modern ones (some of them were being exposed to these at the festival for the first time). The exposure to the best of cutting-­ edge experimental and traditional Westerns arts was also a rare and new op‑ portunity for Iranians. Finally, the festival helped reduce Iranians’ “inferiority complex” toward the first world, as they saw that other third world countries had no sense of inferiority about their indigenous arts and as they recognized that Iranian arts and performances were appreciated by artists and critics from other countries, in particular from the West (Gaffary 1983–84:50–53).67 Of these spectacles, the one that resulted in the most notable Iranian and international documentaries was the twenty-­five hundredth anniversary cele­ bration. For this occasion, the government commissioned, sponsored, pro‑ vided assistance to, or engaged in coproduction deals with Western compa‑ nies and institutions to make films about the grandiose affair, Iranian history in general, and the Shah’s modernization efforts. Among the notable domes‑ tic films ranked Shahrokh Golestan’s slick propaganda film Flames of Persia (also known as Eternal Flame; Forugh‑e Javidan, 1972), a color news docu‑ mentary that used to good effect expensive techniques such as split screens 138

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and the talent of the renowned director Orson Welles as a voice-­over narrator. Made for the mca, the film documents the arrivals and departures of dozens of kings, presidents, emirs, princes, princesses, and other dignitaries from around the world for the event and shows the pomp and circumstance of mili­ tary marches, historical re-­creations, and the elaborate and expensive feast‑ ing, pageantry, and celebrations. The film’s overheated rhetoric, condensed in Welles’s narration, grandiosely claims that the event is “one of the most his‑ toric cultural gatherings that the world has seen.” Iranian embassies widely distributed Flames of Persia to foreign countries. However, the mca’s overkill scheme for screening the film, which mandated that sixty movie houses in Tehran show it over a one-­week period, probably was a major factor for it not doing well in Iran. According to Golestan, the film prints varied in quality, the stereo sound could not be reproduced at every movie house, and the tele‑ vision networks did not air its trailers (Golestan 1983:41–44). It is likely, how‑ ever, that the major reason for the failure was political, not technical. At this time, the Shah was not very popular, and the forced and massive exposure of this propagandistic film about an event whose extravagant expenditures had become legendary and highly resented was like pouring salt into a wound. The film was soon withdrawn (Golestan’s own Ariana Cinema did very well showing it). The mca and nirt commissioned scores of other films for this occasion, some of which probably found their way abroad, as they aimed at both na‑ tional and international propaganda. 68 American television networks, particu­ larly nbc-­t v, broadcast the celebratory happenings live to their worldwide audiences, occasionally making brief references to the anticelebration senti‑ ments in Iran and to the preemptive arrests of scores of potential troublemak‑ ers before the start of the event. 69 Tales from a Book of Kings (1974) was another slick documentary for the anniversary occasion, this one created by a Westerner, to whose production the Iranian government contributed. Made by Time-­Life for New York’s Met‑ ropolitan Museum of Art (in consultation with the art historian Richard Et‑ tinghausen), the film was based on Ferdowsi’s epic Shahnameh and features some of the 258 exquisite miniature paintings from the so-­called Houghton Shahnameh. Through the skillful use of music and narration and through ex‑ cellent photography and editing, the film re-­creates some of the stories from the book. In the process, it emphasizes the regal position of the shahs, their kindness, their sense of justice, as well as the wisdom of obedience. Although some of these motifs also occurred in the original epic, the undue emphasis placed on them here, the sponsorship of the film by the Iranian government, t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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and the timing of the film’s release suggest more than mere coincidence. The film’s ending credits underscores the linkage. It thanks the Iranian ambassa‑ dor to Washington, Ardeshir Zahedi, the Shah’s’ son-­in-­law, for his “generous assistance and cooperation” for making possible the production of the film “in commemoration of the 2500th Anniversary of the Founding of the Per‑ sian Empire by Cyrus the Great and the First Declaration of Human Rights.”70 Two prestigious, multipart, nonfiction coproductions of the 1970s are worth noting because of their ambition and scale, the controversies they caused, and the way they interjected the self-­othering politics of films onto the interna‑ tional stage. One was the eight-­part series Crossroads of Civilization (1977), pro‑ duced by the British journalist David Frost (Paradine Films), which received major financial and in-­kind assistance from the government. The mca pro‑ vided senior production staff (such as the coproducer Mehrdad ­Azarmi), tech‑ nical personnel, and production services. Bank Melli‑e Iran under­wrote the film’s $2.5 million budget. Iranian armed forces provided equipment, man‑ power, material, and logistical services for transporting the crew and cast and for re-­creating battle scenes (the cost of these services went well beyond what the bank underwrote). Modeling itself on such acclaimed British television series as Civilization and Ascent of Man, Crossroads of Civilization covered in seven episodes the entire history of Iran, from the Medes to the Pahlavis. Ac‑ cording to Clive Irving, the chief screenplay writer, the series took the form of an “odyssey,” a journey “through 3,000 years of history and across some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world” (1977:636). The eighth pro‑ gram, a lengthy interview with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in which he responded “most frankly to Frost’s diligent questions, and with an intriguing honesty” (Mayer 1977:628), was not released, perhaps due to brewing anti-­ Shah sentiments, which would have undermined much of the interview and within a year led to his overthrow.71 Overall, the series dealt with many important issues and patterns of Ira‑ nian history, including external threats, methods of dealing with internal and external pressures, the functions of various kings and religions, and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–11. Stylistically, it used filmic re-­creations, paintings, fascinating historical photos and rare documentary footage, as well as interviews with several distinguished international historians who aided in the preparation of the scripts. Although Crossroads of Civilization charted a decidedly dynastic course for Iranian history and was funded almost entirely by the Iranian government, the series’ executive producer and director, An‑ thony Mayer, claimed that “no Iranian authority had the right, contractual or otherwise, to influence the editorial direction of the series—­not even to 140

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view the films before transmission.”72 If true, this was a welcome surprise, for such government largesse was not exhibited in all cases. For example, the film Cyrus the Great, which the filmmaker Mohammad Ali Issari was trying to turn into a $10 million coproduction deal between Iranian government and Hollywood studios, to be released at the time of the twenty-­five hundredth anniversary celebrations, came to naught as a result of the government’s in‑ sistence on having veto power over the screenplay and the finished film (Is‑ sari 2001). Be that as it may, because of the oncoming revolution, Crossroads of Civilization did not receive the expected international publicity and airing, but a book by the series writer, Irving, based on the film’s research, was pub‑ lished (Irving 1979).73 The second controversial nonfiction coproduction series resulted from a $250,000 contract between nirt and Michigan State University (msu) for sev‑ eral projects, including a series of nine films on Iranian history, collectively called Ancient Iran (1977). As Issari, the series’ producer, told me in an inter‑ view, these films constituted the centerpieces of educational packages that included slides, maps, and booklets designed for distribution to American high schools and colleges. The series came about as a result of Issari’s self-­ othering experiences in the United States in the 1960s when he was a grad‑ uate student. He was so “insulted” by an American public that “knew noth‑ ing about Iran” that he decided to embark on a film project that would “make Iran known” (Naficy 1982a). In a way, this project marked the continuation of his official newsreel and documentary efforts a dozen years earlier, in whose power to spread the good word about the progressive Shah and a modernizing Iran he had taken so much pride. The veteran usis filmmaker was at this time a PhD student at the University of Southern California, the director of the In‑ structional Film and Multimedia Production Service, and a professor of cin‑ ema at msu. In his msu position, he served as a linchpin to the coproduction enterprise with nirt, on which some sixty-­five cast and crew worked. Marga‑ ret Mehring directed the Ancient Iran films, and msu was to have the rights to distribute them in the United States, while nirt could distribute them in Iran and elsewhere. The emergence of the disturbances that led to the revolution of 1978–79 scuttled the international circulation of Crossroads of Civilization and cut short the production of Ancient Iran. This was because the latter became entangled in the increasingly vociferous anti-­Shah agitations in the United States, led by the Iranian Students Association in the United States (isaus) and other radi‑ cal and leftist organizations. The isaus and the Committee to Stop the Iran-­ msu Film Project distributed thousands of leaflets and collected “thousands t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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29a, 29b  Michigan State University students, including some from Iran, demonstrate their opposition to Mohammad Ali Issari’s Ancient Iran film series with a march and signage. Courtesy of Mohammad Ali Issari.

of signatures” to halt the project. According to Resistance, an isaus publica‑ tion,74 the entire msu student body voted against it, many faculty members and the city mayor took their side, as did the editorials in city newspapers. An‑ cient Iran became so controversial among demonstrating msu students and faculty that, according to Issari, the university’s board of trustees debated it in a four-­hour protracted session. Even though the series dealt with a politically safe subject, ancient Persia, its timing, its apparent pro-­monarchy stance, and its sponsorship by an increasingly discredited government tainted and politi­ cized the films. An msu economics professor described the series as an at‑ tempt to “legitimize the regime” by “distracting us into the glorious past of Persia” (Levine 1977). Likewise, Resistance characterized the series as a “cul‑ tural project” that was nothing but “the Shah’s dictatorship in disguise,” ar‑ guing that its objectives were to “purchase legitimacy for the Shah’s regime in the eye of the American people who are not fully aware of the Shah’s regime and its disregard for freedom, human rights and social justice” (figures 29a 142

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and 29b).75 For his part, Issari claimed that the films had become a scapegoat for the anti-­Shah forces (Naficy 1982a). At any rate, unwilling to kowtow to dissident pressure and claiming to preserve academic freedom, the univer‑ sity board of trustees allowed the films that were in production to go forward. But it did not renew the nirt contract. As a result, out of the nine stipulated films, only three were completed; and these did not see wide distribution in the United States.76

The Pahlavis’ Circles of Influence and Media Campaigns Ever vigilant and defensive about its public image abroad, the Pahlavi regime undertook to augment a positive image of the Shah and the country by initi‑ ating a wide-­ranging public diplomacy and public relations campaign in the West, particularly in the United States, its most important ally. As James Bill demonstrates, for about four decades a “system of complex, reinforcing con‑ centric circles of influence” bound the Shah’s regime to the United States, for which he drew up a fascinating “wheel of influence” that identified ten ma‑ jor Iranian and twenty-­eight American leaders representing the key nodes of this system (1988:348–50). All the Iranians were in the inner circle, and some of them headed the institutions of the culture industry: nirt, the mca, the fidci, and the cidcya. The Americans in the inner circle consisted of mil‑ lionaires and politicians such as David and Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kiss‑ inger, Richard Nixon, and Richard Helms; the next circle consisted of U.S. generals and businessmen; followed by another circle involving members of the U.S. Congress; and ending with the farthest circle consisting of mass me‑ dia reporters and sympathetic academics. The Shah and the Iranian government needed to legitimize themselves, influence American legislative bodies and public opinion, stimulate invest‑ ments in Iran, facilitate arms and military procurement, improve the image of the Shah, and counter the charges of human rights violations and corrup‑ tion at home. To that end, the government engaged both Senator Jacob Javits, a member of the congressional circle in Bill’s “wheel of influence,” who had formed a pro-­Iran lobby, and his wife, Marion, who had received a $67,500 annual consultant fee to do public relations for the national airline, Iran Air. This was part of a larger, $500,000 contract, which the Pahlavi government had signed with the New York agency Ruder and Finn to “promote Iran’s im‑ age in America.” In 1976, the revelation of the involvement of the wife of the powerful senator in Iranian publicity became a scandal, deeply embarrassing t he st a t i st d o c umentar y c inema

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both husband and wife and causing Marion Javits to renounce the contract (Bill 1988:365–66). The mass media members with close ties to the Shah and to the Iranian embassy in Washington, who reported glowingly about Iran and the royal family, were Arnaud de Borchgrave (a senior correspondent for Newsweek), Joseph Kraft (a columnist), Barbara Walters (a reporter and anchor for nbc-­t v News), and Betty Beale (a society columnist). The columnists Carl Rowen, Irving R. Levine, James A. Linen, and Tom Brokaw of nbc-­t v also ranked among the Pahlavi favorites, as did the nbc television network itself, which remained the most sympathetic of all American networks in its report‑ ing of the Shah. The Iranian ambassador, Zahedi, with abandon disbursed expensive gifts and souvenirs to these and other influential media individu‑ als. A 135-­page document at the embassy, “United States—­Mass Media,” con‑ tained the names of 620 Americans, 285 of whom received gifts between 1975 and 1977, including cans of expensive Beluga caviar, crates of Dom Pérignon champagne, Cartier silver, pistachios, silk scarves, and diamond watches (Bill 1988:370–71). Iranian public diplomacy in the United States was both wide-­ranging and deep. Government largesse went beyond these national and transnational news personalities and their organizations and extended to underwriting the travel costs and expenses of producers and reporters of syndicated and local television travelogue shows, documentaries, and specials. For example, be‑ tween 1975 and 1978, the syndicated travel series Journey to Adventure pro‑ duced four programs on Iran. Its producer, Gunther Less, was a paid consul‑ tant to Iran Air. Given the funding connection, it is no wonder that the series disregarded the mounting dissatisfaction of Iranians with the Shah and in‑ stead chose to extol him and the freedom of expression and progress purport‑ edly achieved under him. The Iranian government also partly funded the pro‑ duction of pro-­government programming by local U.S. television stations, as exemplified by kvor-­t v in Sacramento. John Ianders, whose trip to Iran had been subsidized by nirt, prepared a seven-­part series of short films, Iran: Old Faces and New (1977). Citing the government’s request not to film any anti­ government demonstrations, particularly those near Tehran University, be‑ cause of the havoc they could cause, the series ignored the demonstrations and the open clashes of the people with the security forces in the streets. In‑ stead, it emphasized the idea of Iran as a country “with oil and an eye on the Western world.”77 The circles of influence also included well-­known academics sympathetic to the Pahlavis, including George Lenczowski, who wrote glowingly of them at the time of the revolution, and Donald N. Wilber, who years earlier had 144

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served with Kermit Roosevelt’s Operation Ajax to topple Mosaddeq and re‑ turn the Shah. The Shah’s government also channeled generous grants and contracts to major universities, including Harvard, mit, Princeton, Southern California, Kent State, Georgetown, American, and Howard. Some of these, such as the contracts to msu discussed earlier, were for film production. The result of these and other linkages, arrangements, and formations was the creation of Iranian-­funded American mediawork, which fanned a gener‑ ally favorable image of the Shah and of Iran under the Shah until long after the Shah’s fall from power.78 During the final two decades of his reign, as the in‑ terests of the Iranian government coincided increasingly with the interests of global capital and Western governments, particularly that of the United States, the Pahlavi regime found in the generally uncritical mainstream American films, television programs, and news media willing collaborators for its brand of public diplomacy and image building, and this happy meeting of interests was reflected in the general uniformity of Western media­work. Only a few for‑ eign and domestic documentaries provided a realistic portrait of Iranian soci‑ ety or delved critically beneath the stable, progressive veneer created by the na‑ tional and global media networks. These were too few and they did not receive wide enough distribution to create a critical mass of oppositional opinion. The result was widespread confusion and surprise, particularly among the West‑ ern media, at the depth of anti-­Shah sentiment and at the speed with which the revolution of 1978–79 toppled the “progressive monarch” who seemed so popular in the West but whose popularity at home ran not much deeper than the celluloid on which it was documented.

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3 commerci a l cinem a’s e volu t ion From Artisanal Mode to Hybrid Production

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nlike the documentary cinema that flourished between the Second World War and the revolution of 1978–79, which was mainly a government-­ supported statist cinema, the feature-­film industry of the same period emerged as a commercial cinema, although eventually state support was needed to en‑ able an intellectual, new-­wave cinema. Fictional and nonfictional cinemas differed significantly from the artisanal productions of the Qajar and Reza Shah periods, as they evolved toward what I call a “hybrid production mode” com‑ bining artisanal and industrial practices, statist and commercial funding and control, and Iranian and Western cultural, narrative, and cinematic forms. This chapter deals with the contextual—­the sociopolitical, demographic, cul‑ tural, and industrial aspects of hybrid production; the following chapters will deal with textual dimensions. Analysis here focuses on the most popular type of movies, popularly known as filmfarsi (Farsi language films), and chapters 4 and 5 of the current volume will concern themselves with two of its genres: the stewpot and tough-­guy movies. As in the artisanal period, cinema at this time was affected by the dom‑ inant mode of social production. In the mid-­1940s—­the beginning of the period studied in this chapter—­industrialization was spotty, mostly a mul‑ titude of small workshops run by artisans. According to a British naval in‑

telligence report, in 1941 only 250 “industrial establishments” existed in the country, including about 30 large factories directly owned by the state. A lack of skilled workers was cited as the chief cause (Harrison, Sherwin-­White, and Mason 1945:457–59). As Ervand Abrahamian reports, state investments be‑ tween 1963 and 1977 during the Shah’s White Revolution rose rapidly, as a result of which the country “experienced a minor industrial revolution,” in‑ creasing the share of manufacturing in the gnp from 11 to 17 percent. Indus‑ trial growth jumped from 5 to 20 percent, and the number of small factories increased from 1,502 to more than 7,000, that of midsize factories from 295 to 830, and that of large factories from 105 to 159. Gas ovens rose from 87,000 units to 220,000, telephones from nil to 186,000 units, and television from 12,000 to 31,000 sets (1982:430). Iran was on its way to becoming integrated into the world’s capitalist economies, a development fueled by quadrupling oil revenues in the early 1970s. But all the profits went to the state monop‑ oly, and to the corrupt Pahlavi regime and family, which spent it on grandi‑ ose, national-­development projects and on massive military procurement, in which they had a stake. The state did not own all the means of production. In‑ stead, a hybridized statist-­private political economy had been instituted, one in which the state set the terms for the public and private sectors by orga‑ nizing massive, long-­term, national development plans (like communist and socialist countries) through the gigantic Organization Plan (Sazman‑e Bar‑ nameh). It controlled the private sector’s compliance with its plans and laws through judicial processes, coercion, corruption, censorship, and force; and it collaborated with the private sector and did its bidding in developing rules and regulations that benefited that sector (as in capitalist countries). The as‑ cendant market forces and increasing middle-­class populations intensified exchanges with the West, particularly with American and European media and consumer industries. Beyond foreign media products and media forms (genres and formats), foreign methods of media management were imported. Iran was rapidly industrializing as manufacturing plants for steel, buses, cars, household utilities, and consumer goods proliferated. However, most of the plants merely assembled parts imported from Europe and the United States. This assembly production thus in fact resembled the previous era’s ar‑ tisanal production mode. But it came with an assembly, or montage, mental‑ ity, culture, and cinema, which fit the Iranian improvisational ethos; the gov‑ ernment’s mix of command and capitalist economies was a montage, and this montage culture opportunistically adapted and adopted, mixed and matched native and foreign products and ideologies to create new cultural and cine‑ matic products. 148

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Characteristics of the modernization and Westernization of the country further drove this montage culture, one fueled not only by petrodollars but also by a rapidly growing population, increasing productivity, literacy, pro‑ fessionalization, personal incomes, and travel and tourism abroad by an ex‑ panding middle class. Filmfarsi was made in modern film studios and labs with specialized professional departments and a division of labor; it increased film productions for mass consumption; and it gave rise to a star system and movie genres that were circulated, recirculated, and evolved over time. Popu‑ lation growth, urbanization, and audience demography, as well as dialogue, music, songs, and dances popularized this montage cinema. The widespread dubbing of both domestic and foreign movies propelled both the indigeniza‑ tion and industrialization of this cinema. In short, many of the formations of national cinema and modernity came together in the second Pahlavi period. Although produced by the private sector, filmfarsi cinema was not free from state intervention. The state imposed its will through authoritarian and ideological apparatuses such as the Ministry of Culture and Art (mca) and Na‑ tional Iranian Radio and Television (nirt), and through its regulatory and ju‑ diciary powers.

Filmfarsi The principal products of the commercial cinema in this period were B-­grade feature films. In 1953, a French-­educated film critic and a graduate of the Institut des Hautes-­Études Cinématographiques (idhec), Amirhushang Ka‑ vusi, coined the derisive term filmfarsi for these films, which became their dominant designation. He claimed that all that these films had inherited from Iranian culture was their Persian language; otherwise, they were “form‑ less, structureless, and storyless” (quoted in Moazezinia 1999/1378:8). An‑ other critic offered the following succinct and thematically limited definition: “Filmfarsi movies are popular feature films made in Iran between 1948 and 1978. They are a mixture of melodrama and popular tales in which the clash of good and evil are based chiefly on class contrast (between rich and poor), a contrast of values (between chivalry and lack thereof), and social contrast (between city and village)” (Mohammad Kashi 1999/1378:140). In the 1960s and 1970s, as commercial cinema surged due to the hybrid mode, additional designations surfaced: “stewpot films” or “meat-­ and-­ potato films” ( film‑e abgushti), “doggerel films” or “drawstring films” ( film‑e bandtonbani), and “dream-­weaving cinema” (sinema‑ye royapardaz).1 If these playful designa‑ commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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30  A cartoon titled “Farsi Cinema” (filmfarsi) shows a director using a sexy woman as a lure to attract the spectator, who is posited as male.

tions did not seem sufficiently derogatory, adjectives such as sleazy (mobtazal) and deviant (monharef ) were added. To be sure, most filmfarsi movies were not high quality, and they were full of improbable plots, escapist fantasies, and inexplicable coincidences. Yet an irrational vehemence in the criticism directed against the films pointed to an underlying anxiety among the critics. On the one hand was the earnestness and piety of the doctrinaire, Western‑ ized political left, who applied the Western or Soviet standards of art cinema and felt embarrassed at the naiveté of filmfarsi. On the other hand, religious believers feared contamination by Western forms of popular entertainment, which these movies embodied. Despite their ideological differences, both sides were suspicious of pleasure, for they regarded any type of leisure activity engaged in for its own sake as either socially harmful or religiously sinful (Sa‑ farian 1999/1378:114). Their negative sentiments also resulted from another belief both sides shared, one that echoed a simplistic understanding of Max Horkheimer’s and Theodore Adorno’s “pessimistic” thesis about the work of the culture industry (1972): they regarded the commercial cinema as a con‑ spiracy staged by a powerful yet fearful government in collaboration with a profit-­hungry commercial movie business to dupe Iranians by means of fan‑ tasy, sex, and violence (figures 30 and 31). Some later critics saw filmfarsi as 150

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31  A poster for Reza Safai’s One Golden-Voiced, One Golden Hand emphasizes male violence and sexy women. Collection of the author.

a “reflection” of the disrupted and contradictory society of the Shah’s authori‑ tarian modernism (Jairani 2000a/1379).2 Despite these critical misgivings, filmfarsi movies were enormously popu‑ lar among ordinary people, as a progressive critic, Parviz Davai, argued. This is now a clear and certain truth that the best-­selling movies are all filmfarsi movies, a phenomenon that has been analyzed less than one-­hundredth of the amount that it has been insulted. No one has con‑ ducted a serious study of the sociological, psychological, historical, and economical roots of why a film like Qarun’s Treasure generates two and a half million tomans at the box office, and that from the pockets of the people of lower classes, who earn their living by selling seeds, shining shoes, and guarding cars . . . Everyone calls the filmfarsi movies bad, wrong, nonsense, deviant, and ridiculous, but none asks himself or her‑ self about the connections, rapport, and intimacy that exists between our people and this nonsensical and inappropriate cinema. (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:411–12) commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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Filmfarsi so permeated the cultural and psychic landscapes that it became hegemonic, in Antonio Gramsci’s terms (1988). No force was necessary to give it political and psychic agency. It acted, as theorized by Louis Althusser (1971), by interpellating (hailing) the lowbrow populace and the highbrow crit‑ ics alike, unbeknownst to themselves. We see evidence of the internalization of the despised mode’s conventions when staunch critics of this cinema, such as Kavusi, Bahram Raypur, and Parviz Nuri, themselves turned to making films, all B-­grade commercial movies. Kavusi’s directorial debut, Seventeen Days to Execution (Hevdah Ruz Beh E’dam, 1956), a detective story in which he used a subjective camera, did very badly both at the box office and with the critics. Farrokh Gaffary, Hajir Daryoush, and the Setareh Sinema (Movie Star) magazine had no difficulties in enumerating the film’s many shortcomings. For one, they claimed, it imitated American and European detective mov‑ ies, but without any of their narrative coherence, suspense, or charm, for it contained many of the filming and editing mistakes of filmfarsi, which Ka‑ vusi had harshly critiqued himself. In addition, it had uneven pacing, rep‑ etitious shots, a chaotic point of view, unmotivated action, disrupted space and time continuity, and a theatrical dialogue—­again many of the ills that also plagued filmfarsi. Kavusi could not blame the commercial producers for tying his hands or for forcing him into compromises, because his pro‑ ducer, Asr‑e Talai Studio, had given the well-­known critic a free hand (Omid 1995/1374:282–85). Akin to Althusser’s citizens who turn to face the police‑ man in the street who calls them, “Hey, you there!,” Kavusi and other crit‑ ics had turned to face the dominant cinema’s beckoning and thereby become its willing subject, internalizing its conventions.3 Years later, another well known (and unnamed) screenplay writer working under the Islamic Republic admitted as much. He claimed that for years his “primary struggle” during the Shah’s era had been to avoid writing screenplays for filmfarsi movies. He was taken aback, therefore, when he discovered that all along he had written “exactly such screenplays,” that no matter how hard he had tried, he had been “unable to prevent this astonishing event from happening” (quoted in Moaze­ zinia 1999/1378:193). This condemned commercial cinema, however, was neither stagnant nor homogenous. It created several notable genres, capturing enough spectators willing to pay Tehran’s unusually high municipal tax of 40 percent on movie tickets in the 1950s. Among these was the historical genre, dominated by Pars Film Studio, exemplified by Nosratollah Mohtasham’s Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (1954), Karim Fakur’s Shahin‑e Tus (1954), and Mohammad Shab‑ pareh’s and Nosratollah Mohtasham’s Bride of Tigris (Arus‑e Dajleh, 1954). 152

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32  The poster for Samuel Khachikian’s patriotic action movie Blood and Honor.

Some were musicals, but none succeeded either at the box office or with crit‑ ics, who savaged them as cinematically irrelevant and historically inaccurate (although a year later, a similar film, Shapur Yasami’s The Renowned Amir Ar‑ salan [Amir Arsalan‑e Namdar, 1955], did very well). The detective-­thriller genre, spearheaded by Samuel Khachikian’s action movies such as Hazardous Crossroads (Chaharrah‑e Havades, 1954), Midnight Cry (Fariad‑e Nimeh Shab, 1961), and One Step to Death (Yek Qadam ta Marg, 1961), did better than the historical and musical movies. Khachikian, an Ar‑ menian Iranian, was the key contributor to film noir in Iran, akin to the Jew‑ ish European expatriates who in the 1930s and 1940s caused the efflorescence of American noir. He also made patriotic action movies, such as Blood and Honor (Khun va Sharaf, 1955) (figure 32). On the heels of The Famous Amir Ar‑ salan’s success, Pars Film Studio and Diana Film put out several filmed epics in an attempt to follow suit. These included, for Pars Film Studio, Yasami’s commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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Qezel Arsalan (1957) and Mehdi Raisfiruz’s and Shahrokh Rafi’s Rostam and Sohrab (Rostam va Sohrab, 1957), and Ali Kasmai’s Yaqub Lais Saffari (1957) for Diana Film. However, these were slapdash “high-­concept” quickies made only for marketing reasons, and none did well, causing the historical and epi‑ cal genres to disappear for a while, though they did reappear after the revolu‑ tion. The enormous financial and critical success of Majid Mohseni’s Nightin‑ gale of the Farm (Bolbol‑e Mazra’eh, 1957), on the other hand, consolidated the village genre. And for the first time an Iranian commercial movie was shown successfully abroad, in Moscow, with Mohseni in attendance. On his return, he described the personal and national empowerment that accompanied such cinematic projections. He stated that he was made proud twice by the screen‑ ing of Nightingale of the Farm. Once nationally, when he saw the Iranian flag flying high outside the theater; the second time he felt pride religiously, when inside the theater he heard “Allah O’ Akbar” (God is great), the first phrase of the Muslim call to prayer, emanate from the movie’s soundtrack. “I became emotional . . . that I heard [that] in the heart of a communist country” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:292). It is to answer Davai’s clarion call to take filmfarsi seriously that I have se‑ lected two distinctive genres from among the various ones possible that to‑ gether constituted key components of Iranian “national cinema” between the Second World War and the revolution of 1978–79: stewpot movies and tough-­ guy films. The practices and conventions of this homegrown commercial cin‑ ema emerged in the 1950s, but they were honed and consolidated in the fol‑ lowing two decades by the hybrid production mode and by the success of two key films, each of which invigorated one of these two genres. Mohseni’s The Generous Tough (Lat‑e Javanmard, 1958) set the model for the tough-­guy films, which flourished more than a decade later, while the enormous success of Si‑ amak Yasami’s Qarun’s Treasure (Ganj‑e Qarun, 1965) consolidated the stew‑ pot films, quickly breeding more than two dozen similar movies. Their suc‑ cesses turned both stewpot and tough-­guy films into the monster genres of the 1970s.

The Hybrid Production Mode: Contextual Formations The emergence of the hybrid production mode out of its artisanal bedrock was undergirded by sociological, political, economic, industrial, and artistic devel‑ opments in the country and the film industry.

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Demographic Profile of the Commercial Cinema Increasing population density and demographic changes supplied paying spectators to the growing number of movie houses. The three major national censuses taken during the second Pahlavi period showed a near doubling of the country’s population (table 2). In the 1950s, the population was about one-­ third urban and two-­t hirds rural. In the 1970s, the urban population had shot up to nearly half. As the capital, the wealthiest city, and the primary site of modernity and of film production and consumption, Tehran shaped the film industry. Table 3 shows the city’s population growth. During the century tabulated here, the massive concentration of wealth and power attracted a constant flow of migrants, and Tehran’s population grew forty times, finally accounting for a fifth of the country’s urban popula‑ tion. As table 3 shows, during the period under study in this chapter, between the end of the Second World War and the end of the Pahlavi regime in 1979, the city’s population surged from 880,000 to more than 5 million. But these

table 2  Iran’s Urban and Rural Population (1956–76)

Total population

1956 Census

1966 Census

1976 Census

18,954,704

25,788,722

30,708722

Urban (percent)

31.4

37.9

47.1

Rural (percent)

68.7

62.0

52.9

Source: Milani 1988:121.

table 3  A Century of Tehran’s Population Based on National Censuses 1891

160,000

1956

1,512,082

1922

210,000

1966

2,719,730

1932

310,139

1976

4,530,223

1937

425,000

1980

5,443,721

1939

540,087

1986

6,042,584

1940

700,000

1991

6,475,527

1946

880,000

Source: Abridged from Madanipour 1998:83.

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figures focus on the city alone. The population of the greater Tehran region was at least twice as high (nearly 10 million in 1991), making it a world popu‑ lation center. The numbers of patrons to movie houses are hard to determine. In the late 1950s, there were some 80,000 moviegoers per day, a figure that had jumped to between 350,000 and 400,000 patrons a day by 1963 (Echo of Iran 1963:467). In 1963, Tehran residents went to the movies 24 million times (Echo of Iran 1970:614). A decade later, the mca’s statistics showed that 42,658,000 movie tickets were sold in Tehran in 1973, suggesting repeat viewings (an average of eleven viewings per person), with total box office sales of 1,297,975,000 ri‑ als. Ticket prices ranged between 10 and 200 rials. The thirty-­rial tickets con‑ stituted the largest percentage of all tickets sold in Tehran (35 percent); many patrons of the commercial cinema came from the lower classes.4 Overall, the best movie seasons in the capital city were winter and summer, in that order (Ministry of Culture and Art 1973/1352:506–9). To get a fuller picture of the presumed audience, whose financial support and taste facilitated the transformation from an artisanal to a hybrid mode of production, the customers of the mobile film units operated by the mca must also be considered. The United States Information Service (usis) had turned over its mobile film program to the ministry’s predecessor, the Fine Arts Ad‑ ministration, in the 1950s. The ministry continued and expanded the pro‑ gram. The mca was operating 130 units nationwide in 1973, screening nearly twenty thousand reels of 16mm films and fourteen hundred reels of 35mm films in provinces to an overall audience of nearly 6 million people (Ministry of Culture and Art 1973/1352:138, 514). Although these mobile units showed mostly noncommercial and nonfiction films, they exposed millions of people to film viewing, paving the way for its wide acceptance. They also taught them visual and film literacy.

Nationwide Movie Houses and Cinema Chains According to a British naval intelligence report, in the mid-­1940s public cin‑ emas were overwhelmingly located in Tehran. They also operated in other cit‑ ies with large populations (Tabriz, Mashhad, and Shiraz), in strategically im‑ portant cities (Bandar Pahlavi [Anzali] and Rasht), and in oil cities (Abadan, Ahvaz, and Kermanshah) (Harrison, Sherwin-­White, and Mason 1945). In company towns such as Abadan, the Anglo Iranian Oil Company operated cinemas such as Taj (Crown) Cinema and Naft (Oil) Cinema. Isfahan, the third largest city, got cinema later. By May 1936, when Iran Cinema with its 156

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two halls, one of them an air-dome, was established, Isfahan had joined the others. Until then, apparently only short-­subject silents had been shown in coffeehouses for thirty shahis. In April 1943, Isfahan took one more step to‑ ward cinema literacy when Iran‑e no (New Iran) Cinema opened to mixed-­ gender audiences. Women sat on the left side of the hall and men on the right, with a black curtain between them (Javdani 2002/1381:34, 38). With the success of such domestic movies as The Renowned Amir Arsalan, from the mid-­1950s onward provincial movie houses helped spur film exhibi‑ tion and production by financing movies. This was supposed to ensure a sup‑ ply of movies appropriate for the provinces’ generally more traditional mar‑ kets. Yet manipulations and corruption soon cropped up. Iranian movie houses were not opulent compared to other regional cine‑ mas in the Middle East. An Egyptian journalist who visited Tehran in 1953 re‑ ported, “The best and most excellent movie houses in Tehran do not compare with even the C-­grade cinemas in Cairo in terms of the elegance of their ex‑ teriors and the internal order and cleanliness.”5 Cinemas in provincial towns were even more primitive. The anecdote below by Mohammad Hosain Popli Yazdi, who was a film runner for Sohail Cinema and later became a university professor, shows that movie watching in the late 1950s in Yazd was similar to that in Tehran decades earlier. He watched the film A Party in Hell (Shab‑ neshini dar Jahannam, 1957), codirected by Samuel Khachikian and Musheq Sarvari, in an open-­air movie house called Aqa Pacheh Cinema. The seats in the first three rows were planks placed over metal cans, on which sat distinguished men who wore suit and tie for the occasion. The rest of the movie house was paved with stone or brick and specta‑ tors brought their own rugs to sit on. They also brought with them beef stew [abgusht], rice and other stews [khoresh], bread, cheese, and yogurt drinks [dugh] with minced cucumber. They sat on the rugs with their families and ate noisily as they watched the movie. Families and par‑ ticularly children were very noisy, their clamor louder than the movie. Some who had seen it before described the coming scenes out loud, causing protest and verbal fights. . . . Sometimes an important person would arrive late with his family, perhaps twenty minutes after the start of the movie. The manager would shout to the projectionist: “Abbas Aqa, the family of the chief of the police has arrived, run the film from the start.” The children loved and applauded this, for they would see the film again. Some community leaders and their families put on airs because they thought people were clapping for them. One night when

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a film starring the singer-­dancer Mahvash was on, the manager asked Abbas Aqa five times to restart the film as families of the heads of the departments of justice, finance, police and important merchants arrived late. (Popli Yazdi 2005/1384:90–91) Air-­dome cinemas continued to flourish. In the central desert towns of Isfa‑ han and Yazd, for example, the clear, cool night air made film watching in the open a lovely experience. The architect Faezeh Golshan, whose grandfather owned Golshan Cinema in Yazd, told me about watching movies as a child from the rooftop of her house. The children gathered on the flat roof during starry nights, where they sat precariously on the edges, their legs hanging over without any railings, mesmerized by the movies (Naficy 2005c). By the 1960s, drive-­in cinemas had also cropped up in major cities. In 1973, the mca released the most comprehensive set of statistics about cultural and media institutions and consumer trends nationwide in a report simply titled Cultural Report of Iran (Gozaresh‑e Farhangi‑e Iran), on which much of this chapter is based. It shows that the overwhelming majority of the movie houses continued to be located in urban centers, particularly in Tehran. Of 432 movie houses nationwide in the Iranian year 1973–74, Tehran had 122, followed by Shiraz with 13, Isfahan and Mashhad with 12 each, and Ahvaz with 8. In the provinces, the capital cities (listed above) contained most of the movie houses (with exception of Abadan in Khuzestan, which had nine cine‑ mas to Ahvaz’s eight). The distribution of movie houses within the provinces was also uneven: the entire province of Ilam, for example, had only one cin‑ ema, while Semnan Province had two and Yazd Province four. 6 Most of Teh‑ ran’s movie houses were built after the 1950s, when both urbanization and the commercial film industry really took off. The government assisted com‑ mercial entrepreneurs in constructing new cinemas through favorable bank loans and taxes. In his autobiography, the Shah states that his Pahlavi Foun‑ dation gave funds for new movie houses and films; it also lowered taxes on cinemas (Pahlavi 1960:190). The seating capacity of all movie houses nation‑ wide in 1973–74 was 299,191, with Tehran supplying 86,054 seats, or nearly 29 percent (Ministry of Culture and Art 1973/1352:397–98). Of Tehran’s 122 movie houses in 1973–74, 8 were classified as “distin‑ guished” (momtaz), while 39 were classified as “first class,” 39 as “second class,” and 34 as “third class” (the rest remained unclassified). A majority of the second-­and third-­class cinemas were located in poorer districts. In all of Iran, only Tehran had “distinguished” movie houses (Ministry of Culture and Art 1973/1352:395–99). By 1970, advertisements screened before films tied

158

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the movies up with the flow of images, capital, and consumer goods. A one-­ minute ad in a first-­class cinema cost between fifteen hundred and two thou‑ sand tomans, depending on its seating capacity. Second-­class cinemas charged between one thousand and twelve hundred tomans, and third-­class theaters between three hundred and eight hundred tomans (Echo of Iran 1970:150). The government kept ticket prices low throughout the second Pahlavi pe‑ riod to appease the potentially volatile lower-­class publics, making movie­ going the cheapest form of mass entertainment. While this strategy brought high numbers of viewers to the cinemas, by the mid-­1970s it had become a liability for the commercial movie industry, which could not survive on the low prices. Between 1973 and 1976, as the nation tumbled slowly toward the revolu‑ tion, film declined. In 1976, the mca reported the total number of cinemas nationwide at 419, 112 of which were located in Tehran, a decrease from the 432 theaters nationwide and 122 in Tehran in 1973 (Ministry of Culture and Art 1976b/2534:412–14). The seating capacity also went down from 299,191 to 190,948 nationwide—­a precipitous fall—­but it went up slightly in Tehran from 86,054 to 86,573.7

Movies and Their National Origins American fiction movies continued to dominate the screens in the 1950s, al‑ though, according to Variety, “Russian pictures were muscling in” in 1952. Referring to the nationalist, anti-­British movement under Mosaddeq, the pa‑ per noted, “naturally, British films are not so popular any more, but German and French films are getting a foothold in the country.”8 The Italian and In‑ dian exports to Iran also increased, chiefly because these were more economi‑ cal to dub into Persian inside Iran than other European films. The Egyptian journalist cited earlier who visited Tehran cinemas in the early 1950s fur‑ ther reported that the films Iranians screened were generally old, dilapidated Egyptian and American movies, so-­called junk prints, he had seen years ago in Cairo. The bad economy forced the trade in cheap and old movies. There were neither many domestic movies available nor many movie houses, so that Tehran’s nightlife was a “stifling stillness” even before the martial law hour (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:232), which was instituted because of anti-­British and anti-­Shah nationalism. Egyptian song-­and-­dance movies starring Farid Al-­Atrash, Um Kolthum, Samia Jamal, and Ismail Yassin were popular, as

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table 4  Number of Feature Films Receiving Exhibition Permits Number of Films, 1967

Number of Films, 1970

Number of Films, 1973

USA

198 (40%)

113 (33%)

80 (22%)

Italy

115 (23%)

66 (19%)

78 (21%)

Iran

55 (11%)

63 (18%)

77 (22%)

India

39 (8%)

13 (4%)

27 (8%)

—

—

21 (6%)

England

16 (3%)

27 (8%)

20 (6%)

Country of Origin

Hong Kong France

27 (5%)

21 (6%)

20 (6%)

USSR

18 (4%)

2 (0.6%)

8 (2%)

Others

27 (6%)

29 (9%)

26 (8%)

495

334

357

Total

Source: Slightly modified from Ministry of Culture and Art 1973:137.

were Indian masala movies. Domestic producers began incorporating aspects of these movies into their own films, and critics in the early 1960s critiqued filmfarsi movies for this kind of imitation.9 By the early 1970s, the situation had changed dramatically. What the com‑ mercial cinema and the mobile film unit audiences saw varied, depending on government policies, commercial film importers’ practices, and foreign companies’ export policies. In 1973–74, the mca issued 2,042 exhibition per‑ mits for all types of films—­fiction, documentary, educational, and ­advertising —­194 fewer than the previous year. Feature movies accounted for 917 of these films, with 495 licensed for first-­time screenings and 422 for repeat showings (Ministry of Culture and Art 1973/1352:135–37). Three countries supplied 22 percent each: Iran, Italy, and the United States (table 4). The eight-­year period charted in the table saw a lowering of imports from the United States and It‑ aly and a rise in imports from India, Hong Kong, England, France, and the Soviet Union. Between 1967 and 1973 the exhibition market shrank, with 138 fewer films receiving permits. Yet there was a doubling in the percentage of domestic movies receiving exhibition permits and a 40 percent increase in lo‑ cal productions (from fifty-­five to seventy-­seven films). Increases in exhibition permits and production point both to the attraction the hybrid industrial mode of production held for domestic audiences and to the government cultural policies.10 That 59 percent of respondents in an mca study conducted in 1975 of Tehran moviegoers preferred films made in Iran 160

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confirms these deductions. The producer Ali Mortazavi claims that filmfarsi movies like the stewpot and tough-­guy films opened the market to domestic films. The market of the 1960s was dominated by foreign imports, almost all of which were dubbed into Persian, but by the mid-­1970s, domestic produc‑ tions predominated (Naficy 1984a:32). The industrialized production mode turned actors into movie stars—­a few even into superstars—­publicized and reviewed the films in the mass media, and showcased domestic productions in film festivals. The preference in the 1970s for American (57 percent), Indian (24 percent), and Italian (24 percent) films was attenuated by education and class, as the more educated moviegoers (civil servants and students) preferred American movies, while the least educated (workers and homemakers) favored Iranian movies (Daftar‑e Motale’at va Barnamehrizi‑ye Farhangi 1977/2536:36). The mca survey also points to the importance of the star system. Sixty-­four per‑ cent responded that they went to the movies because of the stars, while 42 per‑ cent claimed the film’s subject matter determined their choices. Again, there was a class dimension to this preference, with the less educated choosing the movies based on the stars (38).

Moviegoers and Their Taste Culture: Spectatorial Formation What types of moviegoers watched these commercial features and what were their reactions, preferences, and tastes? The mca study of Tehran’s moviego‑ ers in October 1975 supplies some data toward answering these questions (Daftar‑e Motale’at va Barnamehrizi‑ye Farhangi 1977/2536:11–21). A majority of those surveyed (75 percent) were under thirty, with those between the ages of twenty and twenty-­four dominant (36 percent), corroborating that movie‑ going made for a leisure activity engaged in by youth. More than half of the respondents had high school educations, while 25 percent had elementary school, 25 percent university, and nearly 9 percent had no formal education. These figures counter the general impression that a large proportion of the moviegoers was uneducated. When we consider these figures about educa‑ tional background alongside those for the prevalent types of profession, the middle-­class character of moviegoing becomes evident. Of those surveyed, 25 percent were civil servants, 24 percent were employed in the private sector, 23 percent were high school and university students, 13 percent were labor‑ ers, and 8 percent were women (a majority of whom were homemakers). Of those surveyed, 20 percent had a monthly income between twenty thousand commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

161

and fifty thousand rials, 28 percent had an income between ten thousand and twenty thousand rials, and 25 percent had an income of five thousand rials or less. But lower-­income people, single men, soldiers, workers, uneducated men, and university women attended most frequently, more than once a week (22). It is difficult to make a clear-­cut, definitive assessment of moviegoers’ class because of these contradictions. Survey respondents in Tehran were 92 percent male (percentages were higher in the more conservative provinces). The real percentage could have been lower, but some female moviegoers refused to participate in the survey for unspecified reasons (11). Perhaps this refusal reflected the persistence of social taboos against moviegoing by women, particularly among the lower classes and among traditional Muslims. A majority of the respondents (61 percent) were unmarried, but of the 37 percent who were married, most were women (16). There was a smattering of divorced and widowed moviegoers as well, the majority of whom were also women. The larger proportion of mar‑ ried women, numbers corroborated by other anecdotal evidence and personal observations, indicates that the social taboo in the mid-­1970s concerned not so much moviegoing itself but single women’s attendance. A majority of those who were single—­male or female—­said that they did not attend the mov‑ ies alone; they took along family members or friends (25). Moviegoing in the 1970s was apparently a highly social and familial affair. Interestingly, the fre‑ quency of female and male attendance was inversely related to their educa‑ tional level: educated women attended the movies more, while educated men attended less (23). Over 60 percent of the respondents attended cinemas outside their neigh‑ borhoods (26), indicating both the uneven distribution of the movie houses in Tehran (some neighborhoods lacked cinemas while others had a concentration of them) and the mobility that moviegoing encouraged. A majority of the re‑ spondents, particularly lower-­class housewives, soldiers, and workers, attended the movies solely “for entertainment.” Since filmfarsi movies were made for entertainment only, it is safe to assume that these social strata formed the bulk of these genres’ audiences. The higher the educational level of the male respondents, the more likely they were to attend the movies because of “in‑ terest in the art of cinema” (30). The dichotomy between entertainment and education—­long a simmering debate among Iranians who either condemned cinema for its capacity to offer frivolous entertainment and cause moral de‑ generation or celebrated it because of its pedagogical and enlightenment potential—­emerged in this survey as well. Fifty-­one percent identified the sa‑ lient characteristic of the movies as their educational value, while 41 percent 162

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identified a combination of education and entertainment, and only 12 percent counted entertainment as the sole salient value (39). Taken together, these fig‑ ures make clear that a high percentage of respondents at least intellectually val‑ ued cinema for its pedagogical capabilities, although in practice they may have attended the movies mostly to be entertained. This expectation was not limited to what the audiences said but extended to the movies themselves. Regardless of the genre, filmfarsi movies almost always carried a pedagogical message, of‑ ten in the form of character dialogue, about such verities as the evils of greed, the importance of respect for elders, or the value of compassion, generosity, and forbearance. This moralistic ideology permeated the films partly because of the country’s fast-­paced modernization, which many considered morally de‑ structive. Less educated and younger filmgoers professed a preference for the films’ educational values, perhaps because for those with less access to class capital and to other means of enlightenment, cinema did indeed act as a peda‑ gogical agent, an expander of horizons, and as a social leveler. Religiosity continued to be a factor in the reception of cinema. The com‑ parison between the wholesomeness of the house of worship and the deca‑ dence of the movie house, made during the Qajar period, continued in this period and extended further into the Islamic Republic period. The most con‑ cise expression of this binarism in the 1970s was a ditty popular in Yazd, which compared Sohail Cinema (owned by a Zoroastrian and a Baha’i, but managed by a Muslim) with the new Barkhordar Mosque located nearby, which Hajj Mohammad Hosain Barkhordar had built. One built a mosque, another a cinema One led astray, the other led aright Open the eye of your reason Observe the difference from whence to where. (quoted, with modifications, from Fischer 2004:159)11 Particularly from the 1950s onward, worries about excessive Westernization and the media’s effect on moral standards, the early onset of sexuality, and the social delinquency of the young were voiced. A criminologist in the 1960s considered the modern media—­radio, film, television, and glossy magazines —­to be constituting “an academy for corruption and a school of criminality for innocent children,” while a decade earlier a child psychologist had rec‑ ommended that children be permitted to see only films that concerned “na‑ tionalism, science, and hygiene” (Rejali 1994:87). These views gained ascen‑ dancy in the 1970s, fomenting the destruction of the movie houses during the revolution. commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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Politics also played a role in public taste. During the relative freedom of the early 1950s under Mosaddeq, the country was polarized; in September 1951, during the screening of an American movie about the war in Korea, about three thousand spectators and proponents of peace (most probably Tu‑ deh sympathizers) demonstrated against the film, leading to the suspension of the film’s exhibition. A month later, a Soviet film in Tehran’s Crystal Cin‑ ema showed Stalin. Tudeh Party members applauded the film, while Pan-­ Iranist Party members rose against them. The demonstrations created such havoc that the movie house had to shut down and change its film program for subsequent nights. A month later, in the Soviet-­aligned Star Cinema in Tehran, a slogan condemning disloyal Iranians, or “foreigner lovers,” was dis‑ played on the screen. A powder was apparently sprayed into the hall, causing fits of tearing and coughing among spectators. In mid-­1952, several theaters, movie houses, and liquor stores were ransacked in Isfahan. The prime minis‑ ter’s office ordered the minister of the interior to prosecute the unknown cul‑ prits (Haidari 1990b/1369:119–22). The Irish writer Peter Somerville-­Large, traveling through Iran in the 1960s, describes watching a James Bond movie, Goldfinger, in a movie house in the town of Sari in Mazanderan Province. The unnamed cinema was crowded, as bicyclists equipped with loudspeakers had scoured the town and neighboring villages earlier, advertising the movie. Many had ridden the country buses to Sari: “The cinema was packed, whole families, wives concealed in tchador [sic] . . . and children crowded together, soldiers, young men and girls seated apart, yet very conscious of each other’s presence. The cinema was the only place in the town where there was some faint feeling of interchange between the sexes—­at least the girls could be seen at close quarters. The sepeh‑e danesh [sic] [Knowledge Corpsmen] sat on either side of me chewing gum and eyeing the prettiest ones as the lights in the au‑ ditorium lowered.” After the movie, the villagers boarded their bus home, while Somerville-­Large hung around with his Knowledge Corps friends out‑ side the cinema “gazing at the girls being hustled home” and discussing the differences in gender relations between Iran and Europe. The next day, the writer discovered that one of the corpsmen had been beaten up in a fight out‑ side the cinema; one man had accused another of “looking at his sister as she came out of the cinema” and the corpsman had intervened (Somerville-­Large 1968:70–71).12 Such fights were frequently reported in the press after screen‑ ings of action movies. Some resulted from perceived affronts to the honor of women and their men while others were driven by the youngsters’ penchant for emulating the movie stars. While these data indicate that filmgoing was generally a social and col‑ 164

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lective phenomenon, Western movies at this time were singling out individ‑ uals as their proper subjects via their hermetic, invisible, and realist style. Thus sociological and psychological forces as well as premodern and mod‑ ern formations commingled to turn cinemagoing into one of the most pow‑ erful forces of modernity, affecting the imaginative worlds of Iranians. Even children’s ways of telling stories and their vocabularies changed. The film‑ maker Kumars Purahmad memorably recalls that when he was a teenager in the mid-­1950s, the children, influenced by the movies, began telling sto‑ ries differently: “They told them with movement and images; as though they had seen the incidents with their own eyes, they told them live. I heard new words in between their sentences: artisteh [literally, the movie star; the good guy], dozdeh [literally, the thief; the bad guy], sholiyeh [literally, the limp one; the sidekick] . . . Burt Lancaster [movie star], Torch and Bow [movie title], Ali Baba, Hercules, Samson . . . [all movie characters]. Cinemas, Mayak Cinema, Homayun Cinema, Moulin Rouge Cinema [all moviehouses], cinema, cin‑ ema, cinema” (2001/1380:95). He and his friends cut many classes to secretly go to the movies. They were hungry for them, for in the “barrenness” of their youthful lives, the movies offered “windows to another world” (97). Like my friends and I when we were teenagers in the 1950s, Purahmad and his friends bought from street vendors outside Isfahan cinemas individual frames of the 35mm films of Tarzan and of handsome movie stars. The [b]othered and in‑ fatuated children and teenagers carried these windows to another world with them to the privacy of their homes and traded them among themselves. Significantly, secret moviegoing turned the simple act of spectatorship into something immoral, criminal, and oppositional, enhancing its subver‑ sive pleasures. It also encouraged the secret reading of movie magazines in traditional families, intensifying youths’ identification with cinema and chan‑ neling some of them into filmmaking. Finally, moviegoing propelled other businesses: advertising, magazines, fashion, and music. Mobile street hawk‑ ers who sold movie frames soon began selling posters of movie stars, lyrics to pop songs, lottery tickets, cigarettes, candy, and novelties. Pictures of ac‑ tion stars such as Ken Maynard and Tarzan gave way to pictures of sexy movie stars: Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, James Dean, Rock Hudson, Elvis Presley, and Raj Kapoor. Khandaniha magazine es‑ timated that between thirty and forty street hawkers were selling these pic‑ tures in Tehran in 1958. Some were so successful that they opened stationery stores, general stores, and haberdasheries; they did well near schools. One storeowner earned 40 percent of his income from selling pictures and posters of movie stars, particularly to the girls, who purchased more than one hun‑ commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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dred pictures a day. Street toughs and taxi drivers bought pictures of domestic movie stars, singers and dancers, such as Banu Mahvash.13

Movie Genres: Textual Formation When asked how they chose movies, 36 percent of the respondents in the mca study of 1975 cited “advice from friends,” which reinforces the social and col‑ lective bases of moviegoing in Iran. On the other hand, 34 percent cited “mass media reports,” and 25 percent claimed “film reviews” as the arbiters of taste (Daftar‑e Motale’at va Barnamehrizi‑ye Farhangi 1977/2536:33), pointing to the moviegoers’ middle-­class profile, which was necessary to move the film industry from artisanal to hybrid production. Having been thus advised, what movie genres did the respondents favor? As table 5 shows, comedies were the overall favorites. Drama and melodrama followed among women. Westerns, detective movies, and karate films proved decidedly male genres. In general, the least educated members preferred ka‑ rate and detective films while the most educated favored historical movies (35–36). As discussed in the following chapter, this survey ignored two impor‑ tant domestic genres, the stewpot and tough-­guy films. In the mca survey of 1975, only 7 percent went to the movies because of

table 5  Tehran Residents’ Favorite Movie Genres and Types, 1975

Comedy Drama Melodrama Historical Western Musical Karate Detective Documentary Cartoon Science Fiction

Women Percent

Men Percent

Total Percent

34.52 25.83 32.73 18.41 8.18 4.60 4.06 10.23 — — 0.25

39.24 18.31 26.47 25.47 21.64 4.75 19.09 31.08 0.49 0.14 4.00

38.22 19.94 27.83 23.94 18.72 4.72 15.83 26.55 0.38 0.11 5.00

Source: Table 38 in Daftar-e Motale’at va Barnamehrizi-ye Farhangi 1977/2536:84, modified for presentation.

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song-­and-­dance scenes, which seems low. Given the depth of public antago‑ nism among traditionalists to song and dance, respondents perhaps dissim‑ ulated. The survey does not identify the nationality of these movies, but it is safe to assume that the majority were Iranian filmfarsi, particularly the two genres that usually contained song-­and-­dance scenes, the stewpot and tough-­ guy movies. Correlation with age produces vastly increased results, for 12 per‑ cent of those between thirty-­five and thirty-­nine went to the movies because of their song-­and-­dance numbers, as did 21 percent of those between forty-­five and forty-­nine and 14 percent of those between fifty-­five and fifty-­nine years of age (Daftar‑e Motale’at va Barnamehrizi‑ye Farhangi 1977/2536:94). A large percentage of the audience for the commercial cinema genres was middle-­ aged and older. From all these data, one can see that during the 1960s and 1970s, the ma‑ jority of the spectators in movie houses were urban, particularly in Tehran and the capital cities of the provinces. Concomitant with population rise, the do‑ mestic commercial movie industry’s output also rose dramatically, doubling foreign imports, among which American, Indian, and Italian films ranked highest. The audience profile varied depending on age, gender, education, and class capital and on the movies’ national origin, stars, and genres. Over‑ all, educated, employed young people under thirty formed a majority of Teh‑ ran moviegoers in 1975. However, lower-­class male youth went to the movies more frequently. The more educated patrons attended Western films, while the least educated preferred Iranian movies. Women went to the movies less, but married women and educated women attend more frequently. Married or single males and females generally went to the movies with friends and fam‑ ily members, turning moviegoing into a social pastime. Comedies were iden‑ tified as favorites by men, followed by detective films, historical films, and westerns. Women, on the other hand, preferred comedies, melodrama, and drama genres, in that order. An increased rural emigration to cities and larger urban populations corresponded to more movie-­house construction.

Copyright Law In January 1970, the Majles approved a copyright bill under which all “books, articles, theses, plays, poetry, songs, audio-­visual works, music, architectural designs, paintings, photographs, carving and statues and similar other works of arts and types of creation, will be protected and their authors will benefit from financial and moral protection, whether such works have been regis‑ commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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tered or not” (Echo of Iran 1970:596). The law designated a thirty-­year period for protecting the financial rights of the artists after their death. On the ex‑ piration of this period, any royalties would go to the beneficiaries of the art‑ ists; in cases where there were no heirs, the royalties would accrue to the mca. This law, part of the country’s and the film industry’s modernization process, served to protect Iranian films within the country; however, Iranian films were not protected internationally, nor were foreign movies protected in Iran, for Iran was not a signatory to the Geneva copyright conventions of 1952. This would have repercussions for international cinematic exchanges.

Professional Unions The modernization of the film industry occurred through institutions of civil society such as labor unions representing industry professionals and nego‑ tiating for their rights with governmental and private agencies at home and abroad. Film exhibitors unhappy with the high municipal tax levied on films took the first step toward unions. These were sometimes called societies (an‑ joman) and sometimes syndicates or unions (sandika). Among them were the Actors’ Syndicate, representing all actors (its chairman in 1970 was Majid Mohseni); the Society of the Iranian Film Industry, representing chiefly pro‑ ducers and dubbers (headed by the Misaqiyeh Film Studio chief, Mehdi Mis‑ aqiyeh); the Cinema Owners’ Syndicate (headed by Nureddin Ashtiani); and the Iranian Society of Film Critics (Echo or Iran 1970:618). Thanks to the efforts of these unions and of the industry leader Ismail Kushan, for the first time film was registered in 1965 as an “industry” with Iran’s Chamber of Commerce (Omid 1995/1374:997). These unions largely represented main‑ stream commercial cinema, leading in the mid-­1970s to the creation of the Progressive Filmmakers’ Cooperative, an alternative structure for supporting the emerging intellectual new-­wave cinema.

Film Production Studios, Distributors, and Chain Cinemas Film studios contributed to the commercial cinema’s hybrid mode of produc‑ tion, but they did not constitute an advanced studio system, as in the United States, where a small number of powerful studios brought to cinema indus‑ trial techniques and the star system. Autocratic and visionary studio bosses and directors shaped the movies for mass reception in the classic Hollywood 168

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style, which became the reigning global form of filmic realism (Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson 1985). Nevertheless, Iranian commercial cinema de‑ veloped some of the characteristics of this studio system, including short-­ lived studios and production companies, as well as a few long-­term ones, which produced and dubbed a large number of popular movies for mass au‑ diences. These were also often involved in distributing and exhibiting films across the country, in nurturing the star system, in marketing movies and movie stars to the national media, and in product differentiation across sev‑ eral genres, including melodrama, musical, tough-­guy, comedy, stewpot, de‑ tective, and town-­and-­country films. The Iranian film studios began during the first Pahlavi period as small, local operations. The Moradi and Ohanians studios of the 1930s were basi‑ cally one-­man workshops making silent movies under very trying conditions. All of Abdolhosain Sepanta’s filmmaking in the 1930s occurred outside Iran, within the Indian studio system. It did little to industrialize Iranian film prac‑ tices. The studios that emerged in the late 1940s, which began by dubbing Western sound movies—­mostly imported from intermediaries in Egypt—­ and moved on to making domestic talkies, were the forerunners of the com‑ mercial cinema studios of the 1950s and the 1960s under study here. Even these latter studios began as very modest production companies. Mo‑ hammad Ali Fardin, who worked with them as a producer, director, writer, and star, explains that many of these were at first engaged more in film dub‑ bing and distribution than in production. The smaller studios, such as Naji Aghravi Company, owned only a minimum of film equipment and facilities: One 35mm Arriflex camera; a few lenses, tripods, and lights; and one editing Moviola, which the company sometimes rented to others. It produced a hand‑ ful of movies. Some studios specialized in dubbing foreign films only. Others began as dubbing studios but evolved into major production companies, such as Mitra Film Studio (established by Kushan in 1947), which became Pars Film Studio (in 1948) and produced perhaps more commercial movies than any other Iranian studio. On the other hand, some began as film production studios but devolved into dubbing studios, such as Diana Film (established in 1950), which made thirteen features until 1958, when it shifted to exclusively dubbing movies. Ethnicity, religion, nationality, and gender continued to play a role in the formation of the studios. Armenians dominated some, such as Diana Film Studio, which was headed by Sanasar Khachaturian, a female producer and the owner of Diana Cinema. The studio was well equipped and employed, among others, the writer-­director Serzh Azarian, as well as cinematogra‑ commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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phers and cast members who were also Armenian. It produced more than a dozen movies, the most famous of which was Samuel Khachikian’s noir film Hazardous Crossroads, which Khachaturian herself produced. By 1958, Kha‑ chikian had opened Azhir (Alarm) Film Studio with help from his partner Jo‑ seph Vaezian, with whom he also produced Storm Over Our Town (Tufan dar Shahr‑e ma, 1958), the studio’s first smash release. This studio, too, produced nearly two dozen commercial movies, propelling Khachikian to the forefront of action and noir movies. In 1951, the Armenian producers Simik Constantin, Johnny Baghdasarian, and Vahan Terpanchian opened Alborz Film Studio, with Parviz Khatibi’s White Gloves (1951) as their first production. They produced many of Khatibi’s subsequent comedies. Rubik Dezadurian opened two studios, Shahab and Hamlet, which primarily engaged in intertitling foreign movies and dubbing foreign and domestic productions. In 1959, after the demise of Diana Studio, two Armenian brothers, Anik and Henrik Ovedisian, who had worked for that studio, opened their own Shahin Studio. In 1961, Arkadi Boghosian, who had owned studios before, opened Televizion Film Studio, which specialized in dubbing most of the movies that nirt broadcast, an expanding market. In the 1960s, two brothers, Soleiman and Herand Minasian, made docu‑ mentaries and feature movies in their Chaplin Studio, as well as working with the Golestan Film Workshop (Hovian 2002/1381). Jewish Iranians also established successful movie studios. Azizollah Karda‑ vani, Habibollah Hakimian, and Farajollah Nasimian established Asr‑e Talai (Golden Age) Studio in 1950, whose first product was the highly successful and critically praised movie Mashhadi Ebad (1952), which Samad Sabahi directed.14 It went on to produce dozens of commercial movies. Natail Zebulani ran Sina Film Studio, which produced nearly a dozen movies. Georges Lichenski, a Jew‑ ish Iranian of Polish-­French heritage, was perhaps the best-­known cinematog‑ rapher of the first generation of cinema in Iran after the Second World War. The tale of the three Jewish Rashidian brothers who owned Cinema-­T heater Rex and who also produced movies is intriguing; here, ethnicity and cinema entwined them with high-­stakes domestic and superpower politics. Saifollah, Qodratollah, and Asadollah Rashidian were sons of the powerful businessman Habibollah Rashidian and had been the “main British agents in Iran since the early 1940s” (Gasiorowski 1991:64). Habibollah had given his sons his fortune and his Anglophilia. In the 1950s, Britain’s Secret In‑ telligence Service had paid them $28,000 a month to “suborn” Iranians in the armed forces, the Majles, the press, street gangs, the clerical establish‑ ment, and in politics (Kinzer 2003:150–51). James Bill notes that Saifollah, 170

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the eldest, was a musician, a philosopher, a gifted raconteur, and the “brains of the triumvirate,” a man prone to quoting Machiavelli; Asadollah was the political organizer and “confidant of the Shah”; while Qodratollah was the “businessman and entrepreneur” (1988:91). They were “turned over to the cia by m16” when Mosaddeq expelled the British from Iran in November 1952 and they participated in Operation Ajax, the code name for the coup against the prime minister (Gasiorowski 1991:75). Their chief connection to the cia came through Kermit Roosevelt, the American agent masterminding the coup, who in his own book Countercoup refers to Asadollah and Saifol‑ lah as Nossey and Cafron, “Laughing Boy” and “The Mad Musician” (Bill 1988:472n110). In those crucial days, Asadollah held daily morning meetings for some thirty anti-­Mosaddeq activists in his cinema. The Rashidian broth‑ ers apparently used their currency business to funnel money to pro-­Shah fig‑ ures, such as General Fazlollah Zahedi, and to street toughs, such as Shaban the Brainless, who helped topple Mosaddeq (Sarshar 2002:166–67, 412–13). Asadollah prospered under the “Shah’s patronage,” and his home became a salon for influential politicians. In the mid-­1960s, however, the Shah appar‑ ently grew “uncomfortable” with powerful figures who knew his dirty secrets, causing Asadollah, who sensed the royal unease, to emigrate to his beloved Britain (Kinzer 2003:199). The Rashidian brothers ran Rex Cinema and pro‑ duced films as the Rex Cinema-­T heater Company (Omid 1995/1374:205–6). The Baha’i entrepreneur Mehdi Misaqiyeh started the Misaqiyeh Film Stu‑ dio in 1959 with Khachikian’s acclaimed noir movie Midnight Cry (Faryad‑e Nimeh Shab, 1961). During thirty years it produced dozens of movies. Im‑ mediately after the revolution the Islamic authorities confiscated Misaqiyeh’s property and his Capri Cinema, which he coowned with the Rashidian broth‑ ers, and imprisoned him.15 He was released after five years, apparently only after he confessed to being a Baha’i (more on him in another chapter). Be‑ cause religious minorities, particularly Baha’is, faced harassment, many peo‑ ple in the entertainment industry hid their identities, making difficulties for the historian. Arab Iranians were also involved in film, with Gorji Obadia (also known as Ahmad Fahmi or Ahmad Gorji) being the most active. Born in Baghdad in 1925 (one source gives his birthplace as Cairo, however), he worked in film distribution and moved to Iran in 1949, where he established Atlas Film Stu‑ dio, whose first production, The Enemy of Women (Doshman‑e zan, 1958), was directed by Khatibi. Obadia and his studio went on to produce nearly two dozen filmfarsi movies, some directed by Obadia himself, which were a cut above average. He also acted in Shelterless (Bipanah, 1953), produced by other commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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Arab Iranians, Salim Sumikh and Salman Hogi, who owned Homa Cinema and financed some Pars Film Studios productions. Obadia’s movie Fear and Hope (Bim va Omid, 1960) is notable for its vérité footage of Tehran and the eleven-­year-­old performer Googoosh, who walks to a pharmacy to get medi‑ cine for her ill father and in one scene sings and dances in imitation of fa‑ mous performers to cheer him. Naji Aghravi was an Egyptian émigré who, after producing a few films in his studio, loaned money to film producers; banks did not often finance movies. Iraqi émigrés were also involved in film exhibition, the importing of raw stock, and in lending money to producers.16 Nandaras Henduja, an Indian national who had shown films in Tehran with his father, established Filmco Films and produced Ismail Riahi’s Woman and Her Dolls (Zan va Arusakhayash, 1965), about a famous star who toys with sev‑ eral of her fans. He went on to produce many filmfarsi movies. In addition to these émigré producers, there were foreign technicians who worked for Iranian studios, such as the Egyptian cinematographer Mounir Habib, and directors, such as the Indian Sardar Saker, who came to Iran to escape the movie business. After selling cars for a while, Saker decided to return to the movies, and he worked for several studios, including his own Kuh‑e Nur Film Studio. He introduced Indian narrative elements into Ira‑ nian melodramatic emotionality. He used the famous entertainer Mahvash for the first time in his The Sun Shines (Khorshid Midarakhshad, 1956), which proved very successful. These affiliations helped both nationalize and internationalize Iranian cin‑ ema. They underscore one of the theses of this book, namely, that Iranian cin‑ ema was not a hermetic “national” cinema confined to movies made by Irani‑ ans for Iranians. There were many forms of exchange, even in the despised popular commercial cinema, filmfarsi. The most interesting of these was the migration of Arab and Jewish Iranian filmfarsi talent and narrative forms into Israel, resulting in a hybridized film type, which combined two popular but despised film genres—­Iranian filmfarsi and Israeli boureka films.17 A pio‑ neer in hybridized genre was Obadia who in late 1960s emigrated yet again, this time to Israel, under the modified name of George Ovadia (also known as Ovadiah). His first Israeli film, The Desired Ones (Ha-­Nehsheket, 1967), about an Iranian millionaire’s exploitation of a girl in Haifa who is forced to sing and dance in a nightclub, was an Iranian-­Israeli coproduction, which engaged an Iranian production crew. His other early films were remakes of his film‑ farsi movies in Hebrew, for which he imported Iranian crews and casts. In remaking the films he not only copied the stories but also some of the mise-­ en-­scène, shot composition, and editing and transition effects, as when he 172

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remade his Iranian movie What Is My Guilt (Gonah‑e Man Chist, 1965) as Arianna (1971). Many of these films were popular, with Nurit (1972) becom‑ ing the top blockbuster in Israeli cinema history up to that time. However, as in Iran, Israeli critics “loved to hate these films,” labeling them “bourekas” (a Sephardi pastry) and “primitive.” Revealing their first-­world anxiety about the national identity of the new Jewish state and their Eurocentric prejudices against third-­world Easterners, they further characterized these films as “Ori‑ ental kitsch,” “inferior Middle Eastern subculture,” and “Arab movies” (Ba‑ nai n.d.:1). It is clear that the cultural differences between Israeli ethnicities, particularly between Western Ashkenazi and Eastern Mizrahi Jews, which formed the backbone of these melodramas and comedies, were also present in the critical response to the boureka genre. Born in Mashhad, Iran, to a Jewish family, Simcha Zvuloni went to Israel at thirteen, where he attended school in a kibbutz and served in the military. He returned to Iran at twenty-­four and began working for the family production house in Tehran, Sina Film, managed by his producer brother Natail, which made filmfarsi and other movies. As a bicultural subject he shuttled between Iran and Israel. In 1973, he returned to Israel and established the film produc‑ tion company Film-­Or, with funding from Sina Film. His first production, Charley and a Half (Charlie Ve’hetzi, 1974), was a boureka film that borrowed elements from Iranian luti films, and it became a “raving success,” achieving the status of a “cult film” (Banai n.d.:7). The filmfarsi bourekas in Israel proved most popular with the many Mizrahi Jews and Arab and Iranian émigrés. Another structure contributing to the consolidation of cinema in Iran was the movie-­house chain. Several first-­r un or second-­r un movie houses, owned by different entities, would agree to coordinate their film programs, forming channels of access for insider film exhibitors and formidable barriers for out‑ siders. One of these was the Mottahedeh Group, which Naser Majd Bigdeli es‑ tablished in 1963, consisting of fifteen moviehouses in Tehran: Taj, Ferdowsi, Persepolis, Sylvana, Olympia, Khorshid, Khayyam, Taban, Mottahedeh, Mi‑ han, News, Shahab, Khorram, Shohreh, and Kurosh (Omid 1995/1374:351). Some of these chains extended to other cities. Soon, cinema chains such as the Mottahedeh Group and the Mottahed Movie House Group became a force not only in the exhibition of movies but also in their productions by investing in them. They tied their directors to the financial fate of their movies by giv‑ ing part of their salary as profit shares. But these chain cinemas were subject to individual and group rivalries, and their memberships, names, and struc‑ tures changed frequently. Production companies and film studios were established quickly in this commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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period, demonstrating the increasing pace of film activity and the impact of these entities on the commercial cinema.18 Between the mid-­1950s and the mid-­1960s, film production studios and companies went from twenty-­ two to forty, and feature-­film production shot up from twenty-­five to fifty-­ three (Gaffary 1992:570).19 By 1959, more than fifty movies were in various stages of production, a very high number compared to previous years, and half of the movies that were eventually released were by first-­time produc‑ ers (Omid 1995/1374:314). Moviemaking had become profitable, allowing the weekly magazine Rowshanfekr (Intellectual) to claim in August 1962, “Cin‑ ema is one of the most lucrative businesses in Tehran,” with the city’s 2 mil‑ lion citi­zens pouring as much as 23 million tomans a month into box offices (quoted in Echo of Iran 1963:467). That moviemaking had become industrial‑ ized is borne out by statistics: there were 58 film studios, using 124 directors, making 632 commercial movies. During the last year of this period, however, this number dropped to 16 studios and 75 directors, reflecting the crisis that had gripped the film industry (Omid 1995/1374:217). Several robust and professional studios emerged that consisted of multiple divisions and that lasted for many years. Kushan’s Pars Film Studio owned black-­and-­white and color film labs, sound stages, an extensive set-­design and construction department, technical equipment, and cast quarters (Baharlu 2000c/1379:146–47). It had large studio facilities and back-­lot spaces on the outskirts of Tehran near Karaj. In a space exceeding two thousand square me‑ ters, the accomplished set designer Valiollah Khakdan, an immigrant from Baku, built a “historical city” consisting of city gates, alleys, streets, a mosque, a coffee shop, homes, and other public buildings, which were used in many of Pars Film’s historical movies (Omid 1995/1374:386). In fact, the creation of this city committed the studio to and in a way trapped it in that genre. Pars Film Studio and its rival, Misaqiyeh Studio, differed from earlier stu‑ dios. They were horizontally integrated because they provided most of the services and personnel needed for making films—­from preproduction to production to postproduction, including dubbing. They were also vertically integrated, making, dubbing, and distributing movies and owning movie houses. The Moulin Rouge Film Company, owned by Morteza and Mostafa Akhavan, was one of these, like Pars and Misaqiyeh studios. It owned Mou‑ lin Rouge Cinema and imported and distributed chiefly American movies from Paramount and United Artists. Badie Film Studio, established in 1957 by an innovative engineer, Mohsen Badie, produced some movies, but it did not have extensive filming facilities and sound stages; instead it owned black-­ and-­white and color film processing labs, editing suites, and skilled technical 174

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personnel—­perhaps the best film lab in Iran—­and it survived the revolution of 1978–79. Interestingly, the heads of most of these studios were also hybrid figures, like the cinematic mode of production they were building, ethnoreligiously and functionally. For example, Kushan (né Ismail Harirforush) not only ran Pars Film Studio, which he established with his wife and other family mem‑ bers and partners, but also apparently produced a majority of the studio’s mov‑ ies, directed many of them, and wrote several of the screenplays. He gradually ceded some of those functions as the studio expanded. For example, for Pris‑ oner of the Emir (Zendani‑ye Amir, 1948), his second Persian-­language sound feature made in Iran, and the first under the imprimatur of Pars Film Stu‑ dio, Kushan served as the film’s producer, director, screenplay writer, editor, and cinematographer—­making the film a complete artisanal production. His credits for his third sound film, Spring Variety (Varieteh‑ye Bahari, 1949), are fewer but still considerable: he served as the producer, director, cinematogra‑ pher, and editor. For his fourth film, Disgraced (Sharmsar, 1950), his credits are still fewer: producer, director, and editor. The credits for others involved with the film, however, increased.20 With this movie, Pars Film Studio began to come into its own, using stars and a division of labor, two key characteris‑ tics of the studio system. Kushan employed a star entertainer, Delkash, as his lead; he brought in an experienced Egyptian cinematographer, Nuri Habib; he assigned the screenplay to the writer Ali Kasmai; and he inserted Delkash’s song-­and-­dance numbers to spice up the movie. The result was a successful and influential product. It remained on Tehran screens for 102 nights, turned Delkash into a movie star, transformed Pars Film into a viable studio, and es‑ tablished a popular model for the musical genre. Kushan produced documen‑ tary and propaganda films for the Ministry of Information and Publication from 1951 to 1956, published the film magazine Alam‑e Honar (Art World), which he began in 1951, and served as the president of the National Film In‑ dustry Union of Iran (Ettehadiyeh‑ye Sanai‑e Melli‑e Film‑e Irani) until 1969 (Omid 1995/1374:223–25). He also coproduced several films with France, West Germany, and Turkey. To acknowledge his pioneering work in dubbing and the production of sound movies, Georges Sadoul called Kushan “the father of Iranian film industry” (1949:22). By the time he died in 1983, he had produced ninety-­one movies and directed twenty-­eight himself (Omid 1995/1374:203). This all consolidated his position as the first movie mogul and the status of his studio as the first in the nation—­at least in terms of quantity.21 The film industry’s vertical and horizontal integration gradually encom‑ passed larger spheres of pop culture. Mohammad Karim Arbab, for example, commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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who began as a gofer in the film business in 1942, would not only own his own film production and distribution company, Ferdowsi Films (established in 1965), but also thirteen movie houses and seven nightclubs, including the famed Moulin Rouge. Perhaps one reason so many musicals were made and producers inserted song-­and-­dance numbers into nonmusical commercial movies is to be found in this tight, cross-­fertilizing relationship among film producers, cinema owners, and cabaret owners, all of whom banked on the currency of the stars and entertainers. The emergence of integrated film studios and chain theaters; genre mov‑ ies, movie stars, and movie producers; and actors, voice-­over artists, and crafts unions helped to professionalize, commodify, and industrialize the film busi‑ ness toward the end of the second Pahlavi era. As part of this process, a dynamic film culture also developed, one in‑ volving film schools, film clubs, professional publications, robust film criti‑ cism, and diverse film festivals. The expansion of nationwide radio, television, and music industries as well as mass-­media publications permitted the cross-­ fertilization of cultural products and forms. When by the late 1970s movie stars and actors were widely recruited by advertising agencies to sell noncin‑ ematic consumer goods, a massive integrated pop-­culture industry emerged. While these forms of industrialization and institutionalization were un‑ derway in the private sector, the government also intervened in the practices of the culture industry to facilitate, compete with, regulate, and censor film production, importation, and exhibition. It became a major coplayer in the emergence of commercial films’ hybrid production and its genres. What it added to the mix of commercial and industrial practices was the statist ele‑ ments that had governed the documentary cinema. The state’s role, at least at the beginning of this period (1950s and early 1960s), involved less the fund‑ ing of movies than their censorship. Some film critics went so far as to give the lion’s share of credit for shaping commercial movies to the government, particularly to its power to censor. While government censorship was cer‑ tainly widespread and multifaceted, limiting the range of topics and stifling expression, it did not have a uniform impact on the movies, mainly because other factors were involved as well. Foreign film imports, which trounced do‑ mestic productions in the 1960s, also drove Iranian film personnel to seek commercially attractive solutions. One of these was to emulate the imports, resulting in syncretic adaptations of European and American movies, stories, characters, mise-­en-­scène, and filming styles, mixing them with Iranian ele‑ ments. The two genres of stewpot and tough-­guy films are examples of this sort of cross-­cultural amalgamation. 176

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Film Productions A factor in the emergence of the hybrid mode was the rise in movie produc‑ tions. As table 6 shows, the production rate for feature films remained very slow in the late 1940s, but it rose steadily throughout the 1950s. By the late 1960s, when many studios, production companies, dubbing houses, cinema chains, importers, and distributors were in operation and the industry’s out‑ put had surpassed fifty movies annually, the hybrid mode was in full swing. In the early 1970s, the government began both to fund and to compete with the private sector in film production through its various ministries or affili‑ ated institutions, such as the mca, nirt, the cidcya, and the fidci, several of which had studios, labs, and professional editing facilities staffed by profes‑ sionals. These institutions funneled funds to filmmakers, employed them as civil servants or freelancers, wrote coproduction deals, and promoted films in‑ ternationally. By 1972, the industry output had almost doubled, to an all-­time high of ninety-­t wo features, a peak not reached since. Despite these developments toward systematization, cross-­fertilization, and industrialization, Iranian commercial cinema remained through most of this period, as Fardin characterized it colorfully, a “battered, neglected, and browbeaten orphan” (quoted in Baharlu 2000e/1379:91). Some films did not last beyond the first night’s screening in a single theater. Another graphic indication of this state of affairs is the small number of film prints, four to five, that were struck of each movie as late as the 1960s. In some cases, distributors, uncertain of earnings, forced several theaters to share a single print. As one reel was being screened in one theater, a motorcyclist hired by the distributor would carry the other reels to other theaters in Teh‑ ran (Baharlu 2000e/1379:184). While it was certainly economical, such cy‑ cling of individual movie reels sometimes created exhibition problems, as late arriving reels from one theater would force unplanned intermissions in oth‑ ers.22 Commercial cinema was ill supported both by the government and by the private sector, and it did not get much respect from critics; nonetheless, paying spectators supported it substantially, as the attendance figures cited testify. The full institutionalization of a hybrid production mode necessitated a paradigmatic shift of consciousness, from premodernity to modernity—­ something that could only evolve with time. As a result, the film industry re‑ tained some of its artisanal characteristics. The totality of this system consti‑ tutes what I am calling here the hybrid production mode.

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table 6  Feature Fiction Movies Released 1929–79 Production Year (Gregorian/Iranian) first pahlavi period 1929/1308 1930/1309 1931/1310 1932/1311 1933/1312 1934/1313 1935/1314 1936/1315 1937/1316 1938/1317 1939/1318 1940/1319 1941/1320 Subtotal second pahlavi period 1942/1321 1943/1322 1944/1323 1945/1324 1946/1325 1947/1326 1948/1327 1949/1328 1950/1329 1951/1330 1952/1331 1953/1332 1954/1333 1955/1334 1956/1335 1957/1336 1958/1337 1959/1338 1960/1339 1961/1340 1962/1341

Films Released (Exhibited)

Films Banned or Abandoned (Not Exhibited)

0 1 1 1 1 3 0 1 1 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

9

0

0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 6 8 22 18 17 13 12 16 26 27 28 27

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 3 2 0

Production Year (Gregorian/Iranian) 1963/1342 1964/1343 1965/1344 1966/1345 1967/1346 1968/1347 1969/1348 1970/1349 1971/1350 1972/1351 1973/1352 1974/1353 1975/1354 1976/1355 1977/1356 1978/1357 Total

Films Released (Exhibited)

Films Banned or Abandoned (Not Exhibited)

30 36 43 52 52 71 51 59 83 92 83 60 61 65 46 16

0 1 1 1 3 1 4 2 2 3 1 3 2 3 2 15

1124

55

Source: Compiled from Omid 1987a/1366 and 1987b/1366.

Film Periodicals Another important condition both for an integrated, modern film industry and film culture is the presence of active film journalism to inform and edu‑ cate spectators about cinema; to publicize movies, filmmakers, and the stars; to provide critical assessments of the industry and its product; and to enter‑ tain. The history of film criticism in Iran, like the history of movie studios, is strewn with false starts, brief but valiant efforts, and untimely demises. Edi‑ tors and publishers started magazines, competed with each other, merged their products, switched magazines, or returned to their former publications. The publishers and editors of long-­lasting periodicals changed many times. The tracking of all these movements and changes requires further research. In table 7, I offer a comprehensive but not exhaustive list of film periodicals during the Pahlavi period, indicating when they began and the names of their first or most prominent editors. It appears that movie studios started the earli‑ commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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table 7  Pahlavi Period Film Periodicals (1930–78) Magazine Title

Year Begun

Publisher

Editor

Frequency

Cinema and Perform‑ ing Arts / Sinema va Namayeshat

July 1930 / Mordad 1309

Ali Vakili (Iran Film Studio)

Eshaq Zanjani

Monthly

Hollywood / Holyvud

June 1943 / Tir 1321

Alireza Amirmo’ez

A. Amirmo’ez

Biweekly/ monthly

World of Art / Alam-e Honar

August 1951 / Shahrivar 1330

Ismail Kushan (Pars Film Studio)

Ali Kasmai

World of Cinema / Alam-e Sinema

March 1952 / Farvardin 1331

Abolqasem Rezai Abolqasem Rezai (Alborz Film Studio

Cinema Universe / Jahan-e Sinema

August 1952 / Shahrivar 1331

Simak Vosuqi

Hosain Farhang

Biweekly

Cinema and Theater / Sinema va Te’atr

October 1952 / Aban 1331

Babak Sasan

Kazem Esmaili

Biweekly

Movie Stars / Setaregan-e Sinema

November 1952 / Azar 1331

Hosain Farhang

Hosain Farhang

New Moon / Mah-e No

1952–71 / 1331–1350

Mohammadali Shirazi

Taqi Mokhtar

Movie Star / Setareh-ye Sinema

January 1954–78/ Bahman 1332–1357

Piror Galestian / Ali Mortazavi

Kazem Esmaili / Robert Ekhart / Jamal Omid / Bahman Maghsoudlou

Biweekly

New Monthly Film / Mah-e No Film

1954?

Mohammadali Shirazi

Taqi Mokhtar

Weekly

Message of Cinema / Paik-e Sinema

April 1954 / Ordibehesht 1333

Majid Nejat (Ne‑ jat magazine)

Toqrol Afshar

Biweekly

Cinema / Sinema

September 1954 / Mehr 1333

Hosain Niru‑ mandzadeh (Musik-e Iran magazine)

Farhad Foruhi

Performance / Namayesh

November 1956 / Azar 1335

Hasan Shirvani (faa)

Magazine Title

Year Begun

Publisher

Editor

Frequency

Film and Life / Film va Zendegi

April 1957 / Ordibehesht 1336

Audiovisual Center, faa

Shaollah Nazerian

Quarterly

Tehran Post’s ­Cinema / Post-e Tehran-e Sinemai

September 1957 / Mehr 1336

Amirsaid Borumand

Shadows / Sayehha

November 1958 / Azar 1937

Mohammad Motovaselani

Films and Screens / Filmha va Pardehha

December 1958 / Aban 1337

Mohammadreza Ali Abbasi Taha (Vazin magazine)

Acting Art / Honar-e Honarmandan

May 1959 / Khordad 1338

faa

Belief and World of Cinema / Maslak va Jahan-e Sinema

February 1959 / Esfand 1337

Abolfazl Saqharyaghmai

Art and Cinema / Honar va Sinema

March 1961 / Farvardin 1340

Amirhushang Kavusi

Amirhushang Kavusi

Film and Art / Film va Honar

March 1964 / Farvardin 1343

Abdolmajid Ramezani

Ali Mortazavi

New Cinema / Sinema-ye No

December 1966 / Aban 1345

Cinema Book / Ketab-e Sinema

1970–71/ 1349–50

Pahlavi Univer‑ sity students

(published in Shiraz)

Film / Film

1972 / 1351

Piror Galestian

Jamsheed Akrami

Cinema ’73–77 / Sinema ’52–56

July 1973 / Mordad 1352

Ministry of Culture and Art

Bahram Raipur / Monthly Jamal Omid

Cinema and Theater Special / Vizheh-ye Sinema va Te’atr

1972

Entesharat-e Babak

Bahman Maghsoudlou

Irregular

Free Cinema Periodical / Nashriyeh Sinema-ye Azad

December 1975–77 / Dey 1354–1356

Entesharat-e Sorush (nirt)

Basir Nasibi / Shahla E’tedali

Monthly

Monthly

Feraidun Pirzadeh

Bijan Khorsand

Weekly

Monthly

Quarterly

Source: Created by the author based mostly on information supplied by Poori Soltani of the Iran National Library and on Omid 1995/1374:893–915.

est film magazines as publicity vehicles, demonstrating the pivotal role of the studios in creating film culture. Some film periodicals began as supplemen‑ tary to other established periodicals. With the gradual industrialization of cin‑ ema in the 1950s and 1960s, the number of publications increased, their ho‑ rizons widened, and their specialization and professionalism deepened. With the formation of the faa and later the mca, government film institutions also began publishing periodicals. Not listed in the table are government maga‑ zines about music, theater, and television. The culture of film and discourse about cinema was not limited to the specialized film and media magazines in this table. Television and radio net‑ works participated in them through their newscasts, film and entertainment review programs, and print magazines such as Soroush and Tamasha, both published by nirt. Literary and cultural periodicals as well as popular maga‑ zines and newspapers regularly carried articles on film. Finally, mainstream daily newspapers, such as Kayhan, Ettela’at, and Ayandegan (as well as their foreign-­language sister publications) carried regular columns devoted to film criticism and media news.

Film Clubs Farrokh Gaffary (1922–2006) established the first film club and library, the National Film Center (Kanun‑e Melli‑e Film), in Tehran in December 1949, which screened foreign films regularly in their original languages and initi‑ ated the first film festival, which showed European and Soviet movies. Re‑ markably, the center managed to screen banned movies to its members. Gaffary often obtained documentary and classic features from Western em‑ bassies’ cultural attachés, introduced them to audiences, and discussed them after the screenings. In July 1950, he launched a five-­night festival of British movies at the British Council facilities in Tehran, for which occasion he pub‑ lished a forty-­two-­page bilingual pamphlet in Persian and English on that country’s cinema. It contained, in addition to the list of the films and other materials, essays by Gaffary and by the famed British documentarian John Grierson. Gaffary, who had served as Henri Langlois’s assistant at the Ciné‑ mathèque Française in the 1940s and as the executive secretary of the Inter‑ national Federation of Film Archives in Paris, also published serious film crit‑ icism in the leftist press, such as in Setareh‑ye Solh (Star of Peace), under the pseudonym M. Mobarak, where he wrote “Film Industry in Iran,” one of the

182

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earliest analytic articles on Iranian film (Gaffary 1992:570). He introduced the concept and structure of European “cine-­clubs” (Baharlu 2000c/1379:180). Gaffary returned to France in mid-­1951, and his departure led to the center’s gradual end. The center marked the beginning of cinephilia in Iran. Although the flow of cinephilia is generally construed to have occurred among first world coun‑ tries or to have moved from the first world to the third world, Monika Mehta shows (2006) that it also flourished among third world countries, particularly those with regional, cultural, and historical affiliations with others. In the case of Iran, cinephilia involved not only the vertical love for Western mov‑ ies but also the horizontal love for Indian, Egyptian, Turkish, and, of course, Iranian movies. Gaffary revived the National Film Center in 1959 under the auspices of the faa, thanks to support from its head of public relations, Zaven Hagopian. Its inaugural film program consisted of two documentaries, Robert Flaherty’s Louisiana Story (1948) and Mostafa Farzaneh’s Persian Miniatures (1958). At this time, the center’s members comprised foreign nationals residing in Teh‑ ran (primarily American, French, and Danish), as well as Iranian critics, film lovers, and college and high school students. Membership was two hundred rials for ten sessions, except for students, who were admitted at half price. In its second iteration, the Film Center proved highly successful and endur‑ ing, with regular weekly screenings throughout the 1960s and the 1970s (until the fall of 1978), during which 16mm and 35mm prints were shown and discussed. The majority were classic American and European movies screened in their original languages, although there was a smattering of Ira‑ nian new-­wave and proto-­new-­wave films as well. Censorship afflicted even such a specialized film venue. For example, the gathered audience, foreign embassy personnel, and Iranian film critics were upset because mca censors in their zeal had mutilated Michaelangelo Antonioni’s The Red Desert (Il De‑ serto Rosso, 1964), Francesco Rosi’s The Moment of Truth (Il Momento della Verità, 1965), and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Oedipus Rex (Edipo Re, 1967) (Baharlu 2000c/1379:187–88). In 1973, the Film Center became part of the National Film Archive of Iran at the mca, which still exists. Other cine-­clubs emerged as well, among them the Iran Cine-­Club, which involved prominent film critics Toghrol Afshar and Amirhushang Kavusi and the filmmaker Feraidun Rahnema. More clubs cropped up in Tehran and other cities like Isfahan, and university students also created their own film clubs in various locations.23

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Censorship Apparatuses and Regulations Official movie censorship also contributed to the hybrid production mode and the politics and poetics of its products, the commercial movies. Iranian cinema has been “subject from its beginning to official censorship” (Akrami 1992b:585), whether attempted by governments, religious leaders, profes‑ sional unions, civil society pressure groups, film distributors, or even the gen‑ eral public. Instances of various efforts at censorship have been recounted throughout, but during this period the role of the state in muzzling and chan‑ neling cinema became more prominent, concomitant with the increased au‑ thoritarianism of the government and the Shah. In June 1950 (Khordad 1329) the government passed the Regulations for Cinemas and Performing Arts In‑ stitutions, which incorporated, updated, and supplanted the Regulations for Cinemas (1936) and the Regulations Governing Taking Motion Picture Films and Photographs, Painting, and Drawing (1938). With periodic modifications, the regulations of 1950 held throughout the second Pahlavi period to censor films during preproduction, postproduction, dubbing, and exhibition. These regulations also specified the administrative structures both for censoring movies and for regulating movie houses. The most relevant of these was the Exhibition Committee (Komiteh‑ye Nemayesh), which in Tehran comprised representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, of the mca, of the national po‑ lice, of nirt, of Savak, and of the film exhibition industry. The committee reviewed all requests and issued permits for film production, movie-­house construction, and film exhibitions.24 In cases of dispute, the High Council of Exhibition (Showra‑ye Ali‑ye Nemayesh), consisting of the minister of the in‑ terior, the minister of culture and art, and the director of Savak, or their official proxies, were the final arbiters. All film-­production and film-­screening permissions from the Exhibition Committee or from the High Council of Ex‑ hibition pertained to the entire country, consolidating the position of Tehran both as the seat of national government and as the center of the film industry. The regulations of 1950 specified building codes for constructing movie houses, health and safety codes for their facilities, a rating system for classi‑ fying cinemas (high class, first class, and second class), and review and cen‑ sorship rules for judging the screenplays of the movies and the completed films.25 Those regulations designed to improve the health, safety, and security of moviegoers were progressive and much needed. Those designed to regulate and control movie contents, on the other hand, were less progressive, politi‑ cally motivated, and highly controversial. Only the latter regulations are dealt with here.26 184

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Before screening, all films—­fiction and nonfiction—­had to obtain permis‑ sion from the Exhibition Committee, including films that were to be shown by mobile film units and by television. If the Exhibition Committee rejected the screening of a film but an exhibitor went ahead with it, the culpable movie house would be closed for one week; if the offense was repeated three times, the cinema would be closed indefinitely. Likewise, if the Exhibition Com‑ mittee banned a portion of a movie but the exhibitor defied the committee and screened it with the banned portion, the exhibition permit for the movie would be revoked for the entire country. The Exhibition Committee’s permis‑ sions were for a specific period, and the committee could extend or revoke those permissions as it saw fit, thus interjecting much uncertainty and con‑ tinual haggling and hailing into the relationship between the government and the film industry. The committee’s power was quite intrusive, as it ex‑ tended to approving even the titles of the movies shown in Iran. Article 55 of the regulations specified fifteen conditions under which en‑ tire films or portions thereof would be banned. The same conditions applied to the screenplays of prospective movies. Since these regulations had a deci‑ sive impact on the politics and poetics of the movies—­film plots, character development, and genre formation—­t hey are translated below as they appear in the regulations. Conditions for Banning Entire Films or Portions of Films 1 Opposition to religious principles of, and propaganda against, the Twelver Shiite branch of Islam 2 Opposition to constitutional monarchy and insulting the person of the Shah or the royal family 3 Showing political revolutions anywhere in the world that lead to removal of constitutional regimes 4 Inciting revolution or uprising against the government or against the monarchic regime 5 Propagandizing in favor of any ideology or belief that is illegal in the country 6 Letting murderers, criminals, or robbers who commit homicide go unpunished 7 Showing uprising or revolt in a prison that results in the defeat of security forces and in the prisoners’ victory 8 Provoking workers, students, peasants, and other social strata to fight the security forces and to destroy or set fire to factories and educational institutions commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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9 Opposing Iran’s national traditions and customs 10 Containing scenes that severely disgust, annoy, and affect spectators 11 Containing scenes in which illicit relations of married women with men are shown, or scenes in which girls are sexually taken advantage of, or scenes of nude women, particularly those showing their breasts and private parts 12 Using obscene words, swearwords, disgusting expressions, and parodying local and ethnic dialects, particularly during dubbing 13 Showing a woman and a man in the same bed, particularly if both are naked and under bedcovers, that is, if they are engaged in lovemaking 14 Promoting moral corruption, public immodesty, and revealing secrets of gangsterism 15 Fueling the fire of racial and religious difference and encouraging prejudice and intolerance Since movies underwent many changes during production, particularly given the improvisational and contingent hybrid mode of production, films whose screenplays were permitted would often fail to receive an exhibition permit without further government censorship. In addition, although censorship regulations were vague enough to afford flexibility of interpretation to both censors and filmmakers, the ultimate power of decision making resided with the censors. As a result of these unequal power relations, movie producers, directors, and critics would blame the government for the form, content, and low quality of the commercial movies, completely ignoring their own contri‑ butions to the low state of cinema. Some producers and critics claimed that censorship was so pervasive and ironclad that no meaningful or critical mov‑ ies about any social strata could be made except about those involving tough guys (lutis), velvet hat wearers ( jahels), and prostitutes because none of these had professional associations or labor unions to defend them, nor government connections to protect them (Baharlu 2000e/1379:327). Mohammad Ali Samii, the head of the Exhibition Committee in 1958, jus‑ tified the government’s strict censorship of domestic and foreign movies on the grounds that movies represented the “soul and ways of thinking” of a nation and that most Iranians were impressionable and uneducated about film and tended to imitate what they saw on the screens (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:879). However, much of the censoring was for political and moral reasons. A six-­minute scene in which Bob Hope as the barber attempts to murder the king in George Marshall’s Monsieur Beaucaire (1946) was cen‑ sored for fear that it would give similar ideas to Iranians. The second trial of

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Joan of Arc (played by Ingrid Bergman), lasting around thirty minutes, was cut from Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc (1948) because in it she defended her uprising against the royalty. The lovemaking scene of the Spanish king in Da‑ vid Macdonald’s Christopher Columbus (1949) was removed because Colum‑ bus attacks the king, throwing him to the ground. The swimming scene of Samson and Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949) was cen‑ sored on account of nudity, and the film’s ending was censored because Sam‑ son destroys the temple and the palace. All references to the city of Tehran in Frederick de Cordova’s historical “Arabian desert tale,” The Desert Hawk (1950), starring Yvonne De Carlo and Richard Greene, were blocked out in‑ geniously by placing wax on the soundtrack wherever the word Tehran was uttered. This resulted in brief moments of complete silence throughout the movie. Throughout the 1950s, many foreign movies were either censored or banned altogether for their violations of public morality and government pol‑ icy, among them rock-­and-­roll movies and Soviet films deemed communist propaganda (Omid 1995/1374:874–75; Sadr 2003/1381:132–33). Politicized censoring initiated by an Exhibition Committee consisting chiefly of government and military officials, most of whom were not well versed in filmmaking, often resulted in significant elisions that made the movie plots chaotic and comprehension difficult. The committee did not act uniformly toward all films. Powerful commercial importers and exhibitors with political connections were able to exert influence. Others sometimes vio‑ lated its censorship recommendations by showing the movies without the pre‑ scribed cutting, resulting in the confiscation of their films after a few nights’ screening. In 1958, the year in which Savak was officially created and its agents were trained with American and Israeli assistance in techniques of intelligence and torture (Rejali 1994:78), censorship assumed a more politicized and strin‑ gent character and Savak’s influence began to surpass that of all government agencies both in society and on the Exhibition Committee. Domestic movies bore the brunt of the increased stringency. “Almost all of the productions of 1958 had ‘censorship’ problems in one way or another,” writes Jamal Omid (1995/1374:878). Samuel Khachikian’s Messenger from Heaven (Qased‑e Be‑ hesht, 1958), about a prominent businessman who goes bankrupt and has to battle a smuggler, was banned five times. Reasons were perceived insults to the Boy Scouts and to civil judges (Sadr 2003/1381:134–35), two sacrosanct Pahlavi-­era institutions.27 Sometimes, censorship was initiated not to please the government but to bring the movies into compliance with conservative traditions. For example, two reels of Khatibi’s The Enemy of Women (Dosh‑ commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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man‑e Zan, 1958), amounting to about twenty minutes, were removed because a male teacher (played by Naser Malekmotii) taught in a girls’ school (Khatibi 1994:134). This sort of censoring went against the reality of the Iranian educa‑ tional system in which male teachers in urban all-­girls schools were no anom‑ aly. The removal of so much footage from the movie created narrative chaos. The film became a cause célèbre not because of its high quality but because of the cuts. From then on, regardless of their quality, censored movies acquired a higher status among the public and intellectuals for they were perceived to oppose a regime whose legitimacy had become suspect since the 1953 coup that had restored it to power. The realistic portrayal of the poor routinely resulted either in banning or in the removal of offending scenes, often in ways that made the films incom‑ prehensible. Saker’s Ray of Hope (Rowzaneh‑ye Omid, 1958), about the life of a village émigré in a poor district of Tehran, was cut heavily to remove scenes of poverty, scenes integral to the story of a destitute character whose social world was the poor South End. Without these scenes, the movie did not make sense, but the cuts remained. Censorship-­driven illegibility enhanced the existing narrative chaos caused by the filmmakers’ improvisational practices—­an im‑ portant feature of hybrid productions. The most celebrated example of this was Gaffary’s neorealist film South of the City (Jonub‑e Shahr, 1958), which he cowrote with Jalal Moqaddam. Gaffary and Moqaddam had researched the overcrowded and dilapidated neighborhoods of Tehran’s South End, includ‑ ing the fruit and vegetable markets, the bazaar, street vendors, and the low‑ brow restaurants and tough guy cafés for three months to create what Gaffary called a fictional but “truthful” screenplay about two toughs’ rivalry over a café dancer (figure 33). He shot the film outdoors in the South End, aided by the famous tough-­guy leader, Tayyeb Rezai, who in those days was appar‑ ently a staunch supporter of the Shah’s regime. Tayyeb, as he was affection‑ ately known, and his toughs helped protect the film crew, clear the streets for shooting, and control the crowd, duties the police were unable to perform (Gaffary 1983–84:10–11). After editing, the film was submitted to the mca for its exhibition permit. The Exhibition Committee ordered the film cut, not be‑ cause the poor had lobbied hard to protect their image but because the gov‑ ernment, as the country’s biggest lobby, was protecting its own public pro‑ jection of Iran as modern and prosperous. The offending scenes of poverty were removed, as well as references to executions. When the film opened in six cinemas, spectators received it enthusiastically, before the police banned it five days later (for reasons see below). Gaffary relates that he was in the the‑ ater behind two boys when one of them kept telling the other the film’s plot 188

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33  The poster for Farrokh Gaffary’s heavily censored toughguy movie South of the City.

just ahead of the action. It turned out that he had seen the movie five times in the few days that it had been screened. The film also made one-­sixth of its relatively large budget of three hundred thousand tomans in just those few days (13–14). Deputy Prime Minister Ali Mansur reiterated in conversation the earlier warnings Gaffary had received from others not to sleep at home the night the movie was banned for fear that he would be arrested and mistreated. Subse‑ quently, Gaffary had to defend his film before some of the highest govern‑ ment officials—­Prime Minister Manucher Eqbal, the minister of the interior, Lieutenant General Batmanqelich, and the head of Savak, General Taymur Bakhtiar, and his deputy, Brigadier General Alavi Kia. Apparently, the govern‑ ment feared that the film’s realistic depiction of the lower classes played into the hands of the Soviets and of local communists. Further, the Savak deputy director had a suspicion that the Soviets, who in those days were “spending all kinds of money to undermine some, even small, aspects of the regime,” may have financed the film. Gaffary denied this and presented documents show‑ ing that his company, Iran Nama Film, relied on a close-­knit network of five commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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investors: himself, his father, his mother, his brother Hosainali, and an out‑ side partner, Siavash Emad. Apparently, the source of suspicion was Emad, who had been a communist previously. His name was given to Savak by a production manager, a former communist turned Savak snitch, with whom Emad had had a fight. Gaffary’s documentation of the film’s financing seems to have satisfied the security agency, but the film’s banning by the police had “entrapped” the government, for it could not release the film with rumors of its “revolutionary” nature already circulating. The film’s screening, the secu‑ rity people feared, would attract throngs of people, causing some sort of “ex‑ plosion” (Gaffary 1983–84:14–16). As a result, South of the City remained banned for three years, and when its negatives and six positive prints were finally returned to Gaffary, many scenes were missing, never to be found. The film had been “mutilated” (Gaffary 1970:91). Civic pressure groups also exerted their own forms of censor‑ ship. Audiences had liked the original South of the City during its brief ini‑ tial run; however, as newspapers reported, some South End toughs beat up and injured the actor who portrayed one of the luti protagonists because his character had exhibited self-­doubt and weakness. Apparently, they considered a hesitating tough demeaning to their idealized projection of decisive lutis (quoted in Sadr 2003/1381:180–83). Given the aid that Tayyeb and his bud‑ dies had given the film, it is understandable that they felt invested in how the movie portrayed them. They felt betrayed. To recoup his loss, Gaffary reedited the movie, adding scenes of singing and dancing by “famous lady entertain‑ ers of those years,” and released it under a new title, Rivalry in the City (Reqa‑ bat dar Shahr, 1963). It did not do well at the box office. The new title signaled the change of emphasis, from the gritty social milieu of the South End to the action-­filled plot of the toughs’ personal rivalry over a girl. The multiple cen‑ soring of this movie made the original, which was never shown again, the cele­brated ur-­version. Censorship thus elevated the status of South of the City to the point of mythologizing it, since the quality of its original could never be verified. Apparently, to compensate for the way Gaffary’s film had been de‑ stroyed, Savak decided to help the director by introducing him to major com‑ panies that needed freelance filmmakers: the Tehran Cement Company and the National Iranian Oil Company, for which he made several institutional and documentary films (Gaffary 1983–84:17–18). Critics and film periodicals, particularly Setareh Sinema (Movie Star), roundly criticized the declarations of the head of the Exhibition Committee, Samii, justifying censorship and the actions of the committee. The maga‑ zine admitted that censorship was needed and that all countries engaged in 190

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it, but it questioned the arbitrary and haphazard rulings of the committee and of other censorship apparatuses, which censored not only movies but all cultural productions, including radio, television, the press, theater, and pop music. Stung by the criticism, Samii astutely showed two local commercial movies—­Ebrahim Baqeri’s Sea Tulip (Laleh‑ye Dariai, 1961) and Salar Eshqi’s and Henrik Estepanian’s Returned from Paris (Az Paris Bargashteh, 1959)—­to an invited group of producers, directors, and writers and sought their advice. Ironically, they unanimously voted to ban both movies permanently because they considered them to be doggerel and unsuitable for public viewing. They argued that censoring bad movies was necessary to raise the level of film‑ making in the country; however, they contended that the Exhibition Commit‑ tee often licensed low-­quality entertaining movies and censored high-­quality films that either showed Iranian social realities or criticized them. The chaotic and unstable leadership of the Exhibition Committee exacer‑ bated the arbitrary application of the vague regulations of 1950, adding to nar‑ rative chaos exhibition chaos. This was evident in the revocation of licenses for films that had already received exhibition permits and had been screened, the licensing of previously banned films, the exhibition of films with previ‑ ously banned scenes left intact, and the progressive piecemeal censorship of films after each night’s exhibition. Perennial critics of the commercial cin‑ ema strongly attacked the various censorship regulations, institutions, pro‑ cesses, and practices. Amirhushang Kavusi called for the total dismantling of censorship institutions. Parviz Davai characterized the Exhibition Com‑ mittee’s authoritarian actions as “extremist, subversive, and intolerable” and called for the removal of incompetent censors and irrelevant regulations. The commercial movie producer Misaqiyeh suggested in derision that movies should carry the title “produced and directed by members of the Exhibition Committee of the Ministry of the Interior” because of its heavy interference in the movies (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:881–83). In the fall of 1964, the mca consolidated all matters pertaining to film pro‑ duction, regulation, supervision, and censorship in its General Department of Cinema Affairs (Edareh‑ye Koll‑e Omurat‑e Sinemai). Censorship responsibil‑ ity moved there from the Ministry of the Interior (Nilla Cram Cook’s Depart‑ ment of Performances). Either to silence recalcitrant critics or to truly change the censorship system, Kavusi was appointed to head the Office of Supervi‑ sion and Exhibition. This was the name given to the former Exhibition Com‑ mittee, which had been transferred to the mca. Whatever the motivations of the government and of Kavusi himself, he succeeded in having the cabinet ap‑ prove in July 1966 several sets of regulations governing permissions to pro‑ commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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duce films, to exhibit films and slides, and to operate movie houses, which governed the industry throughout the remaining years of the Pahlavi regime. He was able to introduce some novel elements, but in the main the regula‑ tions, which consisted of twenty-­seven articles, remained similar to those of 1950 but were more stringent, demonstrating the triumph of authoritarian‑ ism. I list them fully here: Regulations Governing the Exhibition of Films and Slides, July 1966 The screening of parts or all of a film that contains the following items is prohibited in the entire country. 1 Insulting monotheism, religions, holy books, and prophets, saints, and things held sacrosanct 2 Insulting the true religion of Islam and the Twelver Shiite faith and its saints and those things held sacred by it 3 Casting aspersion on and defaming the country’s minority religions and beliefs 4 Insulting the lofty status of the Shah or the glorious royal family 5 Encouraging and inciting any uprising or riots against the constitutional monarchy or the government 6 Insulting any government officials, whether civilian or military 7 Insulting the countries with which Iran has friendly relations or insulting their historical or national treasures to the point of offending them 8 Propagandizing any ideology or belief that is illegal 9 Scenes in which assassination against leaders or members of government are shown for the obvious intention of inciting such actions 10 Scenes showing uprising against the security, disciplinary, and military forces in which these forces are defeated 11 In general, any scene that is against or opposed to those things that Iran has held historically and nationally sacred and lofty and which besmirches the international status and reputation of the country either in the past or in the present 12 Encouraging evil and inhumane acts such as betrayal, criminality, espionage, adultery, homosexuality, theft, bribery, and violating other peoples’ rights in such a way that lacks positive and humanistic outcome, or in such a way that exonerates or justifies the bad and inhumane acts 13 Showing in any form and expression, explicit or implicit, preference 192

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14 15 16

17

18 19

20 21 22

23 24

25

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for, or victory of bad over good, indecent over decent, inhumane over humane, and wickedness over virtue and piety Scenes and details of sexual relations designed either to satisfy prurient desires or to attract audiences Revealing those parts of the bodies of men, women, boys, and girls that should remain covered in such a way that offends public morality Making fun of the language or dialects of Iranian ethnoreligious minorities or of those living in the provinces for the sole purpose of laughing at or humiliating them and in such a way that leads to no positive outcome (in Persian-­language films, whether made in Iran or imported) Uttering obscene swearwords, phrases, or sounds and showing scenes of ruins and underdevelopment and people with torn clothing to hurt the prestige of Iran and Iranians Scenes that incite racial and ethnic differences that serve no purpose other than promoting discrimination Scenes that demonstrate the details of murders or scenes of killing of domestic animals or torturing of animals, and in general scenes of animal abuse that can cause disgust and revulsion Films that in part or in whole are without value and tend to lower audience taste toward accepting doggerel fare Films that offer inaccurate geographical, historical, and other information that is misleading from a cultural viewpoint Film prints that because of technical shortcomings in the image or soundtrack are difficult to see and to hear and cause discomfort in spectators Old nitrate films stored in vaults whose careless handling and screening can cause fire, explosion, and suffocation Exporting Iranian films abroad for the purpose of selling them or entering them into international or regional festivals requires a new review process and a new license. Invited by the Ministry of Culture and Art, the Ministry of Education will send representatives of parents and teachers associations to the mca to determine which films should be prohibited to girls and boys who are under eighteen years of age and forward their opinion to the Office of Exhibition and Supervision. Films that are so rated must display the phrase “Prohibited for people under the age 18” in their exhibition license, and exhibitors must display the same phrase in their advertising in cinemas, on television, commercial c inema’s evo lutio n

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in the press, and on posters, billboards and theater marquees. They must also strictly prevent such people from entering the cinemas. 27 Deviants from any of these articles will be punished according to the article 14 of the regulations for issuing exhibition permits. (Omid 1995/1374:885–86) Similar to the regulations of 1950, several articles of the later regulations (nos. 1–3) emphasized respect for the dominant Twelver Shiite branch of Is‑ lam but added monotheism and the protection of minority religions, dem‑ onstrating an expansion of the state-­protected religions under Mohammad Reza Shah. These progressive measures were designed to reduce religious intolerance by the dominant Muslims. Reflecting the increasingly authori‑ tarian regime of the Shah, several articles were hardened (4–11), prohibiting any kind of affront to the Shah, his family, the government, government officials, friendly countries, or Iranian history, as well as any successful upris‑ ings and assassination attempts against the monarchy, the government, or the coercive state apparatuses. The moralism and didacticism of the regulations were consolidated and intensified in several articles (12–15) in which specific practices and relationships were singled out for condemnation. In a decid‑ edly Manichaean worldview, good was to always triumph over evil. Articles promoted an overarching Iranian national identity by prohibiting the mov‑ ies from mocking or provoking sectarian, regional, ethnic, racial, and class differences and prejudices inimical to national honor. New articles promoted the technical quality of the movies (20–23). To prevent unauthorized films from leaving the country, article 24 regulated the export and entry of domes‑ tic movies into international festivals. Other articles created a rating system for films for underage spectators (25–26). Like his predecessor Samii, Kavusi felt that censorship was most needed to raise the quality of films and to educate Iranian audiences—­improving the textual, authorial, and spectatorial formations. Yet despite these new regula‑ tions and Kavusi’s attempts at streamlining and systematizing the censorship process and at promoting higher-­quality productions, the entrenched censor‑ ship bureaucracy and commercial relations continued their hegemony, and low-­quality, “worthless,” and “valueless” (bi arzesh) films continued to receive production and exhibition permits. This situation undermined the new cen‑ sorship regime, as did the bizarre fact that the mca was in charge both of pro‑ moting films and of censoring them, particularly when it censored movies whose production it had previously licensed. Setareh Sinema magazine com‑ plained that an institution whose function is to promote the art of cinema

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cannot at the same time judge films using the “microscope” of morality, reli‑ gious ethics, and politics (Omid 1995/1374:886–87). Kavusi resigned from his post in 1967 and was replaced by Seyyed Ebrahim Saleh, who remained in the position until the revolution of 1978–79. During Saleh’s term, the paternalistic tendencies of the censorship appara‑ tuses increased in line with the authoritarianism of the Shah’s regime. Cen‑ sorship became less a means to enhance the quality of the movies than to ensure a politically correct and submissive cinema. This resulted in two al‑ most simultaneous developments. One was the production of more violent and sexually charged but politically safe, escapist, and melodramatic commer‑ cial movies, such as the stewpot and tough-­guy films, which in a few years would bring revolutionary wrath down on the movie houses as emblems of decadent Western influences. The other was the production of new-­wave films by a younger generation of auteurs, leading to a progressive dissident cinema whose narrative engines would predict, or rehearse, the rising tide of an op‑ position and a revolution yet to come.

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4 fa mily mel odr a m a s a nd comedies The Stewpot Movie Genre

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ccording to the veteran commercial film critic, producer, and film maga­  zine publisher Ali Mortazavi, the designation of “stewpot films” or “meat-­and-­potatoes films” ( film‑e abgushti) began with Siamak Yasami’s Qa‑ run’s Treasure (1965), in particular with a celebrated sequence in which two male buddies avidly devour lamb-­and-­potato stew, abgusht, the traditional lower-­class meal, while singing a happy, humorous, and danceable tune (Na­ ficy 1984a:1).1 This movie’s screening in half a dozen Tehran cinemas helped consolidate some of the existing stylistic, thematic, generic, and industrial conventions of filmfarsi (ff) and introduced new generic elements, which to‑ gether were solidified by the film’s immense popularity into the conventions of Iranian melodramas, particularly the stewpot genre.

Siamak Yasami’s Qarun’s Treasure (Ganj‑e Qarun, 1965) Yasami had a university degree in French literature, and while holding his job at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he wrote and directed commercial movies, as well as translating stories and novels serialized in newspapers. He began Qarun’s Treasure after the tremendous commercial success of his two previ‑ ous movies, Twentieth-­Century Gentleman (Aqa‑ye Qarn‑e Bistom, 1964) and

Champion of Champions (Qahreman‑e Qahremanan, 1965), in which he had tried out some of the characters and narrative elements that were refined in Qarun’s Treasure. Qarun’s Treasure opened in November 1965 in six Tehran cinemas simultaneously and broke all previous box-­office records. It was on the screens for more than sixty days in each cinema, where an unprecedented 870,000 of Tehran’s population of over 1 million saw it, garnering 2,500 mil‑ lion tomans. The film’s enormous success caused a flurry of productions, and nine Tehran movie houses under construction sped up their completion to handle the new films then in the pipeline, riding on the coattails of Qarun’s Treasure (Omid 1995/1374:374–75). The film is about Qarun (Croesus), a rich man who abandoned his wife and son years earlier to follow his pleasurable pursuits. In reference to the leg‑ endary wealth of King Croesus, who reigned from 560 to 546 bc over Lydia in western Asia Minor, it begins with Qarun’s arrival in a chauffeured Ca‑ dillac at his palatial home. Obsequious male servants greet him at the door and usher him through a gigantic anteroom into a living room, where they remove his jacket and guide him to a dining hall, where he sits alone at the head of an enormous table. These scenes are filmed in long shots and long takes designed to impress. Doctors have limited Qarun’s intake to a strange diet of bits of bread and tightly measured amounts of water. He is suffering from more than physical ailments. He is adrift in the autumn of his life. He moralizes to his butler, “Life is meaningless to me. Although I possess every‑ thing, I do not have what I need. Money is to make a better life, not the other way around.” That he has no heir troubles him, as does his guilt at expelling his “innocent” wife and son from his home some twenty-­five years earlier. Although he deeply regrets that action, he does not specify the reasons for it. Qarun orders that his private plane be readied for a trip to Isfahan, mysteri‑ ously bidding his loyal butler farewell as though he is going on a final journey. In Isfahan, Qarun’s despondency overtakes him and, one night, he at‑ tempts suicide by throwing himself off a bridge into the Zayandeh River. Two male passers-­by notice the incident, save the drowning man, and take him to their humble home. The two buddies, a mechanic named Carefree Ali (Ali Bigham, played by Mohammad Ali Fardin) and a street toy-­seller named Hasan the Rattler (Hasan Jeghjegheh, played by Taqi Zohuri), live with Ali’s mother (Iran Qaderi). Their one-­room place is favorably contrasted with Qa‑ run’s opulent palace because it is richer in the authenticity, honesty, and hu‑ manity of its poor but hardworking occupants who faithfully retain traditions. They have little furniture, sit on the floor, eat on a cloth spread on the floor, and Ali calls his mother “naneh,” an old-­fashioned, lower-­class designation. 198

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34  The “primary scene” of toughguy movies: male bonding over a meal of abgusht (lamb stew) eaten with gusto, which gave the name to the stewpot genre. Happy Ali (Mohammad Ali Fardin, left) and Hasan the Rattler (Taqi Zohuri) in Siamak Yasami’s Qarun’s Treasure. Frame enlargement.

They exchange Qarun’s wet clothes for Carefree Ali’s spares, which makes Qarun one of them. Neither Qarun nor Ali is aware of the other’s true iden‑ tity (or of their father-­son kinship) until much later. Carefree Ali’s mother sets the dinner cloth on the floor and offers them the lowly but tasty abgusht, setting into motion the celebrated sequence that led to the generic moniker abgushti genre: stewpot films. Qarun looks on while Ali and Hasan prepare the stew by shredding the meat and mashing it with potatoes and chickpeas (figure 34). In the meantime, they also try to cheer him up with a pop song. Delivered artfully by Fardin, it recounts the story of rescuing Qarun from drowning and urging him to be merry and to forget the troubles that drove him to suicide (among its lyrics: “beat the drum of profligacy, which has its own charm”). Ali lip-­synchs all the songs, which are actually performed by the famous singer Iraj. After the song and some extra goading by his newfound buddies, involving colorful tough-­guy expressions like “abgusht bezan, roshan mishi,” roughly translated as “eat up the stew, you’ll cheer up,” Qarun, who has just been anointed with the tough-­guy moniker of “Esmal the Brainless” (Emsal Bi‑ mokh), relents and begins to eat, violating his former strict diet. They eat the stew heartily in traditional fashion with their fingers, particularly Care‑ free Ali and Hasan the Rattler, who take huge bites, loading up their mouths while talking, and licking their greasy fingers—­all in an exaggerated display of oral pleasure. A combination of elements led to the popularity of this sequence, spawn‑ ing whole movies. The social disparity between the millionaire and the hum‑ ble workers is equalized when Qarun wears the clothes of the latter and par‑ takes of their meal. The poor are valorized at the expense of the rich. This f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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sequence also privileges traditional customs and orality—­t he latter in its wid‑ est sense—­involving the sharing of traditional meals, male bonding by means of tough-­guy argot, communitarian singing and dancing, and the spouting of happy-­go-­lucky philosophy passed on by oral tradition (at another meal, Ali tells Qarun his philosophy: “Eat, sleep, bum around, and have fun”). The rest of the film repeatedly corroborates these elements. The millionaire Qarun, now masquerading as Esmal the Brainless, roams the streets of Isfahan with Hasan the Rattler, who takes pleasure in selling rattles and toys, a pleasure he displays by dancing with his full toy tray on his head while singing a celebratory song about his wandering life of vending. Carefree Ali also sings a ballad in which he again spells out his street-­smart, carefree philosophy based in oral tradition. Its refrain, “Don’t be sad, life con‑ sists of only two days, each of which should be enjoyed,” urges spontaneity and improvisation—­two important characteristics of the commercial cine‑ ma’s production mode. In this song, he refers to the riches of the fabled Qa‑ run of folk tales to provide a moralistic gloss about basic social disparities: “I don’t want Qarun’s treasures / I don’t want wealth . . . / a small corner of this world / a loaf of bread and a bowl of water is sufficient for me.” These songs not only reiterate the film’s pleasurable narrative elements but also express the personal feelings of the protagonists, the philosophy of street-­smart tough guys, and the modus operandi of the commercial cinema. In the meantime, Shirin (Foruzan), the shapely daughter of the rich Zarparast family, rejects Faramarz (Arman), the fiancé her parents had cho‑ sen for her. Her farfetched excuse for rejecting him is that she has met a much richer candidate, Qarun’s son in India, with whom she has fallen in love and whom she is planning to wed as soon as he arrives in Tehran. Hear‑ ing of this better option, her greedy parents immediately and ungraciously expel Faramarz from their home, causing Faramarz to develop a grudge that becomes the film’s complicating factor throughout. As it turns out, Shirin’s story is a lie, designed to rid her of the undesirable suitor. Now, she must either confess to her lie or produce Qarun’s son. For‑ tuitously, driving around in her bewildered state, she runs into her solution by literally running down Qarun and his two buddies in the street. This and another accidental run-­in, in which the three buddies save Shirin from the clutches of the jilted Faramarz and his hooligan friends, bring Shirin close enough to them for her to confess her dilemma, requesting their help. They immediately concoct a plan to produce Qarun’s son. The next day, Ali arrives at the Tehran Hilton Hotel, pretending to be Qa‑ run’s son returning from India, dressed in a white Nehru suit and hat, while 200

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35  Shirin (Foruzan), wearing a tough-guy fedora, does a sexy jaheli song-and-dance by the pool for Happy Ali in Qarun’s Treasure. Frame enlargement.

Hasan, dressed in a goofy British safari outfit (shorts and a pith helmet), acts as his comic translator. Qarun himself pretends to be their chauffeur. At the hotel they meet with Shirin and her parents, where much silly verbal comedy ensues that makes fun of the accent of Indians speaking Persian. In this sec‑ tion, the film clearly enters the realm of fantasy, where transgressions of all sorts are imagined—­poor becoming rich, self becoming other, love winning over traditional arranged marriage, and alienated family members reconcil‑ ing. Fantasy pays off, as the two lovers are soon alone in Shirin’s house. Ali is in the pool showing off his athletic agility by swimming and somersaulting from the diving board (Fardin was a champion wrestler before turning to act‑ ing), while Shirin cheerfully demonstrates to him her dancing and singing abilities. At first, dressed in a sari, she does a song-­and-­dance number pat‑ terned after the Indian masala films; then she does a sexy tough-­guy song-­ and-­dance number, dressed in a tight dress and wearing the black tough-­guy fedora hat (figure 35). When Ali’s mother enters Qarun’s palatial home for a visit, she undergoes multiple shocks of recognition, whereby her memory of the house, her for‑ mer identity as Qarun’s wife, and her name are restored. For the first time in the film, her name changes from the generic naneh, Ali’s mother, to Zinat, Qarun’s wife. As is appropriate to a patriarchal society, she never achieves an independent identity of her own; she is always known by her relationship to a man. Qarun apologizes for abandoning her and Ali, without specifying the reasons, and asks for her forgiveness. Zinat is willing to forgive and forget, but she warns him that Ali is very angry about having been abandoned and that if he knew that Qarun was his father, he would never have rescued him from the river. f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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Another session of musical performance takes place in the garden to cele­ brate Ali and Shirin’s engagement, in which Ali, still dressed in his Nehru outfit, does a comic dance and sings a silly song. When Faramarz, the jilted suitor, attempts to debunk him as Qarun’s imposter son, Qarun arrives on the scene, this time as himself, hand in hand with his newly found wife, Ali’s mother. He embraces Ali warmly. The inspired close-­up, showing father and son hugging hard, condenses not only their extradiegetic back history of fam‑ ily abandonment but also the history of their diegetic mistaken identities. Ali, who thinks that the man he is hugging is Emsal the Brainless in Qarun dis‑ guise, is delighted with his clever performance, while Qarun, who knows the true identity of Ali as his son, is crying from happiness for having found him at last. The two go around and around for several turns, each time revealing one side of this Janus-­faced situation—­one face joyful, the other tearful. When later a disbelieving Ali realizes the true identity of his father, he re‑ bukes him for having abandoned his family. They all gather for a meal re‑ sembling the earlier scene, except that this time Qarun appears as himself, accompanied by Shirin. This time, all the participants are who they say they are, there are no subterfuges, masquerades, false pretenses, or mistaken iden‑ tities. Punctuating the film’s moralistic philosophy, both Shirin and Qarun declare that they have given up their worldly riches for love—­one to gain a husband, the other to regain his son. Even Ali’s anger at his father evaporates when Faramarz and his gang severely beat Qarun. Ali at first hesitates to in‑ tervene, but when his father, in a tight close-­up, calls out to him, “my son,” Ali comes to his senses and shouts back “my father” in a similar, overdramatic close-­up and rushes to his rescue. The fight scene, like the others in the film, seems to have been filmed in fast motion or with a strobe light to create speed and excitement; however, the result is more hectic and chaotic than exciting. In the end, having defeated the jilted and vengeful suitor, the members of the new family—­Qarun, Ali, and Shirin, sans Ali’s mother—­triumphantly walk together shoulder to shoulder.

The Hybrid Production Mode—­Textual Formations The hybridity of this production mode was dense and multilayered. Having examined its contextual formations in the previous chapter, here follows an investigation of its textual formations, with emphasis on filmfarsi’s stewpot genre.

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Artisanal Multifunctionality In terms of authorial formation, like the artisanal filmmakers of the previ‑ ous eras, many above-­the-­line production personnel of commercial movies were multifunctional, sometimes simultaneously serving as producers, di‑ rectors, writers, and on-­camera talents of a single film. Yasami, for exam‑ ple, produced, directed, and cowrote the screenplay (with Ebrahim Zamani Ashtiani) for Qarun’s Treasure.2 Multifunctionality allowed directors to control their films, improvise better, cut corners, and keep production costs down, so that even a week or two of receipts sufficed to generate profits. Artisanal multifunctionality comes through in the following excerpt from an interview with the renowned comic Nosratollah Vahdat: “The working principle is that I perform multiple functions simultaneously, the fees for which I pour into my own pocket instead of into the pockets of others. I am a producer and I know how to spend money. I am a screenplay writer, I double my own voice in post‑ dubbing, and I produce and direct my films in my own Naqsh‑e Jahan Studio, so I don’t have to spend money on film equipment. As a result, the production costs of my films are low. I work very hard sometimes and that is why I can’t make more than one film a year” (quoted in Arian 2001/1380:68). Reza Safai, another ff filmmaker, was very prolific: he directed fifty-­two movies in a seventeen-­year career that ran from 1961 to 1978. In addition, he wrote the screenplays for twenty, he produced fourteen, edited many, and even starred in several. In the most productive and industrializing period of cinema, he made more: In 1969, he made five movies and in 1972 and 1974 four movies each (Safai 2001/1380:52). Another indication of the industrializ‑ ing tendency, in addition to increased output, was an acceleration of the pro‑ duction pace. Ironically, at first this development was encouraged by vestigial artisanal tendencies. For example, because of his multifunctionality and the weakness of civil society formations, such as film industry unions and en‑ forced labor laws, Safai reduced his total shooting days by increasing the work length of each day. In one perhaps unusual but not unheard of case, he got the cast and crew of The Twentieth-­Century Tough (Luti‑ye Qarn‑e Bistom, 1968) to film for forty-­eight hours nonstop in the Nobel Hotel in Isfahan, which he had rented, shooting an incredible 40 percent of the film. He filmed the entire movie in just nine days, edited it in seven, and dubbed it in two (Safai 2001/1380:82–83). Evidence of his frugality shows in his filming ratio, which generally, as in the case of Golnesa in Paris (Golnesa dar Paris, 1974), was one to one and occasionally two to one. He also created the publicity trailers for

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his movies from the outtakes (138). Another strategy that he and other prolific filmmakers employed was to interlace their movies, that is, while the footage of one film was being processed, such as that of his Baby Dandy (Jujeh Fokoli, 1974), he filmed another movie, Hosain the Cop (Hosain Azhdan, 1974). Often sets or stage properties owned by one studio would migrate from film to film shot in that studio. As male genres, stewpot and tough-­guy movies, two key genres of ff melo‑ dramas, were particularly favorable to the multifunctionality of male super‑ stars, such as Fardin and Naser Malekmotii, who produced, directed, and wrote the screenplays for many of the films in which they appeared. Fardin, for example, acted in scores of stewpot films, produced several, directed eleven, and took credit for the screenplays of at least six.3 Parviz Khatibi’s multifunc‑ tionality extended far beyond the cinema. He was essentially a comic lyricist and writer who also acted in the theater, in movies, and in radio variety shows. In addition, he wrote vaudeville forestage skits, which were performed before film screenings or at intermissions (pishpardeh), as well as theatrical plays, ra‑ dio plays, television scripts, and movie screenplays. He was relentlessly and pervasively productive, as he also wrote the lyrics for many pop songs, pub‑ lished his poems in periodicals, and wrote for and edited film, humor, and po‑ litical magazines (among them, Alam‑e Sinema, Towfiq, Haji Baba, and Bah‑ ram). Finally, he established his own movie studio, Alborz Films (in 1951) and produced and directed several successful commercial movies and two pro-­ government features, Noqlali (1954) and Pishehvari’s Uprising (Qiam‑e Pishe‑ hvari, 1954). During the oil nationalization crisis of the 1950s and the cia/ m16 coup, Khatibi was arrested as a journalist (the publisher of Haji Baba) for his support of Mosaddeq and imprisoned in solitary confinement (Omid 1995/1374:233, 242). He was soon released.4 When multifunctionality, a feature of the hybrid production mode, com‑ bined with media cross-­fertilization, the impact of key individuals—­such as Ismail Kushan, Fardin, and Khatibi—­on the commercial cinema extended vertically to all aspects of the film industry and dispersed horizontally across many media and cultural formations. Such multifunctionality in Iran, born out of necessity, was the obverse of the division of labor and the specialization of tasks, which were the engines of the highly industrialized cinema and the studio system in the West. Multifunctionality allowed resourceful and nimble producers, directors, and stars to pull a movie together fast and on the cheap despite (or because of) a dearth of professional means. Yet the approach also had some serious negative consequences. The accumulation of responsibili‑ ties by a few people in the production of a film and the lack of clarity in lines 204

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of authority adversely affected industry professionalization. By blurring lines of responsibility and authority, multifunctionality encouraged an existing ten‑ dency to blame others. Even producers and directors at the helm tended to blame others inside or outside the production.5 As generalists, most of the multifunctional directors perhaps knew a little bit about a lot; their liability was that their knowledge, particularly about the technical and aesthetic sides of film production, was often rudimentary. Because of their involvement in many aspects of their multiple movies, they did not have the time to widen their horizons and to educate themselves by viewing other peoples’ works or by reading for future projects. They had no time to think, reflect, or revise, for they were in constant activity. As a result, their approach to cinema was prac‑ tical and utilitarian, not intellectual, and their films kept repeating the same formulas. A good example, in addition to Safai, is Kushan, who despite—­and because of—­directing numerous movies in the 1950s and the early 1960s, continued to make movies that exhibited the narrative chaos and time-­and-­ space confusions of novice filmmakers, such as in his Amir Arsalan remake of 1966. Artisanal multifunctionality goes a long way to account for the gen‑ erally low and uneven quality of the commercial movies, particularly of ff.

The Star System The stars defined commercial movies, helping domestic films compete with imports. This claim is underscored by some mca statistics of 1975, which showed that 64 percent in a Tehran audience survey stated that they went to the movies because of the stars. However, the stars also represented the big‑ gest cost; in the 1970s, the fees of some superstars consumed nearly half of a film’s budget, typically estimated to be around seven hundred thousand to‑ mans (Moazezinia 1999/1378:65). At the height of his popularity, Fardin typi‑ cally received three hundred thousand tomans, while the directors of his mov‑ ies received between twenty-­five thousand and sixty thousand tomans and screenplay writers only ten thousand to fifteen thousand tomans (Baharlu 2000e/1379:330, 347). The multifunctionality of the stars turned them into the architects both of their filmic personae and of the cinema’s success. Far‑ din’s real-­life status as a former world-­class wrestler and his dashing, tough-­ guy but loveable screen persona, which took off with Qarun’s Treasure and was honed in sixty-­t wo features, made him so popular that a genre, “Fardin films,” ( filmha‑ye fardini) was named for him. The protagonists he played and the stories in which he appeared evolved over the years, but their essential attributes remained. Fardin generally played f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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a good-­looking, debonair, physically and mentally agile, happy-­go-­lucky, wise‑ cracking, and gung-­ho leading man who was both romantic and tough. He was fearless when confronted with dangers, bullies, and rich enemies and fun-­loving, humble, and endearing with his buddies and with women. In ad‑ dition, he was content and patient with life and kind and compassionate to the weak (Baharlu 2000e/1379:19). Almost all these characteristics fit the Care‑ free Ali character in Qarun’s Treasure. Fardin proved enormously important to the financial health of the film industry and to the psychology of the spec‑ tators. “As a hero he expressed the desires and aspirations of the spectators and assuaged their worries. In the struggles between these two tendencies he functioned both as an instrument and a pretext, a star and an ordinary per‑ son, a spectacle and a representation, and finally an opiate and a cure” (Sadr 2003/1381:184). With the onset of the revolution of 1978–79 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Fardin was sidelined, though not officially banned like most Pahlavi-­era commercial movie stars. After a long period of unemployment, he opened a confectionery store in Tehran and led a private life. In 1997, at age sixty-­seven, he wrote a desperate and sad letter to the minister of culture and Islamic guidance, Ataollah Mohajerani, and to his counterpart across town, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the director general of Voice and Vision of the Is‑ lamic Republic (vvir), in which he attempted to rewrite his history to curry favor with the new regime. He claimed that he had always made films that “were in step with the people’s beliefs,” something for which he had paid dearly by becoming an object of criticism and ridicule for the secular crit‑ ics and film establishment of the Pahlavi period. Pointing to the fact that he had been sidelined for more years after the revolution (twenty years) than he had been involved in Pahlavi-­era cinema (eighteen years), he suggested that these fallow years away from cinema should be considered sufficient punish‑ ment for whatever he may have done wrong. He pleaded with the authori‑ ties of the Islamic government to allow him to return to cinema, so that “the current and future generations may view the Fardin of today on the screens” (quoted in Fayyazi 2000:151–59). It is not known what kind of response he re‑ ceived from the authorities, but he did not act in any further movies. Yet he remained immensely popular with his fans as a former wrestling champion and a movie star, as demonstrated by the passionate outpouring of around twenty thousand people who mourned his death in April 2000 in the streets of Tehran—­a situation that the official media ignored while reformist papers played it up.6 This is all the more significant considering that he had not acted for more than two decades, during which time none of his movies could be 206

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shown. One reviewer in a reformist paper claimed that Fardin had entered the “collective memory” of Iranians (Qasemfar 2000/1379:12), while liberal film magazines devoted special editorials and articles to his contributions both to sports and to cinema.7 Some of the stars, such as Fardin and Behrouz Vossoughi, owned film studios and movie houses and produced their own movies; they chose their costars and controlled scripts and setups; and they had the “final cut.” Vos‑ soughi became a star with his breakthrough performance in Masud Kimi‑ ai’s Qaisar (1968) and doubled his salary for his subsequent movies—­from 80,000 to 150,000 tomans. By the early 1970s, he had gained control over his films from Ali Abbasi, the producer, and Amir Naderi, the director, of Tang‑ sir (1972) (Zeraati 2004:225–34). Yet becoming a star brought responsibili‑ ties, including the promotion of the movies. Vossoughi was recruited to tour with Qaisar and its director, Masud Kimiai, in the provinces to promote it. In Isfahan, the star’s fans crowded around the Shah Abbas Hotel (now Abbasi Hotel) where he was staying, breaking some of the windows and doors to see him. In Tabriz, near Vossoughi’s birthplace of Khoi, the wild, all-­male crowd was so enthusiastic that despite the presence of the police chief and an en‑ tourage of policemen guarding him, the star was raised overhead and carried aloft from the hotel to the Metropole Cinema. During the screening, specta‑ tors preferred to look at the star in the cinema rather than at his image on the screen. Admitting that his presence had blocked the streets and made control of the city difficult, the police chief was forced to whisk Vossoughi and the di‑ rector out of town on a military plane. 8 The commercial cinema’s star system was highly genre driven, with each genre supplying its own stars. This system, of course, involved women as well. Some of them were prominent and serious screen actors: Fakhri Khorvash, Parvaneh Masumi, Susan Taslimi, and Jamileh Shaikhi, took dramatic parts, acted in stage productions as well as in films, and were selective about roles. These women achieved prominence in the intellectual new-­wave cinema that emerged in the 1970s alongside ff. Yet however respected these women were as actors, their impact was limited to their on-­screen presence and magazine covers. They did not have the men’s power and privilege of multifunctional‑ ity, in other words, the power to shape their movies or the film industry. Only one woman is credited with directing a fiction feature film during the entire Pahlavi era (in fact, during the entire history of Iranian cinema up to the revo‑ lution of 1978–79): Shahla Riahi (née Qodratzaman Vafadoust), a commercial cinema actress who directed and acted in Marjan (1956).9 Another group of female entertainers and movie stars appeared in ff com‑ f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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edies, stewpot movies, and tough-­guy films in lightweight roles in which they danced and sang, sometimes in cafés and cabarets. These often performed sexually suggestive numbers for a delighted diegetic, usually male-­only, au‑ dience. A leering, voyeuristic, male-­driven camera gaze filmed their perfor‑ mances, which either isolated their legs, breasts, and faces into fragmented fetish objects or tilted and panned across their scantily clad bodies as though caressing them by hand. Foruzan, who appears as Shirin in Qarun’s Treasure, can serve as one example. Her most suggestive dance is the one she performs poolside in the tough-­guy style for the benefit of her fiancé, Carefree Ali. Some of the filming occurs from Ali’s low-­angle point of view inside the pool. Newspaper and fan magazine accounts often referred to these entertainers in breathless terms, translated from American fan magazines and Hollywood publicists, as movie stars (setareh‑ye sinema) and sex-­bombs (bomb‑e jazebeh‑ye jensi). With the emergence of a nationwide mass media in the 1970s, some of these stars and starlets were recruited to sell consumer goods in advertise‑ ments shown in cinemas, on radio and television, and in the press. These stars, whose fame generally derived less from their acting abilities than from their sexual appeal, epitomized the turning of women into sex objects. They facilitated the creation of an integrated entertainment industry in Iran, link‑ ing the movies with pop culture and consumer goods. By the late 1970s, the movies had become a target of revolutionary wrath, and such entertainers, re‑ designated once again as motreb (cheap dancer-­entertainer), would be banned. Because these women’s ticket to fame was their youth, the careers of ac‑ tresses were short and crowded. For example, during only one decade, be‑ tween 1959 and 1969, Sohaila acted in forty-­two movies, Nadereh in forty-­ one, Shahin in twenty-­eight, Puri Banai in twenty-­t wo, and Shahla (Riahi) in eighteen (Naficy 1991:132). In a fourteen-­year movie career before the revolu‑ tion, Foruzan (who appeared in Qarun’s Treasure) acted in fifty-­six features, starring in most, many of them stewpot and tough-­guy films, with her costars Fardin and Malekmotii, several of them directed by Yasami, who also made Qarun’s Treasure. This amounts to an average of 3.8 movies per year, but in some years she was even more active. In four of these years, 1968–72, she acted in eight movies annually, demonstrating extraordinary productivity and popularity. Interestingly, unlike the men, many female stars of ff movies used only one screen name—­Foruzan’s real name was Parvin Khairbakhsh. In a society that considered women’s work as public entertainers immoral, this was cam‑ ouflage; it also created a mysterious and alluring screen persona. Perhaps, too, it stemmed from the uncertainties of Iranians’ political life and their 208

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penchant for veiling; pseudonyms and camouflaged identities had wide cur‑ rency. But fan magazines glorified the women and dredged up their private lives for public consumption, defeating camouflage. Perhaps using a single pseudonym simply acknowledged the fundamental masquerade at the heart of cinema. Finally, there was a third category of women movie stars. These were pro­ fessional singers, dancers, and entertainers, who also sometimes acted in commercial movies, usually as themselves performing for diegetic audiences. They regularly appeared in stewpot and tough-­guy movies in café, bar, and nightclub scenes. As radio and television came of age in the 1950s and the 1970s, respectively, some of these entertainers migrated to these media with much success, among them Banu Mahvash in the 1950s, Delkash in the 1960s, and Googoosh in the 1970s. These entertainers proved immensely popular with audiences—­in life, in death, or in exile. Banu Mahvash (née Akram) enjoyed great popularity, particularly with lower-­class patrons and the tough guys, and she performed sometimes risqué songs in the cabarets, on the radio, and in the movies, the most famous of which involved call-­and-­ response singing with her male spectators. She appeared as a screen-­credited character in at least seven comedies and melodramas between 1956 and 1960, the first being Sardar Saker’s The Sun Shines (Khorshid Midarakhshad, 1956), and the last Reza Karimi’s What’s the Difference (Ki Beh Kiyeh, 1960). How‑ ever, she performed songs and dance numbers for many more; by one count, she performed three hundred songs for the movies (Omid 1995/1374:333). She danced voluptuously, particularly the special tough-­guy dances, and she sang the tough’s “orchard alley” ballads (avaz‑e kuchh baghi). She published a dar‑ ing “autobiography,” which was really a sex manual illustrated with swimsuit photos of herself, called Secrets of Sexual Fulfillment (Raz‑e Kamiyabi‑ye Jensi, 1957). It was widely available and reprinted many times, even though she was prosecuted for it in June 1960.10 Studios and exhibitors, such as Asr‑e Ta‑ lai Studio, spliced film clips of her into unrelated Iranian and foreign mov‑ ies at appropriate spots, such as in the saloon scenes of American westerns, to make the films more palatable to lower-­class tastes (figure 36). Vossoughi recalls that in a color western, Gary Cooper walked into a saloon to order a drink. The film then cut to a black-­and-­white clip of Mahvash singing a luti song. Several more cuts between Cooper and Mahvash sutured the closeu ­ p image of Cooper looking with the image of Mahvash dancing (Zeraati 2004:74). The cinematic gaze was mobilized to promote cross-­cultural in‑ tegration and identification: Mahvash became a conduit linking two foreign characters and two archetypal male national genres—­Iranian tough-­guy mov‑ f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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36  Banu Mahvash, famous for her tough-guy “orchard alley” ballads and for many other sexy songs and dances. Still courtesy of Jahanshah Javid and the Iranian.

ies and American westerns. Shahla also relates that when her movie, Marjan, did not do well, the producer forced her to cut in Mahvash’s song-­and-­dance clips to spice it up and to change its depressing ending so as to bring in spec‑ tators. These changes so disappointed her, however, that she did not direct an‑ other movie (Arian 2003/1382:60). When Mahvash died in a car accident in 1961, religious authorities at first balked at allowing her to be buried in a Muslim cemetery, since entertainers were considered unchaste and unclean and were disdained by official Islam. Yet when they finally relented, it “attracted the largest number of mourners ever seen at an Iranian funeral before Ayatollah Mahmud Taleqani’s in 1979” (Chehabi 2000:162). According to the famous tough guy Shaban the Brain‑ less (Shaban Jafari), a million fans thronged the streets of Tehran to mourn and pay their respects to her (Sarshar 2002:173). Delkash (née Esmat Baqerpur) was a singer of ballads with a clear, operatic voice, which became androgynous in its power and tonality as the years wore on.11 Her frequent radio broadcasts, accompanied by Mehdi Khaledi’s violin, made her famous and beloved. Her fame grew with her appearance in many commercial movies, beginning with Kushan’s melodrama Disgraced (Sharm‑ sar, 1950), which consolidated the model for musical melodramas involving 210

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professional café singers that Irani’s The Lor Girl had initiated. In the film, Delkash plays a country girl who is befriended by a city boy who lures her into the city but soon betrays and abandons her. Unable to deal with the resulting shame, she stays in the city and gradually becomes a famous café singer, al‑ lowing Delkash to display her professional singing abilities. After many com‑ plications, however, she returns to her home village to marry a country boy. Tradition is restored. Her success in Disgraced made Delkash the first star of Iranian cinema, whose private life and career became fodder for fan maga‑ zines such as Setareh Sinema. She teamed up with Kushan’s Pars Film Studio in seven similar movies, and she made three more commercial movies with other directors. In at least two of them, Chance, Love, and Accident (Shans, Eshq, va Tasadof, 1959, dir. Hosain Madani) and Gamble of Life (Qomar‑e Zen­ degi, 1972, dir. Abbas Kasai), she appeared as herself, a famous café singer, demonstrating her extradiegetic star status. In the latter movie, she plays a mother whose daughter is blinded by the shocking news of the purported death of her mother in a car accident. Later, the culprits are arrested and her mother emerges from her hiding place. When she sings to her daughter, her beautiful voice shocks the daughter again, restoring her eyesight. Finally, sig‑ nificantly for the tough-­guy genre, Delkash appeared in drag in Yasami’s film, Top Dog (Zalem Bala, 1958). Dressed as a male tough guy, she sang an orchard alley ballad so artfully in the toughs’ special style that it gained national noto‑ riety, one fanned by radio broadcasts and records.12 The stage performances of both Mahvash and Delkash as tough guys and their participation in luti movies were instrumental in popularizing this movie genre. However, a woman singing the orchard alley ballad in the mu‑ sical mode called Bayat‑e Tehran was frowned upon. When Delkash recorded it in the late 1950s for broadcast by Radio Iran, some of her musician friends tried to dissuade her on the grounds that singing such a low-­class song, typ‑ ical of “tough guys, street vendors selling kebab, and construction work‑ ers,” was beneath her.13 But she forged ahead, and when the song was aired, the many phone calls to the station requesting it proved her instinct for the popular. In October 1998, after almost twenty years of absence from the public stage because of the Islamic Republic’s ban on public performances by female sing‑ ers, Delkash toured Europe and gave a concert in London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall to standing ovations by her exile admirers. She died in Iran in 2004. Googoosh (née Faeqeh Atashin) was a child star on the nightclub circuit and became the first pop music star of the new medium of television, appear‑ ing first on the commercial Sabet Pasal Iran Television and later on nirt, on f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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which she performed successfully for many years into the late 1970s. Her lively and informal personality, her sophisticated mix of Iranian and Western musical forms, and her creative dances and performances spiced with know‑ ing humor all made her the darling of most social strata. She became the first woman to make public singing and dancing “accepted by polite society” (Chehabi 2000:162). She was also a prolific actress, as she appeared in thirty movies, starting with Gorji Obadia’s Fear and Hope (Bim va Omid, 1960) and ending with Parviz Sayyad’s Into the Night (Dar Emtedad‑e Shab, 1977). In sev‑ eral of these, she was paired with the screen heartthrob Vossoughi, whom she married for a short time, a romance that fed their stardom. When the revolu‑ tion of 1978–79 came, unlike many entertainers who went into exile, includ‑ ing Vossoughi, she stayed behind in Iran, where she did not perform publicly. However, when she toured North America in 2000 after some twenty years of enforced silence under the Islamic Republic, along with her new husband, the film director Masud Kimiai, her concerts in Canada and the United States were thronged by ten thousand to twelve thousand fans per performance, with tickets ranging from $35 to $250 (Sabety 2001).14 These fans were not only old-­timers remembering her prerevolution performances at home but also members of a new generation of Iranians reared abroad on the elders’ re‑ counted memories and on the cds of her songs. The popularity of these professional entertainers and movie stars, despite the traditionalists’ general disdain for them, was driven by encroaching mo‑ dernity, the performers’ acute expression of interiority and personal and so‑ cial desires, their skill, and the circulation of their star personae, imagery, and songs by the entertainment industry, which transformed them into veritable superstars and commodities. This popularity was instrumental not only in the financial success of individual movies but also in ushering in the com‑ mercial cinema’s hybrid production mode. Another type of superstardom in this period involved the Shah and his three consecutive wives. As the Shah became more authoritarian and influ‑ ential, his pictures routinely appeared on the front pages of national news­ papers, on the inside cover of all school textbooks, and at the top of practically every nightly television and radio newscast. His portraits were placed in all government offices, businesses, and schools, and films of his activities were featured in newsreels shown in cinemas nationwide. His wives, Queen Faw‑ zieh, Empress Soraya, and Shahbanu Farah, were featured alongside him or individually on magazine covers.15 Soraya even acted in at least one feature movie in Europe after her divorce from the Shah. Farah developed an identity of her own as a major supporter of the highbrow visual arts and performing 212

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arts in the country, headlining many festivals, concerts, and performances. However, despite the superstar pervasion of their images, the Shah and his queens never attained genuine star status, since their ubiquity was driven by politics, not popularity.

Improvisation and Spontaneity Improvisation is one of the key features of the Iranian literary and perfor‑ mance arts, particularly of classic poetry, comic theatrical performances (ruhozi and siahbazi), oral epic storytelling (naqqali), classical art music, and now of cinema, particularly the ff movies. Improvisation and its resulting loose structure seem well suited to Iranian psychology, society, and history. In analyzing the emergence of modern literary forms in Iran, Ehsan Yarshater astutely elaborates on this: “The Persian literary mind is of a meandering and centrifugal turn. It has a strong predilection for embellishment and ara‑ besque. It does not take easily to a controlled and balanced construction that leads from diverse premises to a climax and resolution. By Western standards, a loose structure seems to be the weakness of most Persian attempts at fic‑ tion writing” (1971:303). The tolerance for loose narrative structures, narrative chaos, indirection, and meandering plots is rather high, and it is not only re‑ lated to Iranians’ meandering “turn of mind” but also to their propensity for improvisation. As Michael Hillmann notes, authors, readers, and critics take a lesser interest in “determining the thematic unity of a whole ghazal [lyric poem]” than in finding “in a particular ghazal an especially apt expression of familiar images and themes” (1990:75). Examining the way improvisation works in classic art music helps bring out its deep cultural penetration and aesthetic powers not only in music but also in the other arts, including cinema, where it contributed to the hybrid production mode. Classical Persian music is organized into twelve repertories (dastgah), each containing up to thirty melodies (gusheh) that have been transmitted orally over the centuries. Each melody is only a framework, which a good performer is expected to fill in, or elaborate on, spontaneously. As such, music composi‑ tion and performance occur simultaneously and extemporaneously, based on existing frameworks. No framework, however, is inviolable. Both performers and listeners intuitively know “the compositional procedures without being aware of them” (Zonis 1973:98–99). That is why musicians are often unable to articulate what they are doing when improvising and listeners are unable to explain why they are so affected by what they hear. However, improvisation f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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is not a free-­for-­all. Like moviemaking it is intensely decision based, involving many microdecisions that must remain latent and invisible to the audience. To improvise, ensemble members must at once both compose and perform. They not only have to know intimately all of the traditional repertories and the hundreds of melodies within them but also decide when a particular reper‑ tory should be played and which melody within each repertory should be per‑ formed, in what order, and for what duration. After reaching those decisions intuitively, musicians must make further decisions, particularly during the actual performance, about which of the three types of elaboration and embel‑ lishment they will employ. These are repetition, ornamentation, and centoni‑ zation (Zonis 1973:105). Repetition is a characteristic of all Iranian oral, musical, visual, and per‑ forming arts, from art music to pop music, from poetry to carpets, from cal‑ ligraphy to Islamic architecture, and from miniature paintings to film. It in‑ volves not only the repetition of individual motifs, or absences thereof, but also the repetition of sets of motifs to create larger patterns and complexities. Ornamentation, by which the musical passages are enlivened and enriched, also occurs in all Iranian arts, but we cannot think of it as an additional deco‑ rative feature; rather, it constitutes an integral component of their ontology. Lastly, centonization (patchworking, montage) refers to the manner in which recognizable motifs from various sources are quoted and pieced together to form a whole. To create and perform a composition, players use the stock of known repertories and melodies and filler materials and elaborate them ex‑ temporaneously by means of repetition, ornamentation, and centonization, thus turning familiar motifs into innovative personal passages. The building blocks are known, but the use of these familiar building blocks is particular to each performer and to each of his or her performances. In this process of improvisation, the audience serves a crucial, reciprocal function, as Ella Zonis explains: “In performances where the player is before a small group of friends, the improvisation is partially controlled by glances and verbal suggestions between the performer and his audience. Because of this subtle communication the mood of the listeners determines the char‑ acter and often the form of the player’s improvisation” (1973:14). A similar rule-­bound improvisation with deep ideological, cultural, and artistic reso‑ nances operates not only in American jazz music but also in many other Af‑ rican American cultural and artistic spheres. The value and saliency of this kind of improvisation in African American cinema has yet to be sufficiently recognized. In the classical Hollywood cinema, too, which serves as a model for the 214

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commercial hybrid cinema in Iran, the spectators are crucial. Yet since the performance of the film is not live, the audience is metaphorically inserted into the filmic diegesis during production by means of the Hollywood indus‑ trial production mode and its realist invisible style, according to which spec‑ tators are given the optimum vantage point, or the best seat in the house, through the mise-­en-­scène, shot composition, and continuity editing, which guarantee viewer omniscience, narrative clarity, and a realistic illusion of the world (with certain deliberate generic and authorial exceptions) (Ray 1985). The realist invisible style of Iranian commercial cinema, however, does not fully subscribe to the classic Hollywood cinema’s formal paradigm, for it is filtered through improvisation, self-­reflexivity, and veiling. Improvisation manifests itself in the production and the poetics of ff ­movies—­in their industrial and textual formations. The internalization of improvisation by Iranians—­filmmakers, film critics, film historians, and film spectators—­may account for their lack of recognition and appreciation, or for their condemnation, of improvisation’s constitutive and productive function in this cinema. Extemporaneous ways of handling life and art by repetition, ornamentation, centonization, and by the culturally acceptable strategies of dissimulation (taqqiyeh), accismus (taarof ), cleverness (zerangi), and inside-­ outside dynamism (zaher va baten) are so ideologically ingrained as to have become naturalized—­part of the air that one breathes. As a result, the inter‑ pellative power of improvisation goes unnoticed, or is taken for granted; and, if it is noticed at all, it is undermined by displacement strategies such as de‑ fensiveness and undervaluation. That is another reason why film critics like Kavusi, who condemned ff movies, ended up making films that did not differ much in terms of their narrative chaos and stylistic flaws. But why do Iranians highly value improvisation for one art form, classical music, and not for another, the movies? For one thing, classical art music has a deeply spiritual and mystical—­even religious—­dimension that sets it apart both from other types of music and from the material and industrial arts, in which financial and materialistic aspects dominate. For another, classical mu‑ sicians are highly trained and skilled, having spent years under the tutelage of masters and mentors, whose teachings they proudly acknowledge and pass on to their own tutees. What they express in their performances is not only that learned mastery but also their own unique authentic, private feelings and creative impulses—­which improvisation channels to the surface. Moviemak‑ ing, on the other hand, is an industrial, collective art, and commercial movies rarely constitute the expressions of a single author. In the commercial cinema of the second Pahlavi period, authorship was f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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even more contingent, as many directors were undereducated in the arts and techniques of production. Their improvisation was not informed by deep knowledge or a mastery of filmmaking, and it did not emanate from a lofty, spiritual source or from an inner auteurist spark. Rather, it meant to capital‑ ize on the popularity and bankability of certain genres, stars, plots, and char‑ acters, and it often copied foreign films or successful domestic models. It was also driven by lack—­of proper equipment, specialized personnel, or profes‑ sional procedures. Finally, movie improvisation was often slapdash and crude, not artistic and meticulous. Yet this sort of improvisation was still not without precedent or without value, as the critics uniformly claimed, for it followed its own logic—­that of an Iranian style of improvisation. Regarded in this light, features of the ff movies that the critics disdained and considered errors or evidence of crass commercialism acquire new meaning and systematicity. This section argues that Iranians’ art of improvisation carried over into commercial movies, constituting the key engine for their production and their poetics, both of which value chance, coincidence, repetition, spontaneity, ornamentation, centonization, and tolerance for loose narrative structures, even narrative chaos. This is not to say that improvisation led to high-­quality commercial movies—­most were not of good quality—­but to recognize and critically theorize the constitutive forces forming the commercial cinema in‑ dustry, its products, and its popularity. The directors of ff movies often lacked formal training in film produc‑ tion techniques and aesthetics and their technical knowledge about cameras, lenses, lighting, film emulsion, sound recording, and the coaching of actors was rudimentary. Many of the producers for whom they made movies had even less formal education. The U.S.-­trained commercial film director Amir Shervan, for example, claims that a majority of the producers in commercial cinema had not finished even their high school education (quoted in Moaz‑ ezinia 1999/1378:33). As a result, both producers and directors worked in‑ tuitively, and spontaneously, patching things together as they went along. Some of the early commercial films, such as Kushan’s Prisoner of the Emir (Zendani‑ye Amir, 1948), suffered from serious technical and continuity prob‑ lems, particularly a lack of proper sound synching. This resulted in excessive lip flapping in dialogues and in asynchronous sound effects, to the point that the sounds of horse hoofs and whipping were heard either far before or far af‑ ter the relevant images. Likewise, some night scenes in this film were lit so brightly that they seemed “brighter than the sunniest summer days” (Jairani 2000b/1379:68). Unknowingly, the directors often violated the rules of realist cinema’s invisible style, which involved a coherent mise-­en-­scène, 180-­degree 216

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filming, and continuity editing to guarantee viewer omniscience, narrative clarity, and realism. The resulting spatial and temporal discontinuity led to narrative chaos and spectator confusion. As Farrokh Gaffary in an important early article on the problems of Iranian cinema noted, in the 1950s the posi‑ tion of the “script girl,” who ensures the continuity of mise-­en-­scène from shot to shot, did not exist. As a result, it was not uncommon to see a person leaving a room in one shot, and in the next exiting the same door from a different angle, while wearing a different outfit (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:296). An extended, free translation of a portion of an interview with Fardin provides some examples. According to him, most commercial movie directors “did not know their jobs,” could not direct the actors, and lacked technical knowledge. If they took a shot from one angle, “they couldn’t figure out where the camera should be for the next shot. They worked by chance and luck, with the result that sometimes after processing the dailies there was no way to correctly edit the shots. For example, if a man was supposed to enter from this door and exit from that door, they were forced to show him entering and exiting from the same door” (quoted in Baharlu 2000e/1379:65–66). Improvisation was so deep a cultural orientation that even experienced and foreign-­trained filmmakers such as Kushan and Shervan and film critics such as Amirhushang Kavusi unknowingly resorted to it. Their films did not contain as many of the technical errors of the cinematically illiterate filmmak‑ ers, but improvisation and formal chaos were structuring presences in them. The production of many movies would begin without a completed screen‑ play, with one that was directly copied from another film, or with a few notes that the director had jotted down on a piece of paper. Such an ad hoc man‑ ner of developing screenplays also factored into the repetitive structures and narrative lacunae and confusion of the movies. According to Fardin, Kushan, the head of Pars Film Studio and one of the more professional commercial di‑ rectors, often wrote his scripts on the run, on the back of rectangular white cardboard cigarette boxes, which were fashionable in those days (quoted in Baharlu 2000e/1379:68). Khatibi corroborates not only Kushan’s unplanned modus operandi but also the extemporaneous elasticity of ff productions. Ap‑ parently, only one week before filming was to begin, Kushan commissioned Khatibi to write the screenplay—­w ith a “hot and exciting” story—­for a movie that he had already scheduled to be released during the very lucrative New Year (Noruz) holiday season. After the usual haggling over fees, intensified by the urgency of the imminent deadline, Khatibi set to write the script immedi‑ ately, completing it in a record three days. Yet he withheld the screenplay until his contractual deadline, the day before filming. As a result, neither the direc‑ f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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37  The poster for Ismail Kushan’s toughguy movie We’re Your Servant, Master Karim. Collection of the author.

tor nor the actors and crewmembers had an opportunity to prepare them‑ selves in advance. Nonetheless, Kushan managed to finish the movie We’re Your Servant, Master Karim (Ussa Karim Nokaretim, 1974) on time, which he released through his own cinema chain to record-­breaking box-­office reve‑ nues (Khatibi 1994:134–35) (figure 37). In many cases, the screenplay was not even ready before filming began. It thus would be written as filming progressed, an approach reminiscent of the simultaneity of composition and performance in classical art music. As Far‑ din relates, when the director Jalal Moqaddam signed him and other actors for his movie The Secret of the Jujube Tree (Raz‑e Derakht‑e Senjed, 1971), “he only told us the story orally, and he promised several times to write the full screen‑ play and give it to us before filming.” This he never did, and when filming be‑ gan, he wrote the script on the set, scene by scene, with the actors unaware of—­and unprepared for—­t he upcoming scenes. “When filming was over, the story still did not have an end” (quoted in Baharlu 2000e/1379:144–245). 218

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Without a completed script, there could be no script breakdown before filming to assist with prior planning and with the assignment of resources, tasks, equipment, cast, crew, and stage property. This often created chaotic and tense situations during filming, as film crews, for example, would dis‑ cover that they did not have the proper lenses or stage properties for the day’s shoot. The production would either stop until what was missing was found or the crew and cast improvised around the missing items. Most average spec‑ tators would not notice the missing property, but for observant spectators it would stick out like a sore thumb. This sort of discontinuity was rampant. When the film critic Toghrol Afshar visited a new commercial studio, he pub‑ lished in Sepid O Siah magazine a lengthy and at times humorous but highly critical account of what he observed there, including the story that when after several hours of haggling among cinematographer, director, cast, and crew the scene was ready for filming, the director suddenly discovered that he had forgotten to bring his screenplay to the set, forcing a long pause in produc‑ tion, which was lengthened further by a protracted lunch break (quoted in Sa’dvandian 2001/1380:556–57). Such production chaos inevitably leaked into the film’s textual system. The lack of prepared scripts and of preplanning also meant that directors, screenwriters, cast, and crew had to rely to a large extent on spontaneity and improvisation, which drove them to rely on generic conventions, story formu‑ las, and stereotyping. Directors and writers concocted impromptu plots from the arsenal of known ones, borrowing from oral tradition, popular romances, domestic films, or foreign movies. Actors, too, often relied on stock charac‑ ter behavior, gestures, and dialogue, which made their acting style more pre‑ sentational and stereotypical than representational and psychological—­a style typified by the performances of naqqali, ruhozi, siahbazi, and taziyeh and by miniature paintings.16 Another side effect of the lack of preplanning was that all actors had to be present on the set at all times in case they were needed for a scene, creating resentment among those who had to wait in costume and makeup for hours without being called before the camera. This was the case with The Course of the River (Masir‑e Rudkhaneh, 1964), starring Fardin, which Saber Rahbar wrote, filmed, and directed. This situation would have driven up the cost of production were it not for the clever and opportunistic practices it spawned. Some popular and prolific actors, such as Reza Baikimanverdi, were able to act in several movies in one day by taking advantage of the various wait‑ ing periods on each film set. Likewise, technically proficient directors, such as Safai, could film scenes of singing or of fighting for more than one movie f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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during the same filming session (Baharlu 2000e/1379:133, 270, 154). While these opportunistic practices did not raise the production cost, they likely in‑ creased the production chaos, as multitasking actors sometimes confused the characters they were playing in different movies or mixed up lines of dialogue from different films. Shahin Yazdani, who worked as a production assistant in the late 1970s, remembers that Baikimanverdi was once involved in three si‑ multaneous movies, which were being shot in three different cities. The star would arrive on the set from the airport, not sure of the character he was to play and not sure of his dialogue, forcing the director to assign a prompter to walk with the traveling camera during filming, feeding Baikimanverdi his lines (Naficy 2003a).17 In one reported instance, Baikimanverdi scheduled two production crews from different movies to film him in the same loca‑ tion, filming with one crew while the other prepared to film him (Mostaghaci 2003:57). Producers engaged in similar behaviors. When famed entertain‑ ers visited Kushan to discuss film projects, he would take advantage of their presence by having them sing a song on his Pars Film Studio stage, which he would film and later insert into his movies. Because of the production and textual problems that it would create, im‑ provisation did not make for an ideal strategy either in developing screenplays or in filming, and over the years other strategies were explored. The most sig‑ nificant was the recruitment of novelists, writers, poets, and journalists to ei‑ ther write or adapt screenplays.18 The constitutive relationship between the newspaper and magazine serials popular in the 1950s and 1960s and movie melodramas is important and requires further studies.19 The popular novel‑ ist Ali Kasmai, for example, set a trend for melodramatic country-­versus-­city tear-­jerkers with his screenplays for Disgraced, Mother (Madar, 1951, dir. Es‑ mail Kushan), and Neglect (Gheflat, 1953, dir. Ali Kasmai), the first two star‑ ring Delkash. With their stories favorably comparing the purity and honesty of villagers with the sophistication and corruption of city dwellers, both Dis‑ graced and Mother were highly successful with lower-­class village immigrants living on city margins. The former made an unprecedented 200,000 tomans in just one month (Jairani 1999/1378:126) and stayed on Tehran’s Rex Cin‑ ema screen for 192 days (Akrami 1992a:573). Mother stayed on the Metro‑ pole Cinema and Homay Cinema screens in Tehran for 102 nights with box-­ office revenues of about 220,000 tomans, which paid for the production cost twice over. This was significant, as Kushan had spent a lot of money on hir‑ ing its star and needed to recoup it. He had paid Delkash 8,000 tomans for acting and 12,000 tomans for the twelve songs she sang in the movie (Omid 1995/1374:218). The popular and financial successes of these two movies es‑ 220

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tablished some of the key conventions of ff movies, particularly the use of entertainers as actors and the adaptation of film stories from other sources (Kasmai had adapted the story of Disgraced from an English writer and that of Mother from a newspaper account of a real story). The novelist Mohammad Maimandinezhad followed with many screenplays, among them The Domes‑ tic Prey (Shekar‑e Khanegi, 1951, dir. Sadegh Bahrami and Ali Dariyabaigi) and A Star Twinkled (Setareh-­i Cheshmak Zad, 1963, dir. Mohsen Badie), while the writer Hosainqoli Mostaan wrote the screenplay for The Sinner (Gonah‑ kar, 1953, dir. Mehdi Garami). Several poets wrote screenplays for commer‑ cial movies, including many comedies. Mehdi Sohaili, for example, wrote the screenplays for Bride on the Run (Arus‑e Farari, 1958, dir. Esmail Kushan), Ebram in Paris (Ebram dar Paris, 1964, dir. Esmail Kushan), and For God’s Sake Give Generously (Bedeh dar Rah‑e Khoda, 1970, dir. Reza Safai). Likewise, Ismail Nuriala penned the scripts for Men of Dawn (Mardan‑e Sahar, 1970) and Entertainer (Motreb, 1972), both of which he directed. Surprisingly, the renowned leftist modernist poet Ahmad Shamlu wrote screenplays for nearly a dozen commercial features in the 1960s, including Branded with Shame (Daghe-­ Nang, 1965), which he also directed. That all his screenplays for the despised filmfarsi were written over a brief period may imply both a short-­ lived financial need on Shamlu’s part and his internalization of the codes of the hegemonic commercial cinema. He once almost admitted that this was a “sad story” of financial need, of being forced to “write to obtain a morsel to eat . . . of survival by means of the pen, in truth, a type of literary prostitution” (quoted in Moradi 1989/1368:24–25). Several poets and writers directed their own commercial movies, among them Esmail Nuriala, who directed Men of Dawn and Entertainer, Nezam Fa‑ temi, who directed The Laughing Widows (Bivehha‑ye Khandan, 1961), and Is‑ mail Pursaid, who directed Women Are Angels (Zanha Fereshtehand, 1963). The journalist Khosrow Parvizi also directed A Girl Cries Out (Dokhtari Far‑ iad Mikeshad, 1961). Although the movies of these writers, journalists, and poets were an improvement over those of the other commercial directors in terms of content, they did not represent a breakthrough. Indeed, their screen‑ writing and directing helped consolidate the various genres of the commer‑ cial cinema, which many of them disdained and ridiculed.20 Begun in the 1950s, an imitative, montage method of filmmaking grew stronger in the 1960s and the 1970s. It was driven not only by the improvisa‑ tional enabling factors already noted but also by the emergence of the hybrid production mode, which required increased output. Faced with heightened demand for product and unable to fulfill it with original domestic ideas—­due f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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in part to heavy censorship and in part to a lack of good screenplay writers—­ movie producers, directors, and writers turned to ideas from elsewhere. As Shervan told me, “Our film ideas were all copied from foreign movies. If you are making, say, five films a year, how can you be so creative as to write all of the screenplays yourself?” (Naficy 1988a:36). Shervan was trained in the‑ ater and film in the United States, and he had a prolific output, directing two films a year between 1971 and 1977; he wrote the screenplays of twelve of the twenty-­two features he directed. Shervan’s statement demonstrates the hold of the artisanal production mode’s multifunctionality on him: it assumed that directors write their own screenplays. In a fully industrialized cinema, the di‑ vision of labor would have made that a rarity.

Oral Narrative Roots The literature about the impact of oral traditions on the cinemas of the third world, particularly among those in Africa, has been growing (Armes 1987; Diawara 1989; Ukadike 1994). Not much has been written about this aspect of the Iranian cinema, although oral tradition entered it with the sound mov‑ ies of Abdolhosain Sepanta. His Firdausi (1934) was based on the life of the eleventh-­century poet Abolqasem Ferdowsi and re-­created parts of the mythi‑ cal and paradigmatic battle of father and son—­Rostam and Sohrab—­from Ferdowsi’s epic poem Shahnameh. His Shirin and Farhad (1934) was inspired by Nezami’s famous ballad, his Black Eyes (1936) centered on a love story set during Nader Shah’s conquest of India in the 1700s, and his Laili and Maj‑ nun (1937) dealt with another ancient love legend memorialized in Nezami’s poetry. The borrowing from history, mythology, and poetic oral tradition con‑ tinued well into the 1970s, alongside adaptations of foreign literary works and movies. The Persian literary tradition has been divided into two basic types. “Po‑ lite literature” satisfied the needs and tastes of ruling classes, while “folk literature” catered to the needs and aspirations of common people (Cejpek 1968:609). In the past, a minority elite preserved the polite literature in written form, while folk or popular literature was usually preserved orally (Hanaway 1970:1; 1971b:59). In general, men wrote the polite literature for men, while women told the folk tales orally to women and children (Mahjoub 2003/1382:vol. 2:55). Polite and popular literatures, and high and low culture, have blurred considerably, particularly in the era of market capitalism and the global circulation of mass media and mass cultures. Art-­house new-­wave films, which generally drew on high culture and con‑ 222

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temporary literary works, addressed the educated strata as their primary spec‑ tators. On the other hand, ff products principally used stories, themes, and characters borrowed and updated from Persian oral literature and syncret‑ ically impregnated them with contemporary elements. These latter movies also drew on newspaper serials and novels, which had become the rage since the 1950s. However, as demonstrated in this and the following chapter, ff di‑ rectors borrowed not only stories, themes, and characters but also many nar‑ rative and structural features from the oral and popular literatures.21 Finally, ff was indebted to the popular theater, particularly the various comic genres, and to their actors and directors in Tehran and Isfahan who migrated to the cinema and adapted plays. Structuralist scholars identified the constants of the oral and popular liter‑ atures as an aid in cross-­cultural comparative studies (Davidson 2000). Ruth Finnegan in her study of various oral traditions—­from Tatar epics to Anglo-­ American ballads—­identified three indexes for oral poetry: its composition, its mode of transmission, and its performance (Finnegan 1977:17). I refer to this classification as a framework for both oral epics and commercial ff mov‑ ies, particularly the stewpot and tough-­guy films.22 The proponents of the “oral-­formulaic” school, such as Vladimir Propp, Milam Parry, Alfred Lord, and Eric Havelock, contend that oral poets usually composed their epics and ballads orally, like Iranian art music performers, based on extensive reser‑ voirs of widely known stock phrases, plots, stanzas, and themes. The trans‑ mission of oral poems from poets to audiences was accomplished by a combi‑ nation of memorization and re-­creation, whereby these stock formulas were recalled and recombined in novel ways (Finnegan 1977:139–45). During oral performances, poets, like musicians, continued to compose in response to au‑ dience reactions (Lord 1976:5). In his examination of the oral-­formulaic aspects of Homeric poems, Have‑ lock noted that these preliterate poems constituted a sort of “social encyclope‑ dia” that contained information and guidance for the preservation of culture and the management of an individual’s civic and personal life. These oral ep‑ ics were both didactic and entertaining. The transmission of the social and ethical codes embedded in them was accomplished by means of a formulaic structure consisting of forms, words, and stock expressions bound up in hex‑ ameter. Havelock describes them as containing “aphorism and proverb and prescriptive examples of how to behave, and warning examples of how not to behave; with continual recapitulation of bits of tribal and civic history, of ancestral memories for which the artist serves as the unconscious vehicle of repetition and record. The situations were always typical, not invented; they f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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repeated endlessly the precedents and judgments, the learning and wisdom, which the Hellenic culture has accumulated and hoarded” (1963:48). Songs were employed to aid in memorizing them, often accompanied by dance. Fur‑ ther, professional storytellers with excellent memories and poetic abilities adapted the epics through improvisation during performances to suit a new generation’s needs (Innis 1975:59–60). In his pioneering analysis of the morphology of nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century Russian folklore, Propp examined many folk tales to iden‑ tify thirty-­one “stable and constant” functions or components of quest narra‑ tives that circumscribed the tales’ events (Propp 1968). If a systematic mor‑ phological study of ff were undertaken, thematic constants similar to Propp’s would appear. Mary Ellen Page and William Hanaway provided some interesting struc‑ turalist ideas concerning Persian epics and popular romances. In her analy‑ sis of professional storytelling (naqqali) in the mid-­1970s, Page showed that storytellers continued to “rework and reinterpret” epics such as Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh.23 Storytellers composed from a number of sources as they per‑ formed: they drew on poems of the Shahnameh, which they had faithfully memorized, plot outlines written in their scrolls (called tumar), and other memorized poems and literary and religious stories (Page 1979:198–200). Public performances were usually held in coffeehouses or on television, epi‑ sodically over many months, complete with cliff hangers. Page cites the un‑ usual case of a storyteller who told a single story in daily installments that took one and a half years to complete (1977:208–9). Finally, similar to the reciters of the Homeric poems, these Persian oral tellers of tales not only en‑ tertained their audiences but also educated and enlightened them. It is in the context of combined entertainment and education that Qajar-­era coffeehouses successfully integrated film screenings as part of their storytelling tradition. And it is the same combined function that migrated from oral tradition to ff films like Qarun’s Treasure. The origin of rampant didacticism in ff movies must be sought in their use of the oral traditions and their “social encyclope‑ dia.” Antimaterialist truisms are proffered in Qarun’s Treasure in the guise of happy, snappy songs and adventures. In his study of the popular romances of pre-­Safavid Iran, Hanaway noted that from a thematic point of view, these romances were the “principal means of propagating the ideals of javanmardi [chivalry] among the illiterate popula‑ tion, for whom the epic heroes represented in a simple and accessible man‑ ner the chivalric ideal” (1970:145). Many of these romances originated in

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the oral tradition and were elaborated during coffeehouse naqqali and comic ruhozi performances. Some, such as Samak Ayyar and Firuz Shah Nameh, fo‑ cused directly on sly chevalier bandits or tricksters (ayyars) and tough guys (lutis). These romances of chivalry formed a repertory of stories and narrative forms heavily mined by filmfarsi. Carefree Ali’s decision in Qarun’s Treasure to help the damsel in distress (Shirin)—­to find her a suitor, to fight off her attackers—­and to help out his father in the end are all components of the chi‑ valric narratives. The romances used many formulaic devices: phrases, correspondence, dreams, divine intervention, battles, love, and stereotyped characters. And almost all of these were incorporated into genre movies. Iranian critics who constantly put down ff movies as formulaic, and thus bad, films did not real­ ize the deep grip of this social encyclopedia on both filmmakers and audi‑ ences. The film historian Mohammad Tahaminejad caught this, and in his book on filmfarsi, which he called “dream-­weaving cinema,” specified ff’s debt to the popular romances. All folk tales (qessehha‑ye amianeh), he stated, contain the following features, which are transplanted into the commercial movies: “They are fast-­paced and are filled with extraordinary heroism, spell‑ binding beauty, love affairs, intense emotionality, ancient totems and beliefs, timely or untimely poems and risqué expressions, parallel and labyrinthine relationships, breathtaking conflicts and complications, exaggerated descrip‑ tions, and real and imaginary spaces” (1986/1365:18). He classified the mov‑ ies’ borrowing of elements from ancient popular romances and from contem‑ porary romances into four “golden features”: the ideals of heroism, chance and coincidence, the contrast of beauty and ugliness, and the conflict of good and evil.24 Many of these conventions run through Qarun’s Treasure. Iranian moviemaking also borrowed from the taziyeh passion plays, which for centuries have been performed annually before live audiences during the first ten days of the month of Muharram. These plays reiterate the oral tra‑ ditions’ uses of stock features, but in the service of Shiite cosmology. At the same time, they have an expressive dimension—­self-­reflexivity—­t hat Iranian cinema picked up, particularly the art-­house cinema following the revolution of 1978–79. If we apply Finnegan’s tripartite structure of oral poetry to cinema, com‑ position would be equivalent to the preproduction and production phases of moviemaking, transmission would parallel the marketing and distribution phases, and performance would map onto the exhibition and reception of films in movie houses, on television, and on video and the Internet at home.

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Miniature Paintings’ Attributes Oral narratives nourished not only the performing arts but also the visual arts, particularly the court-­sponsored tradition of manuscript painting, also known as Persian “miniature paintings” (during the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries). They supplied painters with a repertoire of stories of love and bat‑ tle. They also influenced them stylistically. Miniature paintings, like oral nar‑ ratives, relied heavily on a limited number of conventional visual elements—­ optemes—­drawn to match not an external reality but expressive conventions. In this art form, as in classical music, distinction and value were assigned not to originality but to the best imitation of the master and the most skill‑ ful repetition with slight variation (Dickson and Welch 1981; Grabar 2000; Canby 1993). If the same criterion of distinction were applied to the movies, ff would obtain a different ranking in the encyclopedia of Iranian cinema. In viewing miniature paintings the viewer is struck by their stylistic intri‑ cacy, their density of details, their exuberant colors, and the multiplicity of vi‑ sual planes and scenes in a single frame. The miniatures are a delight for the eyes, as they entertain viewers more in the manner of a motion picture than in that of a static image (figure 38). The absence of a single vanishing point for perspective creates spatial simultaneity: planes of far and close, high and low, female and male, and inside and outside are all equally visible. While histori‑ cally most miniatures were created to illustrate major texts of prose and po‑ etry and they therefore functioned to highlight the moral or the main scenes of the narrative, the overall compositional design refuses to center some ele‑ ments and marginalize others according to their narrative prominence. Fre‑ quently, the protagonist of the story is depicted in the same size as all the other figures, hidden in a corner, or even only partially visible from behind a bush or through a half-­closed door. In this way, the viewer’s eyes are encour‑ aged to roam from one element to another in search of meaning, examining carefully all the nooks and crannies for a specific scene or figure that corre‑ sponds to the narrative and searching for the relay of the gazes among char‑ acters. The spectator’s gaze thus meanders and is driven by her or his spec‑ tatorial activity and agency, instead of being an intense gaze guided by the agency of the artist. As in cinema, there is also a second type of gaze involved, that of the diegetic characters at each other, which helps narrative comprehen‑ sion. The historian of Islamic art Oleg Grabar calls this a “circuit of gazes” within the paintings, creating a “complex and passionate game of clues, as in an embroidery” (2000:133). And there is also an aural component, a circuit of curious ears eavesdropping on the social world. These ears belong to figures 226

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38  Movie Set (2004), by the Houston-based artist and photographer Soody Sharifi. The work is part of a series that she playfully calls “maxiatures,” in reference to the tradition of Persian manuscript paintings known as “miniatures.” Courtesy of Soody Sharifi.

listening from behind curtains, half-­open doors and windows, and bushes. These liminally positioned figures often seem astonished by what they are seeing and hearing (“biting the fingers of astonishment,” as the poetic ex‑ pression goes) or are gossiping about them with other bystanders (hands cov‑ ering mouths). Indeed, by following the circuit of what Nahal Naficy (2007) calls the figures’ “witnessing,” the viewer may arrive at the key scene or the protagonist. Like art music, abstract geometric tiles, carpet designs, oral poetry, and now ff movies, Persian miniatures are formed through the repetition and slight variation of a limited but recognizable number of motifs, optemes, forming a dense visual repertoire. These optemes are coded according to cer‑ tain rules of representation. One of these encourages the creation of character types rather than distinct individuals. Unlike the modernist visual arts and cinema, then, miniature paintings and ff movies tend to present a crowded social world instead of representing individual subjectivity—­either of the char‑ acters within the diegesis or of the artist and viewer outside the text. Because the presented world is dense and social, character representation is conven‑ tionalized and character subjectivity is suppressed. Because of the circuits of looking, listening, and witnessing, despite their apparent visuality, miniature paintings (and ff movies) are highly oral, aural, and social instead of being visual, psychological, and individual (as new-wave films are). Since the onset of the Islamic Republic, these structures of orality and vi‑ suality have exerted themselves prominently in postrevolutionary cinema be‑ cause of state-­sanctioned gender segregation, the veiling of women, and the system of hijab and modesty patrolled by the morality police and film cen‑ sors. Direct gazes were discouraged, so averted gazes, indirect looks, stolen glances, and indirection of all sorts flourished. The meandering look in the miniatures provides an apt textual homology to the hybrid production mode’s improvisational and discontinuity filming and editing. The visual motifs and elements of the miniatures are ubiquitous and overdetermined in society, re‑ produced in consumer products widely circulated among Iranians at home and in the diaspora—­keychains, pens, pen-­cases, T-­shirts, photo frames, photo albums, vases, and calendars. By this ubiquity these visual motifs tend to naturalize their ideological underpinning of eavesdropping, voyeurism, and unequal power relations. What is striking is the way that the stylistic features and compositional design of the centuries-­old but cosmopolitan manuscript paintings assists new artists like Soodi Sharifi (see figure 38) to visually express the simulta‑ neities, multiplicities, contradictions, liminalities, and hybridities that con‑ 228

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stitute our contemporary globalized condition.25 What we refer to today as “Persian miniatures” is a multicultural and cosmopolitan tradition that de‑ veloped over many centuries of experimentation and at different hubs inside and outside Iran. A set of characteristics remained fairly constant, forming, in the words of the art historian Sheila Canby, a “melody to which all impro‑ visations and variations ultimately refer” (1993:42). If today this visual “mel‑ ody” echoes in Sharifi’s “maxiatures” and in the works of other artists in Iran and diaspora, it is not about sticking to an atavistic tradition of expression; it concerns conversing with a form of art that is, and has always been, a conver‑ sation across times and places, as well as across artistic media. In ways de‑ scribed in this book, the visual melody of the miniatures has insinuated itself into the poetics and politics of Iranian cinema, giving it one of its distinctive characteristics.

Imitation, Repetition, Conventionality, Familiarity One of the important characteristics of oral narratives, classical music per‑ formances, and miniature paintings is their proclivity for repetition and fa‑ miliarity. These traditional forms do not prioritize originality and innovation, which are characteristics of modernity. If such conventionality also charac‑ terized commercial movies, innovation and originality were attributes of the new-­wave films. One film type was primarily genre driven, the other princi‑ pally author driven. Filmfarsi’s use of traditional iterative strategies might have resulted from a dearth of good domestic screenplay writers or from a lack of imagination among Iranian filmmakers, as critics often charged. But beyond the reasons I have given, it also satisfied the voracious appetite of the emerging hybrid pro‑ duction mode for familiar products with slight variations. Imitation and iter‑ ation were constitutive features of industrialization and mass consumption. They influenced not only movie production but also reception. The audi‑ ences who listened to the storytellers’ tales about epic heroes in coffeehouses, or watched their heroic exploits on movie and television screens, saw stories artfully or arbitrarily rearranged to be both familiar and new, depending on the skills of the tellers and directors. Recognition of the familiar may have been more important than encountering the new. What Page describes in her analysis of naqqali and Shahnameh storytelling also holds true for the spec‑ tators of commercial movies: “The audience is familiar with the storyteller’s repertoire, and a storyteller will not perform material which is unknown to f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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his audience. The audience, he feels, will not come back every day to hear a story it has never heard before” (1977:199). The same principle accounts for the numerous imitations that Qarun’s Treasure and Qaisar spawned.

The Morphology of Filmfarsi: Popular Themes and Genres As a developing country caught in the throes of rapid modernization pro‑ pelled by sudden infusions of petrodollars and exchange relations with the West, Iran experienced postcolonial disruptions without having been colo‑ nized. The dichotomous, self-­other relationships that Iranians experienced both in real life and on movie screens became internalized, manifesting themselves in commercial movies’ binarist themes and comparative struc‑ tures also common to other postcolonial cinemas. These themes encoded the clash of values and worldviews, as well as that of premodernity and moder‑ nity. And they were so frequently used and reused that they became the vocab‑ ulary that both nourished and stultified the commercial cinema. Among these themes were the dichotomous relations between tradition and modernity; between the native, local, and national and the foreign, West‑ ern, and international; between self and other; between male patriarchy and female resurgence; between religious belief (Islam) and secularism (West); between rural innocence, purity, and authenticity and urban sophistication and corruption; between poverty and wealth; between spirituality and mate‑ rialism; and between family and collectivity and individuality and indepen‑ dence. These dichotomies inscribed the disruptions of modernization and the trauma and drama of individuality in a collective society. These and similar themes surfaced in the country’s modern literature as well.26 These contrasting themes and values were deployed in the movies in such a way that the self and the values for which it stood were often privileged over the Other and its superficial attributes, which were generally construed as Western. Even though this Western Other was posited as technologically and materially superior, the Iranian self was usually romanticized and valorized because of its purported purity, authenticity, and spirituality. As a rule, the twain did not reconcile, with Iranian essentialism emerging triumphant. In this the movies seemed to follow Frantz Fanon’s and Teshome Gabriel’s for‑ mulation of the combative phase of creating a national culture (Fanon 1963, Gabriel 1989b). After showcasing materialism, modernization, and Western influences, most ff products took a moralistic turn, drawing ethical lessons that favored the self’s traditional value structure. Not all commercial movie themes fit into this morphology. Some played 230

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with the possibilities of reconciliation, transgression, hybridity, or the reversal of values. Yet the dominant social ideologies’ didacticism drove all, whether it was the left’s simplistic Marxism, the traditionalists’ religiosity, or the au‑ thoritarian nationalism of the Pahlavi state. The social encyclopedia of oral tradition—­“folk wisdom”—­was deeply ingrained in the outwardly modern Iranians. Filmfarsi movies, like their originary tales, favored integration into, and the restoration of, an existing order, rather than advocating either dis‑ order or an entirely new order. As in oral tales and popular romances, these themes did not surface discretely as they were expressions of a society in tran‑ sition from premodernity to modernity in which features of both overlapped. Each movie contained several, playing with their centonization and interac‑ tion, differentiating one from the other. These ingrained themes revealing an uneven assimilation of modernity led to genres whose regulating mechanisms were both these themes (their content) and the generic narrative conventions that they produced, reinforced by industrial practices. The themes’ narrative function in the movies guides us toward a structuralist morphology of commercial movies. The Family Stewpot movies represented the family as an enduring if threatened insti‑ tution whose survival depended on the willingness of its members to sac‑ rifice their own individual rights—­countering the individualism of emerg‑ ing modernity. In them, the mother-­son tie is very strong, almost Oedipal, while that of father and son involves both respect and the kind of rivalry that borders on patricide and filicide. In the films, the husband and father rules with an iron hand, although oddly, in many cases the father is absent (Turani 1999/1378:92). Women, on the other hand, are expected to be self-­sacrificing, obedient, decent, and compassionate. In general, they do not have an autono‑ mous identity. Despite their ancillary status, women are the glue that keeps the family together, as they raise the children, manage the household, and forgive their men’s waywardness in the form of drinking, gambling, wom‑ anizing, and rabble-­rousing with male buddies. Modernity and individual‑ ity, particularly those of women, pose a threat to family integrity, arousing male hysteria and panic. The well-­known Middle Eastern honor-­shame com‑ plex, in which male honor depends on female sexual shame, emerges strongly in ff. Men must protect women’s sacred realms, not only from other men’s sexual advances but also from women’s own sexual desire, which can bring about shame for the family, particularly for the males as its primary guard‑ ians (Bourdieu 1965). f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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These conventions surfaced most expressly in the genres of family melo‑ drama and comedy. Qarun’s Treasure, a film that like most stewpot movies is both melodrama and comedy, inscribes many of these familial relations: Qarun, the father, is absent, having abandoned his family for youthful de‑ bauchery. His punishment for breaking the sacred bond is disease, both psy‑ chological and physical. The self-­sacrificing, resourceful mother manages her household, raises her son, Carefree Ali, and shelters his buddy, Hasan the Rattler. Mother and son have a strong if formulaic relation, while the ties be‑ tween father and son remain antagonistic until the end. If at the beginning the nuclear family is disrupted, in the end, after Qarun makes proper apolo‑ gies and demonstrates true remorse and shame, it is reconstituted. In favoring a marriage based on love over an arranged marriage, the film assimilates mo‑ dernity. Yet in restoring Ali’s nuclear family at the end, it acts conservatively. Since family relations and honor take priority over civic responsibility, fam‑ ily ties usually create obligations to seek redress or revenge. In many movies, a family member (usually female) is wronged, forcing other members (typi‑ cally male) to embark on a vengeful adventure, leading to the death or punish‑ ment of the culprit, and sometimes to that of the victim. This theme appeared early in the period under discussion here, and it continued throughout, as in Serj Azarian’s Golnesa (1953) and Hamid Mesdaqi’s Rape (Tajavoz, 1972), in which fathers avenge their daughter’s seduction and rape, respectively. In Kimiai’s Qaisar, the brother takes revenge for his sister’s rape and death, while in Naser Taqvai’s Sadeq the Kurd (Sadeq Kordeh, 1972) the husband takes re‑ venge for his wife’s rape. In a few films women take revenge, as in Yasami’s Tehran Nights (Shabha‑ye Tehran, 1953), in which a wayward mother redeems herself by murdering her daughter’s rapist. In the tough-­guy movies of the 1970s, personal revenge and crimes of passion were coded as citizens’ re‑ venge against governmental or upper-­class oppression. Arranged Marriages Arranged marriages, another threatened traditional kinship custom, ap‑ peared in melodramas and comedies very early, but from the start it was coun‑ terposed with a modern marriage based on love and personal choice. In Ali Daryabaigi’s The Tempest of Life (Tufan‑e Zendegi, 1948), for example, the two protagonists, Nahid and Farhad, are in love. Yet Nahid’s father opposes their marriage and arranges his daughter’s marriage to a wealthy businessman. Al‑ though he feels forlorn, Farhad does not give up. He works hard, excels in his profession, and becomes successful and wealthy. After many fateful adven‑ tures the original lovers are united in the end. 232

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In most movies of the 1950s, young girls were treated and traded like com‑ modities by male family members (Moradi Kuchi 1980/1369:75). As mo‑ dernity took root, arranged marriage was gradually transformed in favor of choice, even including premarital sexual relationships. Yet these came at a heavy social price, such as addiction and suicide in Mahmud Kushan’s The Thirsty Ones (Tashnehha, 1974), loneliness and perhaps prostitution in Hajir Dariush’s Bita (1972), and banishment by the family in Feraidun Goleh’s Hon‑ eymoon (Mah‑e Asal, 1976). Qarun’s Treasure clearly favors modern courtship. Shirin’s parents arrange to marry her to Faramarz, which apparently surprises her. She rejects this suitor by concocting the story of having fallen in love with Qarun’s son. It be‑ gins as fiction but becomes fact: the film’s second half is devoted to Shirin’s and Ali’s collaboration, culminating in her decision to give up her wealth for the love of Ali. Female Seduction and Male Temptation In numerous melodramas and crime and detective movies, women are se‑ duced and deceived by men, especially by those with means, resulting in their shame and inexorable downward spiral into sin, singing and dancing in ca‑ fés and nightclubs and engaging in prostitution. Filmfarsi movies repeatedly used this theme, partly as a melodramatic plot and partly as an excuse to fea‑ ture song-­and-­dance routines and to please their audience. Yet the theme did also have a basis in social reality. In a detailed study of 1,548 prostitutes in Tehran in 1969, for example, 37 percent of the respondents claimed that they had been “deceived and/or lured into prostitution” (Floor 2008:263). In the moralistic world of ff, both seduction and giving in to temptation deserve punishment. In many cases, the female victim is punished—­by suicide (as in Kushan’s The Thirsty Ones), by imprisonment (as in Kushan’s Mother), and by death (as in Kimiai’s Qaisar). Males, too, are susceptible to temptation, but by “bad” women and deviant male buddies. Married men are lured by sexy, wicked women and set on an inevitable downward path into gambling, drinking, womanizing, and crimi‑ nal activity. They pay by losing not only their families but also their wealth, and they are forced to endure loneliness, degradation, and imprisonment. They discover the extent of the damage they have caused only years later; if they exhibit proper remorse, they are usually rewarded by a reunion with their families, often in a chance encounter. Qarun’s Treasure embodies the theme of the father’s yielding to selfishness and debauchery, but at the high price of illness and anomie, which drive him to attempt suicide. In Ali Kasmai’s Ne‑ f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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glect (Gheflat, 1953), a young man loses his wife and son because of his drink‑ ing and gambling, and he becomes a homeless beggar. Next he loses his eye‑ sight in an accident. Later, a chance encounter reunites him with his son, with whom he begins a new life. In Hasan Kheradmand’s Whirlpool (Gerdab, 1953), the male protagonist makes his discovery only when he is no longer young, looking remorsefully back at a wasted youth. Social Divisions and Class Struggle Social divisions and class struggle surfaced as themes in comedies and melo‑ dramas in three key binaries: village life versus city life, the poor versus the rich, and the factory owner versus the worker. The first motif was an early one, appearing in Kushan’s Disgraced, in which Delkash plays the simple peasant girl who is duped and abandoned by a city man. Disgraced, she works hard and becomes a famous singer in the city, while her village fiancé man‑ ages to exact revenge on the city slicker, after which she returns to the village to wed happily. Many variations of this theme were developed throughout this period, leading to what critics called “village films” (Akrami 1992a:573). Ma‑ jid Mohseni’s movies, Nightingale of the Farm (Bolbol‑e Mazra’eh, 1957), Village Song (Ahang‑e Dehkadeh, 1961), and Swallows Return to Their Nests (Parastuha beh Laneh Barmigardand, 1963) are exemplars of the genre. Even new-­wave filmmakers, such Dariush Mehrjui in Mr. Gullible (Aqay‑e Halu, 1970) and Kimiai in Baluch (1972), used elements of the village films, indicating the interpellative power of ff narratives. The basic moralistic mes‑ sage remained the same: praise for the indigenous values of rural folk and criticism both of distorted Western values and of the moral corruption of city dwellers.27 At the same time, ironically, women in these village films are of‑ ten depicted in Westernized urban ways, wearing thick makeup, coiffed hair, blouses, and skirts, revealing the power of overdetermined Westernization. Class differences between peasants and landlords are wrapped in personal plots, such as a landlord preventing the marriage of his daughter to a peas‑ ant. Yet often the peasant surmounts the class barrier by hard work, educa‑ tion, and gainful employment. Mohseni’s The Nightingale of the Farm offers an early popular example. In a few movies, such as Naser Malekmotii’s Aras Khan (1963) and Ahmad Safai’s Farman Khan (1967), the villagers, fed up with the oppression of tribal chiefs and village heads, mobilize against them and successfully defeat their oppressors. Armais Aqamalian’s Gol Aqa (1967) centers on personal revenge as the motive behind the uprising against the landlords. Parviz Sayyad developed a comic persona named Samad, a country bumpkin, who in a series of popular comedies debunked the upper classes, 234

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city slickers, and various authority figures—­government officials, religious leaders, village elders, and fathers—­by a combination of rural wiliness and morality.28 From the mid-­1960s on, most commercial movie stories took place in ur‑ ban settings, even though most of the country’s population remained rural (Assadi 1973–74/1352–53:12). This reflected the overwhelmingly urban profile of moviegoers more than the government determination to stress Iran’s mod‑ ern image. For while these movies depicted modernity and Westernization, they generally undermined these by associating them with moral corruption and social disruptions. This emphasis on cities also reflected the rapid growth of cities filled with immigrants, cars, movie houses, cafés, and Western con‑ sumer goods. The emergence of newly rich entrepreneurs, an educated elite (many trained in the West), and foreign consultants and workers complicated the rural-­urban dichotomy by overlaying the contrast between Iran and the West. Agrarian reform disrupted agricultural production, displaced farmers, and destroyed vital qanats (subterranean water canals), turning Iran from a surplus producer of agricultural products into an importer. The “bad guy” movie characters who destroyed Iranian farmers were identified either as Westerners or as their surrogates, Westernized Iranians who had sold out their country. The bad character in Parvizi’s The Last Passage (Akharin Go‑ zargah, 1962), who resorts to any means necessary to steal the land from its rightful owners, is a foreigner named George. In Malekmotii’s Village Bride (Arus‑e Dehkadeh, 1962), the bad guys are the landlord’s Westernized son and his Western wife, who set fire to the farmers’ crops. In Abolqasem Malakuti’s At the End of Darkness (Dar Entehay‑e Zolmat, 1962), a Western woman named Susan heartlessly destroys a farming family. Even new-­wave cinéastes were drawn to this theme. In Mehrjui’s Postman (Postchi, 1972), a Western-­educated Iranian transforms his uncle’s sheep farm into a pig farm (forbidden by Islam) and develops a relationship with the wife of the local mailman, who is impotent. Humiliated, the mailman kills his wife. Likewise, in Kimiai’s Earth (Khak, 1973), a blonde Western woman is portrayed as a land-­grabber. Iranians’ dissatisfaction with their arrogant gov‑ ernment and the Shah, which was slowly shaping into a revolution, was dis‑ placed in commercial movies onto the battle of Iranians with the West and its adherents, particularly with the United States, which had returned the Shah to power. In this way, moviemakers both avoided censorship and appeased spectators. Many movies that took as their subjects the class and social differences of the poor and the rich staged these differences in urban settings. But few city f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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films dealt deeply with the economic and social bases of differences and dis‑ parities, perhaps due to censorship. Most social problems were thus ascribed to individual weaknesses and shortcomings, not to more systemic failures. Rather, personal shortcomings formed kernels around which intricate melo‑ dramatic or comic adventures were woven. Filmmakers displaced Iranian is‑ sues and also resorted to class stereotyping. For the most part, the poor were represented as rural, honest, authentic, simple, hardworking, and religious; the rich were urban, dishonest, rootless, lazy, materialistic, unhappy, and ar‑ bitrarily cruel. By lauding the poor and condemning the rich, and by disin‑ genuously associating the latter with Western influences, they implicitly cri‑ tiqued Iranian social structures and government policies. In these movies, love for the authentic and honest poor conquered class differences. Samuel Khachikian’s Return (Bazgasht, 1954) provides an early model. In it, a wealthy urban family hires a village boy as a housekeeper. The boy serves the family loyally and spends his leisure time improving himself and studying. The fam‑ ily’s son, Hamid, however, wastes his time, eventually becoming a criminal. In due course, they both fall in love with the same girl; despite Hamid’s con‑ niving and wealth, the village boy wins the heart of the girl and marries her. One of the central dramas in Qarun’s Treasures is the contrast between the authenticity and purity of the poor and the debauchery and unhappiness of the rich. The film posits two major types of reconciliation for this class conflict: one is based on descent relations (family affiliations), the other on consent relations (class association). Qarun’s reconciliation with his family is achieved honestly because it is based on the love of kin. Yet the reconciliation of Ali (representing the poor) with Qarun (representing the rich) is not hon‑ est, for Ali is not truly poor. He was born to a rich family, although he does not know it. He crosses the class boundary merely to rejoin his rich family from which he had been expelled. Hence, his falling in love and marrying a rich girl, Shirin, who herself claims to have given up her well-­to-­do family, reconciles the two warring classes only in form, not in substance, as both lov‑ ers belong to the same class. Nonetheless, by positing consent relations that cross class boundaries, the film allows for social mobility—­a revolutionary idea, or an unrealizable sweet fantasy, in a class-­bound society. Another social conflict of modernity, commonly interpreted as personal conflict by filmmakers, was that between oppressive or lascivious factory own‑ ers and their victimized workers. These stories were usually resolved in favor of the workers, who took the lauded position of villagers and the poor in binary tales of class struggle, as in Mohammad Ali Zarandi’s Sin City (Shahr‑e Go‑ nah, 1970) and Hamid Mojtahedi’s The Starless Sky (Asemun‑e Bisetareh, 1971). 236

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Significantly, the movies in which the poor, peasants, and workers strug‑ gled successfully against rich families, landlords, and factory bosses capital‑ ized on the Shah’s White Revolution, two of whose provisions were land re‑ form and factory reform. According to the first provision, land taken away from its owners was to be redistributed to peasants and to former owners. According to the second provision, factory owners were to grant their work‑ ers common shares in their plants. The Shah and the elite, including com‑ mercial filmmakers, the press, and broadcast media all adopted the language of “incarcerated opposition,” issuing revolutionary platitudes about the neces‑ sity of dealing with “feudal reactionaries” and “parasitic landlords” (Richards 1975:20). In the process of capitalizing on these officially sanctioned posi‑ tions, some commercial movies critiqued them while others validated them, thus helping to inculcate the White Revolution programs, which were pro‑ gressive on paper but in reality left much to be desired. Equally significant was the resurfacing of these class-­based films in the postrevolutionary cin‑ ema, which under the banner of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini claimed to champion the world’s mostazafan, that is, the poor, the downtrodden, and the dispossessed. Fatalism and Mistaken Identity The traditional themes of fatalism and mistaken identities, drawn from oral tales and popular romances as well as contemporary social conditions, were widespread, as indicated by my cursory survey showing that from the early 1950s to the late 1970s more than forty movies featured them in one form or another. The resulting intricate, melodramatic family sagas validated both the centrality of the nuclear family and the tensions modernity imposed on it. Chance separated characters and fortuitously reunited them, allowing film‑ makers to get out of narrative tight spots created by improvisation and en‑ ergizing films in need of it. Fateful losses and the disappearance of family members were often handled as profoundly sad and tragic, while their equally fated recovery and reunions were celebrated, as in folk narratives, in numer‑ ous tear-­jerker films. The archetypal tragedy of mistaken identity occurs in the story of Rostam and Sohrab in the epic poem Shahnameh, in which a father and a son engage in a rivalry to the bitter end because the two warriors remained unaware of each other’s identity. Only when Rostam succeeds in mortally wounding his son does he realize Sohrab’s true identity, but it is too late. Mistaken identities, fate, and accidental discoveries in Qarun’s Treasure create that paradigmatic film’s tension and resolution. f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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In both their tragic and comic deployments, fatalism and mistaken iden‑ tity allowed filmmakers to transgress social norms by imagining forbidden relationships such as incest, as in Moezoddin Fekri’s Waif (Dokhtar‑e Sar‑ rahi, 1953). In this film, a young girl loses her father and becomes homeless. Years later, she happens on a house in which her stepfather and brother live. Not aware of her identity, both men fall in love with her, but she loves an‑ other man. When the stepfather fails to attract her attention, he attempts to rape her. Their true relationship is discovered just in time, and the girl ends up marrying the man she desires. Fatalism as theme decreased with higher-­ quality commercial movies, such as Kimiai’s Qaisar, and with the emergence of new-­wave films. Modalities of Power According to commercial movies, power emanates from two principal sources: money and muscle. Both lure and criminalize their subjects. Moral‑ ism triumphs, as those tempted pay a steep price and learn their lessons. In an early movie, Khatibi’s Long Live Auntie (Zendehbad Khaleh, 1952), two pen‑ niless men resort to all sorts of tricks to milk their rich aunt, but, failing, they are forced to go straight and earn an honest living. In Tunnel (Tunel, 1968), di‑ rected by Nader Qane’, a fun-­loving, money-­grabbing woman marries a rich old man whom she subsequently murders with the aid of her driver. She then attempts to seduce her daughter-­in-­law’s husband. She is rejected by him—­ and she dies in a car accident. In Qarun’s Treasure, Qarun’s wealth brings spir‑ itual emptiness, while his poor, abandoned family is happy. The neighborhood toughs represent muscle power, alternately defending the wealthy and powerful or protecting the poor and downtrodden, forming the vast genre of tough-­guy movies, investigated at length in the following chapter. In Qarun’s Treasure, Carefree Ali and Hasan the Rattler are not official tough guys, as they do not dress in the toughs’ uniform or hang out with lutis; however, they represent many of the values of the tough guys, particu‑ larly their chivalry, and they use many of their expressions. The discourse of muscle power involved not only civilians but also the state as the most muscular agency both in society and in cinema. This dis‑ course was bolstered after the defeat in 1946 of the communist Azari inde‑ pendence movement in Azarbaijan headed by Jafar Pishehvari and the coup in 1953 against Mosaddeq, which resulted in several patriotic and propaganda movies—­the mini genre of military or patriotic movies. This includes such films as Gholamhosain Naqshineh’s Patriot (1953) and Khatibi’s Pishehvari’s Uprising and Noqlali, which lauded the person of the Shah and the power of 238

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the Iranian army, gendarmerie, and police to subdue both internal subver‑ sives and foreign enemies. Even these pro-­Shah propaganda movies could not escape government censorship. As Khatibi relates, Savak forced him to cast a police officer in the lead role of the general who in Pishehvari’s Uprising heads the armed units that defeat Pishehvari’s forces, even though the officer had no acting experience (Khatibi 1994:388–89). That Khatibi made two pro-­ Shah patriotic movies back to back and that Savak forced its wishes on him so blatantly indicate his attempted erasure of his prior communist leanings dur‑ ing a period when the Tudeh Party was banned and its members were being hunted down and executed. From the 1960s onward, during the two decades in which the police and security forces were modernized and became pervasive and repressive, com‑ mercial movies often portrayed these coercive apparatuses as alert, efficient, and humane, working to right wrongs and bring criminals to justice. Natu‑ rally, this theme was most prevalent in detective and crime movies. The Ar‑ menian Iranian director Khachikian began a successful series of such mov‑ ies with his dynamic Hazardous Crossroads (Chaharrah‑e Havades, 1954). With his masterful chiaroscuro lighting, extreme close-­up photography and un‑ usual framing, dark mood, and assaultive cutting and sounds he created an Iranian noir cinema imbued with uncertainty and insecurity, implicitly coun‑ tering the government’s emphasis on safety and order. With his sensitive por‑ trayal of a remorseful criminal in this movie, Malekmotii also came to the fore as a heroic character and actor. This film also introduced a strong cadre of Armenian Iranian technical personnel to the commercial cinema, includ‑ ing cinematographers (Vahak Vartanian), an assistant cameraman (Arakol Babakhanian), soundmen (Hanrik Avdisian, Vanik Avdisian), set designers (Hairo Nazlumian, Gargin Zakrian), a poster designer (Haiek Ojaqian), and a producer (Sanasar Khachaturian), once again underscoring the undeniable contribution of Iranian ethnics, particularly Armenians, to the cinema.29 Other detective and crime movies that inscribed a positive evaluation of the police and security forces were Amin Amini’s The Shadow (Sayeh, 1959), Gaffary’s The Night of the Hunchback (Shab‑e Quzi, 1964), and Reza Mirlow‑ hi’s Sergeant Ghazanfar’s Family (Khanevadeh‑ye Sarkar Ghazanfar, 1972). The positive portrayal of the apparatuses of repression in these and other films made after Savak’s creation tended to validate the ever-­w idening activities of this dreaded organization, the oppressive police, and the compromised judi‑ cial system. Since social ills were often ascribed to individual weaknesses, not to society’s failures, correcting those ills also often involved only the punish‑ ment of individuals. Yet later in the 1970s, when the oppressive nature of the f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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state had become clear, the correction of social ills became the duty of individ‑ uals, leading to revenge tactics and vigilantism, particularly in the tough-­guy genre. The rise of vigilante justice in this genre offered an indirect critique of the state’s inability to protect citizens. That individuals were singled out as both the causes of and the solutions to social ills addresses the tentative emergence of individualism. All these modalities of power and subjectivity were highly gendered, as the owners of muscle power, money power, state power, and individualized agency were al‑ most always male. Women’s power generally emanated from wile, sexuality, and duplicity. Modernity and Westernization Filmfarsi movies in this period equated modernity with Westernization. They not only emphasized the arrival of modern ways in the country but also urged their adoption. In this case, too, a binary and comparative structure was de‑ ployed, though it was attenuated by the possibility of reconciliation between Iranian premodern traditions and Western modern innovations. The binar‑ ist but reconciliatory theme was launched in the first feature movie, Ovanes Ohanians’s Mr. Haji, the Movie Actor (Haji Aqa Aktor‑e Sinema, 1933), in which the traditional behavior and Islamic beliefs of a haji are ridiculed. The tradi‑ tional, religious, backward, fanatical, irrational, greedy, ridiculous, and hypo­ critically lascivious “Haji Aqa,” first promulgated in this movie, became an enduring type that appeared as a narrative agent, a buffoon, or a comic foil in movies of all genres. Another character embodying such tensions was the dandy (see volume 1, chapter 6 of the present work). Both the despised haji and the ridiculed dandy emerged stronger under Reza Shah, whose sartorial dictates and moderniz‑ ing policies helped popularize both these characters and the discourse about them. Filmfarsi movies in subsequent decades were filled with mixed and con‑ fusing messages, reflecting a nation struggling to find an acceptable identity. At the same time that these movies valorized Westernization and disparaged Islamic traditions, they emphasized the evils of Westernization in cities, par‑ ticularly for those who had left the safe cocoons of the village and the family. Even Western-­trained filmmakers engaged in these simplistic dichotomies. Hosain Rejaiyan, a ucla-­trained filmmaker, in his chic movie The Eighth Day of the Week (Hashtomin Ruz‑e Hafteh, 1973), tells the story of an attractive, modern medical student (played by Farzaneh Taidi) who lives independently in a modern apartment in Tehran and is raped by what turns out to be her 240

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future suitor. As an autonomous individual, she is alone and must deal with the burden, trauma, and shame of rape and an out-­of-­wedlock pregnancy all by herself. As cathected sites in which Western influences manifested themselves, ca‑ fés and nightclubs, where the sexes mingled, were prominent in ff movies. However, these were sites not only of corruption but also of pleasure; their rendition was always amphibolic. The apparent spectator appetite for these narratives encouraged filmmakers to insert by hook or by crook a few se‑ quences of revealingly dressed women singing and dancing for mostly male spectators. From the 1950s onward, these sequences were expanded to en‑ tire movies about cabaret nightlife and female entertainers, such as Madani’s Chance, Love, and Accident, Abbas Shabaviz’s Prostitute (Rusbi, 1969), and Is‑ mail Pursaid’s Repentance (Towbeh, 1972). In Qarun’s Treasure, Qarun takes Ali and Hasan to a nightclub for a night of wild fun, but surprisingly their outing is not shown in the film. However, Fardin (Ali) and Foruzan (Shirin) perform six song-­and-­dance numbers for each other, for other diegetic audi‑ ences, and for the camera—­though none of them in a nightclub. The close-­ ups of Fardin’s face performing the chahchah—­an artful style of extended vocalizing and trilling—­demonstrates his manly beauty and competence at lip-­synching this difficult singing style, while close-­ups of Foruzan highlight her feminine beauty, curvaceous body, and sexual dancing. Sex in the movies proved as attractive in Iran as in other countries. A sur‑ vey of young audiences in Tehran in 1966 showed that 37 percent were “tre‑ mendously influenced and excited” by sexy scenes in films (Assadi 1973– 74/1352–53:13). Its portrayal in novels and movies had been condemned as early as the mid-­1930s as a “raging fire” and a “savage force.” This condemna‑ tion continued in the second Pahlavi period, but the terms changed from re‑ ligious to moralistic and political. By all accounts, the exhibition of both do‑ mestic and imported “sexy movies,” ones bordering on soft-­core pornography, picked up with the increasing pace of Westernization in the 1970s. Foreign-­Travel and Foreign-­Bride Movies Contact and exchange relations with Western countries increased rapidly in the 1960s and the 1970s through business relations, military procurement, technical and military training, tourism, and student travels abroad, result‑ ing in the encroachment of modernity and modernization and in the foreign countries’ economic and cultural domination of Iranian society. Writers and novelists portrayed Western characters in their works, and the West, Western values, and those who espoused them were “recurrent features” of a literary f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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genre (Ghanoonparvar 1993:2). By engaging in these strategies of represent‑ ing the self against the Other, both writers and commercial moviemakers helped process these experiences and relations with the West and synchro‑ nize Iran with the West. This occurred not only in individual movies but also in two subgenres, the foreign-­travel and foreign-­bride movies. In the first subgenre, other countries, particularly those in Europe and the United States, served as locations for traveling Iranians, a tendency fanned by the emergence of package tours in the 1960s and the 1970s. In fact, the pro‑ ducers and directors of these movies, such as Abbas Shabaviz and Khosrow Parvizi who made Round the World with Empty Pockets (Dor‑e Doniya ba Jib‑e Khali, 1960), took advantage of such tours to shoot their movies abroad. The cast and crew formed the tour group, the stories were improvised, and dia‑ logues were ad-­libbed during travel. Most of these movies followed their char‑ acters to various tourist sites and airports. Some of them used travel to the West for didactic purposes, as did the Jewish director Mosheq Soruri in Haji Jabbar in Paris (Haji Jabbar dar Paris, 1960), in which a Jewish money-­loving miser travels to Paris in his dreams, where he is taught to become a better hu‑ man being. Others showed Iranians’ adventures abroad for business, study, pleasure, or romance, or showed the travelers’ changed attitudes on their re‑ turn home. The subtext of both subgenres, however, was the perennial issue of Iranian modernity: the encounter between the self and the Other, leading generally to the confirmation or reformation of an Iranian identity. In Mohseni’s Swallows Return to Their Nest, a villager who has lost one of his two sons to illness decides to send his remaining offspring abroad for medical training. Yet the father soon learns that the boy has been wasting hard-­earned money and his time on pleasurable activities. Chagrined, he sends his son an emotional letter in which he pleads with him to change his ways, including a bit of his village’s earth to remind him of his obligations to his homeland.30 The letter transforms the boy, who begins to study hard, completes his training, and returns home triumphant and modernized. On viewing this film during the time of his agrarian reform, the Shah was appar‑ ently so affected by it that he exempted it from the heavy municipal tax (Sadr 2003/1381:166–67).31 Mohseni’s movie is unusual, for most of the Western travel films were comedies, which seemed better suited for processing the painful course of self-­othering. For his Three Naughty Men in Japan (Seh Naqola dar Zhapon, 1966), Mo‑ hammad Motovasselani took the three famous comic characters of ff cinema (Mansur Sepehrnia, Garsha Raoufi, and himself) to Japan for a funny story about diamond smuggling. In Shaollah Nazerian’s comedy, An Isfahani in 242

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New York (Yek Esfahani dar Nuyork, 1972), starring the famed comedian Nos‑ ratollah Vahdat, a father sends someone to straighten out his son who has be‑ come involved in criminal activities in the United States instead of studying. In Vahdat’s own film, An Isfahani in the Land of Hitler (Yek Esfahani dar Sar‑ zamin‑e Hitler, 1977), the Iranian cabaret film, with its story of the exploita‑ tion of innocent girls by heartless cabaret owners, is transplanted to Munich. Based on a true story, it deals with a German group akin to the Mafia that lures Iranian girls to Germany, supposedly for higher education. Once in Ger‑ many, the girls find their papers confiscated unless they perform in cabarets. Apparently, the film led to the Iranian and German police busting one such group and arresting its members (Arian 2001/1380:70–71). In Reza Safai’s Golnesa in Paris, a gypsy girl, jilted by the boy she likes, travels to Paris where she is transformed into a beautiful and modern woman. On her return, she attracts the boy and marries him. These movies simultaneously made fun of the West and marveled at its accomplishments, inscribing the astonishment that nineteenth-­century “books of wonder” by travelers and early movie spec‑ tators had expressed. The “foreign bride” was typically a European or American woman whose comic ignorance of Iranian ways allowed filmmakers to play good-­humoredly, but sometimes critically, with cultural difference. The strict binarism of the past was loosened in the interest of envisioning hybridities of various comic sorts. In Vahdat’s very popular comedy Foreign Bride (Arus Farangi, 1964), the foreign bride, Maria, is a foil that convinces the protagonist, an Iranian taxi driver, Hosain Tormozi (Vahdat), to marry his own native fiancée (figure 39). After dating the European woman with a cute Persian accent, flirting with her, and protecting her, Hosain realizes that “the flock of a feather must fly together.” Despite traditional and religious objections to marriages between for‑

39  Hosain Tormozi (Nosratollah Vahdat) with his potential “foreign bride,” Maria, in a scene from Vahdat’s Foreign Bride. Frame enlargement.

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eigners and Iranians, bicultural love prevailed in some movies, as in Wal‑ ter Beaver’s Game of Love (Bazi‑ye Eshq, 1959), in which an Iranian boy and a British girl fall in love and successfully overcome all the obstacles to their marriage. In Nezam Fatemi’s Black Meshki and the Hot Pants (Mehdi Meshki va Shalvarak‑e Dagh, 1972), the tough guy, Mehdi Meshki falls in love with a foreign girl, whom he marries after marrying his sister off first, as dictated by his father’s will. Taking a foreign bride did not always end well. In Parvizi’s Akbar Dilmaj (1973), for example, the translator character is happily married, but when he meets a foreign woman, Katherine, he decides to marry her as well. Yet this polygamous arrangement proves to be far from harmonious, causing the dilmaj to finally divorce the foreign bride. In Feraidun Goleh’s Un‑ der the Skin of the Night (Zir‑e Pust‑e Shab, 1974), a young flâneur who likes to wander around Tehran streets tries to make love to a European female tourist in public places, causing the police to deport her. In Shapur Qarib’s Eastern Man and Western Woman (Mard‑e Sharqi va Zan‑e Farangi, 1975), tradition dic‑ tates that the protagonist marry his cousin, but he falls for a foreign woman, who abandons him, leaving him to win back his cousin from the clutches of another lover. Patriarchal structures could not countenance female exogamy, which is why all the foreign spouses were female. The commercial ff cinema was nothing if not adaptable. Many of the themes and some of the genres and subgenres discussed in this section found their way into the postrevolutionary commercial cinema as well. Be‑ cause the Pahlavi-­era commercial movies were responsive to market forces and to spectator tastes, and because they followed the semi-­improvised, semi-­ industrialized hybrid production mode, they were able to both express and as‑ suage the collective longing of the lower classes for justice, equality, authen‑ ticity, and even modernity in a society whose social disparities and unbridled Westernization proved increasingly alarming. In this two-­pronged task, they were more successful than the auteurist new-­wave films, which also emerged in this period.

A Cinema of Discontinuity and Negotiated Meanings Because many commercial movies, including tough-­guy and stewpot films, were conceived and filmed in an impromptu and unplanned fashion, impro‑ visation and its constituent elements constituted shaping presences not only during filming but also during editing. Like oral storytellers who strung to‑ gether memorized blocks of stories with new items to spice up and vary their 244

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performances, film editors engaged in centonization. Fardin claims that the editors removed, added, or moved around scenes “without creating any ellip‑ sis, for there was little continuity in sequencing the scenes” (quoted in Baha‑ rlu 2000e/1379:95). Despite Fardin’s claim, improvisation did produce un‑ explained interruptions and ellipses: missing persons, loose ends, missing scenes, repetitions, and extraneous tangential scenes. Kavusi, Toghrol Afshar, and other serious critics rightly complained of these shortcomings. For ex‑ ample, Kavusi complained that even the movies of an experienced filmmaker, such as Khachikian’s A Girl from Shiraz (Dokhtari az Shiraz, 1954), contained these problems. He wrote, “There is no continuity in the film. The characters behave in unexpected ways that are not congruent with previous events. . . . The actors hold their poses and gazes for too long. . . . The words and dialogue are incomprehensible and not even Persian in spirit, . . . Camera movements are inappropriate and sometimes bother the spectator’s eyes” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:247). Four years later, he could still complain about the spatial and temporal confusions in Khachikian’s Storm over Our Town, causing Kavusi to wonder to himself: “Was Khachikian’s purpose to show that multiple, si‑ multaneous events were taking place in the same space?” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:303). Other narrative techniques, such as chance encounters and mistaken identities, were used so abundantly and with such abandon as the motivators of plots, complications, and denouements that they both thema‑ tized improvisation and robbed the film characters of agency. Repetition was rampant in the use, even overuse, of colloquial phrases or character-­specific expressions and behaviors; of story situations, plot devices, and stock characters; and of shot compositions, camera movements, violent chases, and fight scenes. However, unlike in Persian classical music, repeti‑ tion and excess were not generally channeled and regulated by artfulness and rhythm. In fact, one of the chief flaws of the ff movies’ repetitive and exces‑ sive structuration was their lack of pacing, their uneven pacing, and even their irrational pacing. Song-­and-­dance numbers, which seemed to function as inexpensive fillers, were often inordinately long considering their meager narrative pay-­off. In Qarun’s Treasure, the first three shots after Qarun leaves his car and enters his home are filmed in extreme long shots, perhaps to em‑ phasize the house’s palatial grandeur and opulent furnishings, with the result that the protagonist is dwarfed and his actions become unclear. These shots are also rather long considering the minimal action that they contain, lasting thirty or more seconds each. The combination of static long shots and long takes makes for a very slow pacing at the film’s start. In addition, many of the movie scenes are filmed in master shots that exhibit the Iranian performing f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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arts’ penchant for “frontality,” which displays the entire action like a tableau to observing viewers. Or they are filmed from the point of view of an omni‑ scient narrator outside the diegesis, that of the director.32 There is a dearth of shot–reverse shot and point-­of-­view filming and of cutaways, making charac‑ ter identification and narrative comprehension difficult. For example, the en‑ tire scene in which Faramarz asks for Shirin’s hand from her parents and pro‑ duces an engagement ring is filmed in a master shot, with only the character movements around the table and character dialogue offering clues as to what to look at. And when he hands to Shirin’s parents the ring, whose quality and size they vocally admire, the camera remains on the master shot. Their admi‑ ration is not corroborated or conveyed to the audience by a close-­up cutaway shot of this important item. While this filming and editing strategy may be adequate for the utilitarian coverage of action, reliance on it reduces the direc‑ tor’s ability to pace the scenes and to direct the audience’s attention precisely. Likewise, when Carefree Ali and Hasan the Rattler are dining at the immense and elaborately set table in Qarun’s house, the technique of the master shot makes the scene undeservedly long, and therefore tedious. Filmfarsi movies were fantastical; neither in their contents nor in their form did they entirely follow the rules of reality or of realism. Because of their use of familiar plots, characters, themes, and forms, their stories were often formulaic and their characters stereotypical. They offered a diegetic fantasy world that sometimes did not resemble the real world at all. The whole second half of Qarun’s Treasure, beginning with Carefree Ali’s pretending to be Qa‑ run’s long-­lost son from India, makes for a hardly believable fantasy. In addi‑ tion, since some ff movies were filmed without considering the rules of mise-­ en-­scène and continuity filming and editing, “unrealism” was embedded in the films’ structure, not just in their contents. With the flawed footage they were given, film editors could not achieve the seamlessness and realism of the classical Hollywood style. Point-­of-­view film‑ ing, or a lack thereof, caused further editing complications. In many cases, particularly in the early movies, each scene was staged and filmed like a tab‑ leau, similar to taziyeh and other traditional theatrical performances, with the result that the relationship of viewers to the film became less psychologi‑ cal than sociological. In other cases, where point-­of-­view filming was used, it was either intermittent, chaotic, or multiple, with the result that character subjectivity and audience identification was disrupted, as spectators could not tell for sure who held certain viewpoints. Because of these attributes it is ap‑ propriate to call filmfarsi a “cinema of interruptions,” following Lalitha Go‑ palan’s designation of the popular Indian song-­and-­dance movies (2003).33 246

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These narrative interruptions had profound consequences for both the fi‑ nal shape of the movies and the experience of watching them. Because of them, commercial movies were like oral tales with an omniscient narrator, a dilmaj, outside the film, not modernist, realist narratives told by diegetic char‑ acters whose points of view and subjectivity propelled the tale. Censorship also contributed to narrative chaos. Qarun’s Treasure contains many incon‑ sistencies that confuse spectators or divert their attention from the narrative. The frequent switching between Tehran and Isfahan locations is irrational, creating spatial and temporal confusion; we do not know why Qarun goes to Isfahan to commit suicide or why the Zarparast family of Isfahan suddenly throws an engagement party for Carefree Ali and Shirin in what appears to be Tehran. In another scene, Qarun leaves the house with his friends, Ali and Hasan, for a night out on the town to repay them for their hospitality in Isfa‑ han. The film then cuts not to a nighttime cabaret scene involving the three buddies, but to a daytime poolside scene (in Shirin’s home in Isfahan?), where Shirin does a cabaret-­style song and dance for Ali. No explanation for this spa‑ tiotemporal inconsistency is given. Logical confusions abound as well. At one point, Hasan the Rattler and Es‑ mal the Brainless (Qarun) ask Carefree Ali to go with them to a café for lunch, in a scene set in Isfahan. Declaring that he has already had lunch, Ali heads home. In the next scene, however, all three are sitting in the restaurant to‑ gether, with Ali engaged most heartily in devouring his meal. Another exam‑ ple is the film’s failure to provide an explicit explanation for Qarun’s decision to abandon his wife and son twenty-­five years earlier, either at the movie’s be‑ ginning when he is contemplating suicide or at the end when he apologizes to them. Without such an explanation, his motivation then and his misery and remorse now are incomprehensible. It is entirely possible that some of these textual inconsistencies resulted from Yasami’s improvisation, which left the director and the editor without the necessary continuity materials to make the scenes cohere. The discontinuous, digressive, and chaotic narratives, characteristic of the hybrid production mode, necessitated interpretation to determine filmic meanings, something that rendered more complex not only the movies’ tex‑ tual systems but also their reception. Spectators had to rely on their cultural competencies: reading between the lines, privileging accismus and dissimu‑ lation, or esoteric meanings and indirection over manifest meanings and di‑ rect expressions, all of which favored negotiated meanings. The internaliza‑ tion and appreciation of the meandering structures of oral narratives provided further insights. Finally, the movies’ familial and communal orientation, f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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which worked against the dominant impetus of classical realist cinema to create a unified, stable, and individuated subjectivity, helped audience mem‑ bers to comprehend, even appreciate, the multiplicity and dispersion of char‑ acter viewpoints and narrative agencies.

Song and Dance and National Identity A surprisingly large number of feature movies made in the first two decades of the commercial sound cinema contained either singing or singing-­and-­ dancing scenes. Begun in 1933 with Irani’s and Sepanta’s The Lor Girl, this trend became indigenized after the Second World War when the first com‑ mercial sound movie was made inside the country, Mohammad Ali Dariya‑ baigi’s Tempest of Life. While in Irani’s and Sepanta’s talkie the actors sang their own songs, this did not become a tradition in Iran. When singers such as Delkash and Mahvash performed on the diegetic stage in cafés and cab‑ arets, they usually lip-­synched to their own prerecorded songs.34 Other ac‑ tors, such as Fardin, Foruzan, and Zohuri in Qarun’s Treasure, lip-­synched to the prerecordings of famous singers. The wide and frequent uses of Persian-­ language song-­and-­dance numbers in various genres, sometimes not narra‑ tively motivated, “nationalized” the Iranian commercial cinema by differenti‑ ating it from other regional cinemas (Arab, Turkish, and Indian) to which the Iranian musical cinema owed something and from which it needed to distin‑ guish itself. These interludes also covered up the movies’ narrative flaws and gave audiences what Fardin characterized as a “recess” from the sometimes incoherent narratives (quoted in Baharlu 2000e/1379:264). Unrelated song-­ and-­dance scenes such as Mahvash’s cut-­in performances proved integral to the pleasurable experience of commercial movies, particularly of stewpot and tough-­guy films. Singers and sexy dancers were touted in the movies’ public‑ ity campaigns, even for movies that were not musicals but contained a few songs, such as Fereidun Zhurak’s Salome (1973) (figure 40). Because of a lack of trained personnel and adequate equipment, from the start of fiction filmmaking, 35mm theatrical movies were shot mos (with‑ out sound), necessitating postdubbing during postproduction. This created all kinds of synching discrepancies and lip flapping, as in Khatibi’s Spring Variety (Varieteh‑ye Bahari, 1949), flaws for which Iranian audiences devel‑ oped some tolerance. However, from time to time, directors sought to solve these problems. Khatibi claims that he pioneered the use of 16mm reversal stock and of double-­system sound recording for features with his The White 248

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40  The poster for Fereidun Zhurak’s Salome touts sexy dancers and male action. Collection of the author.

Glove (Daskesh‑e Sefid, 1951), because filming and synching on this stock was cheaper and the equipment for recording live sound during filming was avail‑ able (Khatibi 1994:519–22).35 This method reduced the synching flaws consid‑ erably, but it introduced other problems, for it required that during filming, particularly during musical numbers, which typically lasted several minutes, all the conditions of filming, actors’ movements, sets, and properties be co‑ ordinated and work flawlessly. This in turn required prior planning and me‑ ticulous execution, qualities that were generally in short supply. Khatibi re‑ lates an amusing story of filming one such sequence involving the singer Ahmad Ebrahimi and an orchestra for his movie King for a Day (Hakem‑e Yek‑ ruzeh, 1952). The scene was to take place in a garden by a pool, but the prop‑ erty master had difficulty keeping the water fountain flowing properly, so this single sequence took a full day, an inordinate amount of time for ff cinema. Because of these difficulties Khatibi reverted to his previous practice in The White Glove, in which he played prerecorded music during filming, to which the singers lip-­synched (Khatibi 1994:390–93). Filming on 16mm reversal stock had another drawback: it produced a sin‑ gle positive copy, necessitating the creation of an intermediate negative, from f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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which duplicates were struck for distribution to theaters. At the time, the 1950s, this was difficult to accomplish locally. Because of these problems and the lower quality of the projected image, 16mm filmmaking was gradually phased out as a serious alternative in feature-­film production, but it remained the workhorse in the documentary and instructional fields. Over the years, to narratively motivate musical interludes, filmmakers at‑ tempted to integrate singers and dancers as characters into their movie plots. Thus cafés, restaurants, and cabarets; celebrations, weddings, dining out, hanging out at cafés, and drinking; and dancing, singing, and prostitution be‑ came standard plot elements, influencing the content and the form of ff. The staggering presence in the movies of what Iranian society considered morally questionable and reprehensible female professions is testimony to the success of this integration. This unrealistic portrayal of women’s presence in public spaces was indicative of the generic requirements of the movies, particularly of ff. Codes of realism were less at stake in these movies than generic codes. As noted in the section on the star system, what drove the popularity of the songs and the singers featured in the movies was the intertextual circulation of both stars and movies among diverse media and pop culture venues: mov‑ ies, radio broadcasts, television shows, musical recordings, nightclubs, and concerts, all of them venues of modernity. Each medium or venue had its own peculiar and competitive infrastructure, personnel, and political economy; yet they all shared in and benefited from cross-­pollination. Each crossover use of specific movies, stars, or entertainers bolstered not only those movies, stars, or entertainers but also the media and venues in which they appeared, with the result that a large, integrated, and hybridized entertainment industry be‑ gan to take shape. All these factors contributed to the overdetermination of modernity.

Dubbing, Doubling, and Duplicity Dubbing is the unsung hero of the history of world cinema. By making the movies intelligible to world populations, a majority of whom were illiterate in the first decade of sound, dubbing contributed immeasurably to the spread of cinema as the most popular entertainment form. It also contributed to the rise of national cinemas and domestic film industries. And it introduced its own poetics and politics. In Iran, dubbing was the linchpin of the hybrid pro‑ duction mode, and it took two chief forms. Dubbing per se involved an opera‑ tion on foreign-­language movies by which Persian dialogue replaced that in 250

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a foreign language. Doubling involved an operation on domestic movies by which diegetic actors, or voice doubles, recorded the films’ dialogue in post‑ production sessions. The separation of the characters’ voices from their bod‑ ies broke the tyranny of synch sound, which was the sound equivalent of in‑ visible editing, the armature of classical realist cinema style. This separation provided ample opportunities for a range of not only dubbing and doubling but also of duplicating and duplicitous practices, involving translations, mis‑ translations, substitutions, elisions, apparent losses, surprising gains, oppor‑ tunistic accommodations, and censorship, contestation, resistance, and hag‑ gling of all sorts. Dubbing and doubling were the cinematic equivalents of Iranian duality, dissimulation, and accismus, which allowed and channeled a play between the inside and the outside, between self and Other, between citizen and the state, and between lips and the words emanating from them. Hence the long period of tolerance for dubbing and doubling among all so‑ cial sectors, which lasted until a few years after the revolution of 1978–79. As such, dubbing—­t he general term applied to both dubbing and doubling oper‑ ations—­is one of the most significant aspects of prerevolution cinema. Ismail Kushan dubbed the first foreign-­language movie into Persian, but not in Iran. During the Second World War, he had joined the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin both as a producer and an announcer of Radio Free Iran’s Persian Service and as voice-­over narrator of Persian-­language German newsreels. He had also played bit parts in German movies at ufa, the giant Nazi movie factory. His pro-­German and anti-­British broadcasts prevented him from returning home, forcing him to relocate from Germany to Turkey where, using Iranian students residing there, he dubbed into Persian Henri Decoin’s French comedy Premier Rendez-­Vous (1941) under the title Runaway Girl (Dokhtar‑e Farari). Kushan had problems finding women willing to act as voice-­over artists, but finally he engaged Nurieh Qavanlu to dub the voice of the lead actress, Danielle Darrieux. In Turkey, he also dubbed a second movie, La Gitanilla, a Spanish musical directed by Fernando Delgado, which he titled The Gypsy Girl (Dokhtar‑e Kowli, 1942). He carried both movies home with him at the war’s end, when he was allowed to return. He screened Runaway Girl for dignitaries and the general public in Tehran’s Crystal Cinema starting on 25 April 1946. In newspaper ads and posters for the film, Kushan prom‑ ised that “the cute and beautiful French actress [Darrieux] will speak in Per‑ sian.” In a strategy that became popular, he further indigenized the film by using Persian names for the characters during dubbing, and by creative (and somewhat dishonest) uses of titling he created the impression that the film was somehow a production of Mitra Film in Turkey (Baharlu 2000b/1379:61). f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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The ad for the film not only stated that the film “spoke Persian” but also that it was subtitled in Turkish, thus revealing its Turkish source. The film caused a sensation among the spectators. It took in two hundred thousand tomans at the box office, and the media reported positively on Qavanlu’s dubbing of the French actress’s voice. The filmmaker and inventor Ebrahim Moradi praised the film’s achievements in rendering the Persian dialogue realistically and ac‑ curately. However, he found some technical faults with it as well: dark, out-­ of-­focus, and scratchy images. As he explained it, these faults were caused by Kushan’s use of a positive copy of the movie from which he had struck an intermediate negative on which the optical dubbed soundtrack had been re‑ corded (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:928–30). Another shortcoming was the loss of sound and music tracks, as the Persian dialogue was recorded over the original composite track. The successes of Runaway Girl and Gypsy Girl in the same year, and the media focus on them, encouraged Kushan to officially form Mitra Film Studio to make and dub movies in Iran. The first dubbed films, though inferior to their originals, were good enough to be functionally equivalent and to attract investors and audiences.36 Mitra Film Studio in 1948 released the first Persian-­language talkie made in Iran. Called Tempest of Life, it was produced, photographed, and edited by Kushan and directed by the German-­trained theater director Dariyabaigi. Kushan’s artisanal multitasking included many other uncredited tasks. The result was a melodramatic, musical tear-­jerker in which true love triumphs over arranged marriage and hard work and perseverance transcend class in‑ equality. The film was first shown at the Rex Cinema to dignitaries such as the Shah’s sister, Ashraf, and his brother, Abdolreza, preceded by a newsreel about the opening ceremonies of the Royal Social Service Clinic, headed by Ashraf, which Kushan had filmed. The novelty brought many enthusiastic spectators to the theater. But the enthusiasm soon wore off due to the film’s many technical flaws, particularly bad sound (dialogues were all doubled and postdubbed), bad acting, inferior cinematography, and a trite story (Omid 1995/1374:194–200). Mitra Film Studio’s dream of dubbing the first foreign film in Iran was dashed, however, when Iran‑e No Film Studio beat it to the punch by dub‑ bing and releasing in 1948 André Berthomieu’s La Neige sur les Pas (1942), a dialogue-­driven French movie, under the title Forgive Me (Mara Behbakhsh). Several voice-­over artists worked on it, including three women, Mehri Aqili, Mahin Dayhim, and Mehri Mordadian, and several men, including the dub‑ bing director, Ataollah Zahed, who dubbed the voices of seven characters. It was screened simultaneously in Tehran’s Diana Cinema and the Park Cin‑ 252

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ema, where it did well, earning 160,000 and 90,000 tomans, respectively (Omid 1995/1374:932). In the meantime, several foreign movies were dubbed into Persian in Egypt and Paris. The one made in Paris by Ahmad Vahabza‑ deh, Eternal Return (Bazgasht‑e Javdani/L’Éternel Retour, 1943), was one of sev‑ eral Vichy-­era films dubbed into Persian after the fall of the regime. It was artfully directed by Jean Delannoy and written by Jean Cocteau, based on the myth of Tristan and Isolde. It was a superior product to begin with and the dubbed version enjoyed high image and sound quality, particularly because the original music and sound effects had been retained. The overall success of these early dubbed movies led to new dubbing stu‑ dios that took advantage of the public’s fascination with Persian-­language for‑ eign sound films. Aria Film Studio opened in 1949, Diana Film Studio in 1950, Asr‑e Talai Studio in 1951, Borna Tone Studio in 1952, Iran Film Studio in 1953, Alborz Film Studio in 1953, Dariush Film Studio in 1953, and Cen‑ tral Film Studio in 1954. Under the direction of Saifollah Kamrani, Central Film Studio became a key site for dubbing movies, bringing together a skilled workforce who dubbed into Persian films such as René Clair’s Roya‑ye Shirin (Les Belles de Nuit, 1952). With one exception, all these studios were located in Tehran. The exception was Dariush Film Studio in Italy, headed by the Armenian Iranian entrepreneur Alex Aqababian, who specialized in Persian versions of Italian films.37 Riots in some European cities, such as in Milan, forced the mandatory dubbing of all foreign films to regulate the public deployment of nonnational languages (Durovicová 2003b:82). As a result, dubbing in Italy was perhaps more advanced than in any other country, suitable for creating an Iranian miniature dubbing industry. For his first effort, The Story of Miserable Feraidun (Sargozasht‑e Feraidun‑e Binava/Le Meravigliose Avventure di Guerri Meschino, dir. Pietro Francisci, 1952), Aqababian not only translated the Ital‑ ian dialogues into Persian but also Persianized the proper names of the char‑ acters, including that of the protagonist in the title. Its screening in October 1952 in Tehran’s Diana Cinema was so successful than within a week, Park Cinema also began showing it. This studio and other subsequent ones in Italy created a second front for movie dubbing, as they dubbed not only Italian mov‑ ies but also other foreign movies for which they imported talent from Iran.38 This Italian front rivaled the one in Tehran and achieved some respect in the late 1950s and the early 1960s. Over the years, others attempted to dub in the region the regional movies popular in Iran—­dubbing Indian films in India and Arabic films in Egypt—­but these efforts did not prove very successful. The bulk of the dubbing took place inside Iran, which by 1968 boasted f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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some twenty-­five dubbing studios, 240 dubbers (170 males and 70 females), and the professional Film Dubbers’ Union, which began its operations in 1965 (Omid 1995/1374:939). The Ministry of Labor ratified the constitution of the union in 1974, but according to the veteran dubber Khosrow Khosrow‑ shahi, none of its provisions were ever implemented.39 The union attempted to fight for the rights of voice-­over artists against the movie importers, cinema owners, and film distributors, who tried to squeeze budgets to raise profits. The union staged a major strike in 1974 for improved pay, which lasted nine months, but it was eventually broken by scab dubbers and studios. The technical quality of the dubbed prints continued to be a problem. Fur‑ ther difficulties arose from the liberties film importers, distributors, exhibi‑ tors, government censors, and dubbers took with the originals. Many of the technical problems were overcome, but some of the aesthetic and ideological problems worsened, leading to particular textual poetics and politics. At first, voice-­over artists not only dubbed the voices of the characters but also cre‑ ated some of the sound effects. By the 1960s, distributors and importers of foreign movies provided dubbing studios with separate music, sound effects, and dialogue tracks, allowing the voice-­over artists to concentrate on their dialogues. Indeed, these voice artists became very proficient and prolific, the best of them specializing in the voices of several foreign movie stars. Some of them dubbed the voices of several actors in a single movie, such as Vossoughi who began as a dubber and dubbed the voices of six principal and ancillary ac‑ tors in the television serial International Police (Polis‑e Bainolmelali), as well as the diverse voices of Louis Armstrong and Dean Martin in theatrical movies (Zeraati 2004:51, 57). As a result of their success, the number of dubbed for‑ eign movies shown in Iran continued to rise rapidly—­56 films were dubbed in 1957, 119 in 1958, and 183 in 1959. By the end of the 1950s it was rare to encounter a foreign movie that was not dubbed (Omid 1995/1374:939). The undubbed original-­language films, particularly art-­house films and classic films, were screened in various intellectual film clubs or in the cultural arms of foreign embassies and consulates, which were cropping up in different cit‑ ies in the 1960s and the 1970s. Because of various production difficulties, almost all the commercial fea‑ tures made in Iran were also doubled, that is, they were filmed mos, with di‑ alogues and sound effects both recorded and added in postproduction. Dub‑ bing and doubling thus became the linchpins of the entire commercial film industry, affecting movies’ production, censorship, importation, distribution, exhibition, and advertising. Some critics rightfully claimed that ff movies had found another “secret base” in the dubbing studios, for these studios 254

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tended to transform all dubbed movies, foreign and domestic, into a version of filmfarsi (Mehrabi 1984/1363:430). Only in the late 1970s, with such new-­ wave films as Khosrow Haritash’s Kingdom of Heaven (Malakut, 1976) and Abbas Kiarostami’s Report (Gozaresh, 1977), did synchronized sound filming become a viable option for domestic art-­cinema features, while it had been a growing practice in documentary and nontheatrical films. The institutionalization of dubbing and doubling and their kin, actors’ lip-­ synching, popularized the commercial cinema and filmgoing and helped im‑ prove both the technical capacity of the film industry and the construction of new movie houses. It also served as an informal film training school, as dubbers studied and viewed the movies repeatedly to learn their parts, in the process learning much about acting, shot composition, film structure, and narrative. Yet this institutionalization also had a profoundly negative impact on film-­production practices. For one, actors did not have to memorize their lines, even if they had been scripted beforehand, as a prompter (called suflor, from the French word souffleur) fed them their lines during filming. This situ‑ ation reinforced laziness, intuitive acting, spontaneous filmmaking, and the insidious idea that filmmaking was basically improvisational and required little preparation. Until the end of the 1950s, Iranian actors had doubled their own voices in postproduction, but from the 1960s onward, most of them abandoned this practice in favor of professional dubbers (called dublor from the French dou‑ bleur) doing their voices. For one thing, many actors were not trained and could not match their disembodied voices during postdubbing sessions with the actions of their on-­screen personae. For another, voice-­over artists had become very skillful and their services were much cheaper than those of the movie stars. Despite the dubbers’ skill, however, dubbing and doubling inevi‑ tably resulted in lip flapping, caused by a lack of match between what the ac‑ tors’ lips appeared to be saying on the screen and what their dubbed voices said. Although this phenomenon increased the imprecision of the movies, general audiences seemed perfectly willing and able to either suspend disbe‑ lief or to ignore the effect. Rampant illiteracy also made dubbing a preferred practice to subtitling. The Iranian penchant for negotiated meanings and indirection, and the tol‑ erance for chaos, were additional factors in the acceptance and flourishing of dubbing and doubling. There were several domestic actors and stars, particu‑ larly comics, who continued to double their own voices, but this did not elim‑ inate lip flapping. Dramatic actors who doubled their own voices included Parviz Fannizadeh and Behrouz Vossoughi; comics included Parviz Sayyad, f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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41  Dubbing Masud Kimiai’s The Deer. From left: Ali Kasmai, the dubbing director; a dubber named Erfani; and Behrouz Vossoughi, the film’s star, dubbing his own voice.

Nosratollah Vahdat, Nosrat Karimi, Taqi Zohuri, and Reza Arhamsadr (Meh‑ rabi 1984/1363:446) (figure 41). Professional voice-­over artists were both specialists and generalists. Some of them specialized in dubbing the voices of only certain foreign and domes‑ tic actors, while others dubbed and doubled many different voices. They often indigenized (Iranianized) the foreign actors and stars by putting Persian ex‑ pressions in their mouths, thereby continuing the function of live screen in‑ terpreters (dilmaj). This was particularly true of the comics and of the strong character types, such as cowboys, tough guys, outlaws, and romantic heroes and heroines. Sometimes, these efforts at indigenization were inappropriate, as when dubbers spoke Burt Lancaster’s lines in a Persian Turkish accent or those of Tony Curtis in a Persian Rashti accent—­both of which carried very specific cultural baggage not extant in the original. Also, because each voice-­over artist usually dubbed and doubled the voices of several characters, foreign and domestic, strange transnational crossover resonances and disso‑ nances would be set up between dubbed voices and screen characters and be‑ tween original and dubbed films, which served to undermine the spectators’ mirror-­phase identification with the foreign characters. Thus dubbing be‑ came the great equalizer, a “machine for processing differences” (Durovicová 2003b:79) (figure 42). Some critics, such as Kavusi, rightly condemned these efforts as fraudulent because they violated the “authenticity and integrity” of the original films (quoted in Mehrabi 1984/1363:431). Working-­class audi‑ ences seemed to like such transformations, however, and drew special plea‑ sure from hearing John Wayne and Jerry Lewis use expressions that Iranian tough guys or comedians employed. This subverted the original films while endearing them to audiences. Contrary to what the critics of the culture in‑ dustry thought, the “work” of these slippery and manipulative dubbing and doubling practices proved highly ambivalent, ambiguous, and sometimes 256

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42  Veteran dubbers, from right: Parviz Bahador, who dubbed the voices of Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, and Walter Chiari; Manuchehr Esmaili, who dubbed many foreign stars, including Anthony Quinn, Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, and Charlton Heston; and Ataollah Kameli, who dubbed, among others, Kirk Douglas.

even counterhegemonic. Instead of providing wholesale interpellation and identification with Western movies and cultures, the practices created new movies and an alienating sort of identification. Dubbers’ work often went unrecognized by both critics and audiences:40 they usually did not receive any screen credit. I have listed some of the key voice artists and the foreign and domestic actors whose voices they dubbed and doubled both to recognize their contributions and to indicate the range and variety of their talent in terms of character types, type of actors, nation‑ ality of actors, and film genres.41 Despite the lack of official recognition, the small group of versatile professional voice-­over artists became highly influen‑ tial not only within cinema circles but in the entire entertainment industry. Their services were sought for the full range of media. The oral tradition was strong enough among some of the voice-­over artists to drive their practices. Comic radio actors, such as Hamid Qanbari, trans‑ ferred their various radio personalities into their film dubbing, imbuing for‑ eign actors, such as Jerry Lewis, with a new Iranianized personality beloved by radio audiences, who spewed specifically Persian expressions or jokes that were then current in Iran and on the radio. Thus Lewis was always haunted by his indigenized double. As in Persian art music and oral storytelling, some‑ times the composition and performance of dubbing occurred at the same time. Dialogue translators and voice-­over artists, forced to work within the confines of a time-­based art, resorted to improvisation and to the efficiency of inserting tried and true expressions into the mouths of the actors, much like oral poets stringing together formulaic phrases. Once a type had emerged, such as a country bumpkin, a foreign bride, a tough guy, or a dandy, the voice artists ran with it. They did so by turning a foreign character into a local one, or by imbuing a local actor with more character than he visually displayed on the screen, or by typecasting him into a familiar, endearing, or tiresome char‑ f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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acter. The key characters of Qarun’s Treasure all owe something to these dy‑ namics of orality, dubbing, doubling, duplicity, and typecasting. Any dubbing is a form of translation and a potential mistranslation, not just in linguistic terms but also in cinematic, sociocultural, and political ones, allowing censors, filmmakers, voice-­over artists, and spectators to evade, hag‑ gle, delay, and play with the meanings and the politics of the movies. Like song-­and-­dance sequences, dubbing served narratively and politically impor‑ tant functions in the semi-­artisanal, semi-­industrial hybrid commercial cin‑ ema, which was bridled by heavy censorship. It offered the directors a second chance to smooth over their films’ narrative flaws or to tie up loose ends. By adding a few words of dialogue or expository speech, they explained away or covered up ellipses, missing scenes, missing persons, or extraneous elements left in the movie because of improvisational filming. It also allowed them to censor their movies, papering over immoral relationships or politically sticky points.42 As the veteran voice artist Ataollah Kameli noted in recounting early practices, through drastic manipulations during dubbing, a tragedy could be turned into a comedy (quoted in Mehrabi 1984/1363:438–39). Dubbing also served the causes of Iranian nationalism by encouraging linguistic homoge‑ neity and by reducing heteroglossia and the “Babel effect,” so feared by reli‑ gionists and ultranationalists. This is how Persian became the dominant lan‑ guage not only of national cinema but also of television, all of whose ­programs —­a large portion of them imported—­were dubbed. With the Islamic Republic, the dubbing of foreign movies became even more of a politico-­religious instrument. For example, through dubbing and cutting, the sexual relationships of unrelated men and women in foreign movies—­illegal in Islamic Iran—­would be changed to sibling or friend rela‑ tions. Verbally, the lovers would be called brothers and sisters or friends, and to avoid taboos, images that suggested sexual relations would be removed by cutting. Such changes would have major repercussions for the entire movie, requiring many other changes to make the story seamless and coherent. With‑ out those fine-­t uning changes throughout, the movies’ intelligibility would be compromised, which was the case in many instances in the early days of the Islamic Republic. Similar strategies were applied to change and manipulate films politically. Both American and Soviet movies were manipulated through dubbing and cutting.43 Because of its vast possibilities in cinema, dubbing pro‑ vides a rich arena for deciphering the tensions of hailing and haggling, and of selfing and othering. Doubling in Iranian movies decreased dramatically within a decade after the revolution, as the government began to encourage synchronized sound 258

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filming by providing more funds, or more raw stock at lower prices, to the filmmakers who took that option. As a result, most of the art-­cinema films were shot with synch sound on location, a practice that enhanced the realism of the postrevolutionary movies.

Censorship Throughout this chapter I have cited many examples of censorship. These various forms of censorship, whether instigated by the state, by the religious establishment, by pressure groups, by commercial concerns, by spectators, or by filmmakers themselves as an internalized form of self-­censorship, worked together to affect Iranian films collectively, even though they were applied haphazardly, contingently, and locally by various external and internal agents. They became a constitutive component of the hybrid production mode. While most films suffered from one form of censorship, some movies labored under multiple forms, such as Gaffary’s South of the City. Another example is Kha‑ chikian’s comedy Messenger from Paradise (Qased‑e Behesht, 1958), a departure for the director, who specialized in detective and noir genres. The story is conventional: an established bazaar businessman goes bankrupt because of the shenanigans of a smuggler, who is in love with the businessman’s daugh‑ ter. The daughter, on the other hand, is in love with a different young man. After many adventures, the smuggler is exposed, the businessman’s venture restored, and his daughter marries the boy she loves. The film was not dis‑ tinguished either in the market or with the critics, but its censoring made it special, for it underwent five different types and stages of censorship after it had already received an official exhibition permit. First, the mca forced Kha‑ chikian to remove some of the nudity. Then, he had to remove some of the dialogues of Abbas Mosaddeq’s character. Then the Boy Scouts complained about the inappropriate behavior of a Boy Scout in the movie, causing further editing. Then the lawyers of the Ministry of Justice complained about the rep‑ resentation of a lawyer character, forcing a halt to the film’s screening, which resumed only after a few days of discussion. Finally, the film was taken off the screen completely without any reason. Subsequently, on reviewing the film again, the mca ordered more editing, after which it approved its screening for a second time. But by then the film’s producer, Azhir Film, preferred to hold the film (Omid 1995/1374:312). What effects did all these editing demands, initiated by different parties, have on the film’s narrative? We do not know for sure. But it is safe to assume f a mi ly melo d r amas and c o med ies

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that all the cutting aggravated the different types of chaos so characteristic of many ff movies, and of Khachikian’s movies in particular. The producer’s finances must surely have suffered too, for Azhir Film Studio had to pay for all the editing changes and live with the delays in the film’s exhibition while interest on its production loan accumulated. This could have affected the sol‑ vency of the producer, and if there were enough of these cases, the health of the whole movie industry. Of course, under authoritarian regimes with panoptic ideological and co‑ ercive apparatuses the most pernicious form of censorship is self-­censorship. When artists and film authors internalize the state’s external rules, censor‑ ship remains unconscious and normal. Spectators then encounter incoherent film texts whose interpretation is challenging and a waste of time for most—­ although for the hermeneutically inclined the challenge must prove a form of pleasure. All these political, financial, and personal considerations; all these uncertainties, delays, and frustrations; and all these textual, authorial, and spectatorial effects form part of the hybrid mode of production.

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5 m a l es, m a sc ul ini t y, a nd p ow er The Tough-­Guy Movie Genre and Its Evolution

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enres emerge with the industrialization of production, distribution, exhi‑ bition, and consumption of the movies. The stewpot and tough-guy mov‑ ies emerged during the 1950s but became flourishing genres in the subse‑ quent two decades when industrialization set in. If Siamak Yasami’s Qarun’s Treasure (Ganj‑e Qarun, 1965) was a key progenitor of the stewpot or meat-­and-­ potato movie genre, Masud Kimiai’s Qaisar (1969) was the energizer of the tough-­guy genre. Both of these pioneering movies jolted the complacent com‑ mercial cinema, particularly filmfarsi, toward industrial productivity.

Genres and the Production of Meaning Although Kimiai’s Qaisar rejuvenated the tough-­guy conventions, turning the movies about the lutis and their lifestyle into an immensely popular genre, this genre had earlier roots. Two movies, released in 1958, had launched it. Majid Mohseni’s The Generous Tough (Lat‑e Javanmard, 1958) dealt with a well-­ meaning tough guy charged with protecting the daughter of a friend, caus‑ ing complications; while Farrokh Gaffary’s South of the City (Jonub‑e Shahr,

1958) centers on a widow who out of necessity works in a café, frequented by two rival toughs, who compete with each other over her. The latter movie, as discussed in a previous chapter, was influential not so much because of its wide distribution but because of the controversy it aroused and its censorship. Mohseni’s film did not run into censorship problems, and since it dealt more centrally with a single heroic tough and it did very well in the market, it is gen‑ erally credited with being the first tough-­guy film. Kimiai’s reworking of this genre a decade later with Qaisar and that movie’s great success transformed the entire sector of commercial cinema, which had been bedeviled by formulaic filmfarsi comedies, stewpot melodramas, and crime movies. The tough-­guy genre (luti, and later, jaheli genre) shared some of the characteristics of both stewpot and dandy films, but it developed its own specific tendencies, aesthetics, politics, and stars. Like all deeply rooted genres, it was flexible, endearing, and enduring, surviving the Shah-­People Revolution, the Islamic Revolution, and transplantation into exile. Spectatorial pleasure here stemmed not only from the shock of the new features but also from the search for the schema, the recognition of the familiar conventions, in Umberto Eco’s words, from the “return of the identical” (1985:168, 179). Luti movies’ popularity in the 1970s caused critics, both religious and sec‑ ular, to deride them as sleazy (mobtazal) and deviant (monharef ). The elitist bias against these movies was so naturalized that in one study of spectator reactions, social science researchers failed to include the tough-­guy genre in their questionnaires, although they included two popular foreign genres that were similar: westerns and martial arts movies. Only one major study (by Ali Akbar Akbari, written in 1963–64 and published in 1973) took the tough-­ guy movies seriously. But Akbari limited himself primarily to their contents and only to condemn them as degenerate and “lumpenist” (lompanist), from the word lumpen, a designation that persists to this day. He thought them so formless and artless that he did not bother with their narrative structures and their deep cultural roots. Nevertheless, he provided an influential, albeit inflexible, Marxist “cultural imperialist” analysis of this genre and of its re‑ lationship to the social classes the movies depicted—­the petit bourgeoisie, the proletariat, and the lumpen proletariat. According to Akbari, tough-­guy movies glorified the lives of the lumpen, who were not engaged in mean‑ ingful social production but led a shiftless, degenerate, and “parasitical life” (1973/1352:5). The toughs and their women eked out a marginal existence in debased professions, exhibited antisocial behavior, and involved themselves in criminal schemes. Their lives included the vending of seasonal foods, gofer‑ ing, rabble-­rousing, knife-­w ielding, pimping, spying, singing and dancing, 262

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smuggling, stealing, and prostitution. In a flight of judgmental elitist fantasy, Akbari contended that the “mind of the lumpen is very empty, ordinary, and small, and its contents do not exceed the most elementary concepts.” Instead of using “scientific cognition” to understand the problems of life, he said, the lumpen resorts to “metaphysics and superstitions” (1973/1352:138). He went on to remark that the wide propagation of their “debased culture” by the film and culture industries under the Pahlavi regime served the needs both of the feudal, Westernized, and authoritarian ruling classes in Iran and of the for‑ eign imperialists and capitalists elsewhere. To him lumpenism was the dis‑ ease of lower-­class taste, formed by silly and degrading adventures of lowlife hang-­abouts such as tough guys, their loose women and sidekicks, and their song-­and-­dance routines in the movies, whose production the government en‑ couraged to either dope or dupe the lower strata. As a result, the “Westernized culture” imposed by the elite from above and the “lumpenist culture” exud‑ ing from below contaminated and distorted Iran’s “national culture” and the authentic “class cultures” of various social strata, thus perpetrating an ersatz hybrid culture (Akbari 1973/1352:160–80). Despite its unquestioning subscription to top-­down cultural imperialism, overgeneralization, elitism, and shallow attention to the underlying social, psychological, and cinematic formations at work, Akbari’s thesis had identi‑ fied a major problem and offered a diagnosis of its genesis. Lumpenism is the other side of the Janus face of dandyism: one side represents the disease of the lower classes, the other that of the middle and upper classes. Both suffer from hybridity and inauthenticity: the luti is cathected primarily to an ersatz and formulaic native culture, the dandy principally to a phony and shallow West‑ ern culture. Both represented important trends in Iranian identity formation in the twentieth century. Akbari’s identification and diagnosis of lumpenism as an illness of mo‑ dernity suited the anti-­Shah and anti-­Western zeitgeist of the Marxists and of the Islamists at the time, and it proved highly influential. Almost all the sub‑ sequent studies of filmfarsi movies, particularly those of stewpot films, Far‑ din films, and tough-­guy movies, were influenced by this work’s thesis.1 The critics who subscribed to the formulation of this government-­induced pathol‑ ogy implicitly posited either an imaginary, originary, and stable high culture of purity and authenticity for Iran or an authentic folk culture of the masses, which they rarely questioned and which they believed filmfarsi cinema de‑ filed and misrepresented. In addition, they subscribed to an “injection thesis” of cinematic influence, according to which the Pahlavi regime and its impe‑ rialist Western masters used film and cinema instrumentally to interpellate ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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(hail) the spectators and inculcate an ideology of syncretic Westernization di‑ rectly and unproblematically. According to this view, state-­supported culture was entirely homogenous and hegemonic. Private desires, alternative views, public tastes, resistance to government manipulations, and haggling with the dominant ideology had no room. Citizens and spectators were thought of as helpless and hapless victims. Like both the communists and the critics of Western mass culture, such as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, these critics believed that the “ruthless unity” of the culture industry imposed it‑ self on an essentially passive and atomized population (1972:123). These views were held by both secular intellectuals and the religious elite, exemplified by Jalal Al‑e Ahmad (1961/1340) and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1981a, 1981b, 1984), both of whom developed powerful key concepts such as Westo‑ nitis (gharbzadegi) and the “culture of idolatry” ( farhang‑e taqut), respectively, to critique the popular culture of the second Pahlavi period. These key con‑ cepts became the engines of the revolution of 1978–79.2 Finally, proponents of this thesis of cultural imperialism placed an un‑ due belief in the power of cinema as a machine both for manipulating real‑ ity and for realistically rendering the world. Accordingly, if the government and the Western movie industries employed cinema’s manipulative powers to hail and subjugate Iranians and to turn them into consumers of cheap, de‑ based Western entertainment and products, Iranian filmmakers had a duty to counter this stratagem by using cinema’s power of realism to present the true Iranian reality, one uncontaminated by ersatz Westernization and politi‑ cal manipulations. Both the government’s manipulation of cinema and cin‑ ema’s power of truthful realism were much more complicated and contingent than the critics either understood or acknowledged. As a result, in public discussions and critical examinations of the filmfarsi industry, the tropes of disease and pathology dominated. The thesis of this chapter, however, is that the tough-­guy movies constitute a genre, which I de‑ fine as a dynamic, rule-­bound activity of meaning production, collective ex‑ pression, and cultural inculcation, resistance, and negotiation involving mul‑ tiple elements and parties, including the film industry production practices, generic conventions, censorship rules, filmmakers’ authorial creativity, and spectator reception. By examining the tough-­guy movies as a genre, I hope to bring out the complex and contingent social and cinematic dynamics that gov‑ erned their production and reception and that ensured the genre’s longevity while allowing evolution. Generic approaches shed light not only on the ways that social and ideological forces are inscribed in a specific group of films—­ textual formation—­but also on the manners in which genres influence so‑ 264

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cial and ideological discourses and relations. The latter describes ideological formation (Schatz 1981; Neal 1983; Altman 1981, 1999; Naficy 2003b; Grant 2003). By examining the dynamics of generic conventions and codes and by track‑ ing their evolution, much can be learned about the deep structures, preoccu‑ pations, and aesthetic traditions of a society and about the process by which it shapes, and is shaped by, forces of change, such as by Westernization, mo‑ dernity, and cinema. This is because these conventions tap into deeply held values, concerns, and traditions that have become naturalized as common senses of society, requiring no examination. The cultural studies of genres can take us far beyond the issues of cinematic realism, those of a realistic por‑ trayal of the tough guys, of the symptomatology of a sick society, or of mere textual regularities. Generic conventions, of course, are not immutable; they change and evolve in correlation with political formations, social tensions, cultural and religious traditions, government censorship, authorial tendencies, production and mar‑ keting practices in the film industry, and spectators’ reactions and counter‑ hailing. As Stephen Neal noted in an early study: “Not only a set of economic practices or meaningful products, cinema is also a constantly fluctuating se‑ ries of signifying processes, a ‘machine’ for the production of meanings and positions, or rather positionings for meaning; a machine for the regulation of the orders of subjectivity. Genres are components in this ‘machine.’ As sys‑ tematized forms of the articulation of meaning and position, they are a fun‑ damental part of the cinema’s ‘mental machinery.’ Approached in this way, genres are not to be seen as forms of textual codifications, but as systems of orientations, expectations and conventions that circulate between industry, text and subject” (1983:19). As a popular genre with mass appeal, the tough-­ guy movies constituted the mental machinery of the mid-­twentieth century popular culture whose workings bore less the stamp of individual authors than of Iranian cultural orientations, expectations, conventions, and social and ideological formations. Hence these movies may be said to present and represent the voices of the culture, mediated through signifying practices and generic conventions. With the exception of Kimiai’s films, the bulk of the tough-­guy movies were “authorless” in the sense that their makers did not de‑ velop a coherent worldview or a consistent individual film style, but instead intuitively followed, improvised, and elaborated on the contents of a deep socio­cultural encyclopedia and an evolving set of conventions, which they ne‑ gotiated and internalized alongside government censors, film financiers, and the audience.3 Other professionals, such as the composer and lyricist Jafar ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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Purhashemi, who wrote the songs and composed the music for many tough-­ guy movies, contributed to the regularity and conventions of the genre. The sociocultural encyclopedia the tough-­guy movies drew on resembled that of the stewpot movies. This genre was derived from two primary sources: the tough’s historical formation, ideology, and lifestyle and Iranian oral litera‑ ture and medieval literatures, such as “chivalry literature” (adab‑e pahlevani) (Jami 2000; Mahjoub 2000), “popular romances” (Hanaway 1970), and “folk tales” (dastanha‑ye amianeh) (Mahjoub 2003/1382). While the stewpot genre also drew on oral literature and contained luti-­type characters, they did not centrally deal with the lutis’ social formation and their lives and times.

The Tough Guys (Lutis) as a Social Formation The tough guys and their ideology (variously called lutigari, javanmardi, or fotovvat) are both ancient and complex and in them are commingled many seemingly contradictory tendencies. As Ehsan Yarshater notes, the terms above may collectively be translated as “chivalry,” which refers to “the code of behavior of a loosely defined social group that appeared or was revived in the Muslim Middle East in the first century of Islam” (quoted in Mahjoub 2000:5). Mehrdad Bahar traces the luti tradition further back to the ancient, pre-­Islamic Mithra myths and philosophy (1976/2535:18). Whatever their ori­ gins, the lutis’ social functions and status were not static, and they did not constitute a unified and homogenous formation.4 Over the centuries they evolved, became systematized, and took different national forms in each Mus‑ lim country. In the Iranian context, chivalry is based on “the virtues of brav‑ ery, generosity, loyalty, and helping the poor and the downtrodden.” In the course of their evolution, some of the javanmard groups favored Sufism and adopted the “ideals of abandoning worldly pleasures and dedication to spiri‑ tual goals”; others adopted bravery, vigilantism, adventurism, and pleasure seeking (Yarshater quoted in Mahjoub 2000:5). In his classic treatise on the topic, Fotovvatnameh‑ye Soltani, Hosain Kashefi Sabzevari identifies a central tenet of javanmardi to be the maintenance of a productive tension between bi‑ nary opposites: good and evil, morality and immorality, certainty and doubt, generosity and parsimony, love and hate, and humility and arrogance (quoted in Abbasi 1998/1377:vol. 1:19–20). The numerous terms that Iranians have used to describe the toughs testify to the tensions and complexities of this duality in belief, value, and behavior. Many of the terms, such as lout (lat), ig‑ norant thug ( jahel), loafer (velgard), knife-­w ielder (chaqu kesh), bully (qoldor), 266

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and lumpen (lompan) are pejorative and critical of the toughs. Others, such as velvet hat wearer (kolah makhmali), slick brother (dash mashti), brave and gen‑ erous ( javanmard), cunning trickster (ayyar), champion (pahlevan), dervish (darvish), and tough guy (luti) are either neutral or laudatory.5 I use the terms luti and lat here to both denote the polar tendencies of the toughs and to differentiate the heroic characters (lutis) from the villains (lats).6 Historically, the toughs formed an urban social grouping (Hanaway 1970:142; Bahar 1976/2535:16), and in the nineteenth-­century Qajar era, it in‑ cluded two basic types: entertainers and urban social bandits (Floor 1981:86).7 Lutis played music, danced, managed dancing animals (such as monkeys, dogs, and bears), performed comic and acrobatic skits, and told jokes. They organized and performed in religious processions, Shiite lamentations, and taziyeh performances. 8 Wrestlers, bodybuilders, and other athletes were frequent among the toughs as social bandits, acting as Robin Hoods and political middlemen. In their Robin Hood function in popular romances and in the luti movies, they were javanmard and obtained justice for women and underdogs, respected el‑ ders, and demonstrated courage, living an ideal of manliness. They publicly showed self-­sacrifice, truthfulness, loyalty, and piety (Mostofi 1997; Khan‑ lari 1985/1364, 1969b/1348:1073–77; Mirzai 2002/1381; Mahjoub 2003/1382). In their political role they were not so much luti as lout, abrogating chivalry. More often than not they fought publicly with their rivals and acted as middle‑ men for competing clerics, landowners, state governors, or national govern‑ ments, either enforcing the law or violating it.9 Hired by competing powers, they helped settle scores, collect taxes, organize political and religious events, coerce voters during elections, and in general achieve social and moral con‑ trol through violence. In the 1950s, a famous luti, Hosain Ramezan Yakhi (Ra‑ mezan the Iceman), along with his henchmen tore down the walls of a movie house that was under construction in the poor South End of Tehran; erecting a venue for Westernized forms of entertainment (instead of a mosque) in a heav‑ ily Muslim district was considered an offense to public morality. The tough guys’ intervention dissuaded the theater owner from proceeding with the proj‑ ect (Mirzai 2002/1381:127). Politically, the toughs were in the main conserva‑ tive, even reactionary, with their allegiances more often based on rivalry with opposing toughs than on patriotism (Khanlari 1969c/1348:265; Floor 1981:91). Many toughs of both tendencies—­heroic lutis and villainous louts—­were athletes or wrestlers who frequented the houses of power (zurkhaneh, a com‑ bination of a training gym and a spiritual center) or sometimes owned these establishments. In these places, whose ancient origin is a matter of some con‑ ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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troversy, they received their physical and spiritual training and were social‑ ized into their hierarchical roles.10 The zurkhaneh exercises and the institu‑ tion of chivalry and manliness achieved some respectability in the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries (Rochard 2002:321). Yet the zurkhaneh mostly retained a contradictory reputation through the centuries, which stemmed from the binary social functions and behavior of the toughs associated with it. As a result, like the tough guys themselves, the zurkhaneh and the tough-­ guy movies have been both celebrated as noble and condemned as degenerate. All types of toughs—­entertainers, social bandits, and athletes—­were driven by male power and performativity, by both coercion and charm. Lutis’ colorful language, physicality, and costumes, as well as their styles of dancing, sing‑ ing, drinking, bodybuilding, and fighting, and even the tensions of their moral conventions and convictions are for public display. Haunting modern cafés, traditional coffeehouses, cabarets, zurkhanehs, movie houses, and streets, lutis also populate political demonstrations, sporting events, and religious proces‑ sions (dastehgardani), lamentations (rowzehkhani), and passion plays (taziyeh). Many luti wrestlers, among them Mohammad Ali Fardin, Imam Ali Habibi, Reza Baikimanverdi, and Behrouz Vossoughi, and bodybuilders, including Za‑ karia Hashemi and Ilush Khoshabeh, turned to acting and became stars. What was on public display and what was at stake was not just the toughs’ power to charm their fans but also their power to defeat their opponents. Fear and re‑ spect in their own neighborhoods for some grew to national prominence for them. Such fear and respect are evident not only on the movie screens but also in the movie houses (recall that in early days of cinema, when a major tough arrived late at a neighborhood cinema, sometimes the projectionists stopped the movie in his honor, resuming only after he was seated). Vossoughi relates an amusing story about the power of the lutis. One day, during the filming of Kimiai’s The Deer (Gavaznha, 1974) in Tehran, an imposing luti arrived on the scene and invited Vossoughi to lunch at his house. Respecting Vossoughi for his performance as a famous luti in Qaisar, he did not take no for an an‑ swer, and since both the director and the star were keenly aware of the power of such lutis in the neighborhood and of the negative repercussions of refusing his offer and disrespecting him, they agreed to stop the production for lunch. However, the tough’s power was such that he not only kept the star for lunch, watched over by dozens of neighborhood observers, but also kept him through‑ out the afternoon, insisting that he partake of a variety of food and alcoholic drinks, despite Vossoughi’s protestations. Hours later, at dusk, the inebriated star finally returned to the filming location, where he found the crew and cast patiently waiting for him. The director, however, was so livid with anger that, 268

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as the Persian saying goes, if you knifed him he would not have bled. It was so late that no more filming could be done that day (Zeraati 2004:274–27). The maintenance of a proper balance between opposites constituted the ideal of Iranian masculinity. Without a public to be impressed by their perfor‑ mance of masculinity, the toughs were nothing. The best tough-­guy movies inscribed the tensions between the binary themes of good and evil, morality and immorality, certainty and doubt, generosity and parsimony, love and hate, and humility and arrogance and the resulting conflicts, hesitations, contra‑ dictions, and resolutions. They also revolved around the central quality that ideal lutis are expected to possess, something that continues to be the ideal of Iranians in general: the elusive “inner purity” (safa‑ye baten), which can be achieved only when these dualities and contradictions are resolved, leading to a consistency of feeling and behavior or harmony between the interior and the exterior (Bateson et al. 1977:268–69). Inner purity involves balancing binary opposites in a corrupt world and maintaining a productive tension between individual interior feelings and desires and social demands for proper behavior and appearances. “In a cor‑ rupt world, self-­preservation forces one to play the game, to lie, to be dishon‑ est, to take nothing at face value. But underneath this mandatory mask, the individual’s self-­respect depends on a view of himself as essentially pure, hon‑ est, and trustworthy. Furthermore, there is a constant search to find others with whom one can be this true self” (Fischer 1980:140). The tension be‑ tween interior and exterior worlds and between self and other and the efforts to achieve harmony form the central drama not only of the tough-­guy genre but also of some of the best Iranian movies in general.11 The closer one is to possessing inner purity, the closer one is to being a Sufi, or a dervish, that is, disinterested in worldly power and material possessions. These dervish types are frequent characters in prerevolution new-­wave movies, such as Kimiavi’s P as in Pelican and Stone Garden, and in postrevolution art movies, like Dariush Mehrjui’s Hamoon (1990). What matters is neither mate‑ rial wealth nor poverty outside but inner richness, spirituality, and humanity.

The Narrative Structure of Tough-­Guy Movies Like all enduring genres, the tough-­guy genre evolved over the years, help‑ ing Iranians interpret, rework, and process social change and modernity and negotiate individual and national identity. Two main subgenres developed in prerevolution Iran: dash mashti and jaheli movies. After the revolution, the ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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genre underwent further evolution as it attempted to process and incorporate the radical social transformations of an Islamic revolution at home and of ex‑ pulsion of a large number of Iranians to foreign lands. This led to the pro‑ duction of another tough-­guy genre in the country—­involving Islamicized toughs—­and to transplanted tough-­guy forms in Los Angeles such as tele‑ vision shows, serials, and music videos. The terms luti movies and tough-­guy movies cover all these subgenres. I have selected two archetypal movies for detailed analysis, both directed by Kimiai. They shed light on the evolution of the genre and on the specifici‑ ties and differences of its two main subgenres, dash mashti and jaheli movies. However, these movies are not run-­of-­t he-­mill filmfarsi; they were exemplary and highly influential. Although Kimiai made both Qaisar (1969) and Dash Akol (1971) around the same time, in terms of their diegetic worlds, the for‑ mer is a jaheli movie while the latter is a dash mashti film. The dash mashti films concerned premodern, rural toughs from the turn of the twentieth cen‑ tury, and they were generally made in the late 1950s inside Iran. On the other hand, the jaheli films, also called kolah makhmali (velvet hat) films, dealt with the life and times of modern toughs after the Second World War—­more pre‑ cisely, with post–White Revolution toughs, as they were made primarily be‑ ginning in the 1960s. Both genres were shaped not only by the contents and formal attributes of classical epics and romances but also by the commercial cinema’s hybrid production mode.12 During the second Pahlavi period, sound and fiction filmmaking brought with them concerns about the Persian lan‑ guage, about oral narration, Iranian nationality and authenticity, and Persian mythology, history, and literature as sources of both movie stories and narra‑ tive conventions. By thus localizing the movies, sound and speech helped cre‑ ate an Iranian national cinema, one differentiated from the products of other national and global cinemas.

Dash Mashti Movies: Masud Kimiai’s Dash Akol (1971) Dash Akol is the best known example of the dash mashti subgenre, though many of the films in that group were, like Dash Akol, based on famous histori‑ cal or mythological stories and figures. It was adapted from a short story of the same name, first published in 1932, by Sadeq Hedayat, which Hushang Gol‑ shiri considered to be “one of the foundations” of contemporary fictional lit‑ erature (1990a/1369:172) and Homa Katouzian called “a small masterpiece” (1991:103).13 Pars Film Studio produced it.14 On its release, the movie version also garnered much critical praise. The well-­known writer Akbar Radi called 270

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it “one of the most eminent products of the Iranian cinema” (1990/1369:200), while another writer, Zhaleh Mahdavi, called Dash Akol superior to Kimiai’s previous Qaisar, citing it as an evidence of the director’s evolution toward cin‑ ematic “maturity” and “mastery” (1990/1369:208).15 In an interview with me, Bahman Mofid, a leading tough-­guy character actor who starred in both of these seminal movies and has a deep knowledge of luti history and traditions, characterized Dash Akol as “authentic” (Naficy 1984a:14). The royal court, too, thought so highly of the movie that it had it screened in the Sa’dabad Palace. At the end of the screening Empress Farah and Princess Ashraf praised the film to Vossoughi (Zeraati 2004:212). The plot of the movie goes as follows: Dash Akol (Behrouz Vossoughi), a respected, fearsome luti with an ugly scar across his face, is challenged by a villainous and boisterous but stuttering black lout, Kaka Rostam (Bahman Mofid).16 Their adversarial relationship and Kaka Rostam’s villainy are estab‑ lished in the first sequence, on which is superimposed the first line of Heday‑ at’s short story: “Everyone in Shiraz knew Dash Akol and Kaka Rostam were such bitter enemies that they would have shot each other’s shadow.” In this sequence, a drunken Kaka Rostam in an alleyway belligerently argues with a woman who berates him for being a lout, not a chivalrous luti like Dash Akol. His bullying ends when Dash Akol suddenly emerges from the darkness. In this and other similar encounters, Dash Akol straightens out Kaka Rostam through verbal abuse and physical strength and agility. In the opening se‑ quence, both forms of humiliation are combined. After an extended physical fight, Dash Akol pins Kaka Rostam down and, with the edge of his machete against his enemy’s throat, threateningly declares: “I will not kill a dog, but if you harass people once more, I’ll rub rouge on your cheeks.” Already in these early sequences, Kimiai engages in three important di‑ rectorial innovations. The on-­screen quotation of Hedayat’s opening line is perhaps the first such screen quotation that directly and unequivocally links the movie to a specific Iranian modernist literary source. Kimiai stages all the encounters of the archrivals in the style of classic American westerns: While Kaka Rostam is publicly gloating about his accomplishments or ha‑ rassing a victim, Dash Akol appears unexpectedly from the darkness of the night. Accompanied by appropriately rhythmic music (composed by Esfan‑ diar Monfaredzadeh), dramatic shot composition (filmed by Nemat Haqiqi), and staccato editing (by Kimiai and Hosain Hami) the lone hero walks with measured, confident steps and proceeds to put Kaka Rostam and his cowardly gang in their places (figures 43a and 43b). Finally, most of the filming takes place in traditional locations with deep historical roots. ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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43a  A blackface Kaka Rostam (Bahman Mofid) berates Dash Akol: “Do you have a husband or are you yourself Dash Akol’s husband?” Frame enlargement from Masud Kimiai’s Dash Akol. 43b  Dash Akol (Behrouz Vossoughi), wearing a satin jacket, later responds: “I will not kill a dog, but if you harass people once more, I’ll rub rouge on your cheeks.” Frame enlargement from Masud Kimiai’s Dash Akol.

Dash Akol’s elderly friend, Haji Samad, requests on his deathbed that Dash Akol take charge of his wife and young daughter, Marjan, and act as the exec‑ utor of his estate. Unable to deny a dying man’s wishes, Dash Akol accepts the responsibility—­and is trapped by it. Written with clarity and insight into luti philosophy, Kimiai’s screenplay quotes Hedayat as Dash Akol muses aloud: “God bless you, Haji, but this was not a good thing you did. A man is a man when he is free. Now, you have put chains on me.” During the burial in a lovely garden, Dash Akol for the first time lays eyes on Marjan’s unveiled face. They lock gazes; he is transformed. Marjan (Mary Apik) drops her handker‑ chief and Dash Akol keeps it as a symbol of his undying love for this under‑ age girl (figure 44). Dash Akol’s single-­minded devotion to the affairs of the rich Haji and to Marjan earns him the ridicule of Kaka Rostam and his gang, whom he sees at the café of a Jewish proprietor, Molla Eshaq, where they drink vodka (araq), listen to live music and tough-­guy songs, and watch Aq‑ das, a café dancer, perform. When Marjan’s mother asks his permission as the family guardian to marry her daughter to a young suitor, Dash Akol, acting according to the luti honor code, suppresses his own love for Marjan and acquiesces to her mar‑ riage. On her wedding night, he turns Haji’s affairs over to Marjan’s hand‑ 272

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44  The gaze of a nubile Marjan (Mary Apik) transforms the great tough guy Dash Akol. Frame enlargement. 45  Marjan’s handkerchief as a fetishized object of transgression and transition. Frame enlargement.

some, rich husband and in despair seeks out Eshaq’s café to drink and forget. Here, Aqdas (Shahrzad) warns him of the damage to his reputation resulting from his love for the forbidden girl. When she confesses her own love by say‑ ing, “I envy the clothes you are wearing,” Dash Akol spurns her. On the danc‑ er’s insistence, however, a forlorn Dash Akol gives in to her demand, saying, “Tonight, you, too, will become a bride.” Their lovemaking is intercut with that of Marjan and her husband on their wedding night. Yet throughout the scene, Dash Akol tenderly squeezes Marjan’s handkerchief in his hands. The handkerchief allows him to be physically with one woman while pining for the other. In the meantime, one of Marjan’s relatives waits outside her bedroom door for the telltale handkerchief that will indicate by the drops of blood on it the consummation of her marriage and the loss of her virginity (figure 45). Returning from the café that night drunk, Dash Akol encounters Kaka Rostam and his gang in an alleyway, where he is ridiculed and beaten merci‑ lessly. Kaka Rostam accuses Dash Akol of having become a rich man’s “guard dog” and reveals why he is hostile toward the rich. His servant parents, he says, were mistreated by their wealthy masters. He tells how in the dead of one winter night his parents were thrown into the freezing water of a court‑ yard pool to teach their young boy obedience. But instead of learning obedi‑ ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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ence, “I learned to become a good bully,” says Kaka Rostam. To reestablish his manly reputation, Dash Akol challenges Kaka Rostam to a duel “with ma‑ chete” (qameh) at the taziyeh amphitheater (tekkyeh) the following night. To prepare himself, Dash Akol attends a zurkhaneh, where he goes through his exercises alone. Also, for the third time in the movie, he confesses his undy‑ ing love for Marjan to the only creature he trusts, his caged parrot. The final showdown takes place after a taziyeh performance. Kaka Rostam and his impatient gang are ready, but Dash Akol is late. They publicly accuse him of being a coward and a woman. Kaka Rostam sarcastically asks a group of women onlookers in the amphitheater: “Maybe one of you is Dash Akol hid‑ ing under a veil?” As the villains are about to declare their victory and leave, Dash Akol appears from out of the darkness. The machete duel between the rivals proves fierce and continues under a heavy downpour, until Dash Akol pins Kaka Rostam to the ground. Once again he decides to show luti-­style mercy (“I do not kill dogs; if you want to keep your reputation, leave town”). Yet as he turns to leave, Kaka Rostam lunges forward and fatally stabs him in the back. Dash Akol spins around and grabs Kaka Rostam by the throat to choke him to death. Later, on his deathbed, Dash Akol asks Eshaq to deliver his only personal belonging—­his pet parrot—­to Marjan. When a delighted Marjan receives the caged present, Dash Akol’s plaintive voice is heard confessing his love to the bird, “Marjan, my love for you killed me,” strongly implying that he was not killed by Kaka Rostam but by violating the luti code by falling in love with his charge (figure 46).17 In the movie’s final scene, two birds play joyfully in Mar‑ jan’s pool. When one flies away, the image freezes on the one remaining be‑ hind. Over this image is superimposed the first line of Hedayat’s influential, angst-­ridden novel The Blind Owl (Buf‑e Kur, 1937): “There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker. It is impossible to con‑ vey a just idea of the agony which this disease can inflict. In general, people are apt to relegate such inconceivable sufferings to the category of the incredi‑ ble” (Hedayat 1989:1).18 The bookend quotations from Hedayat’s novelette seal the intertextuality of Iranian art cinema and modern literature (figure 47). Kimiai pays homage to and reinterprets three sources in his film: the oral tradition and popular romances from which luti stories and characters are generally derived; the real-­life stories of Dash Akol and Kaka Rostam who lived in Shiraz at the turn of the twentieth century; and Hedayat’s short story from which the film was adapted. William Hanaway studied beloved medieval romances and tales, such as Samak Ayyar, Darab Nameh, Firuz Shah Nameh, Eskandar Nameh, Hosain‑e 274

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46  Dash Akol on his deathbed: “Marjan, my love for you killed me.” Frame enlargement. 47  Film and literature intertextuality. The film Dash Akol opens with the first line of Hedayat’s short story: “Everyone in Shiraz knew Dash Akol and Kaka Rostam were such bitter enemies that they would have shot each other’s shadow.” Frame enlargement.

Kord, and Amir Arsalan, which are based on the Persian oral tradition. Accord‑ ing to him, these romances, which were very popular with Iranians, literate or not, served a threefold function: to entertain; to teach, preserve, and transmit values; and to reevaluate the present in light of the past (Hanaway 1971b:60). They were transmitted in print form as books, orally as bedtime stories, and performed in coffeehouses and at public gatherings. It was natural that they would also form a major source of ideas, stories, characters, and conventions for filmfarsi, particularly for the tough-­guy genre. The newspaper serialization of popular novels involving tough-­guy char‑ acters was another source for the movies. Hasan Madani’s story, Esmal in New York (Esmal dar Nuyork), was first serialized in Sepid O Siah magazine in 1954 and later became a very popular book. It focuses on the life of a jaheli driver who during the Second World War befriends an American serviceman and learns about the prosperous life of drivers in the United States, to which he emigrates. While no film was made of this novel, it and other serials and novels fed into movies like the “foreign travel” subgenre, which popularized tough-­guy characters and their lifestyles, language, and worldview. Like the nineteenth-­century “books of wonder,” which Iranians wrote about their trav‑ els to the West, the protagonist is struck by material progress in the United ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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States, ending his narration with a paragraph that begins: “I saw a country which was a land of wonders” (quoted in Ghanoonparvar 1993:88). In the tough-­guy movies of the mid-­twentieth century, as in the popular romances of medieval times, Iranians reworked, preserved, reinterpreted, and transmitted their values and traditions in the light of momentous so‑ cial changes brought on by modernity. These movies were compilations of an evolving, systematizing inherited lore.

Tough-­Guy Movies’ Generic Conventions In the following section, the features that Dash Akol, as a representative of the dash mashti subgenre, shares with popular romances are compared to es‑ tablish the thesis that oral stories, popular romances, and luti movies are all formulaic, containing similar standardized narratives and generic elements, forming both a social and a narrative encyclopedia for Iranians.

Plot The plots of the popular romances that Hanaway studied were typically driven by chase and pursuits, often motivated by the hero’s desire to be united with a loved one (1970:230). Likewise, the luti protagonist is often on a chase, re‑ dressing a wrong, revenging an affront, or competing with a rival. In Dash Akol, the plot revolves around the personal rivalry between the luti type whose era is fading (Dash Akol) and the lout type who is in ascendance (Kaka Ros‑ tam). Kaka Rostam chases Dash Akol’s status as the neighborhood’s chief luti. Were Kaka Rostam to have survived, however, his antisocial and villainous conduct would have prevented his transformation from a lout to a luti. The plot does not become a drama of transformation, for it stops at the tragic ter‑ mination of both the hero and the villain.

Character Type and Masculinity The movie tough guys retain the dual roles of Robin Hood and political mid‑ dlemen, and they almost always come in binary pairs, with the protagonists representing the luti/Robin Hood pole and the antagonists representing the lout/middleman pole. These character types provide what the anthropologist Michael Fischer called “mental frames” (1980:141). Most tough-­guy movies present these characters in their most stereotypical, unambiguous, and ideal­ 276

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ized forms. Each character represents one of the binary types and behaves according to that type’s dictates. Marjan’s mother describes Dash Akol’s in‑ ner purity this way: “They say he is so truthful that if he steps on a grape, his mouth will taste the sweetness.” Of course, it is always possible to feign inner purity and become what is called a phony luti (luti‑ye motazaher); yet Iranians generally attach great importance to truly achieving such an ideal‑ ized, centered, and balanced state of being in the world (it forms part of their mystic Sufi tradition). Lutis are constantly being tested to prove their sincer‑ ity and that their behavior directly expresses an inner state. The luti code re‑ quires that idealized specimen, such as Dash Akol, be compassionate toward and defend the weak and the women of their neighborhood, be merciful to‑ ward their adversaries, and lead a stoic lifestyle. Finally, they are supposed to be chaste with women (cheshm pak); indeed, according to Mofid, ideally they are to remain virgins until married, and they must remain faithful to one wife throughout their lives (Naficy 1984a:4). This may account also for the preva‑ lence of the toughs’ homosocial and homosexual relationships, relations that are not directly acknowledged but kept as open secrets. On the other hand, villainous louts, such as Kaka Rostam, are boisterous, bully the weak, and act as mercenaries on behalf of the powerful and the rich. While the lutis are generally loners and their authority is derived from their moral and physical strengths, the louts tend to form gangs, deriving author‑ ity from their numbers and their violence. Popular literature depicts lutis as having risen from the common folk. Even those who are born well off, such as Dash Akol, consciously try to live humbly, share their wealth, and help the more unfortunate members of society. The denial of the material world gives the lutis a measure of freedom and a moral authority that separates them from the materialistic lout characters.

Character Development In popular romance literature, action trumps character development, since the tough guys are not only protagonists but also exemplars. They are des‑ tined to fulfill “certain functional roles rather than [be] human beings react‑ ing to events or driven by inner compulsions” (Hanaway 1971a:154). This also holds true for the taziyeh performers, who, as Andrzej Wirth has observed, are “carriers of a predefined character” (1979:38). The tough-­guy movie, in this regard, is the most indigenous of all Iranian film genres. Marjan’s mother expresses this notion of predestination when, in lauding Dash Akol’s truthfulness, she says, “Anybody who has any character has it from the time ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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he is in diapers.” Dash Akol himself expresses a similar worldview after a café brawl with his nemesis by saying, “What is in your cards is certain to happen.” Yet more sophisticated tough-­guy movies, such as Dash Akol and Qai­ sar, endow their dichotomous characters with individual subjectivity, doubt, and choice, which intensify their tales’ dramatic impact. The central drama of the latter movies stems not only from the structural dichotomy of good and bad but also from the responsibility that individual choices pose for the ­protagonists—­a modernist subjectivity. The durability of Dash Akol stems precisely from the archrivals’ internal complexities. Their choices transform them from the archetypal characters of ancient popular romances to real, twentieth-­century dash mashti figures. In fact, Dash Akol is not totally inde‑ pendent and heroic: he takes on the affairs of the rich Haji and falls in love with his daughter—­both choices violating the luti honor code. He is killed as much by his own violations as by Kaka Rostam’s dagger. What further distinguishes Kimiai’s Dash Akol is the partial reversal of the protagonists’ roles, as it is Dash Akol who, beholden to the rich Qavam fam‑ ily, faces dishonor, not the villainous Kaka Rostam. And Kaka Rostam is not a stereotypical lout, for his humble origin as the child of the Qavam family’s former servants sets him apart, giving him a kind of authenticity that his anti­ social behavior then neutralizes. The back story of his parents’ mistreatment by the aristocratic family—­briefly alluded to in the film—­provides the moti‑ vation for his anti-­rich attitude and his disdain of Dash Akol as a rich man’s “guard dog.” A homosocial back story also remains latent in the film. Hedayat’s short story was based on two actual tough guys, Dash Akol and Kaka Rostam, who lived in Shiraz at the turn of the twentieth century. In re‑ searching the film, Kimiai and Mofid, who plays Kaka Rostam, discovered facts they incorporated to give texture and authenticity to the villainous ac‑ tions of Kaka Rostam. In an extended interview with me, Mofid explained that according to the Shirazi elders they interviewed, Kaka Rostam was a young child in the household of the powerful Qavam family, where his par‑ ents, black African slaves, were employed as servants (Naficy 1984a:12). This background brings in the underexplored fact of slave ownership and racism in Iranian history and society. As slaves, both male and female servants were sexually available to their masters. One cold winter night, when Kaka’s father apparently refused to allow Mr. Qavam sexual access to his wife, they were thrown out into the icy courtyard, where they froze to death. The child Kaka Rostam watched this terrible scene from a window and vowed revenge. Soon after this incident, he ran away and was trained by Dash Akol to become a luti. Kaka Rostam’s hatred turned him against all rich people, whom he called 278

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“satin-­coat wearers” (qaba atlasi pushan), and one of his favorite acts as a luti was to forcibly remove the satin jackets of wealthy passers-­by, which he then gave to the poor. The all-­consuming passion for revenge transformed him from a potential luti into a veritable lout. Many years later, the elder of the Qavam family, who resided in Dash Akol’s neighborhood, embarked on the hajj. As tradition dictated, he asked the neighborhood luti, Dash Akol, to look after his wife, daughter, and his belongings during his long absence (in those days, such a pilgrimage typi‑ cally took months). In the meantime, Dash Akol’s boy lover (not Kaka Ros‑ tam) established an illicit sexual relationship with Qavam’s daughter, which Dash Akol covered up to protect him and his own homosexual relations by proclaiming himself the culprit. It appeared that he not only had failed to pro‑ tect the girl entrusted to him but also had violated her himself. Such a serious ethical violation among the lutis was sure to bring about shame; however, ap‑ parently this shame was less than that which would have befallen him had his homosexuality been exposed, for that would have violated a higher luti code, destroying his masculinity. Neither choice was good, and he paid dearly for the one he made. Dash Akol was placed against a tree, blindfolded, and mur‑ dered with a machete by the next person in line to become the neighborhood tough, Kaka Rostam.19 As Mofid told me, Kaka Rostam was apparently very popular in Shiraz; toughs he had spoken with remembered that fifteen years earlier his grand funeral procession had created a nine-­hour traffic jam in Shiraz. Significantly, Hedayat had reversed the status of the two protagonists, turning Dash Akol into a hero and Kaka Rostam into a villain—­a reversal that Kimiai’s movie maintains. Yet Kimiai’s attempts to incorporate elements from the original story into the film, which would have nuanced the characterization of the archrivals, were thwarted by government censors. Scenes evoking sentiments against the upper classes, such as the tragic death of Kaka Rostam’s parents or those showing him removing rich peoples’ satin coats, were cut from the film entirely. Also censored were references to the fact that the boy whom Kaka Rostam forces to drink wine in the opening scene was one of the Qa‑ vam children and that the tea-­boy whom Kaka Rostam ridicules was a Qavam tea-­boy. The censors thus removed the motivation that fueled Kaka Rostam’s an‑ tisocial actions, turning him into a lout stereotype. The passing reference in the movie to the freezing of his parents is too slight to either create justifica‑ tion for his actions or to supply motivation for them. The film’s rendition of Dash Akol, on the other hand, is more nuanced: it highlights the disastrous ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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consequences of freedom, choice, and agency for the great luti. However, in his case, the film’s silence about his sexuality misses an important point re‑ garding both Dash Akol’s personal story and Iran’s national history: the tran‑ sition from homosocial premodernity to heterosocial modernity. As Afsaneh Najmabadi has noted, “In a deeply homoerotic culture, falling in love was what a man did with other men, especially with adolescents. Falling with women more often than not was unmanly” (2005:160). The film fails to fully attend to Dash Akol’s divided loyalties and pain, which had both heterosexual and homosexual origins. The film highlights the former over the latter in the interest of its compulsion toward modernity, even though it is filled with nos‑ talgia for premodern times.

Lifestyle Historically, local governors, powerful clerics, rich landowners, and even for‑ eign powers engaged the tough guys to achieve social control and mobiliza‑ tion, particularly when the central government’s authority was eroded. For example, from the 1940s to the 1960s, the famed tough guy Shaban Jafari (who owned his own zurkhaneh) spearheaded many public brawls, political demonstrations, and coercive actions in support of the Shah and against his opponents and the communists. His fearless violence earned him the moni‑ ker Shaban the Brainless (Shaban Bimokh). Intimately involved in the cia­m16 coup against Premier Mosaddeq in 1953, which restored the throne to the Shah, he became known as “Shaban the Crown Giver” (Shaban‑e Tajbaskhsh) (Sarshar 2000:37, 388–424). He was an influential political middleman who had ties not only to politicians but also to entertainers, including film produc‑ ers, importers, and exhibitors. The Rashidian brothers, as British agents, si‑ phoned off cia money through him to the tough guys for the coup (Sarshar 2002:86, 166, 413; Omid 1995/1374:205–6). With the revolution of 1978–79 he went into exile in the United States, where he died. Other major lutis who rose to prominence during a period of social upheaval were two brothers, Ta‑ her and Tayyeb Hajj Rezai, who became nationally famous for supporting the brief and ill-­fated public uprising in 1963 in support of Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini was exiled and Tayyeb executed, resulting in the mythologization of both. When the central government felt strong, it made little political use of the toughs. During these fallow periods, the lutis made their living as vendors of seasonal goods and as operators of small businesses selling fruits, vege­ tables, and nuts. The more villainous louts kept a low political profile and, 280

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while holding down menial jobs, engaged in unsavory businesses: thievery, pimping, gambling, entertainment, extortion, and protection rackets. Many also organized and participated in Muslim religious processions, lamenta‑ tions, and taziyeh performances. The increasing self-­confidence and arro‑ gance of the Shah and of his government in 1960–70 deprived the toughs of social agency. The state and its coercive and ideological apparatuses were sufficiently in control not to need their services. However, the increasing so‑ cial inequality and political repression made the toughs, who were now usu‑ ally called jahels, very popular with the displaced rural populations flocking to major cities, where they lived in shantytowns and became the biggest fans of the tough-­guy movies. It was the glorification of these jahels and of their mis‑ erable social conditions in the 1970s jaheli movies that made both the charac‑ ters and the movies so popular with audiences. This very popularity caused the detractors to call the toughs “lumpen” and “parasites” and the movies “trite” and “sleazy” (Akbari 1973/1352:118–45; Ghaznavi 1982/1361:7; Najafi 1984/1363:24–29; Karimi 1990). Indeed, most of the tough-­guy movies were trite and formulaic, and in a majority of them the toughs’ lifestyle consisted of vagrancy and a parasitical and nomadic existence. In the films, the toughs are often without a steady and respectable profession. They hold down odd, temporary, low-­grade, or illicit jobs as gofers, taxi drivers, bus drivers, pimps, bouncers, thugs, gamblers, and cabaret operators. In fact, I used these professions and jobs, along with other parameters, as indexes for identifying and classifying the tough-­guy movies. In Dash Akol, neither of the archrivals holds down a steady or discernable job. In keeping with their roles as middlemen and performers, movie toughs frequent particular hangouts: alleyways, traditional coffeehouses, modern ca‑ fés, bars, and nightclubs where their public masculinist dramas and specta‑ cles of excess usually unfold. Drinking gives rise to brawls, and private scores are settled publicly. Molla Eshaq’s café is such a site in Dash Akol, as are the alleyways and the taziyeh amphitheater where the final showdown takes place. Another spectacle of excess is the toughs’ display of enormous appetite, not only for araq but also for food in cafés, where they consume half a dozen or more shish kebob courses in one sitting. Another form of performativity and excess surfaces in the toughs’ special dancing style, such as the jaheli “Baba Karam” dance, which is simultane‑ ously feminine and masculine. It is also evident in their special style of sing‑ ing called “orchard alley ballad,” which expresses their complaints about an unjust, ephemeral world. These ballads, along with jaheli pop songs (tasnif ), often sung by famous singers, were staples of the tough-­guy movies (recall ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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Carefree Ali’s ballad in Qarun’s Treasure). Their often humorous lyrics paro‑ died the toughs’ lifestyle; Dash Akol features such a song, called “Akh Jun,” sung by Aqasi in Eshaq’s café, to which Aqdas dances.20

Violence and Law and Order Tough guys in literature and movies are aggressive, physically powerful, and agile. To rise through the hierarchy from a neophyte (nowcheh) to a lat, luti, dash, and finally a dash mashti, the toughs must undergo physical and spiri‑ tual training. With each promotion, members acquire more of the seven ar‑ ticles of possession (see below). Toughs frequently attend zurkhaneh, where they undergo ritualized and spectacular exercises that have a long history among Iranians.21 Moral and spiritual strength are obtained not only by zur‑ khaneh exercises but also by practicing chivalric virtues socially. Champion athletes, especially wrestlers, were often tough guys from the zurkhaneh; many movies deal with this.22 In addition, luti protagonists are expected to endure physical and psychological hardships. Tattooing is one such physical test; so is physical fighting in lengthy one-­on-­one combat sessions involving the usual weaponry including knives, machetes, brass knuckles, chains, or just plain fists. Dash Akol’s two major battles with Kaka Rostam, which book‑ end the film, are fought with machetes. Many tough-­guy fights in the movies originate in personal revenge or ri‑ valry between the two protagonists. The fights are usually performed before a diegetic audience of other toughs and, depending on their outcome, either reconfirm the previous hierarchy or confer a new order. Tough-­guy movies also contain fight scenes in which many people participate. Such group fights are usually organized to demonstrate loyalty to, and defense of, the tough guys’ leadership, kinship, or residential neighborhood. A typical one is the café brawl in Dash Akol, where supporters of Dash Akol and Kaka Rostam duke it out. The preponderance of violent fights was partially responsible for the government’s crackdown on the tough-­guy genre in the 1970s. The toughs in real life, in popular romances, and in the movies are lim‑ inal figures who cherish their independence and group identity at the same time that they serve as middlemen facilitators among diverse poles of social power. They are social shifters, vacillating between becoming arms of the law or outlaws themselves; at times they work on behalf of the poor (as lutis), while at other times they work over the poor (as louts). Liminality turns individual toughs and groups of toughs into floating signifiers, capable of all types of ac‑ tions and social commitments and their attendant symbolic values. 282

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Style of Dress and Accessories The tough guys’ style of dress, their personal belongings, and their fashion ac‑ cessories are coded, forming a complex semiotics confirming their purported disinterest in material possessions, nomadic mobility, self-­sufficiency, rank within the hierarchy, and dual social agency as luti and lout. Their clothing is modest and their personal articles of possession and accessories very func‑ tional, affording them great mobility and agility. According to Mofid, tough guys in the early twentieth century (dash mashti) carried with them seven in‑ dispensable articles of clothing and personal belongings (called haft parcheh). These included a felt hat (kolah namadi), a long coat (qaba), a large handker‑ chief manufactured in Yazd (dastmal‑e Yazdi), a machete (qameh or qaddareh), a brass bowl ( jam), a chain (zanjir), and woven cotton shoes (giveh Maleki). These were their “war equipment as well as the equipment by which they made a living” (Naficy 1984a:2).23 They also wore studded leather wristbands and carried additional items such as knives (chaqu) and worry beads (tasbih). These elements created not only a distinct tough-­guy style but also, like all subcultural styles (Hebdige 1979), a sense of group identity and, in this case, of male solidarity and of the defiance of dominant society, which marginal‑ ized them when it did not need them. On the other hand, their very margin‑ ality, cultural rootedness, and potential as both role model and villain made them attractive.

Casting The tough-­guy genre stages the drama of maleness in public places. As in all genres, these films are peopled with character types and with familiar char‑ acter actors who migrate from movie to movie. As Mofid told me, many di‑ rectors, who did not know much about how to direct actors, would “just tell us ‘You be Aq Esmal [a famous luti character type], or just imitate Fardin,” leaving the nuance of acting and character development to the individual per‑ formers (Naficy 1984a:20). Women character actors were also popular in the tough-­guy movies, but in subsidiary roles, playing the parts of the lutis’ sis‑ ters, daughters, mothers, wives, and lovers, women who are invariably in need of protection, confirming the lutis’ social status. The plot of many films re‑ volved around the male toughs defending the virtues of their womenfolk and thereby their own honor. Such a defense often resulted in the film’s final showdown between luti and lout characters, as in Dash Akol. As it became semi-­industrialized, the commercial cinema honed this practice into type‑ ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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casting and a veritable star system, whereby a few actors became very popular with audiences who consumed their images in the mass media.

Acting Style Many tough-­guy actors adopted an acting style similar to taziyeh perfor‑ mances. They played lutis as both heroes and as exemplary types, so their act‑ ing was often didactic and rhetorical rather than bent on empathy. However, with the gradual industrialization of film production and the emergence of character subjectivity and psychology in cinema in general, particularly with Mehrjui’s The Cow (Gav, 1969) and Kimiai’s Qaisar and Dash Akol, the pre‑ sentational form gradually gave way to the representational style of acting, al‑ though in most movies both styles persisted side by side, which makes for an‑ other dimension of the hybrid production mode. The integration of Iran into the global economy and exchange relations with American westerns added another dimension to the tough guys’ act‑ ing repertoire. Directors such as Kimiai adapted the codes of the western and began producing crisp, tight, dynamic works such as Dash Akol and Qa‑ isar. As such, his films and many other stewpot and tough-­guy movies can be called abgushti westerns or stewpot westerns. Actors, too, began creating mixed personae that Mofid called “phony lutis,” lutis without all the seven tra‑ ditional articles and not conforming to traditional luti ideology and psychol‑ ogy. This was because “it was not clear what we were; we were a bunch of cow‑ boys with knives, instead of with guns” (Naficy 1984a:27). Imitation created a complicated simulacral situation in which the two cultures mirrored and re‑ fracted each other. So when a star such as Naser Malekmotii played a tough guy, he was not imitating a cowboy so much as he was playing a cowboy who was imitating Malekmotii.

The Nostalgic Longing for Ideals In both the dash mashti and jaheli subgenres, there exists a contradiction and potential conflict between the nativistic aspects of the toughs—­marked by the retrospective, nostalgic idealization of lutis and of bygone Iranian traditions—­ and the toughs’ syncretic adaptation to modern times, which turned them into hybrid creatures. Hedayat in his story put his finger on a profound philosophical contradic‑ tion at the heart of the tough guys’ evolution, which Kimiai reemphasized in his screen adaptation. Both men symbolized centuries of social change 284

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in Iran in the violent encounter of Dash Akol and Kaka Rostam and in the sorrowful replacement of one type with the other. In Hedayat’s thinking in particular, Dash Akol seemed to have represented ancient Zoroastrian Iran, before the Muslim Arab invasion and conquest destroyed the prelapsarian au‑ thenticity in which magnanimous lutis, endowed with inner purity, sincer‑ ity, and independence, behaved like Robin Hood, protecting the weak and defending native soil. Kaka Rostam, on the other hand, represented not only the louts of bygone eras, who acted as middlemen to settling scores for their masters, but also the degradation, materialism, and greed brought on by state-­ sanctioned Westernization. In this ideologically chauvinistic point of view, ironically promulgated both by the Pahlavi state and by modernist intellectu‑ als, Kaka Rostam’s victory over Dash Akol is the triumph of louts over lutis, but also of vile foreigners—­Arabs and the West—­over authentic Iranians. That Kaka Rostam is black makes this scenario racist as well. Hedayat’s “Dash Akol” can thus be regarded as a eulogy (Naficy 1992a:537– 38). Writing during the first Pahlavi period, Hedayat seems to hold out nos‑ talgic hope for redemption or for a return to previous glories, even though the frustration of this hope, as Yarshater has noted, found expression in his “sense of gloom, depression, and disheartened fatalism” (1979:vii). Indeed, a key source of the deep sorrow and grief that Iranian literary and performing arts express can be sought in this and other national defeats and in the result‑ ing perception of lost glory and diminished world status. In Kimiai’s Dash Akol, on the other hand, this nostalgia for the fading lutis remains absent, as both of the protagonists are killed in the end, leaving no heroic social actor on the scene. Kimiai projects the deep sense of pessimism and impotence that had gripped Iran during the second Pahlavi regime, when the state with its massive, authoritarian, and coercive apparatuses had itself, in tough-­guy parlance, become the chief national lout. If the government had not censored the presentation of Kaka Rostam’s anti-­rich sentiments, the film would have inscribed yet another conflict and triumph—­a racialized class warfare in which a descendant of black African slaves takes revenge on his white masters. Indeed, as Mofid emphasizes, these considerations “were in my mind when I played the part of Kaka Rostam” (Naficy 1984a:17). Despite the excision of the scenes, the film does suggest these themes, particularly in the context of the emerging underground guerrilla activities at home, dis‑ guised in Kimiai’s film The Deer, and vociferous student demonstrations abroad, both of which transformed hopelessness into hope, eventually lead‑ ing to the revolution of 1978–79. In this reading, the guerrillas and the stu‑ dents are the new lutis triumphing over the old lout, the Pahlavi regime. It is ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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in this context that it makes sense when Mofid says that “Kimiai’s early 1970s movies, Dash Akol, The Deer, and Reza Motori (1970) played a major part in the struggle of the Iranian nation against the government” (Naficy 1984a:22). Kimiai’s Dash Akol expresses a deep nostalgia not only for ideal lutis but also for bygone traditions, which the director re-­creates meticulously in the architecturally and culturally rich locations in which he stages his film. The old Iran and its traditions are lovingly re-­created not only in the language of the lutis but also in Haji Samad’s grand home, in funeral ceremonies in a para‑ disiacal cemetery, in taziyeh performances and religious rituals in an amphi‑ theater, in zurkhaneh exercises, and in fights in ancient alleyways and coffee‑ houses. Kimiai’s revival of these antiquated traditions and architectural sites was appreciated by the filmmakers (and spectators) who, saddened by their loss to unbridled modernity and to claptrap montage architecture, featured them in their movies, creating a new fashion of “authenticity” in Iranian cinema.

Language and Linguistic Expressions The popular romances were not written in the adorned, polite, literary lan‑ guage of the time. Rather, they were written in something like a vernacular, containing fewer Arabic words, simpler syntax, and a richer treasure of tradi‑ tional lore (Hanaway 1970:17–18). The language of the movie toughs is also colloquial, with simple syntax, many contractions, and phonological devia‑ tions. Its argot creates group cohesion for insiders and distinction from out‑ siders.24 Kimiai had a keen ear for tough-­guy expressions, and his films are filled with choice dialogues that demonstrate his mastery of the luti argot and worldview in the context of Iranian psychology. In the movies, the toughs rarely use their last names; instead, they are known by nicknames, which usually combine their first names with a ref‑ erence to their profession, a past behavior, their physiognomy, a physical or mental disability, their ethnicity, or their regional origin. There are toughs named Mehdi the Butcher (Mehdi Qassab), Taqi the Knife-­Wielder (Taqi Tiqkesh), Asghar the Spitter (Asghar Tofi), Shaban the Brainless (Shaban Bi‑ mokh), Abdollah the Dime (Abdollah Dah Shahi) because he killed someone over small change, Ebram the Bull-­Necked (Ebram Khar Gardan), Mostafa the Crazy (Mostafa Divuneh), Qasem the Blind (Qasem Kuri), Mahmud the Dog (Mahmud Sagi), Hosain the Executioner (Hosain Mirghazab), Turkish Baqer (Baqer Torkeh), and Mahmud from Qazvin (Mahmud Qazvini). Some female and male lutis carried effeminate nicknames.25 Tough guys also engage in threat behavior. Dash Akol verbally threatens 286

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Kaka Rostam throughout the movie, saying things like, “I’ll take care of you. I’ll cut you in half with this very blade.” The abusive language often refers to an opponent’s disability. For example, toward the end, Dash Akol cuts Kaka Rostam’s stuttering short by interjecting: “God knew you well when he gave you only half a tongue, and tonight I’m going to cut the other half.” Insults of‑ ten are feminizing, as in a café scene in which Dash Akol sarcastically asks: “Kaka, wasn’t your man at home to keep you there?” Near the film’s end, he once threatens Kaka Rostam by declaring, “I’ll make you wear a headscarf.” The point of such insults is to signal that a male tough who is supposed to be the active partner in sexual relations has become a passive one by submitting to penetration by another man.

Masculinity, Homosociality, Homosexuality, and Pederasty In the popular literature, idealized lutis and tricksters (ayyars) treat women with great respect and show much restraint in their sexual relations with them, to the point of keeping chaste until their marriage (Hanaway 1970:161). Yet this sexual restraint vis-­à-­vis women combined with their sexual license with young boys (in the form of sodomy and pederasty), along with other ten­ ets of luti ideology and practices and the general gender segregation under Is‑ lam, turned the tough-­guy gatherings into powerful male-­only clubs, gangs, and sexually charged social organizations. Lutis’ emphasis on bodybuilding and masculine display, and the physical force and moral authority that top lutis exuded, attracted nubile boys to them, and they in turn sought homo­ social companionship or sexual relations with them. In his exhaustive Social History of Sexual Relations in Iran, Willem Floor shows that Iranian history and literature are replete with references to men’s love for young boys and to pederasty, which was permissible, desirable, and even on public display among certain classes. He further elaborates, Throughout the centuries, sodomy remained a way of life in Iran that upset nobody. . . . However, with rare instances, there does not seem to have been a homosexual way of life, i.e., a long-­term partnership be‑ tween men based on equality and love. The prevailing culture was and is that sexual relationship is one based on dominance of one partner of the other. The act of penetration is the male act par excellence, done by (free) men to social inferiors, i.e., women, boys, slaves (males and females) and prostitutes (male and female). . . . Thus, a man would not lose status by penetrating boys, but adult free men submitting will‑

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ingly to penetration means loss of face, honor, and respectability, worse they are considered to be perverts. Contrariwise, men who are engaged in sodomy are not considered homosexuals, but rather as macho-­guys, who show their virility. (2008:364–65) Such hierarchical relations of power between an older active partner and a younger passive subject are particularly true of the tough guys. Indeed, the term luti has its origin in the word for sodomy and pederasty, lavat (Dehk‑ hoda 1998:1982). However, this sexual power is threatened by the ambiguity and tenuousness of the tough guy’s social position. The exaggeration in male performativity, the public display of masculine prowess, and homosocial rela‑ tions, language, posture, dress, and gesture must stem from precisely an anx‑ iety about the tenuousness of social authority and political power. As socially liminal and sexually transgressive figures, lutis are under the constant threat of erasure, necessitating the public reaffirmation of their power and their prowess by masculinist performances and battles with rivals. Women consti‑ tute both a threat and a necessity. The historical Dash Akol is willing to be de‑ famed for having had an illicit sexual relation with his female charge, Marjan, but not with his neophyte boy. Homosexuality and pederasty were the open secrets of the tough guys, their Achilles’ heel, for if it became known that a tough guy engaged in sexual relations with men, which was highly disdained in modernist circles, he would lose much of his authority. And if it became known that he had engaged in pederasty—­also disdained but less so than homosexuality—­there would be a danger that his position as the dominant partner could be misconstrued as having involved his submission to a might‑ ier tough when he was a neophyte. While the dominant position in a male-­ to-­male relation denotes power and prestige, the submissive position implies weakness and surrender, a status to which no luti worth his seven tough-­guy articles would want to be relegated. Because of these complicated considerations, the movie toughs usually are shown to enjoy the company of their male friends and cohorts much more than the company of women. These relationships sometimes carry homosex‑ ual overtones, but they do not go beyond a suggestion, as the open expression of homosexuality in the movies has always been forbidden. In these movies, male bonding is the dominant form of social cohesion and of both the pro‑ curement and the exercise of power. However, many toughs who engaged in pederast relations with boys also entered into sexual liaisons with women or maintained a traditional nuclear family. In their homosociality and bisexual‑ ity they were transgressive and threatening to the social fabric.

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Women’s Representation and Masculinity Although tough guys are supposed to respect women, not all women receive equal respect from them in the movies. Three chief models of womanhood obtain here: female blood relations occupy the highest and the most sacred position and are regarded as pure, virtuous, and sexually off limits; wives come next in rank, sharing some of the attributes of blood relations; followed by women entertainers, who are fair game sexually. For convenience, I here conflate the first and second categories. Much of modern Iranian literature and cinema, including Dash Akol, uses the pure/impure model. The literary critics Farzaneh Milani and Azar Nafisi note that Hedayat’s own works con‑ tained a similar binary: “whorish woman” (lakkateh) and “ethereal woman” (zan‑e asiri) (Milani 1986/1365; Nafisi 1994). According to Azar Nafisi, the fe‑ male characters in modernist novels, such as in Hedayat’s The Blind Owl, “are much more passive than the female characters in the classical Iranian narra‑ tives,” in which they were more well-­rounded and active narrative agents. The modern females “no longer subvert; they only submit” (1994:120–21). It ap‑ pears that Hedayat’s works established an influential model for all represen‑ tations of women in modern literature (Miralai 1990/1369:396). Partow Nuri‑ ala, too, points not only to the representation of women as miserable creatures without agency and individuality but also to this dual construction of women in Kimiai’s nine feature movies (1986:47–68). Like all gender representations, this one is spatialized. Purity is confined to the private spaces of the home, while impurity enters the public sphere. In Dash Akol, Marjan is pure; Aqdas is impure. The roles come with costs and rewards. Purity comes with confinement and limited horizons, but it is re‑ warded with dignity and respect. Impurity is publicly degraded, but sexuality and other aspirations are potentially open. In most filmfarsi movies, however, women do not achieve their ambitions and self-­realization. Dash Akol’s love for Marjan is platonic, while his relationship with Aqdas, the café dancer, is strictly carnal. These contrasting relationships are poignantly dramatized in the sequence in which Dash Akol makes physical love to Aqdas while secretly thinking of Marjan, squeezing her handkerchief in his hand. Usually the two types of women remain far apart, with no possibility of reconciliation or transformation, or the impure ones are unproblematically turned into their opposites through such mechanisms as male patronage and marriage. A tough guy may take a prostitute under his wing to “save” her from further disgrace or to “reform” her by having her repent (as the saying goes, by pouring the water of repentance on her head), and he may even marry ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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her to ensure her domestication.26 In several movies, such as in Kimiai’s own Ghazal (1975), based on a story by Jorge Luis Borges, the entire story revolves around the problematic of transforming a prostitute into a virtuous woman as two brothers compete for her love. While this film also contains scenes of a café frequented by men and by women entertainers, it is not locked into the dichotomous, genderized spaces of the tough-­guy movies. For, ingenuously, the majority of it takes place in the liminal spaces of a thick forest, outside normative social space, where the brothers live and meet with Ghazal. The meandering and foreboding forest externalizes the internal psychology of the three protagonists. In the tough-­guy movies, virtuous women dress and behave modestly, while the vulgar women wear fashionable Western clothing, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and sing and dance in public. The duality in women’s image is reflected in the names given to good and bad women in these movies. Good women’s names—­Marjan, Parvin, Haleh—­are linguistically Persian and Ira‑ nian. Names given to bad women—­Aqdas, Akram, Akhtar, and Ezzat—­are more Islamic, Arabic, and religious and denote a lower-­class origin. Ideologi‑ cal self-­other battles are operative even here. Good women generally do not have nicknames; bad women usually do, such as Shamsi Pahlevun (Shamsi the Champion), Pari Khoshgeleh (Pretty Pari), and Fatmeh Arreh (Fatmeh the Saw).27 The toughs’ threatening behavior extends to women. In the movies, the lutis rarely hit women; when they do, it generally originates in deep anger or shame at some act of the woman. The louts, on the other hand, are more prone to striking women, particularly bad ones, and they also curse them of‑ ten, harshly, and graphically. For example, when Aqdas refuses to dance for a belligerent, drunk lout in Eshaq’s café, he slaps her around and calls her a dancing shrew (saliteh‑ye raqqas), a dancing floozy (harum loqmeh‑ye raqqas), and a dancing bitch (maddeh sag‑e raqqas), grabbing her hair to chop it off with his machete to publicly disgrace her—­all in a single scene. As already noted, in the tough-­guy argot, calling a male rival a woman constitutes a major in‑ sult, and in a number of places Kaka Rostam and Dash Akol belittle one an‑ other by calling each other women. In general, women in tough-­guy movies are rarely endowed with strong social agency or with psychological interiority, traits that would be marked by such strategies as point-­of-­v iew filming, cutaways, and continuity editing. This lack confirms these films as masculinist and misogynistic. However, Dash Akol contains a few instances of female subjectivity. In one scene, Mar‑ jan voyeuristically watches through an open door as Dash Akol prays on the 290

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prayer mat that she had set for him. The point-­of-­view filming emphasizes her subjectivity and the satisfaction, even sexual charge, which she draws from this scene. From a previous scene, the audience already knows that Dash Akol is aware that in praying on this mat he is bowing not only to God but also to Marjan (who has aestheticized and personalized it by sprinkling flower pet‑ als on it). Marjan’s point-­of-­v iew scene thus conjoins the subjectivity of Dash Akol with Marjan, creating a powerfully erotic charge between them, which ironically occurs during a religious ritual. In another powerful scene, Marjan watches from behind the curtains of her room the activities of the servants in the yard preparing for her wedding, emphasizing that she is only a sad ob‑ server of her own fate, not an agent in its transformation.

The Filmmaker’s Biography and Authorial Formation The sources of inspiration of the tough-­guy movies and their narrative struc‑ tures are to be found not only in Persian oral traditions, popular romances, literature, social reality, and American westerns but also in the filmmakers’ biographies. An examination of a single scene from Kimiai’s childhood, as he recalled it years later, supplies an example of the shaping presence of social milieu and autobiography in the works of a filmmaker, particularly an auteur cinéaste. Kimiai is a hybrid filmmaker in that he has made almost all of his films commercially, with private-­sector financing; many of these films are tough-­ guy movies or deal with toughs—­even those made long after the revolution. Yet he made these works in an authorial style. As a child, he lived in the same neighborhood as Mojtaba Navvab Safavi, the creator, in 1945, of the Devotees of Islam (Fadaian‑e Eslam), a militant Islamist group involved in antigovern‑ ment terrorist activities, including the assassination of the reformist writer Ahmad Kasravi and of Prime Minister Haji Ali Razmara.28 As Kimiai relates it, “Navvab was an imposing person. He wore a black shawl around his waist in which he tucked a handgun. When he walked in the neighborhood, all the children greeted him and kissed his hand, whereupon he gave us each one rial. Movie tickets in those days cost six rials; as a result, the other kids and I would place ourselves in his path six times to greet him, kiss his hands, and collect a total of six rials. At the same time, we would steal a glance at his gun, which was partially sticking out of his shawl. Of course, he knew what we were doing, but he would give us one rial every time. We would sometimes use that money to go to the movies with friends” (quoted in Parham 1990/1369:11). Like Freud’s “primal scene,” this social scene appears to have been sufficiently ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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traumatic, mysterious, and cathected with affect that it organized itself into “scenarios or scenes” (Laplanche and Pontalis 1973:335) that had to be repeat‑ edly restaged and rehearsed with variations in Kimiai’s many films. Each repe­tition informed and consolidated his cinematic authorial style and preoc‑ cupation with tough-­guy masculinity—­to the point that in later years his style and tough guy preoccupation solidified into clichés. This childhood primal social scene may be read as a typical one in his tough-­guy movies: A group of young toughs loitering in a neighborhood alley encounter a socially impos‑ ing and charismatic luti, before whose power they feel small and vanquished. Dangerous, yet alluring and generous, he makes sure that they are aware of the source of his power (his gun) and of his willingness to use violence. The similarity of this scene to Dash Akol’s opening alley scene in which Kaka Ros‑ tam and his gang encounter the imposing figure of Dash Akol is uncanny. This similarity is not just metaphorical, for in pursuit of his political aims Navvab Safavi had resorted to individuals who used to “disturb the peace of the neighborhood,” such as hoodlums (owbash), roughnecks (gardankolof ha), thugs (latha), and bullies (arbadehkeshha) (Behdad 2004:76). His violent tac‑ tics of retribution (qesas) and revenge (enteqam) for the cause of creating an “Is‑ lamic government” would unknowingly be mobilized by the tough-­guy mov‑ ies in the 1970s in whose films the tough guys’ personal revenge stories were coded as narratives of social justice against an autocratic government. More than any other director Kimiai was involved in this type of coding: the primal scene related may account for it. Despite the Devotees of Islam’s destructive morality campaigns and the group’s assassinations of secular op‑ position figures and government officials, many people viewed them as Robin Hood types who used violence to obtain justice from an essentially unjust re‑ gime that had been returned to power in a coup against a duly elected prime minister. In many of Kimiai’s films, tough guys are involved in fights coded to symbolize social struggles on behalf of “the people” or of “the neighborhood.” Such individual battles against the system take different forms: battle against the police, as in The Deer; against the rich, as in Journey of Stone (Safar‑e Sang, 1978) and Baluch (1972); against Western foreigners, as in Earth (Khak, 1973); against villainous toughs, as in Dash Akol; or against well-­connected smug‑ glers, as in Snake’s Fang (Dandan‑e Mar, 1989). In these movies, and as dem‑ onstrated in the case of Dash Akol, the lutis wield their power against their nemeses by means of violence, at the same time that they display gentleness toward children and sometimes toward women. In Kimiai’s primal scene, Navvab Safavi acts like a luti, for although he was terrorizing government officials—­for which crime he was eventually 292

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e­ xecuted—­he treated his neighborhood’s children with kindness. He knew why they repeatedly greeted him and kissed his hands. Yet he went along with them and gave them the small change they needed to go to the movies, even though he himself had condemned movies for their morally corrupting influ‑ ence (Naficy 1999/1378:28). This primal scene contains not only a luti protagonist but also a group of male children who, like Kaka Rostam’s gang, loiter around and make mis‑ chief in the neighborhood alley or “tiny bazaar” (bazarcheh). It is in these places that children like Kimiai developed their social identity, personality, and ideas about masculinity. It is no wonder, then, that his first published writing on cinema is about what he calls “tiny bazaar cinema” (Shokrollah and Turanpur 2000/1379:13–15). Significantly, the primal scene of this cin‑ ema, and of Kimiai’s tough-­guy movies, is not a private one, occurring in a home or inside a bedroom as in the Freudian case; rather, it occurs in the streets, where passers-­by and neighborhood residents can witness and absorb the drama of male bonding and male power. More than any other Iranian di‑ rector, Kimiai fills his films with scenes in which male power is enacted dra‑ matically in public places to reassert itself again and again, for in a country in which power is both boundless and ephemeral, it needs frequent reitera‑ tion. In his films, viewers are witness to how men befriend, betray, and battle with each other; how they kill ignominiously (like Kaka Rostam in Dash Akol and the Aq Mangol brothers in Qaisar); or how they are killed magnificently (martyred) and thereby mythologized (like Dash Akol and Qaisar). In his rec‑ ollection of this childhood scene, Kimiai does not refer to women, which is congruent with the reality of the time, as reputable women in those days did not hang around public places and alleyways. These places, however, emerge as favorite locations in Kimiai’s movies, where boys become men and louts become lutis or vice versa. Women have little agency here; at best, their func‑ tion is to witness the spectacle of men’s exertion of power, or humiliation by power, and to cheer or lament the process. Another element that has migrated from Kimiai’s childhood scene to his cinema is the importance of religion, particularly of Islam, in the social life of Iranians. However, the religion he depicts in Dash Akol, Qaisar, and his other movies is not so much an official Islam imposed on unwilling sub‑ jects. Rather, it is a popular form of Islam so intermingled with other cultural forms, and so internalized by society, that it has assumed the status of custom and tradition. Religion in his films appears to lie outside ideology, exerting its power clandestinely and powerfully—­like all dominant ideologies. Kimiai’s movies are suffused with reenactments of such naturalized Islamicate cus‑ ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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toms and traditions, ways of dressing and behaving, architectural forms and the interior spaces of gardens and yards, uses of language and proverbs, and gendered power relations. Kimiai’s primal scene informs his filmic style as well as his cinema’s con‑ tents. That he has both directed and written several of his films consolidates the contribution of this scene to his authorial style. Among the new-­wave filmmakers emerging in the 1970s, Kimiai stands out: Because he depended on private-­sector support to make his films, he needed to be more receptive to public tastes. Also, unlike many new-­wave directors, Kimiai learned filmmak‑ ing by watching films, not by any formal education in cinema or the arts in Europe or North America (Saberi 1976:8). This, too, along with his lower-­class upbringing, better sensitized him to public tastes than other filmmakers.

The Evolution of the Tough-­Guy Genre The tough-­guy genre was neither homogenous nor static. It began in the late 1950s with a dash mashti movie, Mohseni’s The Generous Tough. The subgenre ended in the early 1970s with Kimiai’s Dash Akol. However, by the time it was drawing to a close, another subgenre, the jaheli film, emerged, making its most emphatic assertion with Kimiai’s Qaisar. This latter was the most popu‑ lar luti subgenre, lasting through the anti-­Shah revolution, after which it was transformed again, this time into an Islamicate postrevolutionary tough-­guy subgenre. This post-­revolution reemergence itself underwent further modifi‑ cations when some of the stars and directors of jaheli movies went into exile in the United States, where they created new hybridized, ironic, and meta‑ generic tough-­guy films, performances, television serials, and music videos. These iterations and evolutions of the luti genre are discussed in this chapter. The cinematic shift from dash mashti to jaheli accompanied a gradual shift of societal paradigms within society from religious traditionalism to secular‑ ism and Western-­style modernism.29 While dash mashti movies generally por‑ trayed rural toughs, jaheli movies dealt with the lives of toughs in a modern, post–Second World War, post–White Revolution world. While the realm of the former subgenre was generally limited to rural Iran or to rural émigrés in the cities, that of the latter involved urban characters in urban settings inside Iran and abroad. Instead of in coffeehouses and traditional cafés, the jahels hung outs in Western cafés, cabarets, and nightclubs, where alcoholic drinks and modern entertainment, particularly women dancers and singers, were fea‑ tured. Poverty had been a virtue in dash mashti movies but became a vice in 294

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jaheli films. The chief protagonists also shifted from generous lutis, who gen‑ erally defended the weak, to selfish, revengeful hooligans and louts, in some way representing the shift of political authority in society. Qaisar provides an early entry and exemplar of jaheli movies.

Jaheli Movies: Masud Kimiai’s Qaisar (1969) Qaisar, written and directed by Kimiai and starring Malekmotii, Vossoughi, Mofid, Jamshid Mashayekhi, Puri Banai, and Iran Daftari, became widely popular and enormously influential, breathing sudden life into the doldrums of Iranian commercial cinema. Major critics placed the film next to Sam Peckinpah’s violent and powerful western The Wild Bunch (1969) as the out‑ standing movie of the year, a comparison that is telling in terms of luti mov‑ ies’ similarity to westerns. One critic suggested that modern Iranian cinema had begun with this “epic” film (Davai 1990/1369:98). Ever the contrarian, however, Amirhushang Kavusi denounced it as a bad copy of a “Dodge City” western by way of filmfarsi conventions (1990/1369). The movie charts the story of Qaisar (Caesar), a modern tough (Vossoughi) who avenges the rape and suicide of his sister Fati and the subsequent mur‑ der of his brother Farman (Malekmotii) by murdering the three tough-­guy Aq Mangol brothers who perpetrated the dishonor on his sister and the vio‑ lence against his brother. The film is thus a family defense saga driven by the honor-­shame paradigm. It can also be elevated into a national allegory and a condemnation of modern times in which the idealized luti values of generos‑ ity and compassion toward the poor, the weak, and women are replaced by un‑ bridled thuggery, which the police are either unable or unwilling to contain. The bygone idealized world of luti chivalry opens the film. The title se‑ quence, designed by a young graphic artist who years later would become the most prominent name in Iranian postrevolutionary cinema, Abbas Kiar‑ ostami, shows in close-­up shots the elaborate tattoos of the luti toughs: heroes of the Shahnameh grace their arms, chests, backs, and shoulders (figure 48). Punctuated by dramatic drumbeats of ancient bodybuilding exercises in the zurkhaneh, these close-­ups show the mythological champions, such as Ros‑ tam and Sohrab, and their exploits in combat with men and their liaisons with women. One set of the tattoos also depicts what appears to be the mythical story of the Thirty Bird (Simorgh) saving and nurturing Zal, the albino father of the national hero, Rostam, who serves as an important reference point for lutis. This title sequence establishes an idealized, mythological world to which the rest of the film, about contemporary times and toughs, is contrasted. ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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48  Qaisar’s title sequence, designed by Abbas Kiarostami, links contemporary toughs to ancient mythical heroes. Frame enlargement.

The contrast begins immediately in the first live action scene, which shows a siren-­blasting, speeding ambulance rushing Fati to a hospital. As it turns out, she has attempted suicide by taking poison to remove herself as the stain on the family honor, particularly on the honor of her two brothers, Farman and Qaisar, as the honor-­shame system requires. In a letter that she has left behind she explains the source of the dishonor: her rape by a tough guy who had promised to marry her, but who refused when she became pregnant. As in many nuclear families in filmfarsi movies, the father is absent (deceased in this case). All the family males have been well-­respected toughs. However, Farman and Qaisar, and their aging great-­uncle (Jamshid Mashayekhi), have given up their rabble-­rousing, middlemen practices, “repented,” and obtained honest jobs. As befits the patriarchal system, the worried mother (Iran Daftari) is less concerned about the fate of her daughter than about the reaction of her sons to the rape, as she murmurs to her lifeless body, “What calamity befell you, my daughter? How can I answer to your brothers?” Likewise, after reading the letter, the great-­uncle also intones, “It’s best that she departed from this world, otherwise how could she explain the situation to her brothers?” This implies that had she not committed suicide, the brothers would probably have killed her to remove the dishonor. This crime and suicide, the resultant dishonor and shame, and the police’s inability to deal with it, sets into motion the honor-­shame paradigm. The el‑ der great-­uncle remains steadfast in his reformed path and in his oath not to engage in violent personal revenge. Farman, on the other hand, is unable to do so, and he sets out to avenge the family dishonor and his sister’s death (fig‑ ure 49). Yet he follows the code of the reformed lutis not to carry any weapons and to fight with his bare hands, a decision that costs him his life, as the three 296

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49  Farman (Naser Malekmotii) is compelled to seek revenge for the dishonor and suicide of his sister in Qaisar. Frame enlargement.

Aq Mangol brothers, armed with knives, fatally stab him. This new violence on the family unhinges the younger, hotheaded Qaisar to the point of giving up not only his oath but also his job and going all out in taking revenge on the brothers. He traps and murders each brother separately, dramatically, and in loca‑ tions that are emblematic of the country’s encroaching modernization. He stalks the first brother in a public bath, where Kimiai spends a considerable amount of time depicting how bathhouse workers massage, scrub, soap, and wash their clients. Qaisar catches his enemy in a shower stall and with a straight razor cuts him down. In a scene that directly quotes the shower scene in Alfred Hitchock’s Psycho (1960), the murder is shown in a burst of brief shots of stabbing, grimacing faces, and the victim’s trembling and blood‑ ied hand sliding down the white tiles, like Janet Lee’s, as life departs from it (figure 50). Qaisar tracks down the second brother in a traditional slaugh‑ terhouse where he works and, amid carcasses of skinned animals hanging from meat hooks and knives cutting and peeling flesh and skin, mercilessly murders him. The shots of his silent murder are dramatically intercut with the shots of the butchers slaughtering and skinning cattle. The first two mur‑ ders occur in traditional spaces now undergoing changes due to moderniza‑ tion: public bathhouses were being replaced with home showers and slaugh‑ terhouses were becoming mechanized. The final murder, however, occurs in a place replete with the cost and the detritus of modernity: a massive grave‑ yard for abandoned railroad cars and industrial machinery. Qaisar chases the last brother into this space, but he is himself followed by the police who are now convinced that he has committed the other two murders. In an alterca‑ tion with his victim, Qaisar is injured but still succeeds in stabbing the fi‑ nal brother to death, while he himself is shot by the police. The movie ends with him wounded and cornered in an abandoned restaurant car surrounded by the police, leaving the fate of Qaisar to the spectators’ imagination and inclination. ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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50  Masud Kimiai quoting Hitchcock’s Psycho in his Qaisar. The bloodied hand of one of Farman’s killers, who has been stabbed, slides down the bath wall as he falls to the floor. 51  Qaisar (Behrouz Vossoughi), dressed in the all-black outfit of the modern toughs, pulls up the back of his shoes as a cue that he is on the warpath to avenge Farman’s murder. Frame enlargement.

Each of the murders begins in a dramatic fashion, with Qaisar pulling up the back of his black shoes to zurkhaneh drumbeats (by Monfaredzadeh). As a modern luti or jahel, he wears an all-­black outfit: black suit, black shirt, black see-­through nylon socks, and black pointed shoes, the backs of which have been broken down so that they can be worn like slippers (figure 51). Unlike his more traditional older brother, Farman, he does not wear the signature fedora hat, and unlike him, who goes into battle with bare hands, he is armed with knives and razors. He also sports a worry bead. As is required by the conventions of the jaheli genre, the film not only con‑ tains fight scenes but also café scenes. Qaisar goes to neighborhood cafés in his search for the brothers, where he drinks with fellow lutis and listens to a colorful and masterly soliloquy of a tough guy passing his defeat off as vic‑ tory. He also attends the modern Ferdows Café, where he drinks vodka and watches an attractive luti woman named Sohaila Ferdows (Shahrzad) perform classic tough-­guy songs and dances for a predominantly male audience. Her performance is filmed with a leering, voyeuristic camera gaze that singles out parts of her body and her sexually suggestive gestures and dancing. Her lyrics are also sexually loaded and good-­naturedly make fun of the musicians who 298

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52  The café dancer Shahrzad (Sohaila Ferdows) performs a sexualized dance in Qaisar, filmed from a male point of view. Frame enlargement.

accompany her (figure 52). From her Qaisar learns the whereabouts of the last remaining brother, and he spends the night with her in her home. Sohaila represents the fallen woman with whom Qaisar is authorized to have sexual relations. In public she wears no veils and dresses boldly in a miniskirt, while in her room she undresses for Qaisar and the camera, both of whom she seduces. Qaisar’s sister and his fiancée, Azam (Puri Banai), on the other hand, represent angelic women, both of whom are asexual and wear the chador in public. The sister, who was sexually molested, disappears from the scene to wipe out the shame caused to her brothers’ honor, while Qaisar’s relationship to the second woman must remain only platonic. Following the generic formula, the fallen woman’s name is modern and secular (Sohaila), while those of the sister, Fati (short for Fatemeh), and the fiancée, Azam, are traditional and religious. The mother, too, represents the typical suffering matriarch and tragic victim of the genre, who must sobbingly mourn and en‑ dure all the calamities of her family, to which she succumbs, reinforcing Qa‑ isar’s resolve to seek revenge. In the end, nothing is left of the nuclear family but the broken-­down great-­uncle, a former luti, who with stooped shoulders and downcast eyes silently mourns the multiple losses while reading his Shahnameh, which is filled with stories of Iranian heroism in the past. Critics correctly characterized the movie as “an elegy for lost values” (Davai 1990/1369:93). As a more mournful elegy than Dash Akol, it laments not only the passing of the old luti values of manliness and generosity but also that of the heroic and masculine characters whom they represented, and their re‑ placement by vigilante thugs or by an indifferent authoritarian state. In a way the movie is about the cost of modernity to individuals, to social and fam‑ ily structures, and to Iranian traditions, represented by the many institu‑ tions that it shows on the wane and whose passing it mourns. Kimiai depicts these institutions and places tenderly: the traditional public bathhouse, the ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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slaughter­house, the coffeehouse, the neighborhood bazaar, old homes with water tanks in their yards, pilgrimages to holy Shiite sites, and mourning cer‑ emonies for the dead in cemeteries. Such nostalgic depictions of disappear‑ ing traditions, which some critics put down as “touristic,” are emblematic of modernity, in whose constitution cinema played a significant part. By such depictions, Kimiai and the other new-wave filmmakers before the revolution and art-­house filmmakers after the revolution engaged, to borrow from an‑ thropology, in “salvage filmmaking.” What caused Qaisar to jolt the filmfarsi industry and turn it controversial was not only this modernist nostalgic construction of Iran in the past but also the modernist cinematic style with which it accomplished that rendering. Critics attacked the film not only because of its “touristic” view of an exotic Iran but also because of the incongruity of its modernist style with its nativist contents. In other words, they rejected the film’s syncretism. The new-­wave filmmaker and critic Hajir Daryoush, for example, disdainfully opined that Kimiai had “planted a foreign camera inside an Iranian décor” (quoted in Moazezinia 1999/1378:43). The controversy about the film continued in film periodicals for quite some time, fueled by well-­known critics.30 In addition to being an elegy, however, Qaisar, like many dash mashti and jaheli movies, offered a discourse on ethics by mobilizing the ethos of the an‑ cient oral narratives. It also issued a call to arms against the forces of evil and oppression. Kimiai, whose cinematic trajectory has involved films that exam‑ ine male power and authoritarianism as well as resistance to them (Balducci and Shirozhan 1998), here offers individual action as the solution to the ills of a society whose laws fail to protect or to serve citizens. What he prescribed, had it been widely taken up, would surely have resulted in vigilantism and chaos, but given the political climate of the time, when Savak had stifled all legitimate and nonviolent forms of expression, this solution seemed inevitable and acceptable. The film’s wide screening in December 1969 in twelve Teh‑ ran cinemas and its high box-­office sales of 1,800,000 tomans pointed to the popularity of Kimiai’s solution. As its star Vossoughi relates, during its suc‑ cessful first run, the mca censors withdrew Qaisar from the screens because it “went against the public interests” and was considered “corrupting.” Appar‑ ently, after watching the movie, two boys imitating Farman and Qaisar had engaged in a knife fight, one killing the other, causing a media flurry about the negative effects of vigilante movies on youth. The movie was rereleased only after it was reedited to reduce the number of Qaisar’s knife attacks. The audience did not seem to take notice of this change, as its popularity grew with both the ordinary and the powerful. Following a request by the Shah’s 300

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sister, Ashraf, Vossoughi took a print of Qaisar and screened it for the royal family at the Sa’dabad Palace, an event that inaugurated the star’s entry into the royal court, where he socialized and showed his movies frequently. After the screening before some forty people, Ashraf told Vossoughi that she had liked his performance but that the movie itself contained “not much more than knife-­w ielding” (Zeraati 2004:139–49). Despite its narrative disconti‑ nuities and flaws of realism, which Kavusi enumerated encyclopedically, the film’s violent call to action was prescient, for within a decade the mass of peo‑ ple would rise up against the oppressive Iranian regime to topple it.

The Conventions of Jaheli Movies The binarist and comparative thematic and narrative structures of filmfarsi—­ their morphology—­which encoded the clash of values and worldviews, as well as that of premodernity and modernity can be found in the jaheli movies as well, except that these are mobilized in the service of luti worldview and char‑ acters. They also evolved with time. With the consolidation of Westernization and modernity in the 1960s and the 1970s, the style of clothing and the per‑ sonal accessories of the urban toughs underwent a Westernizing evolution both in real life and in the movies, demonstrating the toughs’ capacity for syncretic adaptation, which is the secret of their historical longevity. Thanks to its massive circulation in the mass media and the movies, the jaheli style became a professional uniform: black suit (sometimes the jacket was slung over one shoulder); black fedora hat worn cockily; solid black or solid white shirt, with buttons open in front; thick handlebar mustache; wide leather belt; and black pointed-­toe shoes with the backs stepped on.31 The good lutis, such as Farman and Qaisar in Qaisar, both wore all-­black outfits, while the dress code of the louts, such as the Aq Mangol brothers, was not as uniform. West‑ ern fashion then the rage in Iran also affected the jahels, as shoes with plat‑ form heels and thin see-­through socks became popular. Some prominent lutis, such as Tayyeb Hajj Rezai, were so well dressed, at least in their photo‑ graphs, that they appeared like dandies.32 This new tough-­guy style surfaced in most jaheli movies, including in Ismail Kushan’s Velvet Hat Wearer (Kolah Makhmali, 1962), the first blockbuster movie in which Malekmotii appeared as a jahel, and in Qaisar, also starring Malekmotii, which consolidated the sty‑ listic conventions of this subgenre. The style of dress and the toughs’ personal articles set this genre apart from the stewpot films, which otherwise shared many attributes with the tough-­guy genre. The importance of the dress code cannot be underestimated, for whether the star wore a particular article or ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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not had an impact on the film’s narrative and the star’s persona, as well as on his earnings and on the film’s budget and box-­office receipts. As Ali Mor‑ tazavi told me in an interview, the superstar of the jaheli movies, Malekmotii, demanded twice as much for acting in a film if he wore the jaheli fedora hat (Naficy 1984b:6). Yet in many films, all that the movie toughs possessed of the luti attributes were the external semiotics of their characters, not their inter‑ nal psychology. As a result, a majority of the actors remained only dressed-­up stereotypes of ideal characters. The language of the movie toughs changed from dash mashti films to jaheli films, becoming more realistic, vernacular, and colorful, thus more accurately reflecting the jaheli argot and the changing times. Skillful screenplay and dia‑ logue writers, such as Feraidun Goleh and Ahmad Najibzadeh, specialized in this argot, creating memorable film exchanges. Kimiai also demonstrated his own skills at writing tough-­guy dialogues, as in the café scene in Qaisar, in which a tough named Muti (short for Morteza and played by Mofid) delivers a memorable drunken soliloquy to his buddies. In it he colorfully relates how he fought with a rival but was beaten up by him, a fact that he wants to pass on as a victory or keep private to avoid losing face. What makes this scene fas‑ cinating is not only the loving accuracy and humor with which Kimiai repro‑ duces the nuanced argot but also the mastery with which Mofid tells the story, replete with the typical tough guy’s special intonations, accents, and gestures. In the process, he turns a simple story of a street skirmish into the pure po‑ etry of manhood under threat. Many of the stars of the jaheli movies, such as Mofid, Malekmotii, and Fardin, who were well-­versed in the lifestyle and argot of the jahels, contributed considerably by adding their own dialogues during filming, consolidating the improvisational style of filmfarsi. The movie tough-­guy characters also evolved in response to the modern, authoritarian, state-­driven, petroleum-­fuelled, Westernizing, and capitalist political economy under the Shah. Embodying the tensions caused by these developments, the tough guys began to transgress their inherited and generic conventions, to go against type, and become hybridized. Like Qaisar, some became vigilantes, taking the law into their own hands in the absence of both just laws and just law enforcement. In Kimiai’s following film, The Deer, vio‑ lent personal revenge was read as an attempt to gain social justice through armed struggle against a government whose security forces not only failed to protect people but harassed them. This violent and individualized take-­charge attitude was both a vestige of the fading improvisational system and a symp‑ tom of emerging modernity and capitalism, both of which rewarded individu‑ ality and personal initiatives. 302

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Like other Iranians, the movie toughs gradually became more cosmopoli‑ tan and transnational as they traveled to Western megalopolises or befriended Westerners in Iran, resulting in comic situations that sometimes pitched Ira‑ nian authenticity against Western modernity. Two Pars Film Studio produc‑ tions, which also fit the foreign-­travel and foreign-­bride subgenres, provide examples. In Ismail Kushan’s Ebram in Paris (Ebram dar Paris, 1964), a jahel named Ebram (Naser Malekmotii) falls in love with a Parisian girl, Nicole, whom he wishes to marry. However, after touring the famous sights of the French capital, cultural contradictions force him to realize the incompatibil‑ ity of the jaheli lifestyle with the modern world, resulting in his return home to marry a native girl. The favored return home is coded as a return to tra‑ dition and to the self. This movie was the first coproduction with a French film concern, which dictated setting the story in France. Kushan assembled a large crew of twenty-­five members and filmed his comic story of the jahel sightseeing and seeking a bride in various popular tourist spots in France. Although narratively the movie favors Iranian culture, the majority of its run‑ ning time is devoted to Ebram’s adventures in France as the ideal of moder‑ nity (the scenes filmed in Iran comprise only the first twenty-­t wo minutes of the movie). The film is ambivalent; it wants to have it both ways, traditional and modern. In Nezam Fatemi’s Black Mehdi and the Hot Pants (Mehdi Meshki va Shalvarak‑e Dagh, 1972), Mehdi (Malekmotii) falls in love with a Western woman (Christine Paterson) who also loves him. However, before marrying her, Mehdi has to abide by his father’s will and find a suitable husband for his sister. He succeeds with both goals, proving that one can have a traditional, monocultural marriage (that of his sister) and a modern, bicultural marriage (his own). If cultural contradictions had made the jahels’ intermarriage with foreigners impossible in Ebram in Paris eight years earlier, they no longer posed a problem. The validation of an authentic self to which return was urged showed how much commercial filmfarsi cinema, particularly the popular tough-­guy and stewpot movies, was in touch with the peoples’ sentiments. It was attuned to the tastes and aspirations of paying audiences more than the new-­wave auteur films, which were largely state funded and shielded from the vagaries of pub‑ lic taste. This affinity, in addition to the spontaneity of the hybrid production mode, turned filmfarsi movies into powerful collective expressions of the cul‑ ture at large. Significantly, their diagnosis of Iranian social ills of the 1970s (Westonitis) and their solution (a return to self) coincided with those of lead‑ ing intellectuals, such as Jalal Al‑e Ahmad and Ali Shariati, and of anti-­Shah ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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forces, which ironically used these films’ embrace of things Western as one reason for opposing the Shah. With the shift from dash mashti to jaheli movies the star system also came of age. A shift from the artisanal production mode to the hybrid mode re‑ flected the rise of industrial production methods in the 1960s, with the first car-­assembly plants introducing a Fordist workflow, television ushering in standardized productions, and popular culture and consumer industries inte‑ grating into a mass marketing industry. Industrialization also resulted in the emergence of a star system, which transformed actors into bankable commod‑ ities. The most frequently featured actors playing the luti and jahel parts were Malekmotii, Fardin, Manuchehr Vosuq, Mofid, Reza Fazeli, Yadollah Shi‑ randami, Vossoughi, Morteza Aqili, Abbas Mosaddeq, Bahram Vatanparast, Mohsen Arasteh, Akbar Hashemi, Mohammad Ali Homayun, Hasan Sha‑ hin, Taqi Zohuri, and Reza Baikimanverdi. Many of these became stars, al‑ beit at the price of being typecast. Malekmotii and Fardin played their tough-­ guy types in a plethora of movies. Malekmotii, for example, played in about ninety-­t wo features, perhaps half of which were tough-­guy movies, mostly of the jaheli subgenre. Likewise, Fardin acted in about forty movies featuring toughs before 1970 (Bahrami 1972/1351) and in many more thereafter, stamp‑ ing his own style of acting, language, and personality on the films, which be‑ came known simply as “Fardin Films.” While typecasting limited these men’s options, their popularity as super‑ stars gave them the authority to introduce individuality and variation of the types. In thus changing the types, they were able to remain the same—­stars. There was also a coterie of actors who played villainous lout character, among them Jalal Pishvaian and Gholamreza Sarkub, as well as some of the afore‑ mentioned performers who played both types of roles. These stars’ salaries topped filmfarsi budgets. Economy-­minded producers often cast only one star in each movie, hoping that his drawing power would attract a sufficient num‑ ber of moviegoers. This proved shortsighted, for top stars often shone better in the light of strong supporting actors. The industrialized star system, of course, involved women as well, but in subsidiary roles. Foruzan, Shurangiz Tabatabai, Shabnam Jahangiri, Shah‑ rzad, Puri Banai, Haleh, Sepideh, Katayun, Zhaleh, and Marjan frequently played the female leads in the luti movies. Qaisar’s cast included a who’s who of male and female tough-­guy character actors: Malekmotii, Vossoughi, Mo‑ fid, Sarkub, Pishvaian, Shahrzad, and Banai. Famous entertainers such as Mahvash, Afat, Paria, and Delkash were instrumental to these films’ success as well, even though they may have performed only a few numbers. 304

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Although the world of these films was one of male superiority and patriar‑ chy, the tough-­guy genre was flexible, allowing certain gender-­bending prac‑ tices, often as comedy. To serve narrative purposes, several women, such as Puran in The Twentieth-­Century Man (Aqa‑ye Qarn‑e Bistom, 1964), Azar Shiva in Champion of Champions (Qahreman‑e Qahremanan, 1965), and Foruzan in Shamsi the Champion (Shamsi Pahlevun, 1966) appeared as male characters or as tough guys in disguise (all directed by Siamak Yasami).33 They also car‑ ried typical colorful male luti names, such as Akbar Lancaster (Shiva’s name in Champion of Champions) and Shamsi the Champion (Foruzan’s name in Shamsi the Champion). In these movies, the women cross-­dressed in typical dark suits and fedora hats, wore fake mustaches, swaggered like male toughs, and spoke their argot. Although she does not cross-­dress as a male luti in Qa‑ isar, Sohaila Ferdows talks like one. And Foruzan sings and dances a number while wearing a black fedora. Audiences appreciated the comic and sexualized incongruities that masquerade created. These films, and the later tough-­guy music videos by women entertainers in the United States, mimic and good-­ naturedly mock the lutis both as social figures and as cinematic characters. As in stewpot movies, film actresses and female singers in many tough-­guy movies used a single-­name pseudonym: Foruzan (Parvin Kairbakhsh), Haleh (Nasrin Kahzak), Katayun (Shahpar Amirebrahimi), Shahrzad (Kobra Saidi), Sepideh (Nasrin Kahzak), Zhaleh (Showkat Olov), Marjan (Shahla Safizamir), Mahvash (Akram), Afat, and Delkash (Esmat Baqerpur) (known real names are given in parentheses). Tone and outlook shifted over time. While dash mashti films were gener‑ ally hopeful and lightweight, the jaheli films became bitter and pessimistic. A jaheli protagonist often engaged in reprisals that ended in his own death. The best of the jaheli movies were the noir versions of the stewpot films.

Popularity As a male genre, tough-­guy movies were very popular with young lower-­class male spectators, many of whom were either soldiers on leave in cities or vil‑ lagers who had immigrated as laborers and lived in shantytowns. While the upper and upper-middle classes had other entertainments available, only the movies were affordable for the lower classes. In the absence of a rating system, the males of a family would often first attend a movie. If they approved, they would later take their families with them (Naficy 1984b:28). Accurate statistics for the tough-­guy genre’s popularity are difficult to ob‑ tain, but indirect sources provide some evidence. The first, and least satisfac‑ ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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tory, is the work of social science researchers, who largely ignored the genre. For example, neither the audience polls conducted by the mca nor those by nirt asked their subjects’ opinions about the popular native genre. However, both inquired about two popular foreign genres, westerns and martial arts films (Ministry of Culture and Art 1977/2536:34, 85; Assadi 1973–74:14–15).34 The omission reveals an intellectual bias. One comprehensive study of the leisure-­time activities of residents of Yazd in 1974 showed that 9.3 percent of the polled audience named the tough-­guy movies as their favorite (Assadi and Hakimzadeh 1975:16). If the percentage seems low, it is perhaps because Yazd at this time was not a major urban center with large uprooted and marginal‑ ized populations, the types that the tough-­guy movies attracted. It is also prob‑ able that, aware of the researchers’ and intellectuals’ disdain for the genre, the respondents told the surveyors what they thought they wanted to hear. Another source for determining the genre’s popularity is output. My own survey of films produced up to 1976 shows that between 1950 and 1966, fewer than ten tough-­guy movies were produced annually. In 1971, twenty-­one were made, and forty in 1972 (of a total of sixty-­t wo films made in 1972).35 Accord‑ ing to a magazine report, about fifty jaheli movies were in the works in 1972 alone.36 These numbers did not last, for reasons I will discuss later. The films’ popularity also reveals itself in movie-­house numbers. For ex‑ ample, Black Mehdi and the Hot Pants was shown simultaneously in thirteen theaters in Tehran; Mr. Mehdi Arrives (Aqa Mehdi Vared Mishavad, 1974, dir. Feraidun Zhurak) was shown in eleven theaters in Tehran and simultane‑ ously in seventeen theaters in twelve other cities; and The Golden Heel (Pash‑ neh Tala, 1975, dir. Nezam Fatemi) was exhibited simultaneously in eleven cinemas in Tehran and in twenty-­t wo provincial cinemas in eighteen cities.37 Numbers for moviegoers, particularly broken down by film genres, are hard to come by. But the number of cinemas nationwide and their seating capacities increased steeply until 1976, so one can surmise that the number of specta‑ tors also rose. This nationwide pattern was amplified by the emergence of sev‑ eral national film distribution networks and chain cinemas capable of accom‑ modating audience demands—­another aspect of the hybrid production mode. The tough-­guy movies and characters proved popular in neighboring coun‑ tries as well. Orhan Aksoy remade Qaisar in Turkey almost scene by scene, resulting in Destiny (Alin Yazisi, 1972), in which Cånet Arkin starred as Qa‑ isar (Naficy 2000). This remake formed part of regional cinematic exchange relations between Iran and Turkey that involved coproductions with Turkey, the export and remake of Iranian movies in Turkey, and the export of Iranian

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tough-­guy stars, such as Jahangir Gaffary, Banai, and Homayun Tabrizian, to act in Turkish films (Ozguc 1991).

Decline The doubling in the number of tough-­guy movies from twenty-­one in 1971 to roughly forty in 1972 indicates the genre’s popularity and profitability. It eventually began to lose steam, however. For one, the movies did not seri‑ ously delve beneath the veneer of the social ills they depicted. The industrial‑ ization of the industry encouraged the high output of shallow and entertain‑ ing tough-­guy movies. Government censorship limited the choice of topics for all films. Article 55 of the Regulations for Cinemas and Performing Arts Institutions of 1950 was still in force in the 1970s, prohibiting fifteen types of actions that, if shown in a domestic or imported film, would lead to censorship or an exhibition ban. These regulations hamstrung film producers, directors, exhibitors, and dis‑ tributors. Government censorship of socially critical material was thus partly responsible for the proliferation of the stereotypical jaheli genre, for although film critics and government censors condemned it as sleazy or trite, its pro‑ duction and exhibition was officially tolerated. But the genre’s creative limita‑ tions doomed it.38 Many years later, from a position in exile, the famed tough-­ guy actor Mofid called the second Pahlavi-­era jahels “the vilest, the most parasitical, and the most corrupt characters around . . . who like tapeworm thrived in the filthiest part of the Iranian national body. They [the jahels] were no lutis” (Naficy 1984a:34). This distortion of the laudable luti characters, in which Mofid had a hand himself, may have been another reason for the de‑ cline of this genre. Pressure groups further narrowed filmmakers’ options. The magazine edi‑ tor Ali Mortazavi and Aman Manteqi, a director and writer of tough-­guy mov‑ ies, contend that since all social strata other than the toughs and prostitutes had strong lobbyists and unions protecting their filmic representation, film‑ makers found it convenient to focus on the lives of the undesirables, creating formulaic genres.39 The government, which since the enormous popularity of Qaisar had be‑ gan to clean jahels off the streets of Tehran, issued an edict in 1972 that es‑ sentially outlawed the genre. Since it had crushed the riots in Tehran in 1963 and had executed their luti leaders, the Pahlavi government—­now strong with muscular, coercive nationwide apparatuses—­viewed the tough guys with dis‑

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trust and had no use for their middleman functions. Perhaps, too, the nativ‑ istic tendencies of these movies, and their privileging of idealized traditions over modernity were undermining the government’s project of authoritarian modernization. Those films that dealt with the lives of the contemporary ja‑ hels and the urban poor often emphasized personal revenge and vigilantism, which could be read by savvy spectators as advocating antigovernment action. These escapist movies reflected badly on the modern and civilized image of Iran promoted by the Pahlavi regime. Finally, the films did not openly circu‑ late the iconography of the Pahlavi state, which included the mandatory and prominent display of the portraits of the Shah and his wife in offices. Accord‑ ing to Mofid, silent resistance by the purveyors of low culture took the form of prominently displaying the Shah’s picture in the diegesis only on the walls of prisons, police stations, cabarets, and whorehouses. If this is true, then one can understand Mofid’s counterintuitive contention that “filmfarsi was the only trench” in the warfare with the unpopular regime. To back this con‑ tention, Mofid claims that after the revolution Savak spies were discovered in many social strata, including among poets and writers who had tradition‑ ally championed freedom of expression and resistance literature, but no spies turned up among the filmfarsi cadres (Naficy 1984a:47). It is important to understand the immediate social context of the mca edict of 1972 against filmfarsi movies. In October 1971, the Shah staged the elabo‑ rate anniversary celebration of the founding of the Persian Empire, to which scores of world leaders had been invited. It was in the heady atmosphere sur‑ rounding this event and its aftermath that the mca issued its decree, pub‑ lished in the trade journal Film va Honar, whose aim seemed to be to set straight the image of Iran under the Pahlavi regime that filmfarsi movies were projecting. In convoluted language, the edict banned the production of all “trite and valueless films, which contain superstitious materials or materi‑ als contrary to all that is religiously sacred or to all that is of national pride.” It further forbade the production of films that contained scenes of “personal re‑ venge, knife-­w ielding, playing at being a jahel, producing shameless sounds, uttering indecent and meaningless words, gambling with knuckle-­bones, pigeon-­flying, and displaying of details of sexual relations for the sole pur‑ pose of satisfying prurient desires and attracting customers.”40 Because of its ideology of syncretic Westernization, the Pahlavi govern‑ ment did not oppose reviving ancient, pre-­Islamic institutions such as luti chivalry, oral narratives, and traditional religious and comic performing arts. Indeed, it required their revival for its historical legitimacy. Yet it wanted this done in an authorized, respectable, secular, and modernist manner, one ap‑ 308

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pealing to the elite both at home and abroad. Indeed, in its various efforts at creating a syncretic culture of spectacle, it sponsored a government-­r un Shi‑ raz Art Festival, the Tus Festival in Mashhad, and Isfahan Folklore Festival performances and conferences that celebrated the institutions of javanmardi and chivalry, oral storytelling, art music performances, traditional comic per‑ formances, and taziyeh religious performances, many of which undergirded the tough-­guy ideology and genre conventions. These festivals, particularly the one in Tus, featured Shahnameh storytelling and movies and plays on luti and ayyari themes. For example, the theme of the fourth festival in the sum‑ mer of 1978 was javanmardi.41 In addition, in 1974–75, Channel One Televi‑ sion broadcast Shahnameh recitations and naqqali performances nationally and on a daily basis (Motamed-­Nejad 1979:58). These festivals and broadcasts during the 1970s helped spread the authorized, generally secular, highbrow, and nationalistic forms of the tough-­guy ideologies that suited the govern‑ ment and the elite. The popular jaheli movies of the 1970s undermined those ideological constructs. Almost all the elements the edict banned were conventions of the jaheli genre.42 By banning these features, the government was forcing the filmmak‑ ers either to change the genre drastically or to abandon it altogether. Both routes seem to have been adopted. By 1975, the number of movies made had declined from forty to twenty-­four, and by 1978, the year of the revolution, it had dropped to a mere five. Yet filmmakers, both those who made filmfarsi movies and those who made new-­wave films, objected to the government’s new ruling. Mehdi Misaqiyeh, the prominent commercial cinema producer, summarized their feelings when he characterized the edict as a “cute joke.”43 He contended that the government could not award a top filmmaking prize (the Royal Prize) to the jaheli movie Qaisar and then turn around and outlaw the whole genre. He claimed that if the film industry was forced to comply with the decree, there would be no subjects left for filmmakers: “When we make a film we must use our local conditions, customs, and national dress, and I do not think this is a crime.”44 Yet the decree stood fast, and the dra‑ matic drop in tough-­guy movies points to its dampening effect, though the genre was not eradicated. Its continued resilience, in fact, angered the Tehran City Council, which found the reduction in films insufficient. In 1975, one council member, Farhang Farrahi, condemned filmfarsi producers for por‑ traying knife-­w ielding tough guys and jahels, whom he considered negative role models, as if they were “the luminaries of Iranian ethics.”45 In this light it can be seen that the cute joke to which Misaqiyeh referred was nothing but the complex process of cultural negotiation through genre ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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formation and evolution, involving film producers, governmental policymak‑ ers, film critics, and film spectators. One plausible scenario for this multi‑ part negotiation could be summarized as follows: Western-­style moderniza‑ tion, enforced through the Shah’s White Revolution, stirred up deep anxieties, which surfaced in jaheli movies. In them, age-­old Iranian character ideals (lutis, jahels, and ayyars) were made to grapple with a modern world filled with the temptations of modernization and consumerism, which were degraded by being coded as immoral, violent, materialistic, and exploitative. Of course, such coding did not always have the effect intended; instead, at times it made modernity and Westernization even more alluring. Their traditional power bases undermined by modernity and by a brutal centralized state, the toughs in the movies resorted to personal revenge, which sometimes audiences took to have a larger political import. Many Westernized local movie critics dis‑ dained both the types of traditional values mobilized in these films and their low technical quality and apparent artisanal style and the disjointed and cha‑ otic narratives. The government, for its part, wanted to encourage neither the toughs’ take-­charge attitude via violence, nor the tough-­guy films’ condemna‑ tion of Westernization as corrupt, nor the portrayal of poverty and margin‑ ality as the norm in a modernizing Iran. The spectators, on the other hand, largely comprising recent rural émigrés and the urban poor living in the sti‑ fling society of the 1970s, found in the jahel characters worthy authority fig‑ ures, however distorted their portrayal of these characters and of Iranian soci‑ ety may have been. They often cheered on the lutis and jahels as they redressed a wrong or took violent revenge. One might speculate that the increased vio‑ lence on the screens was a harbinger of the return of the politically repressed. The number of tough-­guy films dwindled precipitously, but until the demise of the Pahlavi era, they did continue to be made.

The Reemergence of an Islamicate Tough Guy From its installment in January 1979, the new Islamic government distrusted what it called the “un-­Islamic” leanings of the second Pahlavi-­era tough guys and jahels whom it associated with that era’s corrupting Western influences. This was ironic, for the films’ coding of Westernization as corrupt, which was partly a political oppositional strategy and partly an economic measure to at‑ tract mass audiences, was now being interpreted as propagating that very cor‑ ruption. Within a year, in March 1980, the Revolutionary Court published several orders in major national dailies summoning some thirty actors, both male and female, for “preliminary investigation.” The unusual step of widely 310

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advertising the order was apparently taken because the court did not know the whereabouts of the entertainers, some of whom might have been in hiding out of fear. All of them had starred in filmfarsi movies, particularly in stew‑ pot and tough-­guy films. Among those listed were Fardin, Malekmotii, Vos‑ soughi, Simin Ghaffari, Banai, Baikimanverdi, Iraj Qaderi, Manuchehr Vo‑ suq, Morteza Aqili, Shahnaz Tehrani, Sarkub, and Foruzan. As if to reassure them that nothing terrible awaited them, the summon noted that the actors who had voluntarily appeared before the court had been released after prom‑ ising to change their ways and abstain from activities that were “against Is‑ lamic values.”46 Regardless of whether they appeared before the court, Pahlavi-­era stewpot and tough-­guy movie actors were soon banned from screens as part of the “purification” process to which the Islamic Republic subjected the entire film industry. Some stayed in Iran and chose other careers, while others escaped into exile, predominantly to the United States, where they attempted to revive their acting careers. Yet genres, particularly those with heavy cultural and ideological invest‑ ments, do not die; they just evolve. Genres change to stay the same—­popular. Understandably, Pahlavi-­era tough-­guy movies were not screened publicly in the Islamic Republic because of their display of women without veils, nudity, sexual relations, and song-­and-­dance numbers, but the genre’s masculinist ideology and narrative conventions did not disappear entirely. Instead, they were reworked into new variations. This took at least three forms. First, immediately after the revolution, film producers tried to recycle the Pahlavi-­era tough-­guy types and formulas with only minor modifications and updates, but these efforts were unfavorably re‑ ceived. A reviewer, for example, complained that postrevolution film entrepre‑ neurs had exchanged the trappings of the lutis, louts, and jahels with those of the anti-­Pahlavi guerrillas. As a result, the toughs who in prerevolution mov‑ ies had worn fedora hats and dark suits and brandished knives and machetes, had, in the postrevolution movies, become scruffy lumpens who wore berets and guerrilla jackets and carried guns (Ebrahimian 1979/1358:5). Sometimes updating was limited to a mere title change or to other mi‑ nor modifications hoping to make the movies palatable to the new audiences. Amir Shervan’s The Jahel and the Student (Jahel va Mohassel, 1978), filmed in the throes of the revolution, was renamed Heroin and released with minor alternations. Yet it was never publicly shown. Qaderi’s movie about the Iraq-­ Iran war, Living in Purgatory (Barzakhiha, 1980), which starred Malekmotii, Fardin, and Qaderi himself, tried to recycle the Pahlavi-­era tough types and ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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formulas by updating them to fit the revolutionary era’s ethos. Critics con‑ demned it. In Aman Manteqi’s The Soldier of Islam (Sarbaz‑e Eslam, 1980) and in Parviz Nuri’s Dawn of Explosion (Tolu‑e Enfejar, 1981), Malekmotii played an anti-­Savak, pro-­revolution character, but the movies did not do well, and he was forced to abandon acting altogether. Mofid, too, acted in a few films af‑ ter the revolution that supported revolutionary movements, such as in M ­ ehdi Madanian’s Cry of the Mojahed (Faryad‑e Mojahed, 1979), which dealt sym‑ pathetically with the clerical opposition to the Shah and re-­created the at‑ tack of Savak forces on the Faiziyeh Seminary in Qom. However, it did badly at the box office and, according to Mofid, its negative was destroyed (Naficy 1984a:22). These last few movies, along with Tehrani’s From Shout to Assassination (Az Faryad ta Teror, 1980), formed what might be called a subgenre of “Savak films,” an opportunistic and failed thriller or noir genre, in which gangsters and toughs acted like revolutionaries. Not all the movies of this genre involved the reformulated tough guys, and although some of them dealt with real so‑ cial and political conditions under the Shah, such as repression and corrup‑ tion, the majority proved amateurish and unsuccessful. The critics roundly condemned them as phony and exploitative. One critic warned the producers of these movies that, “if you are not truthful, the audience will edit you out into the dustbin of history.” He called on them to abandon commercialism and to pick up the “pen of the camera” to create accurate reports of life under the Pahlavis (Ebrahimian 1979). Second, if Pahlavi-­era toughs appeared in postrevolution movies, they were usually coded as corrupt and unethical, in other words, as louts, not as lutis. For example, in Mehdi Sabbaghzadeh’s Dossier (Parvandeh, 1983), a tough guy acts as a stool pigeon for the authorities while in prison, an action that violates the lutis’ idealized code of conduct of loyalty to comrades and independence from centers of power. Third, a new Islamicate tough guy surfaced in the postrevolution mov‑ ies, one who subscribed to an altered but recognizable form of masculine dress, posture, and mannerism whose aims were now strictly and selflessly to help the Islamic community (ummah). Unlike the Pahlavi-­era lutis, these Islamicized toughs were not idealized; thus they were susceptible to develop‑ ment and transformation. An example is the illiterate protagonist of the tele‑ vision series The Neighbors (Hamsayeh-­ha), a former luti who learns to read and write from a boy, obtains a decent job, and carries out his missionary tasks, thereby serving the community. Deviant toughs were thus reformed and brought into the fold, letting the genre survive, albeit formulaically. In 312

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53  The transformation of Pahlavi-era toughs in Kimiai’s postrevolution movies. Poster for his film Snake Fang. Collection of the author.

Khosrow Malekan’s feature, The Night Breaker (Shab Shekan, 1985), an ex– tough guy war veteran, who has redeemed himself by fighting in the Iraq-­Iran war, manages to reform an addicted tough guy.47 These transformations differ from the ways in which dandies were reformed from dandies to lutis, namely, through marriage and a change of status. In Kimiai’s postrevolutionary films, tough guys resurface in different guises, leaving them sometimes almost un‑ recognizable. As in his prerevolution movie The Deer, in his postrevolution Snake Fang (Dandan‑e Mar, 1989), the toughs are involved in drug running and smuggling, this time against the background of the war with Iraq (figure 53). However, in the latter movie, they are no longer coded as revolutionary. It appears that the Islamic Republic’s censorship was more airtight than that of the Pahlavi regime, but also that Kimiai felt a greater affinity with the Islamic rulers than with the Pahlavis. A few years later, however, his movie The Wolf’s Footprints (Radd‑e Pay‑e Gorg, 1992–94) was heavily criticized for reviving the same old “retrogressive” toughs in a new form, essentially offering, to borrow from the film’s title, the old wolf in the new sheep’s clothing.48 The primary scene of the little bazaar apparently continued its hold on him. Said Naderi’s ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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Tricksters and Pickpockets (Ayyaran va Tarraran, 1986) uses another tactic for incorporating the toughs: it places its story in an apparently timeless past, when a trickster (ayyar), in an idealized Robin Hood form, returns to their owners the goods that thieves had stolen.49 By being involved in the process of cultural negotiation and social change, by continually coding and recoding its contents and conventions, the tough-­ guy genre managed to survive, but it did not thrive as before. The most dar‑ ing and entertaining recoding occurred in Davud Mirbaqeri’s The Snowman (Adam Barfi, 1994–8), produced by the Art Center of the Islamic Propaganda Organization, which was partly filmed in Turkey. The movie was banned in Iran for several years, and it was released only after the election in 1997 of Mo‑ hammad Khatami to the presidency and the appointment of Ataollah Moha‑ jerani as the new minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Immediately, the film became very controversial as Islamist hard-­liners, including the militant Supporters of the Party of God (Ansar‑e Hezbollah), attacked the theaters that showed the film in major cities, including in Tehran and Isfahan (Peterson 1997). However, government officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khame‑ nei and the popularly elected president Khatami, voiced support for the film, and audiences flocked to the movie houses. It became so popular that the Is‑ fahan movie house that had been attacked continued to show the film for over a month thereafter. Ostensibly, the reason for the attack was the film’s theme of transvestitism. The story of The Snowman involves a protagonist named Abbas (Akbar Abdi), who dreams of going to the United States; yet because there is no U.S. embassy in Iran, he travels to Turkey to obtain a visa under disguise. After his various disguises fail to procure him a visa there, he gets involved in a scheme, hatched by expatriate Iranian tough guys, to disguise himself as a woman willing to marry an American man for $6,000. Abbas dons women’s clothes, hair, and makeup; thus dressed, he appears unveiled in public (which is unlawful in Iran), and he skillfully adopts a camp gay masquerade (also un‑ lawful). He befriends a woman, Donya, with whom he falls in love, introduc‑ ing interesting homoerotic sensibilities and textuality into the narrative, as he does not reveal to Donya his true gender. Another reason for the protest, therefore, may have been the movie’s treatment of such taboo subjects as un‑ veiled women, homoeroticism, and gender crossing, all of which are punish‑ able in the Islamic Republic, where boundaries segregating the sexes, divid‑ ing inside and outside, and keeping apart the self and the Other are strictly patrolled and enforced. Gendered passing seemed possible only outside the country where normative national categories of citizenship and gender are, 314

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if not suspended, more elastic. Eventually, Abbas and Donya return home, where heteronormativity requires that Abbas either come clean about his sex‑ uality and cross-­dressing or use a ruse to kill the female character he was playing. He opts for the latter. A yet more subtle, but no less serious, reason both for the attack on The Snowman and for its popularity may have been the film’s open, even appre‑ ciative, display of transplanted Iranian toughs in Turkey (who happen to be involved in shady smuggling operations). They sing the toughs’ favorite ja‑ heli songs from prerevolution days, sprinkle their conversations with color‑ ful jaheli expressions and gestures not heard or seen in the cinema of the Islamic Republic, and wear some of the coded tough-­guy clothing.50 They also frequent a bar, a favorite hangout of toughs before the revolution, where they drink amber drinks that strongly suggest beer (outlawed in Iran). These scenes and others involving unveiled women could not have been staged so openly in Iran. It is as though the genre had to cross the national borders to remain true to its generic codes—­perhaps resembling the many Irani‑ ans who left the Islamic Republic instead of putting up with unacceptable compromises. The Snowman’s audiences recognized the transgression of the banned ja‑ heli codes with appreciation, as they clapped to the beat of the tough guys’ singing and cheered on the actors. The film not only revived the tough guys’ lifestyle but also reworked the genre’s revenge theme, so that the toughs ended up defending not so much their personal honor as the national honor of Iranian refugees and émigrés in Turkey. The revolutionary changes caused much transformation, some voluntary and some involuntary, in the fortunes and psyches of Iranians. The possibil‑ ity, indeed, the necessity, of change was reflected in the postrevolutionary movies. It is in this context that one can understand the changed role of the Islamicate toughs. The change from social deviants to agents of social change is so drastic and its didacticism so strong that, as a leading Pahlavi-­era female movie star, Fakhri Khorvash, told me, the new Islamicate toughs “perform the tasks that Friday prayer leaders are supposed to perform” (Naficy 1987). In this role, they were pressed in the service of purifying and ameliorating the moral ills of a society perceived to have become corrupted by the culture of taqut (idolatry), by excessive and wrong-­headed Westernization, and most ironic of all, by the tough guys themselves. Under the Islamic Republic, the toughs both in the real and in the diegetic world changed to remain tough.51 Their continued currency is indexed by the sale of luti dolls, which drivers hang on their cars’ windows and mirrors (figure 54). ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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54  A luti doll in a car. Collection of the author.

Reemergence in Exile That the tough-guy characters, ideology, and movies are enduringly fascinat‑ ing to Iranians and serve to continually renegotiate and reinterpret their iden‑ tity is again illustrated by the resurgence of the tough-­guy movies, television series, music videos, and plays in exile, particularly in Europe and in North America.52 The cinematic resurgence took the form initially of exhibiting pre‑ viously made tough-­guy movies and then producing new films and television serials. My survey of the exhibition practices of Iranians in exile shows that in the 1980s, nearly two dozen tough-­guy movies produced before the revolu‑ tion of 1978–79 were imported and screened in commercial cinemas in the United States, principally in New York and Los Angeles. Many of these later became available on video, including the compilation tape Colorful (Ranga‑ rang), which contains favorite song-­and-­dance numbers from filmfarsi mov‑ ies, including tough-­guy films. More significant was the role of exilic television whose production cen‑ ter was Los Angeles and whose various channels offered a home for several tough-­guy television serials and movies (Naficy 1993a). All tough-­guy movies made in exile were first produced on video, then shown on exile television in 316

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a serial form, and subsequently distributed for sale or rental on videocassettes and dvds to Iranian ethnic grocery stores, bookstores, and music stores. That many well-­known luti and jaheli character actors and entertainers as well as filmfarsi industry personnel were in exile in Los Angeles facilitated the re‑ vival and yet another transformation of the luti genre. The most important movies of this genre are briefly discussed here. Beyond Laughter (Balatar az Khandeh, 1985) is directed by Morteza Aqili and stars transplanted Pahlavi-­era tough-­guy character actors such as Mofid, Bahram Vatanparast, and Aqili himself. It comically chronicles the luti life‑ style in Iran before and after the revolution, as well as in exile in the United States. It was first aired as a weekly serial on Jam‑e Jam Television in Los Ange‑ les in 1985 and was later released as a ninety-­minute video. Strangers (Ghari‑ beh-­ha, 1986), a feature-­length comedy starring Aqili, humorously treated the tough guys’ lives in the United States. Like Beyond Laughter, this movie com‑ piles segments originally shown in serial form on Aqili’s own television vari‑ ety show in Los Angeles called Jomeh Television. In fact, during its entire life‑ time, this show’s standard opening sequence featured a jahel, played by Aqili, the producer and host of the show, even though the show as a whole was not about toughs. The Tough Guys’ Company in Los Angeles (Sherkat‑e Jahelan dar Los Anjeles) is another feature-­length jaheli movie produced on video in the 1980s, and it parodied the toughs’ lifestyle in exile. The syncretic malleability and parodic attitude of the movie tough guys to‑ ward the world allowed them not only to engage in exchange relations with the West while in Iran but also to engage in exchange relations with Iran when relocated abroad, where their parodic work continued. Before the revolu‑ tion, for example, foreign-­travel and foreign-­bride movies had been filmed in Europe and North America, where the tough guys’ exploits and Iranian tradi‑ tions of dating and marriage had been parodically defamiliarized in a foreign context, and a touristic one at that. These television serials made in exile provided a reverse view of the lutis by Iranians living abroad, and they proved more critical, even more parodic, of the lutis than their counterpart movies made in Iran. Even the title of Be‑ yond Laughter parodically reworks the title of the American television spy se‑ ries, Mission Impossible, popular in Iran in the 1970s under the title Beyond Danger (Balatar az Khatar). The team featured in the Mission Impossible se‑ ries triumphed over third world dictators, strongmen, and other assorted bad guys thanks to superior American technology, know-­how, morality, and laws. The team and the American triumphalist and exceptionalist ideology that it embraced were never questioned and in fact became the basis for judging the ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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various third world countries into which they made their forays. Perhaps to counter the social uncertainties of the Vietnam War, textual certainty was wo‑ ven into the fabric of this series. In Beyond Laughter and Strangers, on the other hand, a team of displaced Iranian tough guys attempts to recreate in exile its former lifestyle and narra‑ tive traditions. In neither of them are the toughs able to determine their exilic context the way the American team could in Mission Impossible. The toughs are wholly out of place. These shows weave in ambivalence, not certainty. Like the dandies, the modern toughs are ambiguous and hybridized figures who assimilate certain aspects of Western cultures at the same time that they criti­ cize them. It is their villainous lout aspect that generally allows them to take up the new modern ways through mimicry. They syncretically adopted fea‑ tures of Western fashion in the 1970s at the same time that they, through the exaggeration of other features (see-­t hrough nylon socks and platform shoes), made fun of Western dress and, unknowingly, of themselves. In this process, they reproduced not whole or authentic subjects (Westernized or Iranian) but ambivalent, inappropriate, half-­finished, and hybrid subjects. In exile, too, they engaged in similar syncretism, with similar results. The tough guys’ accessories and mannerisms—­such as maybe carrying a drawn machete—­are all out of place in the streets of Los Angeles, with English let‑ tering on shops and Spanish and gang graffiti on the walls. In such a con‑ text, their concerns with meting out personal justice and their penchant for mysticism and exaggerated emotionality seem old-­fashioned or comic. Like‑ wise, the stereotypical characterization of the toughs as men with giant ap‑ petites is put to comic effect in Beyond Laughter, where Mofid’s character in a restaurant orders multiple kebob and rice dishes for himself in one sitting (figures 55a and 55b). Finally, these displaced toughs’ adoption of the Iranian exiles’ lingo, Penglish (a mixture of Persian and English), which they fur‑ ther mingled with their own argot, produced a rich, hybridized, and humor‑ ous language that required a knowing audience to decode and fully appreci‑ ate. Through them as much as through high literature the Persian language evolved and was enriched. The Iranian professional wrestler Hossein Khosrow Vaziri (the Iron Sheik) provides another fascinating example of tough-­guy transplantation to and mimicry in exile. During the so-­called hostage crisis in the early 1980s, when Iranian hard-­liners were holding Americans hostage in their embassy in Teh‑ ran, he took advantage of Iranians’ unpopularity in the United States by par‑ ticipating in the commodification and caricaturing practices of what had be‑ come an anti-­Iranian “hostage industry.” As I explain fully in another chapter, 318

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55a, 55b  Tough-guy characters in exile are decontextualized, inappropriate, excessive, and comic. Bahman Mofid in Beyond Laughter chases a rival with a drawn machete in the streets of Los Angeles and in a restaurant orders a mountain of kebob and rice. The stack of empty dishes signifies his insatiable appetite. Frame enlargements.

the burley Iron Sheik, a former champion wrestler, luti, and friend of Sha‑ ban the Brainless who wore a typical tough-­guy handlebar mustache, became a popular and notorious figure in American professional wrestling circuits and on mainstream television while working out of Southern California. For Iranians familiar with the tough guys’ honor code, which required loyalty to neighborhood and country, the Iron Sheik’s riff on national honor for per‑ sonal gain was a betrayal of those codes and values. Iranians’ infatuation with the toughs enriched not only the older media arts, such as film and television, but also newer forms, such as music videos. This was partly due to the syncretism with which the toughs both brought in the new and tapped into the old. As Manuchehr Bibian, the executive pro‑ ducer of Jam‑e Jam Television, told me: “The tough guys are representatives of Iranian culture and tradition. The Islamic regime is destroying all that. But by doing this series, we help preserve that culture and tradition” (Naficy 1985b). Since the tough-­guy genre is filled with culturally specific formulas, it requires the active complicity of viewers. Their understanding validates the audience as culturally competent, something the older generation could not claim vis-­à-­vis its knowledge of the host society. Younger viewers, on the other hand, turned to them to learn about, and to have fun with, those values and ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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traditions. In these senses, then, both producers and viewers, uprooted from home, became guardians of what Teshome Gabriel called “popular memory,” which conferred and confirmed a shared Iranian cultural and national iden‑ tity (1989), this time from the diaspora.

Tough-­Guy Music Videos in the Diaspora Tough-­guy characters surfaced in pop concerts and music videos produced by émigrés of a younger generation long after the lutis’ heyday on exile televi‑ sion. Concerts and videos were powerful means by which multicultural Irani‑ ans negotiated and defined their new hybridized identities in the West (Naficy 2002). The tough guys’ reappearance in these venues, unlike their reappear‑ ance in the Islamic Republic, did not generally serve moralistic and didactic goals. It recuperated the tough guys’ parodic excess in the service of enter‑ tainment, the transgression of identities, and market capitalism, again dem‑ onstrating both the rootedness and the routing capabilities of the tough-­guy ideology. Produced by the younger or second generation, the bicultural generation, tough-­guy music videos inscribed more successfully and densely than the earlier tough-­guy television serials and movies the layers of ambivalence and cultural negotiations around the tough-­guy phenomenon, creating texts that seemed puzzlingly contradictory. An example was a six-­minute video by Jak‑ lyn, Mafia, which provides a critical (if moralist) catalogue of life in the United States. In it, Jaklyn Dardarian—­an Armenian Iranian and the daughter of the famed pop singer Vigen—­appears in two personas, one female, the other male. In one, she is a sexy singer, doning long, flowing hair and a short, se‑ quined dress, performing on the stage with her all-­male band. In the other, she is dressed as a male tough, looking very much like an Italian Mafia don or an Iranian jahel in a black suit and a black fedora hat, and in some scenes brandishing a machine gun (figure 56). The video images accompanying these two personas posit that the United States is imbued with the “Mafia ethics” of greed, violence, corruption, and crime and the social ills of injus‑ tice, homelessness, addiction, the degradation of women, and lax morality. Her lyrics develop ironic and critical resonances with the images. In some of them, she calls the United States “a prison” that is “worth nothing” and from which she urges her compatriots to return to the homeland. This modern mu‑ sic video thus appears surprisingly old-­fashioned and traditional, much like tough-­guy movies that paraded alluring Westernization throughout just to moralize and condemn it in the end. 320

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56  The pop singer Jaklyn (Jaklyn Dardarian), dressed in an outfit that at once borrows from American Mafia figures and Iranian lutis, in her music video Mafia. Frame enlargement.

The video was produced at a time when American outrage about the hos‑ tage taking was still strong. Iranian émigrés in the United States were both fearful and resentful at being harassed for the actions of a government they opposed and detested. The video’s contradictions and ambivalence mobilized the moralism of Iranian traditions and the exiles’ discourse of nostalgic re‑ turn, as well as the discourse of mimicry. In both of her two personas, Jak‑ lyn borrows ironically from the video’s own catalogue of negative images of America as oversexed and Mafia-­driven. By adopting these negative images of the Other at the same time that she critiques them, the singer engages in mimicry, not imitation. This and other music videos were widely screened by Iranian television in Los Angeles, reaching a potentially global audience.53 Another female entertainer, Leila Foruhar, also produced a music video, Cry of Exultation (Helheleh), in which she and other women dancers, dressed exactly like the tough guys (with the exception of the mustache), danced in the toughs’ macho style and playfully parodied them. Similarly, Morteza’s music video, Heart to Heart (Del Beh Del), shows him on the stage singing and danc‑ ing with three female dancers dressed like Iranian toughs, who dance in the style of the lutis (figure 57).54 In the Black Cats’ slick, ten-­minute video, Pul (Money, 1991), an Asian-­looking warrior resembling Rostam performs a Per‑ sian rap against materialism that constitutes an inspired combination of the Iranian tough-­guy singing style and American hip hop. Money is even more direct in its criticism of materialism and more conservative than Jaklyn’s Ma‑ fia video. It shows how an Arab sheik millionaire wastes all his money on fancy cars, palatial homes, leggy blonde women, and oversexed sycophants—­ and in the end finds himself in a desolate, parched desert with only a single penny lying in the cracked earth. As though this was not clear enough, the video ends with a title card: “The root of all evil is money.” No parody seems to be at work here. ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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57  Morteza’s music video Heart to Heart, featuring female dancers dressed in tough-guy outfits and dancing in the toughguy style. Frame enlargement.

Baba Karam is a Persian rap video featuring the young male singer Foz‑e Aghili who, unlike the other performers discussed here, sings in English, rep‑ resenting the second generation of Iranians in the United States. The video opens with his arrival at a concert hall in a stretch limousine, surrounded by beefy bodyguards who push back his fans to make room for his grand en‑ trance. The middle section of the video shows him and his female dancers on the stage and in what passes as the graffiti-­marked streets of Los Ange‑ les, dressed in various formal dance outfits and Chicano/a street attire. Dur‑ ing this section, the lead singer and his dancers demonstrate “Baba Karam,” a luti dance (and song) originally made famous by Mahvash and the tough guy movies, but this rap version does not much resemble its original. The video’s third section, a bookend to the first, shows Aghili’s departure from the hall. From a narrative point of view, the video’s opening and closing cre‑ ate its young performer as a star. Iconographically, the midsection creates a multiculturally hybridized world, poaching from both Iranian and American styles. This hybrid text knowingly and ironically comments on and critiques its originals. In creating this hybridized space of identity, the video speaks forcefully and good-­humoredly to its young multicultural audience. Mimicry and its discrepancies can become economically fruitful and ideo‑ logically productive when the mimicking personas (Iron Sheik, Jaklyn, Foru‑ har, Morteza, the Black Cats, and Aghili) and the dissonant texts they inhabit are circulated by the capitalist global media in music videos, concerts, ra‑ dio broadcasts, commercial television, and satellite television. By associating themselves with the American pop performance styles and icons, so popu­lar with second-­generation Iranians, the émigré and hyphenated entertainers at‑ tempted to transfer to themselves the fondness of this generation and to capi‑ 322

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58  Young women dancers from the Beshkan Dance Academy perform a toughguy song-and-dance at an Iranian New Year’s outing in April 2006 at Vasona Park, Los Gatos, northern California. Photograph by Talieh Shahrokhi. Courtesy of Talieh Shahrokhi and the Iranian.

talize on the economic rewards of the transfer. In the process, they consoli‑ dated the commodification of themselves and their own images, along with that of their fellow exiles as consumers. This economic diffusion of exilic mu‑ sic videos, along with their political and moral conservatism, defused their subversive potentiality. The waning of the hostility from the hostage crisis reduced the strict bi‑ narist construction of identity among Iranians in the diaspora, encouraging hybrid and critical playfulness, both with the host countries and with the homeland. The tough-­guy movies and their attributes formed part of this playfulness. A graphic artist named Mahmoud drew many cartoons in the 1990s and posted them on the Iranian, an online magazine. The cartoons cir‑ culated and deftly poked fun at the images of the tough guys in Pahlavi-­era movies, of those toughs who were absorbed into the Islamic government, and of those in diaspora.55 Visually, these cartoons engaged with stereotypes for easy recognition; the parody was chiefly embedded in the elaborate text and in references to the original movies, characters, and social formations, re‑ quiring much extratextual knowledge. The toughs were also a regular feature in many performances that Iranian Americans organized on celebratory oc‑ casions, performances that both circulated and good-­naturedly critiqued the toughs and the Iranians themselves (figure 58). Such critical playfulness de‑ rived from the diaspora community’s increased self-­confidence, based on its accomplishments. The feedback loop of the tough-­guy representations is completed when these televisual, cinematic, musical, and theatrical tough-­guy texts produced outside Iran were beamed back to the homeland by Iranian satellite televi‑ sion channels in Los Angeles. These diasporic representations, as well as re‑ ma les, masc ulinity, and p o wer

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cent reworkings in Iran, have resulted in the emergence of an Iranian rap and hip-­hop genre involving the toughs inside the Islamic Republic. For example, Shahkar Bineshpazhuh’s musical album Eskenas (Toman Bill) contains not only samples of jaheli songs from before the revolution but also contemporary rap versions.56 It is as though in these music videos, films, and television pro‑ grams at least three mirrors are held facing each other. One mirror reflects the representations of tough guys made in Iran before the revolution; a sec‑ ond displays the representations made in the diaspora during the 1980s and 1990s in response to the first; and a third shows the representations of tough guys in the Islamic Republic in the 1990s, again in response to the first two reflections. None of these representations maps squarely onto reality, as each feeds and is fed by the other, creating an infinite series of self-­and-­other re‑ flections, representations, and refractions. Such is the national and diasporic optics of the global media.

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6 a dissiden t cinem a New-­Wave Films and the End of an Era

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f culture and cinema in the United States are primarily commercial, in Iran they are principally political, even the commercial culture and cinema. The state constitutes both a powerful friend and a pillar of support for the film industry and an irresistible foe and punching bag for the filmmakers. In the spring of 1962, Ismail Kushan, the head of the Film Producers’ Syndicate, in‑ vited the U.S.-­supported prime minister Ali Amini to his Pars Film Studio to inspect the premises and to listen to the movie producers’ assessment of their problems and needs. In his presentation, Kushan boasted that the country’s fiction cinema had progressed tremendously in its brief existence compared to countries in the region with longer film histories, for Iranians beat those cinemas to color and to Cinemascope filming. However, he warned of emerg‑ ing problems, the biggest being “foreign movies dubbed into Persian,” which were imported “plentifully and with complete freedom and ease, without any obstacles, hindrance, or control.” He noted that Western movie studios through their subsidiaries dubbed the movies, imported them into Iran, and took their substantial profits—­20 million tomans in 1961—­out of the coun‑ try. The country’s economy suffered from this unequal flow of capital and cul‑ ture. He did not own up to the low quality of domestic commercial movies and to the imitative pattern that plagued them. Instead, he pleaded with the prime minister for political help to control film imports, to prevent foreign compa‑

nies from dubbing their own movies, and to encourage the export of Iranian movies. In reply, Amini admitted that this new industry needed state support, and he “confessed that the government should perhaps have acted earlier” in that direction. He promised to help, but he astutely reminded the gathered dignitaries of the film industry that government support was a “double-­edged weapon.” For if the government “supported” the industry, it would also expect to have a hand in “guiding” and “controlling” it. “One cannot regard cinema from a strictly commercial viewpoint, for its spiritual and moral aspects are even more important,” he remarked (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:341–44). Amini was removed from his post as prime minister before he could fol‑ low up on his promise of assistance. It took almost a decade, until Amir Abbas Hoveyda became prime minister and the Shah’s so-­called White Revolution was well underway, before the government became a serious and systematic supporter of cinema. By then, the reciprocal equation that Amini had pre‑ dicted had become a reality. The film industry also had commercial and artistic problems. Kushan’s blockbuster tough-­guy movie Velvet Hat Wearer (Kolah Makhmali, 1962) and Samuel Khachikian’s crime drama Panic (Delhoreh, 1962) were much imi‑ tated. Critics were relentless about the low quality of popular films, saying it hurt both industry profits and Iran’s national identity. Amirhushang Ka‑ vusi called a spate of such recent movies both a “stigma” and a “testimony” to our country’s failures and an “abject humiliation.” He accused Khachikian of copying the lighting scheme, shot composition, and even camera move‑ ments of Charles Vidor’s Gilda (1946) in making his Midnight Cry (1961). He was so disdainful of the imitative and improvised narratives of these commer‑ cial movies that he memorably called them “authorless.” “If a ladder without any rungs could still be called a ladder, then a movie without a director can also be called a movie” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:337, 347). Another critic, Karim Emami, titled his review of the state of Iranian cinema and of Kha‑ chikian’s Panic, “The Disaster of the Iranian Cinema.” In the past, he admit‑ ted, Khachikian’s crime movies had scored very well in the market and were imitated. Yet many of these were themselves copies of Western originals, re‑ sulting in dissonant texts in which Iranian and Western elements clashed. He explained: What is unpleasant about Khachikian’s works is his lack of attention to reality and his evasion of realism. In his movies, the stories occur in Iran and his protagonists speak Persian; however, their behavior and movements are more like Hollywood characters than Iranian charac‑

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ters. And the fight scenes that he inserts in his movies are totally like Hollywood westerns. Khachikian is under the spell of American movies to an amazing degree, and his chief problem is that he does not have an Iranian view of the world. As a result, the financial success of his mov‑ ies cannot help the Iranian film industry at all. . . . We cannot build the foundation and principle of a country’s film industry on the basis of im‑ itation. What we need now is a cinema that can stand on its own feet, an independent cinema. (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:349) In a way, Kavusi and Emami were both charging that Khachikian and other commercial directors were suffering from a case of epistemic violence caused by American movies, that they were seeing the world through Western narra‑ tive schemas and textual formations. However, this was not a case of total identification with things Western. The clashing aesthetics of Khachikian’s movies pointed to their (perhaps un‑ conscious) resistive strategies: imperfect imitation, exaggeration, and mim‑ icry. Iranians tended both to assimilate and to resist modernity and to create a modernity with a difference. In a montage culture suffused with oral litera‑ ture and traditional performances, originality was rare. And modernity was stirring originality. Jalal Moqaddam’s Three Madmen (Seh Divaneh, 1968) combined aspects of what would become the new-­wave cinema—­original screenplay, continuity filming, and realistic character de‑ velopment—­in a movie made for the commercial film industry. While the critics appreciated this effort, spectators did not. Davud Mowlapur’s Ahu’s Husband (Showhar‑e Ahu Khanom, 1968), based on Ali Mohammad Afghani’s award-­w inning novel of the same name about a polygamous family, was an‑ other progenitor for the new wave. Produced and directed by Mowlapur, who had studied filmmaking in London, it was unexpectedly successful at the box office and controversial with the critics, primarily because of a dispute over screenplay credits between Mowlapur and Arby Ovanessian. The rise of intel‑ lectual new-­wave cinema would require an additional impetus. There is a long history of patronage in the Iranian arts, whereby the royalty and secular and religious elite underwrote the arts and even the life of visual artists, craftspeople, calligraphers, architects, performers, or poets who made their arts for, in honor of, and sometimes about their patrons. Panegyric and imitative arts were one outcome; so were original arts of great distinction. It is ironic but not unprecedented that the independent cinema Emami demanded proved impossible without government patronage—­both under the Pahlavi and the Islamic Republic regimes. By August 1968, a more enlightened gov‑

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ernment had learned that to control cinema one could simply patronize it, rather than censor it. On 21 August, the prime minister, Amir Abbas Hov‑ eyda, told a gathering of the Movie Artists Syndicate, “Iranian movies must have originality and be inspired by Iranian history.” He then announced that a sum of 10 million tomans was designated in the fourth national develop‑ ment plan for investing in the film industry (Omid 1995/1374:432). One ironic and felicitous result was the emergence of a countercinema, the new-­wave cinema (sinema‑ye mowj‑e no), at odds with both commercial cinema and the government that largely funded it. State censorship shaped commercial cin‑ ema in the 1950s and 1960s; the new-­wave cinema in the 1970s was formed by both censorship and the state’s courtship of film. The hybrid production mode also facilitated its emergence. It was not so much a genre cinema as an authorial cinema: each filmmaker engaged with the social and intellectual discourses of the time and developed his own more or less individual style (and, yes, they were almost all men). Many young filmmakers produced nu‑ merous features, documentaries, and animated films. A wide range of factors and formations converged to provide the foundations for this film movement.

Formations of the Culture Industry Supporting New-­Wave Films From the 1960s onward, the Shah intensified his policy of syncretic Western‑ ization, creating an official culture of spectacle that depended both on West‑ ernizing Iran and on revitalizing a partly fabricated monarchic and chauvin‑ istic ideology and history that predated Islam. The state sponsored grandiose spectacles such as the Shah’s coronation in 1967, celebrated for a week na‑ tionwide, during which Empress Farah was also crowned as regent. Grand pageantry in 1971 honored the twenty-­five hundredth anniversary of the Per‑ sian Empire; yearlong festivities in 1975 celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Pahlavi rule. Annual festivals such as the Shiraz Festival of Culture and Art, Isfahan’s Popular Tradition Festival, and Mashhad’s Tus Arts Festival, were organized by the mca, nirt, and other institutions. The media covered them, and their organizers commissioned and screened films and hosted filmmak‑ ers from around the world, resulting in an unprecedented flurry of produc‑ tions and exchanges. The anniversary celebration of the Persian Empire in particular marked the height of spectacles centering on the Shah, what James A. Bill called “in‑ creasing megalomania” for the Shah, who at the Persepolis ceremonies di‑ 328

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rectly linked himself to Cyrus the Great, addressing him directly: “Cyrus! Great King of Kings. Noblest of the Noble. Hero of the history of Iran and the world! Rest in peace, for we are awake and we will always stay awake” (1988:184). Average Iranians were not allowed in, and police rounded up hun‑ dreds of suspected “troublemakers” in anticipation of the celebrations. In Jan‑ uary 1971, Ayatollah Khomeini sent a message from his exile in Iraq urging Iranians to stay away from the celebrations: “Anyone who organizes or par‑ ticipates in these festivals is a traitor to Islam and the Iranian nation” (quoted in Fischer 1980:189). Spectacle was clearly part of the top-­down reforms whose overarching la‑ bels evolved over the years: The White Revolution became the Shah-­People Revolution and the Great Civilization. In seeking massive financial aid from the United States, the Shah presented the funding of these reform programs as instrumental to making Iran the “showcase” for all of Asia, “the place with the best prospects of a great transformation” (Richards 1975:22). The birth of his son, Reza, and the appointment of Empress Farah as regent removed the Shah’s anxiety about succession. He began believing his own projection of power and was in fact mesmerized by it, instead of remaining awake to the worsening social conditions in the country. By the mid-­1970s, he had built a formidable modern armed force (the fifth largest in the world) and had filled the vacuum created by the British naval forces’ withdrawal from the Persian Gulf by taking over three small islands (Abu Musa, Small Tunb, and Large Tunb). His top-­down, co-­optive institutions shielded the Shah and the ruling strata from brewing social discontent. In moves that consolidated his projec‑ tion of ancient power (and confirmed his megalomania), the Shah now called himself “Shahanshah Aryamehr” (King of Kings, the Light of the Aryans) and retitled his empress “Shahbanu” (Shah’s Lady). In interviews with for‑ eign correspondents, he began lecturing leaders of Western liberal democra‑ cies about democracy and statecraft.1 What Jeremy Tunstall wrote about his use of television in creating this mesmerizing culture of spectacle was also true of his support for all the other arts. Television was “a weapon to consoli­ date power, confer prestige, divide the bureaucracy, to project a single na‑ tional culture—­and generally to identify his personality and office with na‑ tional plans and prestige. . . . The television conception of Iranian tradition appears to resemble a Cecil B. DeMille movie in which the part of the Shah is played by the Shah” (1977:247). State revenues were funneled to filmmakers and art and culture institutions, many of which were pressed into servicing the Shah’s personal status. All the arts were censored and dissenting voices suppressed. a d issid ent c inema

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Nepotism and cronyism suffused national broadcasting, culture, arts, and censorship organizations. Reza Ghotbi, the empress’s close cousin, was the director general of nirt; Mehrdad Pahlbod, the Shah’s brother-­in-­law, was the minister of culture and art; Mehdi Boushehri, another brother-­in-­law, headed the Film Industry Development Company of Iran (fidci); and Lili Amir-­Arjomand, a close childhood friend of Empress Farah, headed the Cen‑ ter for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (cidcya). These formed part of the inner circle of the Shah’s “circles of power,” and their long tenure throughout the life of their organizations under the Shah provided these institutions with historical continuity. However, these people were not all equal in power, prestige, capability, and influence. Ghotbi in par‑ ticular was much more powerful than the head of national broadcasting in other authoritarian countries, and he was more powerful than perhaps all the cabinet ministers in Iran, a power demonstrated late in 1978, when after re‑ signing his post at nirt in the run-­up to the revolution, he negotiated with secular opposition groups on behalf of the Shah (Green 1982:23). Because of her personal connections to these key figures and her own interest in culture and arts institutions, Empress Farah had a deep, extensive influence on the arts, culture, and social services, which empowered her protégés. In a Sixty Minutes program segment called “The Empress,” aired on 24 August 1973, the cbs correspondent Mike Wallace called her, “Iran’s unofficial secretary of culture, health, education, and welfare” (Naficy 1984c:102). Such support for the film industry was only partly driven by nepotism and by the ideological imperatives of the spectacle-­driven Pahlavi state. There was also a genuine de‑ sire among the institutions to promote and to professionalize Iranian media.2 The mca and nirt set up professional film production centers and labs, both of which employed civil servant filmmakers and commissioned free‑ lance filmmakers to produce a variety of feature movies, dramatic television films and film serials, documentary and educational films, short films, and animated films. As will be seen, the fidci, too, was very active in new-­wave film and in coproductions with Western studios. Established in 1967 as an autonomous institution, the cidcya was nevertheless a government agency, for various state bodies underwrote its budget, including the mca, the Min‑ istry of Education, and the National Iranian Oil Company. Its heads of film production (Ebrahim Foruzesh and Firuz Shirvanlu, among others) gathered a group of creative freelance and commissioned filmmakers to make short live-­action and animated films, ostensibly aimed at children. Yet most of the films addressed adult audiences as well and were often philosophical in tone and critical in approach, encouraging the questioning of traditions and of re‑ 330

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ceived notions of authority. These films and their filmmakers, some of whom crossed into feature-­film production, created a large body of work and ush‑ ered in a children’s cinema, a short-­subject cinema, and the new-­wave cin‑ ema.3 Through its other major division the cidcya also produced beautifully illustrated books for children, including translations, and established several cidcya branches throughout the country, often located in pleasant city parks, offering children library facilities, crafts and music classes, and theater work‑ shops and film screenings.4 While the mca and nirt both were nationwide government agencies, and trusted royal relatives headed them, they were not united. One of the fictions of Pahlavi-­era cultural politics, which both proponents and opponents of the regime promoted, was the supposed homogeneity of the state’s ideological apparatuses. If these apparatuses tended to be hegemonic, they were not ho‑ mogeneous; state agencies held different institutional ideologies, histories, and duties, followed various modi operandi, and employed distinct personali‑ ties. And differences among their leaders also ensured that other differences were intractable. Filmmakers played on these distinctions to get their projects done, at the same time that many fanned the homogeneity myth. While all the ideological apparatuses worked together to propagate the Pahlavi state and its ideological projects, they often competed on strategies, tactics, and policies. Pahlbod and Ghotbi had personal differences: Pahlbod was more conserva‑ tive and Ghotbi more liberal. They had competing family loyalties, one being more loyal to the Shah, the other to the empress. Such allegiances and dis‑ tinctions emphasized the institutional differences among their respective or‑ ganizations. Pahlbod alluded to some of these when in an interview he stated that the mca and nirt were ideologically opposite. “The television organiza‑ tion was among liberal organizations that tended toward freedom; while we were conservative. In general, we had these two currents of thought: I consid‑ ered the television organization as liberal and the culture and art organization as conservative” (Pahlbod 1984:67–68).5 Institutional politics and turf issues were also involved, as nirt, which Pahlbod considered more directly “politi‑ cal,” trespassed on the mca’s turf, which was to be more “cultural.” The list of progressive subsidiary arts and culture institutions that nirt created, and which competed with the mca’s missions and institutions, was very impres‑ sive indeed.6 nirt and its subsidiaries attracted creative and managerial per‑ sonnel from the mca and other organizations, creating further resentments. Its wide-­ranging efforts, progressive stance, and successes, which pushed the number of its personnel to more than eight thousand people in a decade, at‑ tracted educated and foreign-­trained fresh talent. This pushed the mca to a d issid ent c inema

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create its own subsidiary institutions of research, production, performance, publication, and distribution. The competition generally proved good for the culture. In the 1970s, Empress Farah, a cosmopolitan lover of the arts with lib‑ eral tendencies, who had left her study of architecture in Paris unfinished to marry the Shah, became an unofficial but powerful force in the national cul‑ ture scene—­Pahlbod called her “another power base”—­whose support was behind not only the cidcya and nirt but also behind many other arts, cul‑ ture, music, ballet, theater, and cinema festivals. She could influence not only the country’s larger cultural policies but also small decisions regarding indi‑ vidual cases, such as rescuing a movie from mca censorship (as happened in the case of Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cycle). She, along with Ghotbi, initiated and strongly supported the Shiraz Festival of Culture and Art, which throughout its lifespan (1967–77) served as a venue for important original traditional art as well as modern, avant-­garde, and sometimes controversial foreign and Ira‑ nian arts.7 As Ovanessian, a film and theater director and a member of the Shiraz organizing committee whose own works were regularly showcased at the festival, noted, several banned movies were screened at the Shiraz festi‑ val: Mehrjui’s The Cow (Gav, 1969) and The Cycle (Dayereh‑ye Mina, 1974) and Naser Taqvai’s Tranquility in the Presence of Others (Aramesh dar Hozur‑e Diga‑ ran, 1973). Inevitably, this intervention by an agency that was part of the sys‑ tem subverted and “displeased” the mca officials who had banned the movies (Ovanessian 1983:22). Even film censorship, officially charged to the mca, had many competing proponents and opponents, from Savak to the prime minister’s office, from the minister of court to the Senate and the Majles, from the National Iranian Oil Company to nirt, from the Iranian Medical Association to university presi‑ dents, from the religious establishment to the bazaar merchants, and from the Tehran Chamber of Commerce and armed forces chiefs to the heads of the commercial movie studios and the film producers’ union. The examination of Farrokh Gaffary’s South of the City (Jonub‑e Shahr, 1958) in an earlier chap‑ ter provided a case study of these complicated and competing censorship rela‑ tions. Pahlbod insisted that censorship rightly belonged to the mca, not to the Ministry of the Interior, to which it had belonged before—­during the era of Nilla Cram Cook—­for this ministry did not have any understanding of the arts and artists. However, he admitted that “censorship had a bad name,” and he claimed that the mca was not as monolithic in censorship as it was perceived to be. “We were caught among extraordinary diverse and changing currents of thought and coordinating these was totally impossible” (Pahlbod 1984:66). 332

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The establishment of state-­sponsored, degree-­granting university and col‑ lege programs in film and television (affiliated with the mca, nirt, and Teh‑ ran University), the nationwide Super 8 film training network Free Cinema (Cinema‑ye Azad), and the cidcya with its national network of libraries and film production centers helped decentralize and systematize the education and training of new talent from film production to film connoisseurship. The mca, nirt, the cidcya, the fidci, Telfilm (nirt’s film production arm), and Free Cinema were also involved in the distribution, exhibition, and archiving of various professional and amateur films. The state thus constituted a formi‑ dable player in facilitating the emergence of the hybrid production mode and the promotion of a film culture conducive to an auteur cinema. In the meantime, as described in chapter 3, the private and commercial sector also developed its own studio-­based industrial formations for the pro‑ duction, importation, dubbing, and nationwide exhibition and distribution of foreign and domestic movies. This sector was equally important in pro‑ viding infrastructure for new-­ wave cinema. Several commercial studios also financed or produced new-­wave movies, such as Masud Kimiai’s Qaisar (1969) and Dash Akol (1971), Ali Hatami’s Bald Hasan (Hasan Kachal, 1970) and Towqi (1970), Soleiman Minasian’s and Herand Minasian’s Sunrise (Tolu’, 1970), and Mehrjui’s Mr. Gullible (Aqa‑ye Halu, 1970). Their successes led to imitations and increased production. As a result, increasing numbers of in‑ vestors and spectators were attracted to the movies. One factor that kept the artisanal features of the hybrid mode in play was the high number of produc‑ ers and directors who in the 1960s and the 1970s embarked on film careers with no training in film, who tended toward opportunistic practices of impro‑ vised, unplanned, and chaotic filmmaking. Occasionally, a new-­wave director would establish a commercial studio devoted entirely to new-­wave projects, such as the Golestan Film Workshop. As shown in table 6, the emerging hy‑ brid production mode, consisting of public-­sector (government) and private-­ sector (commercial) funding, generated a high volume of products to mass audiences nationally—­up to ninety-­two movies annually—­helping feed the expanding number of movie houses. Numerous national film festivals, which showcased both domestic and foreign movies, also helped propagate cinema and film culture nationally. Among these were the following: the Tehran Film Festival (began in 1958), the Educational Film Festival (1963, organized by the mca), the International Fes‑ tival of Films for Children and Young Adults (1966, organized by the ­cidcya), the Sepass Film Festival (1969, organized by Film and Art magazine), the Free Cinema Film Festival (1970, organized by Sinema‑ye Azad), the National Ira‑ a d issid ent c inema

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nian Film Festival (1970, organized by the mca), the Tehran International Film Festival (1972, organized by the mca), the Asian Youth Film Festival (1974, organized by nirt and the Asian Broadcasting Union), and the Festi‑ val of Young Filmmakers’ Cinema (1975, organized by the mca’s Society of Young Filmmakers). Other more specialized festivals showcased advertising films (1974, organized by nirt’s College of Cinema and Television), women’s films (1976, organized by the Women’s Organization of Iran), university stu‑ dent films (1977), and film music (1978). 8 Some, like the Tehran International Film Festival, also produced publications that widened their impact. In addi‑ tion, film clubs, such as the National Film Center (Kanun‑e Melli‑ye Film), the Farabi Film Club, the Cinémathèque of the Tehran Museum of Contem‑ porary Arts, and various university film societies, as well as the cultural arms of foreign embassies, screened foreign movies in their original languages on a regular basis for the public. These proved instrumental to increasing the pub‑ lic’s exposure to quality films and to raising the general level of film culture in the country. The emergence of active film journalism, explained in chapter 3, contributed greatly to these discursive formations of film culture. Powerful state-­funded and commercially funded film production com­ panies—­Telfilm (associated with nirt), the fidci, and the Progressive Film‑ makers Cooperative—­invested in films directed by Iranians and channeled coproduction deals with international companies. Several well-­known Euro‑ pean and American directors received coproduction funding for their mov‑ ies from the government-­supported companies, among them Orson Welles for F for Fake (1976), Patrice Chéreau for La Chair de L’Orchidée (Flesh of the Orchid, 1976), Junya Sato for Gogol 13 (1976), Valerio Zurlini for The Desert of Tartars (1977), Leslie Matinson for Missile X (1978), and James Fargo for Cara‑ vans (1978). None of them, however, fulfilled the financial or image-­building expectations of their Iranian financiers, and they did not revive Iran’s film industry.9 Yet the movies that Iranian directors made under the auspices of these public and private companies proved much more successful and con‑ tributed to the new-­wave cinema. Commercial film studios, too, engaged in coproductions with foreign film companies. One early example was an Iran-­Lebanon coproduction, A Man from Tehran (Mardi az Tehran, 1966), directed by the Egyptian-­born Lebanese Faruk Agrama, starring Mohammad Ali Fardin and Foruzan, which was pat‑ terned after the James Bond movies and dealt with international smuggling. Another was the Misaqiyeh Film Studio’s coproduction with Lebanese Orient Films on the crime melodrama Fate (Sarnevesht, 1967), which Hekmat Aqani‑ kian directed. With an Armenian director and star (Arman), this film became 334

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a tripartite coproduction. In 1969, Pars Film Studio’s Kushan also signed a six-­movie coproduction deal with the Turkish filmmaker Turker Inanoqlu, which used cast and crewmembers from both countries. Among the films produced, The Pretty Pickpocket (Jibbor Khosgeleh, 1969) was highly success‑ ful. Aryana Film Studio coproduced Bird of Happiness (Homa‑ye Sa’adat, 1971) with Indian Ganesh Prasad Movies. The Indian Fabi Chanakia directed the film, but most of the cast was Iranian, and the film did well in Iran with box-­ office receipts of nine hundred thousand tomans. In general, coproductions with non-­Western countries may have benefited Iranians more than their col‑ laborations with Western countries. These involved a more equitable partic‑ ipation of Iranian cast and crew, and their movies were actually made for screening in Iran and the Middle East, not for screening in Europe. These multidimensional public and private industrial, sociopolitical, cul‑ tural, and spectatorial infrastructures would not have come to fruition had it not been for the rising quality and quantity of the film industry products that the energetic, young, and educated new-­wave filmmakers were creating. Many of the new-­wave filmmakers, and a few of the commercial ones, had been trained abroad—­in Europe and the United States—­and, like those in the Qajar period, they had a significant collective impact. Among Western-­ trained new-­wave filmmakers were Feraidun Rahnema (France), Farrokh Gaffary (France), Bahman Farmanara (usa), Dariush Mehrjui (usa), Kam‑ ran Shirdel (Italy), Parviz Kimiavi (France), Sohrab Shahid Saless (Austria, France), Khosrow Haritash (usa), and Hajir Daryoush (France) (those work‑ ing in the documentary field are named elsewhere). These transnationals helped give Iranian cinema its specificity and its universality. Their impact was enhanced by the contributions of the self-­taught or domestically trained cinéastes such as Bahram Baizai, Abbas Kiarostami, Masud Kimiai, Naser Taqvai, Parviz Sayyad, and Amir Naderi. Together, these formed a formidable (but all-­male) cinematic authorial force. The almost simultaneous emergence of a new generation of socially con‑ scious leftist and secular writers, such as Gholamhosain Saedi, Sadegh Chu‑ bak, Hushang Golshiri, and Mahmood Dowlatabadi—­again all male—­whose works these filmmakers adapted or with whom they collaborated on original screenplays, meant abandoning the traditional commercial movie genres in favor of new-­wave films that were imbued with enhanced realism and criti‑ cism, character interiority, narrative continuity, a coherence of space, time, and causality, and improved technical qualities. What added to the enhanced realism and higher quality of the new-­wave films was another form of collaboration, that between the filmmakers and a a d issid ent c inema

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new generation of theater actors, trained in modern representational acting, many of whom worked in mca theaters. In fact, this was an important side effect of mca funding: filmmakers’ access to the ministry’s cadre of trained actors. It accounts for the regular and repeated presence of certain actors in new-­wave films. Many of the narrative, stylistic, and acting features emanat‑ ing from these collaborations remained absent from the products of earlier commercial filmmakers. The collaborative synergy of intellectual directors and dissident writers and actors, the resultant textual innovations, and the aforementioned professionalization and developments created the rhizomatic webs of relations, dispositions, and formations that overdetermined the emer‑ gence of the new-­wave film movement in the 1970s.

The Emergence of New-­Wave Films: Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow (Gav, 1969) What was needed to turn this potential into a reality was a few good mov‑ ies. The spark that social-­realist filmmakers Gaffary and Golestan had ig‑ nited with their South of the City, Night of the Hunchback (Shab‑e Quzi, 1964), and Mudbrick and Mirror (Khesht va Ayeneh, 1965) was fanned by Rahnema’s modernist Siavash in Persepolis (Siavash dar Persepolis, 1967) and Mowlapur’s realist Ahu’s Husband (Showhar‑e Ahu Khanom, 1968), and finally burst into full flame with Kimiai’s Qaisar and Mehrjui’s second film, The Cow.10 If Qai­ sar gave rise to the modernized tough-­guy movies, the jaheli genre, The Cow led to the new-­wave film movement. Together, they shook up the complacent commercial movie industry and helped strengthen the emerging hybrid pro‑ duction mode. In the first Festival of Iranian Cinema in 1970 Qaisar won the top film award, The Cow second place, and Ahu’s Husband came up third. Box-­ office returns for that year rose thanks to the successes of Qaisar and The Cow, the number of commercial movies released the following year increased by nine, and the box-­office earnings of at least twenty movies in 1970 exceeded seven hundred thousand tomans, which was much higher than in previous years (Omid 1995/1374:551). In many ways, The Cow provides an example of the complexities, accomplishments, constraints, stylistic and narrative fea‑ tures, and double-­edged circumstances of the new-­wave cinema. This black-­and-­white film concerns a farmer named Mash Hasan (Ezatol‑ lah Entezami) who lives in a very poor village and whose pregnant cow is very dear to him, as it is the sole source of his livelihood and the only source of milk for the entire village. However, Mash Hasan’s attachment to the cow ex‑ 336

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59  Love and tenderness between man, Mash Hasan (Ezatollah Entezami), and animal in Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow. Frame enlargement.

tends to a deep psychological bond of love with another sentient being, touch‑ ingly demonstrated when he tenderly washes her in the river and talks with her playfully. In a parallel gesture, Mash Hasan pours water over his own head and washes it. Later at night, Mash Hasan in the cowshed caresses the cow lovingly, hugs her head and kisses it, and offers her handfuls of hay. He mirrors her by eating some hay himself. This scene ends when he whispers to the cow tenderly, “nazam, janam!” (my dear, my soul) (figure 59). One day Mash Hasan goes to another village for overnight business. In the dark of the night, sinister thieves invade his village; the cow is mysteriously killed, creating a mystery that remains unsolved to the end. These thieves, al‑ ways in a three-­man formation, silhouetted against a darkening sky or lurk‑ ing and scurrying in the shadows of village walls and alleys, form a recurrent visual and psychological motif of fear and anxiety. Ironically, the villagers call these dark, shadowy figures the Crystallines (Boluriha). Fearful of the disastrous effects that this bad news will have on Mash Hasan and perhaps ashamed of their own negligence, the villagers, headed by the village wise man, Mash Islam (Ali Nasirian), bury the cow and tell Mash Hasan on his return that his cow ran away. They let the carcass fall into the grave, and the slow-­motion image freezes on the head of the cow with its eyes open, looking at the camera. This and other scenes of reciprocal affection between Mash Hasan and the cow endow both of them with subjectivity. On his return, Mash Hasan suspects that the villagers are hiding some‑ thing, as his wait for the cow at the edge of the desert proves fruitless. His desperation spirals into a psychological breakdown. Both his inability to de‑ termine the truth of what happened to his beloved cow and his total identifi‑ cation with her drive him into madness. This type of identification points to a key feature of Iranian mystic and Sufi philosophy and poetry, which is also a d issid ent c inema

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60  The shadowy figures, Boluriha, representing feared outsiders in The Cow. Frame enlargement.

prominent in new-­wave films, whereby the lover and the beloved disappear as distinct individuals and fuse into one another, forming a union. Mehrjui, himself a student of philosophy, pointed to this mystic dimension of Mash Hasan’s relation with the cow in his interview in Akrami’s The Lost Cinema: Iranian Political Films in the Seventies (2006).11 Soon, Mash Hasan makes the darkened womb of the cowshed his home, and he feeds on hay. Mash Islam encounters this bewildering transformation when the next day he enters the cowshed and asks, “How are you, Mash Hasan?” His friend responds, “I am not Mash Hasan, I am Mash Hasan’s cow.” When Mash Islam and others try to convince him that he is not the cow, he implores his master, “Mash Hasan, rescue your cow, the thieves have come to slaughter me.” This conflation of the villagers with the invading thieves constitutes an important moment in the film, one repeated toward the end. The distressed villagers are offended by the accusation that they have become their own enemy, the Crystallines, and they are convinced that Mash Hasan is beyond hope, a belief reinforced when their attempts to exorcise the evil by traditional practices and rituals prove fruitless (figure 60). Finally, three villagers decide to take him to town to the hospital under a heavy downpour. This threesome formation now echoes the Crystallines, confirming Mash Hasan’s suspicions (they also echo the three Aq Mangol brothers, who terrorized the protagonists in Qaisar). Mash Hasan obstinately fights being taken away, forcing the villagers to treat him more like a recal‑ citrant cow than a human being. Indeed, they begin to treat him like a cow: they chase him, capture him, tie him up with ropes, and pull him out of the village by force as he stubbornly resists them. The film builds into a ferocious battle of the wills between the man-­gone-­mad, marked by Entezami’s bravura 338

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performance, and the frantic villagers, with the powerful performance of Na‑ sirian as Mash Islam, who out of exasperation and anger beats Mash Hasan mercilessly with a rope. Mash Hasan eventually breaks loose from their grasp, runs up a hill, and falls off a cliff to his death in front of his astonished friends. This death scene echoes the burial scene of the cow, as Mash Hasan falls into a mud puddle in slow motion and dies motionless, like his cow. In these scenes of death, as in the scenes of intimacy at the river and in the cowshed, the film emphasizes the close material and psychological bonds be‑ tween the cow and his owner. Like Mash Hasan and the villagers, the film has come to this same understanding. Its deep sincerity and empathy for its char‑ acters and their world shows a kind of inner purity (safa‑ye baten), which is in‑ fectious, as the spectators also come to it. The film ends with the celebratory wedding of two young villagers, whose romance had been building through‑ out, softening the sorrow of the primary plotline. But even this scene of happi‑ ness and rebirth is tinged with the loss of Mash Hasan, as his wife is seen on the rooftop looking beyond the horizon for her husband, the way Mash Hasan had gazed at the desert earlier looking for his cow. Such waiting and longing for someone—­a beloved, a savior, a Mahdi—­constitutes another one of the primal themes of Iranian mysticism, literature, and cinema. The film broke many conventions of Iranian cinema. Its focus on villag‑ ers echoed in a different genre the tough-­guy films’ return to the authentic bedrock of Iranian society and psychology. Its rural locations countered the commercial movies’ preoccupation with urban life and ersatz modernity. This turn to rural folk at their most humble was also a declaration of a turn to‑ ward the masses of poor people who formed the majority of the population, in whose defense leftist intellectuals were speaking. The film established a kind of modernist “village genre” in which the drama of self and other, Iran and the West, could unfold in favor of Iranian authenticity. The film’s treatment of village life—­depicting its inner purity and show‑ ing empathy toward its subjects—­was reinforced by sparse, raw, and invisible style of classic realism, resembling neorealism. This was a breath of fresh air in the context of the fantasy-­ridden, textually chaotic filmfarsi movies. The Cow was not a neorealist film, however, for Mash Hasan’s possession by the cow injected a powerful surrealistic element, pushing the film toward philo‑ sophical transcendence and psychoanalytic understanding. On the surface, Mash Hasan’s relation with the cow resembles the obsession of the workman in Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves (Ladri di Biciclette, 1948), the exem‑ plar of Italian neorealism. But through shot composition, acting, and point-­ of-­view filming, Mehrjui endowed both the cow and Mash Hasan with inte‑ a d issid ent c inema

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riority and reciprocity. There is no interiority and reciprocity in The Bicycle Thieves on behalf of the bicycle. The relationship of Mash Hasan and the cow echoes the mutual longing of lover and beloved in Sufi mysticism. If in life the cow and the owner inhabited two bodies, in death they are united spiri‑ tually, achieving the highest level of mystic union—­annihilation ( fana). This philosophical view, evident in most of Mehrjui’s movies since The Cow, is in line with his training in philosophy. As he states, “for me the practice of phi‑ losophy is cinema” (quoted in Saberi 1996/1376:89).

Textual Formation: Luminous Truth If Kimiai’s movies Dash Akol and Qaisar consolidated the conventions of the tough-­guy subgenres of dash mashti and jaheli movies, respectively, Mehrjui’s The Cow consolidated some of the textual features that became character‑ istic of many new-­wave movies, particularly those of Sohrab Shahid Saless, the most loyal dramatist of naturalism and realism in Iranian cinema. Real‑ ity (faithfulness to the external world) and realism (faithfulness to conven‑ tions of classic realist cinema) were two intertwined features that set the new-­ wave films apart from the fantasy-­driven and narratively chaotic commercial filmfarsi movies. They constituted the foundational features of this counter­ cinema, which set the reality of ordinary peoples’ lives, treated with empathy and respect, against the fiction of the official culture of spectacle perpetrated by the government and the commercial cinema. These features gave the new-­ wave films their “luminous truth,” a phrase Giuseppe Ferrara used to de‑ scribe the Italian neorealist films (quoted in Liehm 1984:132). In addition, the marriage of gritty realism and uncanny surrealism (such as a man becoming a cow) became a hallmark of some of the best new-­wave products, among them Golestan’s The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Val‑ ley (Asrar‑e Ganj‑e Darreh‑ye Jenni, 1972), Parviz Kimiavi’s The Mongols (Mog‑ holha, 1973), Baizai’s Stranger and the Fog (Gharibeh va Meh, 1975), Bahman Farmanara’s Tall Shadows of the Wind (Sayehha‑ye Boland‑e Bad, 1978), and Kimiavi’s O.K. Mister (1978). To be sure, surrealism interjected fantasy into the realistic plots and narratives, but unlike in commercial movies, it was driven by the psychology and internal urges of diegetic characters, not by the extradiegetic directors’ desires, market forces, or genre conventions, or by cha‑ otic and improvised narratives. This combination of realism and surrealism resurfaced in the postrevolution art-­cinema movement as well. Surrealism is integral to modernism, and its surfacing in the new-­wave 340

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cinema is one mark of the emergence of Iranian modernity. Iranian surreal‑ ism differed from the surrealism prevalent in European modernism, for as Michael Fischer notes, European surrealism and modernism are based on the assumption that “the world has become technological and dehumanized,” while Iranian surrealism and modernism are driven by reactions against “a rigidified, fundamentalist, and patriarchal universe” (2004:195). These tra‑ ditional structures were so strong that few authorized avenues of protest re‑ mained, forcing modern subjects into violent revolts, madness, hysteria, pos‑ session, or surrealism. All these responses can be found in the new-­wave films. It is against these rigidified structures that Mash Hasan’s madness and possession by the cow become meaningful. However, Iranian surrealism is not entirely driven by opposition to traditionalism; Kimiai’s The Mongols and O.K. Mister, for example, drive against both modernism’s dehumaniza‑ tion and tradition’s rigidity. Surrealism was not the only element that disrupted or enhanced these films’ realism. As both subjects and agents of modernity, some of the movies inscribed textual disruptions in the forms of narrative discontinuity, repeti‑ tion, spatial and temporal discontinuity, and flashbacks. Again, what differ‑ entiated these sorts of discontinuities from those of filmfarsi movies was the way they were motivated by modernity and by character psychology, not by im‑ provisational practices of the artisanal mode or by the exigencies of commer‑ cial cinema. Noted examples were Ovanessian’s The Spring (Cheshmeh, 1972), which surrealistically explored a complicated and morbid adulterous love and its deadly consequences in an Armenian village family, and Farmanara’s flashback-­laden Prince Ehtejab (see below). The new-­wave films broke with presentational filming and acting. Mehrjui used the invisible style of continuity filming and editing, character isolation through close-­ups, and the effective relay of gazes between characters to es‑ tablish interiority, plot development, and relationships without having to use verbose or expository dialogue. The relays of gazes among villagers effectively expressed their fear, astonishment, and bewilderment. Unlike hallmark neo‑ realist movies with nonactors, Mehrjui’s film employed professional Ministry of Culture and Art’s theater actors for its principal characters. Their sensitive and nuanced performances enhanced the realism of the entire film. The prin‑ cipal actors had previously performed in a televised play based on Saedi’s story “The Cow.” They had a deep engagement with their roles. The gritty realism that the new-­wave directors mobilized so effectively to represent “the people” as authentic, countering ersatz spectacle, ironically tended to promote its opposite: the dominant ideology of bourgeois capital‑ a d issid ent c inema

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ism and the emerging style of bourgeois realism. It appears that despite its counterhegemonic content, the realist style worked hegemonically because, like capitalism, which lures its subjects into becoming good consumers, it in‑ terpellated its spectators into becoming the subjects of the realist texts. The engine of attraction for both capitalism and realism is the invisible mecha‑ nism at the heart of each, which satisfies human desires, among other things, for possession and narration and renders the dominant power immanent and natural. In the case of capitalism, this mechanism is the “invisible hand,” and in the case of film realism, it is the “invisible style.” The spectator is sutured into the film in the same manner that a consumer is constituted by capital‑ ism. Only surreal movies, such as Farmanara’s Tall Shadows of the Wind, or avant-­garde films, such as Kimiavi’s The Mongols and Shirdel’s The Night It Rained, or Baizai’s Stranger and the Fog, which exaggerated or subverted both reality and realism, or mixed fantasy and reality critically and in the process made visible the artifact of the invisible style, could sever this marriage of capitalism and realism. Nevertheless, there is a strong sense in the new-­wave films that realism serves the cause of Iranian modernity and with it the cause of nationalism, rationality, and subjectivity. Another distinctive feature of the new-­wave films is the tight imbrication of gritty realism with lyricism, resulting in what might be called a poetic realist style. Multiple sources nourish this relationship: the collaboration of filmmakers with writers and poets (on screenplays, the adaptation of literary works, even in film acting); the use of poetry as dialogue, including quoting famous lines of poetry (from Khajeh Shams al-­Din Mohammad Hafez, Mow‑ lana Jalal al-­Din Rumi, Abolqasem Ferdowsi, Ahmad Shamlu, and Forugh Farrokhzad) either by characters or by the film; a poetic vision of the world (in describing and invoking the world and in commenting on it); mysticism and mystic love in which the individual identities of lover and beloved dis‑ solve into a fused identity (this typifies many character relationships and even sometimes that of humans and animals); and the use of the poetic devices of symbolism, simile, metaphor, ellipsis, and ambiguity. I will reference these features throughout this chapter. New-­wave style tended to be secular, but the themes of the movies tended to be religious and counterhegemonic. The Cow, for example, introduced re‑ ligion and spirituality, but not in aestheticized or exoticized form, as in the fine arts and ethnographic documentaries of the period, and not as an irrel‑ evant ritual or a comic vestige of bygone traditions, as in some commercial movies, but as a living ideology and belief system that affected its subjects’ individual psychology, social relationships, and personal and collective iden‑ 342

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tity. And it was not necessarily an organized, official religion, but included informal popu­lar beliefs in nonmaterial worlds, magical mysteries, invisi‑ ble forces, natural phenomena, and psychological states such as possession. The battle of individuals with premodern or inexplicable formations often involved surreal spirituality. Mash Hasan’s inexplicable loss of the cow and the disappearance of its carcass create a formidably irrational structure. They spur his descent into possession and transform realism into surrealism. The villagers first deny and with cruelty ridicule Mash Hasan’s transformation into the cow in the same way that the children ridicule and harass the vil‑ lage idiot throughout the movie. Soon, however, they are forced to accept the truth of the possession and, finally, during their fateful struggle toward the hospital, they become willing participants in the possession by treating him like a mad cow. They realize their participation in this process dramatically in a profound moment of self-­consciousness, as one of the three villagers, sur‑ prised by Mash Islam’s ferocious beating of Mash Hasan, orders him to stop. Mash Islam suddenly comes to himself and stops in midair, self-­aware, and ashamed of beating his friend and of the way they have all become what Mash Hasan had accused them of earlier—­the three thieves coming to slaughter him. The burden of being modern and an adult is self-­consciousness. The vil‑ lagers are no longer naive believers; they have acquired historical conscious‑ ness. When at the film’s end Mash Hasan’s wife longingly looks for him in the far distance, perhaps she partly longs for the villagers’ innocence before modernity’s disruption, before self-­consciousness. The Cow contains iconography and rituals of Shiite Muslims in the scenes of mourning over the cow’s death and in their homespun attempts to heal Mash Hasan. But these are tangential to the plot and ineffective. Baizai’s pre‑ revolution and postrevolution films Stranger and the Fog and Bashu, the Little Stranger (Bashu, Gharibeh‑ye Kuchak, 1985), as well as Farmanara’s Tall Shad‑ ows of the Wind, also deal with both popular and official religious themes of this sort. Another theme that entered the new-­wave movies forcefully with The Cow was fear—­fear of modernity, of patriarchal traditions, of the totalitarian state, of foreign powers, of internal enemies, and of forces of the unconscious. That the three thieves are not identified allows multiple interpretations about who they are and what they represent. Mehrjui elaborated some of these by sug‑ gesting that what is feared—­t he thieves—­is not necessarily an external force but an internal psychic or collective source. Ascribing the sources of fear to the inside and to the self went against what became an intellectual trend in the 1970s, to place the source of fear outside the individual and often to blame a d issid ent c inema

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it on the authoritarian state’s coercive apparatuses, patriarchal and religious traditions, or a foreign government’s colonial and imperial designs. Fear was also often associated with a particular structure of vision and voice involving surveillance and voyeurism. In this, cinema seemed to rep‑ licate the structure of vision and orality of Persian miniature paintings, in which people are shown in various positions of voyeurism and eavesdrop‑ ping. In The Cow, there are many shots in which men, women, and children are gazing at the world, at Mash Hasan, at the village square, and at the vil‑ lage idiot through windows and half-­open doors, and from behind mud walls and from rooftops. Their structure of vision and hearing is driven by the gen‑ dered and hierarchical segregation of space, and by the desire of the powerless to gain information, to witness, and to control what is seen and heard. To the extent that they are often one-­way and pervasive among a population atomized by fear, these structures of vision and hearing tend to be panoptic. In the authoritarian political atmosphere of the second Pahlavi period it was easy to ascribe the source of fear and panopticism to the government and its feared security organization, Savak, which was seen as omniscient and omni‑ present. Because Savak encouraged the idea that its agents were everywhere and within every family, political fear transformed into a paralyzing paranoia. During the era of the Islamic Republic, another source of fear and panoptic vision emerged: the patriarchal, paternalistic Islamic forces, which policed morality, private behavior, public conduct, and gender construction and seg‑ regation. Baizai’s Stranger and the Fog and Downpour provide good examples of both political and patriarchal fears and surveillance. Another related new-­wave theme was the intrusion of a stranger, or a group of strangers, into often small, closed communities, which they terror‑ ize and destabilize. Sometimes these strangers were real, sometimes fanta‑ sies of the diegetic characters, and sometimes symbolic presences. In The Cow, the Crystallines could be construed as real or imaginary intruders, and while the cow’s intrusion into Mash Hasan’s psyche—­his possession—­is psy‑ chological, it has real consequences. The presentation of the strangers con‑ tributes to the films’ surrealism. In Baizai’s Strangers and the Fog and Bashu, the Little Stranger and in Farmanara’s Tall Shadows of the Wind the strangers’ entry into the primordial village follows the formula of American horror mov‑ ies in the 1980s, in which a monster disturbs the stability and tranquility of a community and must be eradicated to return it to normal. However, in these Iranian movies normality is not restored; the strangers leave indelible marks. What these strangers represented varied from film to film. Mehrjui states that in The Cow, the thieves, whose nickname (Crystallines) implies immate‑ 344

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riality, signified “foreigners” appearing from nowhere to destroy the natives’ property and way of life (quoted in Amiri 1998:28). This makes sense not only in the context of what Western governments, industries, and technolo‑ gies were doing to Iran in the 1970s but also in view of what many foreign invasions had done to Iranian civilization. Some critics even read the figure of Mash Hasan and his village’s total dependence on a single cow politically. To them, Mash Hasan symbolized the Shah, whose ascendance to power and stability in power depended on a single source of national wealth, namely, oil (Sadr 2003/1381:197). Like the cow in the movie, oil was vulnerable to foreign manipulations or to exhaustion, making its owner vulnerable.

Authorial and Spectatorial Formations Mehrjui, an American-­educated director with a baccalaureate in philosophy from ucla, wrote the screenplay for The Cow with the leading dissident writer Saedi, a physician whose further studies in psychiatry were sabotaged by Sa‑ vak arrests and torture, and who worked in a clinic with his brother, Ali Akbar Saedi, in a poor area of Tehran.12 The collaboration that adapted for the screen Saedi’s stories—­many of which dealt with psychic traumas of modernity—­ legitimized cinema as an intellectual medium, rather than being the prop‑ erty of commercial forces or government institutions. In a way, the educated and modern strata had already ratified cinema, as they had already uncon‑ sciously internalized aspects of it. And this included not only filmmakers but also modern writers, such a Saedi and Golshiri, whose stories and styles were “cinematic” in that their characters had psychological interiority and their narratives involved temporal, spatial, and point-­of-­view shifts. The liter‑ ary critic Reza Baraheni argued that cinema, in particular Charlie Chaplin’s silent movies, had influenced both the characters in Saedi’s stories and the style of his one-­act plays, which he collectively called lalbazi (literally, play‑ ing with muteness, or pantomime). Chaplin also influenced Saedi’s personal posture, carriage, and gestures (Baraheni 1994/1373:291–305). Cinema had formed the author as well as his texts. Mehrjui and Saedi adapted The Cow from the latter’s book of eight stories, Bayal’s Mourners (Azadaran‑e Bayal). It was mostly based on one story, with additional elements brought in from other stories to enlarge it. That Saedi had studied medicine and psychiatry and had also conducted ethnographic stud‑ ies of possession (zar) among villagers and had a deep understanding of rural life and psychology deepened the project. Although this kind of collaboration a d issid ent c inema

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was instrumental in the rise of new-­wave authorial cinema it did not exhaust the filmmakers’ relations with literature. Directors did adaptations and wrote original scripts. The point is that directing was modernized and transformed into film authorship, rewarding professional attention and spectatorial scru‑ tiny more than did the artisanal filmfarsi movies. The Cow embodied the political contradictions that became the hallmark of the new-­wave movement: its sponsorship by the state and its censorship and banning by the state—­in both cases by the mca. To obtain funding and permission to film Mehrjui concocted a lie by presenting the screenplay to the mca as if it were a documentary. To ensure an exhibition license later, he engaged in another subterfuge. Even before the mca had given him filming permission, Mehrjui whitewashed the village walls and spruced up the village setting to make it presentable. The advantage of working with the ministry was that it not only financed the film but also put at the director’s disposal a cadre of experienced actors that it employed in its theater division. When the completed film print went for mca review to obtain an exhibition permit, the director was asked to add a caption at the film’s head that would historically place the story forty years earlier, before Reza Shah’s main reforms had been inaugurated (Davai 1996/1375:149). These preproduction and postproduction changes constituted attempts to deny the existence of poor villages like the one in which The Cow was filmed. Even after these changes, the film was banned for a year because the government feared it might contradict “the official image of Iran as a modern nation of promise and plenty.”13 In fact, the film was finished during the run-­up to the twenty-­five hundredth anniversary celebrations, when, as Mehrjui said to me, government officials were “her‑ alding everywhere our nation’s arrival at the gates of a new civilization, and here was a film about a village so poor that there was only one cow to nourish them all, a pregnant cow which dies. The censors could not believe this was Iran. So they banned the film.” This first experience was so traumatic that “the fear of being banned has been with me ever since,” the director noted (Naficy 2008). Nonetheless, the film was screened at the Shiraz Festival of Culture and Art. It was denied an export permit, but one of Mehrjui’s French friends smuggled a print out of the country in his suitcase. That print was entered without subtitles in the Venice International Film Festival in 1971, where it garnered the international film critics’ award. Highly impressed by the work, Italian critics compared Mehrjui to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Akira Kurosawa, and Satyajit Ray (Omid 1995/1374:548). Almost immediately foreign film festivals

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became important players in the politics of domestic cinema. As one critic put it, “Iranian cinema . . . undoubtedly owes its international recognition to Dari‑ ush Mehrjui” (Akrami 1996/1375:50). This success caused the mca to lift the ban. Great critical and public enthusiasm greeted the film’s release in Iran, generating high box-­office revenues and some controversy.14 Most critics had only praise. One called it “nearly the best Iranian movie” (Nuri 1996/1375:152); another, “one step from being an extraordinary film” (Kavusi 1996/1375:153); a third, “the birth of the first Iranian film” (Bahrami 1996/1375:160); and a fourth, “an extraordinary leap” in cinema (Hesami 1996/1375:168). The film’s widespread domestic and foreign successes opened the way for government support of the new wave, which it hoped would create a positive international profile for it at a time when it had come under criticism by an increasingly vociferous population of Iranian students abroad. In this way, the culture of the spectacle widened its reach beyond national borders. Yet the new wave was essentially a dissident cinema, whose critical assessments of contemporary social conditions often contradicted the aims of its sponsors, causing tensions in the relationships among filmmakers, the state, and the film industry and resulting in censorship and the confiscation of the works. In that sense, the new-­wave films also constituted a “cinéma refusé.”15 These relations both compromised the films and heightened audience interest in them, putting the filmmakers in a double bind. On the one hand, their ac‑ claim at international festivals and their censorship at home raised the pro‑ file of filmmaking as a legitimate art, a form of intellectual and authorial la‑ bor, and a commercial enterprise. Foreign film festivals and filmgoers thus became an alternative audience whom these filmmakers began to address. On the other hand, some discontented critics and commercial movie rivals unfairly charged that the new-­wave cinema was basically a “festival cinema” without an audience at home. It is true that some new-­wave films were dense and obtuse textually, compromising intelligibility and causing exhibitor dis‑ content and spectator protestations. For example, Golestan had to rent a movie house himself to screen his Mudbrick and Mirror because no commercial ex‑ hibitor would pick it up; Gaffary’s Night of the Hunchback did poorly in a pub‑ lic theater; and when Rahnema’s Siavash in Persepolis was screened in a com‑ mercial cinema, enraged spectators, used to song-­and-­dance movies, tore up the seat covers with knives to protest it. Khosrow Haritash’s Kingdom of Heaven (Malakut, 1976) received only one sanctioned public screening, at the fifth Tehran International Film Festival, apparently because during the festi‑ val spectators had expressed their discontent by widespread catcalls and whis‑

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tling (Zeraati 2004:309). Despite these negative reactions, however, new-­wave movies were not generally received with such disdain, or not by all audiences, for educated spectators awaited them with bated breath. The bifurcation of spectators into domestic and international proved a mixed blessing. Success abroad generally guaranteed the films more political or commercial freedom at home; but the foreign audiences and their expecta‑ tions also somewhat distorted the directors’ work, earning them criticism at home for peddling third world misery to outsiders instead of paying attention to domestic filmgoers’ tastes and desires. The bifurcation of domestic audi‑ ences into simple and educated also opened the new-­wave films to the charge of elitism. Other great third world filmmakers, such as Ray and Ousmane Sembene, encountered similar rebukes at the time. Auteur filmmakers’ political dissent encouraged educated spectators to read all their movies politically, expecting “political commitment.” As Meh‑ rjui states, “Artistic works were then only studied from a political point of view to see to what extent they spoke of people’s grievances and the tough existing conditions” (quoted in Amiri 1998:28). Some filmmakers bowed to such demands and became more directly political, turning their movies into what Mehrjui called “advertising slogans.” Others camouflaged and ex‑ pressed their politics by means of indirection, symbolism, and surrealism, all of which required parsing and interpretation. In his lengthy introduction to his translation of Herbert Marcuse’s The Aesthetic Dimension, Mehrjui spelled out his own idea of the relationship of art to reality: “Art does not aim to over‑ throw or destroy reality, as it is not equipped with the cutting weapon of ven‑ geance. It does not wish to take revenge on reality or uproot it. On the con‑ trary, it negates and critiques it from affection, or in the words of Marcuse, from love for it (Eros)” (see Marcuse 1987/1368:100). This idea served as the guiding light throughout Mehrjui’s oeuvre. The Cow’s financial and critical successes at home and abroad—­as well as those of Qaisar—­encouraged other filmmakers and producers, causing a surge of original films, as though a dam had been broken.16 The Iranian new wave had begun. The cidcya produced such important short movies as Baizai’s Mustachioed Uncle (Amu Sibilu, 1970) and Journey (Safar 1972), Na‑ deri’s Harmonica (Saz‑e Dahani, 1973), Kiarostami’s Traveler (Mosafer, 1974), and much of the finest animated movies in the country. The fidci (its pro‑ duction arm headed by the U.S.-­trained Farmanara), Telfilm (headed by the French-­educated Sassan Veissi), and commercial movie studios, with Misaqi‑ yeh Film Studio prominent among them, all funded the production of new-­ wave feature movies. Two general points about these latter movies are in order: 348

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private-­sector new-­wave films were fewer than those produced or coproduced with government institutions, and commercially supported new-­wave movies seemed to be more directly political. It could be that commercial filmmakers were responding not only to their authorial visions but also to market forces and audience desires, which were gradually turning against the government.

Neorealist Attributes Much has been made by domestic and foreign critics of the impact Italian neo­realism had on Iranian authorial cinemas, both before the revolution (new-­wave cinema) and after (art cinema). This section examines the neo‑ realist dimensions of the new wave. There has been some controversy about what constitutes neorealism, even among its defenders. For the purpose of this study, I invoke Georges Sadoul’s definition. Sadoul was one of the first to call neorealism a “school” and offered five reasonable prerequisite charac‑ teristics for it. —­ Geographically bounded (concentrated in Rome, Italy) —­ Temporally bounded (post-ww ii phenomenon, 1945–51) —­ Existence of masters (e.g., Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Cesare Zavattini, Luchino Visconti) —­ Existence of disciples (e.g., Luigi Zampa, Pietro Germi, Renato Castellani, Giuseppe De Santis) —­ Formation of a set of rules (location shooting, long takes, invisible style of filming and editing, predominance of medium and long shots, use of contemporary true-­to-­life subjects, open-­ended plots, working class protagonists, non-­professional cast, vernacular dialogue, implied social criticism) (quoted in Marcus 1986:21–22)17 If we apply these criteria, the similarities and differences between Iranian neo­realism and its Italian progenitor become clear. In terms of the first char‑ acteristic, the Iranian new-­wave cinema was limited to fictional films (fea‑ tures and short subjects) made inside Iran. Even though a majority of the filmmakers operated out of Tehran, they often chose as the diegetic locations of their movies villages and the countryside, as in The Cow. Unlike the com‑ mercial stewpot and tough-­guy genres, the new-­wave films thus did not con‑ stitute an urban cinema. Temporally, the new wave lasted for about a decade. Specifically, the movement began with Mehrjui’s The Cow in 1969, while its demise coincided with 1978, the last year before the revolution, when such a d issid ent c inema

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films as Sayyad’s Dead-­End (Bonbast, 1977), Farmanara’s Tall Shadows of the Wind, and Kimiavi’s O.K. Mister were released. In terms of the master-­and-­disciple structure, the situation was more com‑ plicated than in Italy, in part because no generational hierarchy separated masters from disciples. Almost all the new-­wave filmmakers belonged to the same generation, with some directors a few years older than others or with a few more years of experience in cinema. It is difficult to establish the master-­ disciple hierarchy during the Pahlavi period. However, if we include the post‑ revolution period, then the new-­wave filmmakers of the Pahlavi period may be regarded as the masters for the art-­cinema filmmakers of the Islamic Repub‑ lic. Such masters would include Mehrjui, Kiarostami, Shahid Saless, Gaffary, Golestan, Kimiai, Kimiavi, Shirdel, Baizai, Taqvai, Farmanara, and Naderi. Both their courageous precedence under the Pahlavi state and their status as elder filmmakers—­most remained active after the revolution—­gained them respect and influence among the younger generation. Even here, however, problems arise, as some of the new-­wave filmmakers themselves—­Mehrjui, Kiarostami, Kimiai, Baizai, Kimiavi, Taqvai, and Farmanara—­became instru‑ mental in the rise of the art cinema after the revolution, fighting in the same trenches as the postrevolution neophytes. And there were some in-­between filmmakers, such as Nosrat Karimi, who made commercial movies, yet with a knowing nod and a wink to the thematics and aesthetics of neorealism, par‑ ticularly in his comic sendups of Iranian traditions, Carriage Driver (Dorosh‑ gehchi, 1971) and Interim Husband (Mohallel, 1971).18 In terms of a set of rules, the features of the textual and authorial forma‑ tions recounted for Mehrjui’s The Cow became influential guideposts. Stylisti‑ cally, the films employed realism, surrealism, representational acting, and in‑ visible continuity filming and editing. Thematically, they dealt with religion, popular beliefs, spirituality, pervasive fear and anxiety, surveillance, social criticism, hostility and intolerance toward outsiders, and the often disturb‑ ing and destructive impact of strangers and intruders on society. In terms of authorial formation, the liminal position of the filmmakers kept them be‑ tween a rock and a number of hard places—­t he state that both supported and banned them, the public that demanded political commitment, and a film in‑ dustry bent on maximizing profits. Some of the Iranian films’ textual and thematic characteristics resembled those of Italian neorealism, but they also benefited from the domestic hybrid mode of production, which mixed improvisational and industrial practices, public and private funding, and Western and native expressive styles. For ex‑ ample, the use of the invisible style ensured realism and the continuity of 350

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time, space, and causality. Yet Iranian-­style improvisation rendered causal‑ ity in the new-­wave movies looser than in neorealist films. Camera positions and camera movements were both regulated and enjoyed creative improvisa‑ tion. On the other hand, as in Italian neorealism, long shots and long takes prevailed. Filmmakers often used exterior and natural locations, instead of interior and artificial (studio-­based) ones. They employed artificial lighting minimally, and outdoor sequences were generally filmed entirely with natural light. The cast consisted of both nonactors and seasoned actors. Postdubbing was de rigueur, although it was more precise than in the commercial cin‑ ema. The protagonists were in the main working-­class, lower-­class, or rural folk. Many stories were contemporary ones. New-­wave fiction films often con‑ tained sequences reminiscent of documentaries, and they often ended unhap‑ pily, ambiguously, and sometimes circularly. Humanism, a hunger for unvar‑ nished reality, social criticism, anti-­authoritarianism, and moral and ethical considerations made for frequent themes. Many of these elements matched the “Ten Points of Neorealism” that the Parisian journal Films et Documents published in 1952.19 Although critics differed about the specific textual features of Italian ne‑ orealism and on whether it constituted a school, a movement, a style, or a tendency, they agreed on its general philosophy. According to it, neorealism was principally a moral statement about the world told with a certain poetics, whose aim was to promote true objectivity, one that would “force viewers to abandon the limitations of a strictly personal perspective and to embrace the reality of the ‘others,’ be they persons or things, with all the ethical responsi‑ bility that such a vision entails.” It was hoped that this shared moral commit‑ ment would eliminate individual differences among filmmakers and unite them on larger social issues (Marcus 1986:23). In the case of Iranian new-­wave directors, this moral commitment to real‑ ity and the poetics of realism also involved a political commitment to society and a critique of traditions and the government. Since they could not directly inscribe these criticisms into their work without inviting censorship, they re‑ sorted to symbolism, surrealism, mysticism, abstraction, and indirection, which tended to subvert the other tenets of neorealism, particularly those that emphasized clarity and realism. As a result, Iranian new-­wave neoreal‑ ism constituted an amphibolic movement, style, school, or, as we will see, a filmmaking “moment.” Iran’s sociopolitical and ideological formations and its industrial film for‑ mations did not resemble those in Italy after the Second World War. Foreign cinema’s impact on the new wave was not limited to neorealism, and Iran in a d issid ent c inema

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the 1970s faced different kinds of turmoil and destruction, both societally and in terms of the film industry, than did Italy after 1945. In addition to Italian neorealism, the French new wave (nouvelle vague), which gave its moniker to the Iranian authorial cinema, proved highly influential, as were the Ameri‑ can art cinemas and other world cinemas, particularly those of India, Japan, and Eastern bloc countries. Iranian filmmakers were nothing if not cinemati‑ cally literate and cosmopolitan; even those who had not studied filmmaking abroad had been exposed to, and trained by, the many movies they had seen in commercial cinemas, cine-­clubs, the cultural arms of various Western em‑ bassies, and universities.

The New Wave: A Movement or a Moment? Film movements emerge under favorable sociopolitical conditions and require the coalescence of certain institutions, practices, tendencies, formations, and creative individuals. They do not usually last. As conditions and individual filmmakers change, film movements metamorphose or end. New-­wave films emerged in the context of the second Pahlavi period’s official culture indus‑ try, and they were both enabled and enchained by it. The new wave began in 1969 and lasted for about a decade, though it did not die entirely. Instead, it metamorphosed into the art cinema of the mid-­1980s thanks to the continu‑ ity that several key filmmakers—­t he new-­wave masters—­and other enabling state institutions provided. During its decade, the new wave was neither ho‑ mogenous nor harmonious. Commercial cinema and new-­wave cinema over‑ lapped. Filmmakers such as Kimiai and Naderi, made both commercial mov‑ ies and new-­wave films, and commercial cinema filmmakers at times made movies in the vein of the new wave, such as Sayyad with his Dead-­End, Goleh with his Under the Skin of the City (Zir‑e Pust‑e Shab, 1974), and Mohammad Motovasselani with his Compromise (Sazesh, 1974). New-­wave films (despite state support) did not constitute panegyric odes to the regime. They were critical of the prevailing social conditions, and their objects of criticism included the government. For this the filmmakers paid a price, but they also thereby gained some prestige as oppositional, intellectual cinéastes. Both state sponsorship and filmmakers’ political commitment to “the people” proved to be double-­edged swords. The new wave did not constitute a cohesive film movement. A group of am‑ bitious intellectuals with diverse class backgrounds, film training, and ethno-­ religious affiliations who had individual tastes, aspirations, and styles main‑ 352

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tained competitive and even antagonistic relationships. Film and cultural magazines discussed the new-­wave films and promoted them; however, un‑ like the European movements with publications such as Cahiers du Cinéma, the Iranian new wave had no organ of its own that published on a sustained basis. These factors, the divisive politics of the government, and the com‑ mercial stranglehold of major distributors, importers, and exhibitors discour‑ aged the formation of sustained independent civil society organizations such as professional unions, pressure groups, and an independent media through which the above-­t he-­line and below-­t he-­line filmmaking personnel and film critics could discuss issues freely, represent themselves, and exert collective influence. Most new-­wave filmmakers were leftist and opposed the Shah’s gov‑ ernment, but a majority of them also benefited from its largesse, ultimately biting the hand that fed them—­like many great East European filmmakers of the same era, whom they admired. They were atomized and somewhat com‑ promised: new-­wave cinema was not so much a filmmaking movement as a filmmaking moment.

The Progressive Filmmakers’ Cooperative (pfc) One important counteraction to the fragmentation was the attempt to create an independent film collective in support of new-­wave cinema as a movement. It began with the resignation in July 1973 of nineteen well-­known produc‑ ers, directors, cinematographers, composers, and actors (almost all new wave) from the National Syndicate of Film Industries, an organization to which, ac‑ cording to an unwritten law, every person working in cinema had to belong (Daryoush 1975:222). The resignation itself and the manner of its announce‑ ment, at a news conference, were unprecedented. Eleven of the signatories attended the news conference in the Tehran Palace Hotel, where they out‑ numbered the reporters (this ratio would have been reversed had commercial movie stars given a news conference).20 They claimed their resignations re‑ sulted from a desire to create a new cinema against the commercial cinema, a cinema “worthy of our culture and nationality,” a culture in which even an “illiterate villager in the farthest village” in daily conversation cited poems by Sadi, Hafez, and Ferdowsi. Mehrjui claimed that the only feature of the rich Iranian culture that commercial movies employed was Persian dialogue. Hajir Daryoush declared that progressive filmmakers would use every legal means possible, including private-­sector financing and help from “his Excel‑ lency, Satan,” to circumvent the “distribution monopoly” of the commercial a d issid ent c inema

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sector. Rumors circulated of a government contribution of some 50 million tomans to the new group, but they remained unconfirmed. Sayyad stated that the dissenters ultimately aimed to satisfy both the needs of consumers and their own desires to make films that “while representing our culture, national characteristics, and artistic growth, could also earn the country some foreign exchange.”21 This news conference and the formation a month later of the Progressive Filmmakers’ Cooperative (pfc, Kanun‑e Sinemagaran‑e Pishro) officially de‑ clared the existence of a dual-­track movie industry—­commercial and new wave. Members of the pfc stressed that the new-­wave cinema did not pose a threat to the commercial cinema or to its syndicates because, while the com‑ mercial film industry put out about “ninety movies annually,” members of the pfc would probably only manage to make fifteen films. All they wanted to do was to provide the spectators with “the right to choose.” In fact, they wel‑ comed the future formation of “another, more progressive, group” to protest the pfc and bring in another alternative cinema. The official film artists’ syndicate held its own news conference in which members denied the pfc’s criticism that the syndicate was under the thumb of private-­sector producers and that it supported only popular commercial movies and filmmakers, stating that the syndicate had fought for the rights of all filmmakers by attempting to reduce censorship and taxes, that it had sup‑ ported and given awards to some of the new-­wave films, and that progressive filmmakers could form their own cooperative without having to resign from the existing syndicate. The producers’ syndicate also responded to the pfc members’ criticism by noting that they had financed several new-­wave films, films that had lost them money, yet were willing to sign more contracts with them. Some members of the producers’ syndicate, such as Mehdi Misaqiyeh, the owner of Misaqiyeh Film Studio, welcomed the criticism as necessary for an overall improvement in the industry. But he pointed to the mca’s practice of issuing exhibition licenses only to movies produced by members of the pro‑ ducers’ and artists’ syndicates. With their resignation, the filmmakers would deprive themselves of exhibition venues. He suggested that pfc members withdraw their resignations and work to push the government to recognize cinema as an industry and to reward good movies and encourage film exports. To create financially successful, high-­quality movies “worthy of our culture and nationality,” pfc members invested their own funds in their films; but, ironically, a great portion of the funding eventually came from governmental and semigovernmental agencies, such as the mca, nirt, Telfilm, the Minis‑ 354

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try of the Economy, and the fidci.22 Some pfc members did make films inde‑ pendently, with aid from the private sector. The first films produced under the aegis of the pfc were very impressive: Mehrjui’s The Cycle (Dayereh‑ye Mina, 1974), Shahid Saless’s Still Life (Tabi’at‑e Bijan, 1975), and Sayyad’s Dead-­End (1977). The Cycle centers on the story of an old man (Esmail Mohammadi) and his teenage son, Ali (Said Kangarani), who move to Tehran to seek treatment for the old man’s terminal gastrointestinal problems. The film graphically charts Ali’s metamorphosis resulting from his involvement with corrupt and ruth‑ less blood banks that procure tainted blood from down-­and-­out addicts and sell it to hospitals, whose staff, from cooks to physicians, seems driven by av‑ arice. By the film’s end, Ali has been fully initiated into the art of procuring tainted blood for banks and of the exploitation of others. In spite of its humor, colorful language, lively characters, and good cast, The Cycle is darkly pessi‑ mistic about and critical of the cost of unbridled modernization. The scenes of poor and sick blood donors at the blood bank appear devastatingly real, docu‑ menting with precision the state of the donors, who seem barely alive, and the degradation of social relations based on the contaminated blood trade. The film ingenuously embodies the dark side of the national transition from pre‑ modernity to modernity and of Ali’s personal metamorphosis from youthful innocence to wily sophistication by staging much of the action at night or dur‑ ing dawn and dusk (Naficy 1985a:704). The film’s pessimism is tinged with Iranian mysticism and lyricism, sig‑ naled by its Persian title, Dayereh‑ye Mina, translated as “the cycle of heavens,” a line taken from the poet Hafez, which refers to the cycle of the universe and the cycle of life within it. A touching scene toward the end provides another glimpse both of Mehrjui’s and of the film’s mystic philosophy. The old man is sick on the pavement outside a hospital when a blind musician appears and delivers the following lines, revealing what the old man must be feeling in‑ side: “O eternal wheel, running forever here and there is killing us, one denial and all these tribulations / O death come, for life is killing us.” The title also refers to the cycle of blood through the body and through the blood-­bank sys‑ tem and indicates the way corruption cyclically regenerates itself. Finally, the title may refer to the closed cycle of film production and censorship, which be‑ fell many new-­wave films, including The Cycle: a circular closed path led from production to the censorship office and the archive, without public exhibition. Having written the screenplay of the film with Saedi, based on the writer’s story “Garbage Dump” (“Ashghalduni”), Mehrjui submitted it for approval to the mca, who forwarded it to the Iranian Medical Association (ima) for review. a d issid ent c inema

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After meeting several times about it, members of the ima finally approved the screenplay but requested to review the completed film as well. On the film’s completion, the release of The Cycle, coproduced by the pfc (Sayyad), Telfilm (Sasan Veissi), and the fidci (Farmanara), was postponed for four years be‑ cause of objections by some members of the ima board. According to Mehr­ jui, the mca finally approved the film’s release because “numerous books and films had been banned and they didn’t want to lengthen the list by adding The Cycle to it!” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:736). However, rumors have it that three years of behind-­the-­scenes negotiations and appeals to the ruling powers were necessary to finally obtain clearance for release in 1977. Appar‑ ently Empress Farah and the Shah supported it, while Dr. Manuchehr Eqbal, a physician and the head of the ima and the managing director of the nioc, opposed it because it would cast a negative light on Iranian modernity and the medical professions. Mehrjui himself later credited the pressure President Jimmy Carter put on the Shah to liberalize the political atmosphere in Iran as the impetus for releasing his film (Naficy 2008). During this period, the di‑ rector was essentially banned from commercial movie screens and forced to work on television projects such as Alamut (1977), about Hasan Sabbah and the Assassins, while Saedi was imprisoned for his politics and tortured. Like the new wave itself, the pfc was not homogenous. Differing politics, personalities, authorial styles, and political developments overrode the forces of cohesion. Within a year, Baizai withdrew from the group, and within a few years public discontent would lead to a general uprising and a revolution, re‑ ducing filmmaking to a trickle.

The Poetics and Politics of Closed-­Form and Open-­Form Films New-­wave films primarily inscribed a dystopian and closed chronotope; how‑ ever, at times they also gave in to a utopian, open-­form depiction. These forms are encoded in mise-­en-­scène, filming, and narrative structure. Each form has its own poetics and politics, with spatial, temporal, philosophical, and thematic dimensions. The closed form uses a closed mise-­en-­scène: interior locations, tight liv‑ ing quarters, and small villages; a dark lighting scheme to create a sense of constriction and claustrophobia; and characters restricted in their movements and perspective by spatial, bodily, psychic, or other barriers and disabilities, including fear. These elements result in claustrophobic diegetic worlds peo‑

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pled with brooding, passive characters who are attracted to mysteries, myths, mysticism, and mystification. In response, liberatory impulses arise, involv‑ ing other-­directed characters attracted to materialism, justice, rebellion, and passionate outbursts. Narratologically, the closed form is driven by themes of panic and fear; pursuit, subterfuge, entrapment, and escape create temporal claustrophobia. Philosophically, the closed form is given to recession, with‑ drawal, and dystopia. The closed form appears to be self-­conscious and delib‑ erate, and it may be associated with formalism. Its mise-­en-­scène and static framing give the impression that space and time are predetermined by an agency external to the diegesis. It therefore suggests social forces and state apparatuses beyond the individual’s control, or even destiny and the futility of the will. At the same time, this form offers a type of embodied criticism against an invasive authoritarian state. Conversely, open-­form mise-­en-­scène favors external locations and open settings such as landscapes, deserts, ruins, and roads; bright natural lighting; and mobile and wandering diegetic characters. Long shots, mobile framing, and long takes situate characters within their open settings, preserving their spatiotemporal integrity. Spirituality is expressed in open forms imbued with continuity, introspection, and retrospection. The present is often shown retro­ actively by means of a nostalgically reconstructed past or a lost Eden dating back to the early years of Islam. This setup is in line with Fredric Jameson’s assertion that massive displacement and globalization—­ modernity—­ have forced humans to experience and express time as loss (1989). Philosophically, adventure, projection, and utopian longings dominate. The open form ap‑ pears to be spontaneous and accidental and it may be associated with realism. The closed form emphasizes control, distance, and unfamiliarity, while the open form connotes immediacy, intimacy, and familiarity. And if the closed form implies the futility of the will, the open form suggests a freedom of choice (Naficy 2001:152–54). In the main, intellectuals during the second Pahlavi period emphasized the closed form. They often referred to this period as the “era of suffocation” (dowran‑e ekhtenaq) and to its artistic products as the “literature of suffoca‑ tion.” The new-­wave cinema’s deployment of the poetics and politics of the closed form contributed considerably to this literature. The closed form also dominated Iranian films made in the diaspora. While some instances of the open form did occur in new-­wave movies, principally in Kimiavi’s films, these remained few. Ironically, the open form seemed to surface forcefully during the subsequent Islamic Republic period, at least for a time.

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Fear and Trembling Like filmfarsi, new-­wave films tended to concentrate on certain themes. Mi‑ chael Hillmann developed a thematic taxonomy for modernist literature and discusses the social impact of six of these themes: opposition to the Pahlavi government; the rejection of aspects of Shiite institutions and practices; con‑ cern with the country’s economic and social backwardness; a criticism of Westernization; the expression of culture-­specific alienation and the loss of roots; and the expression of cultural nationalism (1982:11). The new-­wave and pfc movies explored most of these themes, and I will touch on some of them in due course; but I want to concentrate on a cluster of themes whose space-­ time representations in the movies give us access to the psychological and philosophical traumas of modernity. Of these, two stand out, one primarily occurring in the closed form, the other occurring both in open and in closed forms. The first deals with fear and panic, which in their various guises per‑ meated new-­wave movies. There were the fear of strangers, of censors, of in‑ ternal enemies, of modernity, of sexual impotence, of the unconscious, and of Savak and its pervasive surveillance, as well as more diffuse fears of un‑ known origin. Both the causes of fear and the individualized subjectivities, self-­doubts, and identity crises that resulted emblematized authoritarian mo‑ dernity in Iran. Gaffary’s Night of the Hunchback (1964), a progenitor of the new wave, was one of the first movies to inscribe a sense of generalized fear, one that ex‑ tended beyond the frame to point to social fears. Gaffary produced, directed, and cowrote with Jalal Moqaddam this tale of what to do with the corpse of a comic entertainer who choked on his meager food and suddenly died. Based on a story from One Thousand and One Nights, the screenplay underwent sev‑ eral revisions as required by the censors. As Gaffary stated years later, in the film “fear overtakes the entire story, from the beginning to the end” (1983– 84:22). The couple who thinks that their prank has caused the comedian’s death secretly takes his corpse to a neighbor. Discovering the corpse, the fear‑ ful neighbor in turn passes it on to another, who tries to escape from it. This process is repeated in various darkly comical ways, and no one calls in the po‑ lice because all characters have something to hide.23 Golestan’s Mudbrick and Mirror (1965) exposed similar anxieties and inse‑ curities, this time by means of a baby without a parent. A taxi driver named Hashem (Zakaria Hashemi) discovers a baby in the back seat after a female passenger tightly wrapped in a black chador (Forugh Farrokhzad) leaves his cab.24 The baby, like the corpse in Gaffary’s film, becomes a vehicle that al‑ 358

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lows Golestan, in a tour de force of modernist cinematic flâneuring, to explore the modern city of Tehran—­a café, high rises, city streets jammed with traffic and passersby, a Ministry of Justice building, a police station, ancient back alleys, a coppersmiths’ bazaar, and a modern orphanage—­and to comment on the fears of the places’ various inhabitants. The gritty visuals of the city are punctuated by strong lines of dialogue recorded in synchronous sound (perhaps the first in the country) and by well-­timed sound effects, including footsteps and radio programs heard in the taxi. Together, the visuals and the sounds create an Iranian “city symphony.” One diegetic radio program, spo‑ ken by Golestan himself at the film’s beginning, about a dark city in which it is hard to tell the hunter from the prey, sets the mood for the entire film—­as well as providing an apt metaphor for the whole era of suffocation. These sen‑ timents of fear and anxiety are not only on the air (radio) but also in the air. They permeate the relationship of the two attractive protagonsits, Hashem and Taji (Taji Ahmadi), who love each other, though asymmetrically. Taji loves Hashem wholly and wants to marry him and keep the orphan baby, while Hashem loves her too, but anxiously, hesitating to commit himself. The baby brings them closer than ever before in a tenderly acted and beautifully crafted middle section in which they make love—­a rare instance in Iranian cinema both for its tenderness and its candor—­but the fears win out (figure 61). Al‑ though the relationship of Hashem and Taji can be read politically, it can also be interpreted personally as a metaphor for the complex relationship between Golestan and Farrokhzad at the time. The film’s mise-­en-­scène—­abandoned buildings, high walls, steep stair‑ cases that lead to mysterious dark places, night scenes, Kafkaesque offices in the Ministry of Justice, strange characters, and the repeated discussion be‑ tween Hashem and Taji of walls, fear and hatred of darkness, and worry about

61  Fear and anxiety undermine intimacy in Ebrahim Golestan’s Mudbrick and Mirror. Courtesy of Ebrahim Golestan.

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neighbors’ prying eyes—­underscores a strong sense of modernist anxiety and claustrophobia. Some of these images and subjects formed part of the vocab‑ ulary of antistate resistance among modernist writers and filmmakers who wished for the eradication of obscurity and prying patriarchal and political surveillance. The frequent invocation of these themes gives the entire night of anxious togetherness between the lovers, both waiting for and fearing the new dawn, a strong erotic and political charge. The presence of the lovely little baby girl (the daughter of Golestan’s brother) in that atmosphere of tension—­ needy, hungry, and by turns crying and cooing—­heightens the sense of hu‑ man vulnerability in the midst of modernity’s angst. The cinematic piece de résistance, in which fears overcome the couple, oc‑ curs during a long, heated argument one day while they walk through the tight alleys of poor neighborhoods in Tehran’s South End and through the historical Seyyed Ismail Bazaar, filmed by Soleiman Minasian’s inquisitive and active handheld camera, which like a hunter pursues (and ultimately cap‑ tures) its restless prey.25 Taji ferociously argues for marriage and for keeping the baby, while Hashem refuses commitment. She directs her criticism at the patriarchal system as she accuses him of being a coward, a living corpse, bound too much by collective traditions and by the opinions of others.26 The public spaces in which this argument unfolds provide stunning visual evi‑ dence for the weight of ancient traditions stifling individuality. Mudbrick and Mirror is perhaps the best example of existentialism in Pahlavi-­era cinema, coterminous with the height of existentialist philosophy in Iran, for it questions and condemns the human desire to seek a savior. In this it is also a modernist work. Taji wants to keep the baby, as she thinks that the little girl’s arrival brought the lovers together as never before. Without that baby, the bond between the two seems tenuous. If Hashem is hesitant about that theory, Golestan was not, for as he said in the postscreening discussion of the film in Chicago (5 May 2007), humans are alone and responsible for their own fate; there is no external savior. The film endorses this view, for it ends with the two protagonists contemplating their respective next steps, one in traffic in his cab, the other in the hall of an orphanage. The film follows an episodic structure consisting of autonomous set pieces of varying quality. The long ending sequence that shows Taji visit‑ ing an orphanage in search of the abandoned baby that Hashem deposited there against her wishes is shot with sensitivity to the diversity of babies ware‑ housed in rows of cribs in various states of joy, curiosity, activity, and men‑ tal illness. It creates a powerful miniature documentary with a narrative arch and some pathos that ends with Taji exiting the holding room and leaning 360

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distraught against the wall as the camera slowly pulls back, leaving her be‑ reft, abandoned, and lonely.27 On the other hand, a café scene early in the film appears long and self-­indulgent, as effeminate intellectuals, dandies, and luti types incongruously gather and endlessly discus abstruse ideas and engage in obscure wordplay. The parodies are too broad and the portrayal of the intel‑ lectuals too stereotypical (germs of the problem in The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley). Nevertheless, Hillmann correctly observes that the film’s depiction of “hypocrisy, pseudo-­intellectualism, sterile urbanization, insen‑ sitive bureaucracy, impersonal governmental institutions and red tape, and individual insecurity and unwillingness to help one another” are echoed in Farrokhzad’s famous poem, “O Bejewel Land,” and in its criticism of Iranian ersatz modernity (1987:55). Golestan said that Mudbrick and Mirror screened in Tehran for three weeks but not in other cities and provided two anecdotes about its public reception. Outside the movie house where the film was being shown he one day over‑ heard a spectator proclaim that his time and money had been wasted. Another spectator took issue with this comment, and their argument escalated into a fistfight. An amused Golestan stood by and looked on. When he attended the film’s last scheduled screening, a film critic there told him he had seen the film fifty times. Yet this did not prevent him from panning the film in his re‑ view a week later as the “stupidest” film he had ever seen. Golestan told the critic that he found it even stupider to spend all that money and time watch‑ ing a stupid film. These anecdotes exemplify the divided sentiments the film aroused in its spectators. The pervasive but vague fear attached to a homeless corpse and a parent‑ less baby became less symbolic and more directly political in the following decade. Fear was cathected not only to modernity and its chief promoter, the state, but also, and more specifically, to the Savak, which had come to be re‑ garded as an omniscient and omnipresent bureaucratic machine. Dread of the Savak was pervasive and profound, afflicting people from all walks of life, and it involved a fear of both aural and visual surveillance. Kambiz Mahmoudi, the deputy director of nirt, a high-­ranking official of a politically powerful institution, thus described eavesdropping: “No one, not even a fifth-­ranking manager of a small administrative unit in the country, was free from think‑ ing that his home phone or his work phone was under surveillance. I can tell you that I, too, thought this way. I thought that my home phone was bugged, that my office phone was bugged, that even the internal nirt phones were bugged. I say this, but I never saw anyone bugging a phone, nor any one ever told me that they had overheard my phone conversations. But this was the a d issid ent c inema

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atmosphere that the security organization had created to show its presence everywhere and to make people think that it controlled peoples’ thoughts” (Mahmoudi 1982:57). Sayyad’s Dead-­End, made under the aegis of the pfc in the final year of the Shah’s rule, expressed this profound fear of the organization. It posits a direct link between the state’s panoptic surveillance and omnipresent power by dramatizing how people internalize the state’s controlling gaze or misread it with tragic consequences. Sayyad had made a name for himself as a pro‑ lific and multifaceted comic actor, producer, performer in theater and televi‑ sion shows, and a director of commercial movies including a series of popu‑ lar comedies about the adventures of a wily country bumpkin named Samad, which he played himself. He deftly made his successful television shows into wholesome movie comedies, which brought back into the movie houses fam‑ ily audiences who had turned away from the cinema because of its recent em‑ phasis on sex and violence. Yet Sayyad seems to have become radicalized in the late 1970s, perhaps partly because of his involvement with the pfc and his coproduction of Shahid Saless’s uncompromising Still Life: in Dead-­End his social criticism, previously sugarcoated by comedy, assumed the mantle of the harsh, paranoid realism so characteristic of new-­wave movies. It became a protoexilic film for him, as he completed it the year the revolution started, and it may have been the reason behind his political asylum in the United States (Naficy 2001:258–60). In exile, he revived the Samad character to mock the regime of the Islamic Republic (Naficy 1993a, 1993b). In some ways like Yilmaz Güney’s powerful rendition of Turkey in his own protoexilic film Yol (The Way, 1982), Dead-­End posits Iranian society un‑ der the Shah as a claustrophobic total prison, a panopticon, whose inhabi­ tants suffer constant police surveillance. The story centers on the life of a young woman (Mary Apik) who is pursued by a handsome man she thinks a suitor but who turns out to be a security agent tailing her brother, who has apparently engaged in some sort of antigovernment activity. As in Mehrjui’s The Cow and Golestan’s Mudbrick and Mirror, fear is palpable throughout this movie. However, this fear is not of mysterious villagers or of walls and night‑ fall but of the ever-­present gaze of Savak agents. The gaze takes on two guises: the official one of the secret police and the personal one of a suitor. Looking out of the window of her claustrophobic room overlooking a cul-­de-­sac, the woman misreads, with disastrous consequences, the surveying gaze of the secret agent lurking outside for her brother as the desiring gaze of a potential suitor. In the end, the agent captures and takes away her brother, leaving her both defeated in love and disappointed in life. The title refers not only to the 362

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alley in which the heroine lives but also to the dead-­end lives of women and others—­at least politically—­in the last years of the Pahlavi period. The film sees no way out of the hermetic panopticon, no way to resist or to rebel, for those who dare to do so, like the brother, pay dearly. Dead-­End, which won a top award from the Moscow Film Festival (for Apik’s performance), was Say­ yad’s most serious and politically nuanced work, and both the Pahlavi and the Islamist regimes banned it. The first banned it perhaps because it dared to represent the Pahlavi period’s open secret: the pervasive surveillance and ar‑ bitrary arrests and disappearances of civilians. The latter banned it perhaps because it represented the unrepresentable in the Islamic Republic: an un‑ veiled young woman with subjectivity and passion who locks eyes with an unrelated male. One of the pfc signatories who made films independently was Baizai, a playwright, theater scholar and director, and a short film director (for cidcya). His first feature, Downpour (Ragbar, 1972), produced by his cinematog‑ rapher Barbod Taheri, placed him among the top new-­wave directors. Baizai revisited its theme in several other films: fear of a stranger entering a com‑ munity upsets its traditional harmony, unleashing strong reactions of attrac‑ tion and repulsion, as if the stranger were a sci-­fi monster. Only after the to‑ tal elimination of the threatening strangers could the community return to harmony. Downpour wove a rich tapestry involving a budding love between a new teacher, Mr. Hekmati (Parviz Fannizadeh), and Atefeh, the sister of one of his students (Parvaneh Masumi), against a background of the politically charged fear of strangers and the secret police in Tehran’s South End. The public arrival of the stranger (the new schoolteacher), with all his belongings loaded on a cart, is observed cautiously by the neighbors and good-­naturedly by noisy children. The teacher attracts and repels because he brings change. The film’s voyeuristic structure of vision positions the students to spy on a scene in which Atefeh complains to Mr. Hekmati about his punishment of her brother, a scene that the school children interpret as intimacy. This in‑ terpretation soon mushrooms into a neighborhood rumor and the exchange of various knowing and derisive gazes among his fellow teachers. Thus be‑ fore Mr. Hekmati and Atefeh own up to their love for one another, the whole neighborhood—­and the spectators—­already know about it. In a collective and closed community that camouflages core values, people sometimes end up keeping their secrets more from themselves than from others, who through voyeurism, eavesdropping, and rumors gain access to them. The frequent re‑ lays of furtive and controlling gazes are also, in the words of Taheri in an interview, “symbolic of the observing and controlling look of Savak’s secret a d issid ent c inema

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agents in society. These were what we called ‘Savaki looks’” (Naficy 1988b). These fear-­driven looks are also characteristic of the Persian miniatures. At the same time, Atefeh and her family are beholden to the neighborhood tough guy Aqa Rahim Qassab (Manuchr Farid), a burley butcher, who has been helping them in various ways in hopes of winning Atefeh’s hand in mar‑ riage. The butcher is to the neighborhood what Savak is to the country: mus‑ cular, arrogant, secretive, and bullying. He beats up Mr. Hekmati in front of the children and competes with him in reconstructing the school and its au‑ ditorium. Their rivalry replays the archetypal rivalry between a luti (Mr. Hek‑ mati) and a lout (Aqa Rahim Qassab). Mr. Hekmati takes the students’ side and learns about their poverty-­stricken but honorable lives—­under a heavy downpour—­and thereby gains the trust and sympathy of the children and their families. However, in the end, he is transferred out of the area to an‑ other school. Like a transplanted organ, the stranger-­teacher is rejected, not so much by the community itself, which has grown to like him, but by un‑ known forces, perhaps by a mysterious physical ailment (drops of blood on his shirt) or by behind-­t he-­scenes Savak machinations (symbolized by furtive looks and by an officious-­looking stranger wearing sunglasses). His depar‑ ture without Atefeh, who decides to stay, is as public as his arrival, though this time the children see him off with honor, and his teary-­eyed coworkers fol‑ low his cart, bearing a mysterious coffin, as though it were a hearse carrying his dead body. Such symbolism both rendered the film more profound and detracted from its realistic integrity. Like Dash Akol, Downpour’s circular end‑ ing mourns the passing of honest, heroic men; but it is a eulogy, not a call to arms. The symbolism of a Savak agent hiding behind sunglasses and of a coffin, as well as all the furtive looks and gossip, were like slips of the tongue, in‑ dexes of some fear that could not be named or expressed openly. Significantly, Mr. Hekmati’s departure does not return the community to its former state, for it has changed as a result of his efforts; even Atefeh has undergone change through him and her affection for him. Downpour has narrative problems and technical rough spots in photogra‑ phy, sound recording, and editing, which may be attributed to the fact that this was Baizai’s first feature film. He accepted no funding from either the state or the commercial sector. Thus the film exemplified a cinema of nega‑ tion. As an artistic strategy, negation and refusal are very powerful, almost aphrodisiac. As Baizai states, “The day that we lost all hopes [of assistance from others] and we decided to make the film ourselves . . . we realized that we had become very powerful” (quoted in Qukasian 1991b/1370:246). This inability and/or refusal imposed an artisanal mode of production on the film 364

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crew but also granted it certain freedoms, which in the hands of an author can become an impetus for creativity. It is worth hearing this in Baizai’s own words, paraphrased and condensed here.28 As he tells it, without the support of either commercial studios or government institutions with their profes‑ sional equipment and crew, each of us did the work of four crew members, and each of us regarded those jobs as belonging to us. No supervisor or nosy censor metamor‑ phosed our story, and the day we began cinematography, I still had to write seventeen pages of the screenplay. We sought assistance from all our friends and we used all of our own resources. We thank everyone who took a step to help us, and we wish whoever blocked our way, or snickered at us, more wisdom and culture. We are sorry that because of financial and technical deficiencies we were not able to create our mise-­en-­scène as well as we wished. . . . We shot the film in twenty-­ four neighborhoods of Tehran, with the aid of, and as witnessed by, the residents, many of whom will find their daily lives reflected in it. We did not have any special equipment to film in the alleys and streets; we filmed very close to our reality. Much of the film was shot without the usual notes, in a very improvised manner, but this does not mean that I did not have any plans in mind. On the contrary, my ideas and plans became real and alive under real conditions. This even helped me to rediscover the meanings of the story. Downpour was made with a mini­mum budget and resources and was beset by many difficulties that postponed its production; it was made with the smallest film crew, over a five-­month period, and all with the aid of memory. In many cases, we could not have done any differently than we did. On the other hand, it was made with the overwhelming passion of its crew members and ac‑ tors, and its only claim is that it did not want to tell a lie. (quoted in Qu‑ kasian 1991b/1370:246–47) Despite its attempts at political symbolism, this authenticity in creating the composite diegetic neighborhood out of dozens of real neighborhoods allowed the film, released more than three decades ago, to retain much of its fresh‑ ness. It received the top jury award at the first Tehran International Film Fes‑ tival and was greeted with positive reviews, but it did not do well at the box office when it opened in sixteen movie houses in Tehran, landing its producer, Taheri, in jail because of unpaid debts. Baizai’s next film, Stranger and the Fog (1975), made for Cinema Rex The‑ ater Company (Rashidian brothers), was an epic in terms of length (140 min‑ a d issid ent c inema

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utes), budget (the unheard of $300,000 for an Iranian movie), the length of time it took to film (two years), scale (large cast, massive battle scenes in dense forests), and film style (realism, surrealism, symbolism). For the latter he deftly combined the representational realism of the invisible style with the presentational performativity of taziyeh passion plays, which he had written about in his book on the history of Iranian theater (Baizai 1965/1344). In this and his other films, a tension exists between the different sources of his style, between the epic, the ritualistic, and the realistic, the first two rooted in Iranian performance traditions and the latter in modernist and real­ ist styles of representation. Other features of his style are a claustrophobic mise-­en-­scène, archetypal but brooding characters, male-­female magnetism, passionate displays of emotions, circular structures, and the themes of in‑ tolerance, injustice, heroism, and martyrdom, mostly involving women and strangers. Elements of surrealism and symbolism are strewn throughout. In most of Baizai’s films, there is also a back story, both national and diegetic, that informs, even haunts, both the film’s narrative and the psyches of its characters. These hauntings are part of modernity’s fears and trembling. In Stranger and the Fog the harmonious life of a fishing village is disturbed by a group of strangers arriving by sea, whose presence throws into question the established order, threatening the community’s very existence. The reac‑ tion of the isolated inhabitants to the strangers, headed by a man named Ayat (Khosrow Shojazadeh), badly wounded and amnesiac, evolves from suspicion to fear, from undergoing tests to assimilation by marriage, and from sorrow‑ ful separation to return by sea. Ayat seems to have escaped a terrible catas‑ trophe, the fear of which is ever present in him. After various ordeals, the community accepts Ayat and allows him to take as his wife a widow named Rana (Parvaneh Masumi), who herself lives on the margins of the commu‑ nity. Soon other strangers, who beckon Ayat to go with them to Him, shake him out of his newly established harmonious family life during a nighttime hunt in the foggy woods. Their answer to his question as to who He is, is given in the literate and philosophical language typical of Baizai’s characters: “The earth belongs to Him, the trees, the seashores, the hills, and the four seasons. Our dreams all belong to Him. Think about it, find out for yourself who He is.” This tension between the material and the metaphysical contin‑ ues to tear Ayat and the community apart—­and makes the comprehension of the film difficult. The film offers a palimpsest of strangers. In addition to Ayat and Rana, there are the newly arrived strangers who beckon Ayat, and there is also Ra‑ na’s former husband, Zakaria (Manuchr Farid), who was martyred but whose 366

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reincarnated presence intrudes into Rana’s psyche and the village commu‑ nity, aiding them in their fight against other intruders. The presence of char‑ acters real and visible and those mythical and invisible raises philosophical and religious questions about their identity and import: Does Ayat represent Bahaullah, the Baha’i prophet? is Zakaria a symbol of the Mahdi, the Shi‑ ite messiah? Do the violent strangers represent modernity’s disruptive forces (Naficy 1985e:2954)? By raising these sorts of questions, Baizai transforms the rather simple Crystalline invaders of The Cow into a complex palimpsest, the interpretation of which challenges its spectators, rendering the film an open, if somewhat opaque, text. Overall, Baizai is less concerned about the relationship of contemporary times with modernity than about that of con‑ temporary times with history and mythology. That many of his films deal less with individuals than with archetypes consolidates this interpretation of his works. Like The Cow, which had an internal Other, a village idiot, Stranger and the Fog features an inside outsider, a disabled boy who drags his feet on the ground behind him like rags. Here, the limitations of the closed form mani‑ fest themselves as psychological and physical disabilities. Baizai explores this figure more fully than did Mehrjui and endows him with premonition and clairvoyance, which offers a way out of the hermetically closed form. Of all the new-­wave directors, Baizai most concentrated on the problematic of female concerns and subjectivity both in contemporary society and in an‑ cient history. While Downpour concentrates on Mr. Hekmati, Atefeh’s story is equally important. In fact, as Baizai himself noted in a piece in Sinema 6, the stories of seven women are woven into that film, each story completing the others, so that together they represent “the women’s situation in contempo‑ rary society” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:689). In Stranger and the Fog, there are two strong women, Rana and her mother, with Rana reflecting her moth‑ er’s youth and her mother representing Rana’s old age. In addition, Rana is a narrative agent as she bears the film’s plot and meaning; she is neither a deco‑ rative figure nor a silent observer of male drama. She begins as a reactant but gradually evolves into an actant, an agent of her own destiny, whose decisions affect the community. According to Baizai, Rana, who symbolizes the earth’s fecundity—­a somewhat hackneyed and patriarchal idea—­may have imagined the entire story. For it is she who brings the stranger Ayat into being, nurtures him, loves him, lives with him, and eventually kills and mourns him (ibid.). As such, she represents both life and death, the amphibolic meanings and characters that Baizai claims he cherishes. Filmed with sophisticated elegance, deep-­focus photography, and sweep‑ ing crane shots, the messianic Ayat arrives and departs by the sea mysteri‑ a d issid ent c inema

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ously. Unlike the stranger in Downpour, who is pushed out, Ayat leaves the community to find out what, or who, is on the other side, thus offering lib‑ eratory promise, although the community is not restored. His brief sojourn represents the journey of life and the human search for identity, truth, and companionship. His departure could also symbolize a return to some mysti‑ cal origins. These motifs of quest, journey, and return introduce elements of the open form into this closed-­form movie. Stranger and the Fog’s religious and philosophical musings and its various epic dimensions made it unique among new-­wave films. Time and place are not identified; the villagers’ cus‑ toms are a mixture of Iranian, Islamic, Japanese, and African, encouraging allegorical speculations. If interpreted as a return or reunion, the ending shares this theme with other key new-­wave films, among them Kimiai’s Dash Akol and Mehrjui’s The Cow. A return to origins (before modernity’s disruption) is one of the char‑ acteristics of Frantz Fanon’s second phase of creating a “national culture” against colonial onslaught, and of its cinematic elaboration by Teshome Ga‑ briel (Fanon 1963:206–48; Gabriel 1989b). It is significant that the return to the past, or to some originary culture, which some new-­wave films seemed to long for, was also a key feature of the Shah’s attempts at creating an official syncretic national culture, which these filmmakers opposed. This correspon‑ dence in the official and oppositional cultures demonstrates that the opposi‑ tional filmmakers had more in common with the official regime than they either realized or admitted. The film received good critical reviews interna‑ tionally, but it did poorly, critically and financially, in Iran. For his devastating chronicle of Qajar-­era cruelty, Prince Ehtejab (Shazdeh Ehtejab, 1974), Farmanara, trained in filmmaking at University of Southern California, adapted a seminal modernist novel of the same title by Hushang Golshiri, a leading dissident writer. Telfilm produced it. Like most engagé writers, Golshiri was a leftist, and he had spent two six-­month stints in Pahlavi jails, once for being a communist in 1960–61, and another time for his writings in 1973–74. According to Farmanara, the mca would not give the green light to a script penned by Golshiri, forcing the director to resort to a ruse: he gave the name of his wife, Farideh Labbakhi-­Nezhad, as the writer, which resulted in her receiving “half a page of commendation for one of the best scripts that they had ever read” (quoted in Dabashi 2001:120). The origi‑ nal story, too, met with high praise: Heshmat Moayyad in his introduction to Golshiri’s short stories calls Prince Ehtejab “the second-­most innovative novel in Persian literature” next to Hedayat’s The Blind Owl (Golshiri 2003:10).29 In one of his letters to a friend, Hedayat (writing from India) had described 368

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62  Evoking modernity’s psychic disruption and the feeling of having aged amid the new. Poster for Bahman Farmanara’s Prince Ehtejab, designed by Farshid Mesghali.

succinctly the psychological chronotope of modernity for Iranians: “I was born in a new world, already defeated, wounded, and aged” (quoted in Katouzian 2003:242). What distinguished Prince Ehtejab the movie as a great modern‑ ist work was, first, its evocation of modernity’s psychic disruption and feeling of being aged in the midst of newness, of being wounded and defeated be‑ fore the start. Second, it was the film’s depiction in evocative black-­and-­white of the claustrophobic life of a dying tubercular Qajar prince, Prince Ehtejab, ensconced in a lonely room surrounded by a myriad of ticking clocks and photo­graphs of his family, recollecting their past corruption and cruelties (fig‑ ure 62). The prince recalls, and the film recreates graphically, how his grand­ father killed his brother and mother (the latter by suffocation under a pillow), how his father machine-­gunned demonstrators, and how he himself caused the death of his own wife, Farrokhnesa. All these stories are told in a series of complicated flashbacks within flashbacks, resembling a palimpsest. Time does not flow linearly; rather, it is framed and fragmented, and it accumulates into something material, as in one dramatic sequence in which many differ‑ ent clocks of varying sizes, shapes, and ages form a forest of ticking instru‑ ments whose sounds build into a disturbing concert of tick-­tocks. Arbitrary a d issid ent c inema

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violence and cruelty imbues the film, as well as the fear of the past that haunts the present. This is a modernist haunting, one underscored by the film’s set‑ ting inside an old mansion, its flashback narrative, and the chiaroscuro light‑ ing. Farmanara said that what interested him in the story was the “suspension between two time frames” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:679). When the past haunts the present that moment of suspension is reached; but it is a delicate moment. The past is corrupt yet the film eulogizes it; it mourns for lost times, like Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Lost Time. As Jamsheed Akrami noted in the magazine Rudaki, the mournful funerals, killings, and deaths outnumber the births and weddings (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:680). Prince Ehtejab’s ele­ gant and evocative opening title sequence by the great illustrator and animator Farshid Mesghali is also noteworthy. The film won the best film award at the third Tehran International Film Festival. Fear of personal impotence and national emasculation surfaced in several movies, including in Mehrjui’s The Postman (Postchi, 1970), based on a Georg Büchner story and produced by Misaqiyeh Film Studio. In fits and starts the film gives stylish expression to the crisis of cultural identity and to the forms that imperialism can take in third world countries. It is about an impotent mailman (Ali Nasirian) married to a beautiful wife (Zhaleh Sam), who even‑ tually “goes postal” on her and kills her out of jealousy. It is also about a young, Western-­educated man (Ahmadreza Ahmadi) who wants to convert his un‑ cle’s animal husbandry business from raising sheep to raising hogs. This prof‑ itable attempt at capitalist transformation raises fundamental religious issues, as Islam forbids pork. In a way this man’s action is as disruptive and devastat‑ ing to the village traditions as that of the postman toward his wife. Taqvai’s Tranquility in the Presence of Others (1973), based on a story by Saedi and produced by Taqvai and Telfilm, centers on the life of a retired army gen‑ eral (Akbar Meshkin) who suffers from a mysterious ailment or from some sort of melancholia and who moves to town with his new young wife, where he witnesses the suicide and unhappiness of his daughter from his previous marriage. Like Prince Ehtejab, he lives on his memories, on drunken recollec‑ tions of a putative glorious military past. As Taqvai notes, he discarded many elements of Saedi’s story but retained its principle theme, “anxiety” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:643). Significantly, the book from which Taqvai adapted Saedi’s story was titled Anxieties of Unknown Origin (Vahamehha‑ye bi Nam va Neshan). Both works described the fears that suffused the diegetic and ex‑ tradiegetic worlds. Taqvai worked these anxieties and their corrosive psycho‑ logical and social consequences effectively into the film’s spatial configura‑ tions by using the closed form’s claustrophobic mise-­en-­scène and filming: 370

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tight living quarters resembling prisons and hospital rooms; a dark lighting scheme; lonely, isolated, and anxious characters; and static framing. Reces‑ sion, withdrawal, and dystopia extend beyond the ex-­army man to dominate all relationships. The film shows scarcely any tranquility; if anyone has it, it is Manizheh (Soraya Qasemi), the military man’s wife. That three modernist po‑ ets acted in the movie—­Manuchehr Atashi, Partow Nuriala, and Mohammad Ali Sepanloo—­reconfirms the close interconnection of new-­wave filmmakers and contemporary modernist writers. Made in 1970, this film about anxiety provoked much anxiety among higher-­ups, leading to its ban for three years after its first screening at the Shiraz Festival of Culture and Art. Perhaps the reason was its dystopian vi‑ sion of the country, which went against state-­sanctioned utopianism. Accord‑ ing to Taqvai, the ban was extended for an additional three years after Gaffary and the nirt chief Reza Ghotbi brought in Fereydoun Hoveyda, a Cahiers du Cinéma film critic during the nouvelle vague’s ascendancy, who was also the prime minister’s brother and a high official in the Foreign Ministry, to inter‑ cede with Pahlbod, the minister of culture and art, to lift the original ban. This development again evidenced the rivalry between a liberal nirt and a conservative mca over cinema.30 Apparently, Hoveyda had liked the film very much, but in a later heated discussion of his book about the Palestinians, Quarantine, during which Taqvai expressed admiration for the book but cri‑ tiqued its characterization of the Palestinians’ tactic of hijacking of planes as barbarous, Hoveyda became so angry that he had called in the Savak to take Taqvai away. Golestan, who participated in the gathering, helped defuse the situation. As a result, Taqvai was not jailed but needed to accept an extended ban on his film. In another ironic twist in this complicated tale of censorship, the mca, which wished to enter Tranquility in the Presence of Others as part of the Week of Iranian Movies in Paris to promote the dynamism of Iranian cin‑ ema, subsequently sought Taqvai’s approval. Astutely, he agreed only on the condition that the mca release his film domestically, which is how the film finally screened publicly at Misaqiyeh’s Capri Cinema in the mid-­1970s. The screening proved lucrative though shortlived (only eleven nights), for the film received another ban, this time a permanent one. Apparently the nursing as‑ sociation had objected to the way the film depicted nurses (quoted in Talebine‑ zhad 1996/1375:44–45). The tale of the film’s censorship and troubled release further underscores the existential link between sociopolitical claustrophobia and its closed-­form expression in new-­wave films. Kiumars Derambakhsh made Blind Owl (Buf‑e Kur, 1975) for nirt. It was a fifty-­five-minute film based on Hedayat’s novel, which is widely considered a d issid ent c inema

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the first Iranian modernist one and an exemplar of a “Western novel” (Beard 1990). First published in 1936 when the author was in exile in Calcutta, it is considered his “masterpiece,” marking the climax of his psychological fic‑ tions (Katouzian 1991:113). It focuses on the claustrophobic, interior world of a disaffected painter, who is a reincarnated version of an ancient artist, nar‑ rating his life’s story and his obsessive love for a woman to his own shadow cast on the wall. The novel abounds with attributes of modernist literature, in particular with doubles, shadows, doppelgängers, twins, and the difficulty of distinguishing between these shifting characters. His lover, wife, and mother all seem to be doubles of each other; the latter he calls “the harlot” who sleeps with many men, including his father, and he himself attempts to sleep with her, not as himself but disguised as someone else. His uncle and father are bio­logical twins but also doubles of each other and of him. The profound threats and disruptions of modernity and exile to social integrity and individ‑ ual sovereignty are embodied by means of these fractured and unstable multi‑ ple characters and by means of times and places that are often indeterminate, out of joint, and confused. At the same time, modernity’s liberatory promises of individuality, autonomy, and subjectivity are expressed through the same configuration of identity, time, and space. The use of a narrating subject en‑ hances the modernity of the novel and the film, but he is not a reliable narra‑ tor; in fact, he is basically insane. Claustrophobic spatiality and temporality, closed-­form aesthetics, and a character’s withdrawal from society not only ex‑ press the individuals’ fear of the dominant society but also constitute a form of rejection and embodied protest against those fearful forces and social for‑ mations. Thematically, The Blind Owl offers a searing social criticism of Reza Shah’s time and of a public that Hedayat paints as an avaricious, gluttonous, and oversexed “rabble,” from which to protect himself the protagonist must seek the closed and phobic structures of his mind and recollections. These offer their subject—­t he nameless protagonist—­both a safe haven and a prison. Hedayat’s despondent writings and his suicide by gas in a Paris hotel room in 1951 gave intellectuals a potent martyr. Hedayatmania conquered the land, affecting the young literati who mourned and emulated him both in their de‑ spondent lives and in their suicides, and Hedayatism as a literary genre came to the fore. In addition to Derambakhsh, Bozorgmehr Rafia made a film ver‑ sion of The Blind Owl (1972) as his mfa thesis for the ucla film school.31 He‑ dayat’s novel, which provided a high but elusive standard for the expression of modernity’s fears and anxieties, proved a challenge to these and other directors who attempted to adapt it to the screen. Neither Dermabakhsh’s nor Rafia’s films did justice to the refractory original, leaving room for further efforts.32 372

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Resistance and Rebellion The second prominent theme and philosophical tendency in new-­wave films was that of resistance and rebellion. Since censorship regulations did not allow direct depictions because these would be construed as acts of uprising against the state, filmmakers resorted to indirect means: symbolic resistance and sub‑ version and personal revenge narratives that were coded, and read, as social protest. Filmmakers acted like the oppositional modernist writers who, as Ahmad Karimi-­Hakkak notes, “developed a codified diction, a canon of allu‑ sions, metaphors, symbols, and myths—­a poetic language almost” (1983:151), particularly as they adopted many of these works to the screen. By inscrib‑ ing modes of resistance and rebellion, these films imagined what Golshiri called a “prognostication of a future beyond the reality of this world,” which may yet come into being because it is imagined (Golshiri 1990b/1369:46). These narratives of resistance and rebellion dealt with future possibilities, openings, and transformations, not with paralysis, confinement, and stasis, as was the case with many narratives of fear and trembling. In some cases, resistance and rebellion manifested not so much in the films’ themes, narra‑ tives, or characters as in the fact of their making. Ironically, various govern‑ ment agencies were instrumental in supporting such works of indirect criti‑ cism, and dissident writers and filmmakers did not hesitate to bite the hand that fed them. Kimiai’s Qaisar was an early movie that forcefully posited personal revenge as a substitute for absent social justice. The film’s success spawned a genre of revenge movies in which various tough guys righted wrongs. Kimiai’s sub‑ sequent films also tapped into the public perception, and reality, of social inequality and injustice. His Baluch (1972), released around the time of the twenty-­five hundredth anniversary celebrations, was banned for a while be‑ cause the eponymous protagonist belonged to an ethnoreligious minority from the southeast at a time when the government was pushing national cohe‑ siveness. The film’s producer, Misaqiyeh Film Studio, and Kimiai suggested alternative titles. Eventually, after some delays, the film was released with its original title to a successful run. The film centers on the story of a rural man, Baluch, whose wife is raped by two smugglers. He chases them until dur‑ ing a shootout the smugglers kill two gendarmes and get away in their uni‑ forms. The police arrest Baluch on murder charges, condemning him to life in prison. On his release a dozen years later, he finds the smugglers in town, which sets Baluch on his violent, single-­minded path. His search through the streets of Tehran (opulently decorated for the anniversary celebrations) politi‑ a d issid ent c inema

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cized the film, making it the revenge of the downtrodden against a corrupt and mighty state. Baluch kills one of the smugglers, now an antique dealer, and searching for the other, a cabaret owner, he befriends a loose woman who puts him up and turns him into a corrupt gigolo. Yet he continues on his re‑ venge mission and ultimately kills the second smuggler. He finally finds his own wife who, predictably, has become a prostitute. He forgives her and takes her back home to Baluchestan. The problem with most personal revenge nar‑ ratives was that even when coded and read as social protest, they were local‑ ized rebellions that did not affect the corrupt governing system. Taqvai’s Sadeq the Kurd (Sadeq Kordeh, 1972), based on Taqvai’s own screen‑ play and also produced by Misaqiyeh Film Studio, gave force and realism to the psychological thriller-­revenge genre. It dealt with the story of Sadeq, a café owner on a main highway (Said Rad), whose wife is raped and murdered by a driver, which causes him to go on a murderous rampage against drivers in hopes of finding the rapist. The police assign an agent to capture a rapist, who turns out to be his father-­in-­law, which creates complications. Naderi’s Tight Spot (Tangna, 1973) created a claustrophobic and fear-­laden world in a story about a vagrant, Ali Khoshdast (Said Rad), who during a dispute over a game of billiards accidentally kills one of three brothers, sending him on the run in fear of the brothers’ revenge and of the police. Fear is palpable in street scenes where cries of “Stop him! Stop him!” ring out. All he needs to escape town is a small amount of money, which he does not have, thus making him roam the streets. Critics called the film’s gritty social realism and pervasive claus‑ trophobia “bitter,” and that bitterness may have kept spectators stay away from this acclaimed film (Omid 1995/1374:649). Thus Naderi began his long-­term dystopian investigation of the underbellies of cities and their beaten (though not beaten down), scrappy, and resilient male protagonists, first in Iran and later in exile in the United States. His Tangsir (1973), produced like Tight Spot by the Payam Cinema Organization, was based on Sadeq Chubak’s novel of the same title and Naderi’s own research and interviews with old-­timers of Bushehr, a city on the Persian Gulf. It turned the real-­life story of Zaer Mo‑ hammad (Behrouz Vossoughi) and his personal battle to retrieve the money that city leaders owed him (money they had promised to invest for him and now claimed they had lost) into a symbol of the struggle of the downtrodden for dignity and justice. When street people joined forces with him, Moham‑ mad’s personal revenge became a popular rebellion against oppressors. In the mid-­1970s, a female television producer entered the world of film with a movie on female resistance and rebellion, a subject rare in new-­wave cinema. Marva Nabili was a producer, director, and sometimes writer of An‑ 374

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cient Fairy Tales (Afsanehha‑ye Kohan), a series of hour-­long films for nirt that explored traditional folk tales. The nirt connection allowed her to film around the country, in small towns and villages, which were otherwise difficult to shoot because of government fear and restrictions. As she told me in an interview, it was under the guise of filming one of these television tales that she and her small crew clandestinely shot her first feature film, The Sealed Soil (Khak‑e Sar Beh Mohr, also known as Khak‑e Mohr Shodeh or Mohr va Khak, 1976, released in the United States in 1978), at the breakneck speed of six days in the village of Qaleh Nurasghar, in southwest Iran (Naficy 1985d). What made the filming possible in such a short time was Nabili’s prepara‑ tion, including a detailed shooting script with camera positions throughout, and frugality, filming mos, in available light, on 16mm stock, and with a low filming ratio of one to two.33 That the film’s female protagonist, Rooy Bekheir (Flora Shabaviz), was married to the cinematographer (Barbod Taheri) also helped, as did the fact that all cast members but Shabaviz lived in the village and were nonprofessional, cutting down on complexity and cost. As the anti-­ Shah uprising began to unreel, Nabili smuggled her negatives and the rough cut out of the country in her suitcase and into the United States, where she completed the fine cut. The film, which cost about $45,000, has never been shown inside Iran. With The Sealed Soil Nabili became the second woman who directed a fea‑ ture movie in the history of Iranian cinema, after Shahla Riahi. The film deals with two types of transitions, one personal, the other national, with Rooy Bekheir, an eighteen-­year-­old girl, at the center of both. She moves from adolescence to adulthood at the same time that her rural community is mod‑ ernizing. While she rejects several suitors, a large agribusiness company that wants to relocate them to a nearby town is courting the villagers. Her par‑ ents pressure Rooy Bekheir to marry in the traditional fashion, a pressure from which she takes refuge in the woods, where she sheds her clothes in a kind of union with nature, exposing her bare back in a daring close-­up (one of very few close-­ups in the film). Yet she is corralled into an arranged mar‑ riage, to which she reacts hysterically, chasing the chickens in the courtyard, frantically screaming and weeping, and finally collapsing on the ground. An exorcist “cures” her, and she is prepared for her wedding, dressed in a white gown that symbolizes her purification from the evil of individuality. She also steps over a flaming oven and throws her old clothes into it, symbolizing her transition to a new social identity. Likewise, the village undergoes changes. Although still ensconced within its ancient protective yet claustrophobia-­ inducing walls, modernity is lapping at its edges. A paved highway runs a d issid ent c inema

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nearby, tapped water arrives, and a modern school has opened in the adja‑ cent village. The style of The Sealed Soil is consciously experimental, influenced by the austere aesthetics of the Japanese director Kenji Mizogouchi, by the tableau‑ like Persian miniature paintings, and, most important, by Bertolt Brecht’s “alienation effect.” The film began as Nabili’s master’s thesis on the applica‑ tion of Brecht’s theory of epic theater to cinema. Brecht used distantiation and alienation to prevent identification with characters because he wanted to force spectators to concentrate on the forces that shaped individuals (Willett 1964). Nabili attempted distantiation by an austere visual style consisting of static long takes, long shots, with almost no close-­ups and rare camera movements (no tilts or zooms, only pans, necessitated by the tight physical space of film‑ ing). The film is shot in available light, including the interiors, giving it a flat and dark palette. Acting is understated, punctuated by infrequent dialogue; characters’ voices are monotonous; and the pace is slow and deliberate. Cin‑ ematic elements that increase or vary pacing to enhance emotional involve‑ ment are shunned. As Nabili told me, Persian miniatures provided an iconographic model, as figures in these paintings are part of their surroundings. Applied to cinema, this idea results in long shots that, like the paintings, contain many motifs and elements. They often show several villagers in routine life, not singled out or separated from their environment by emotionally charged close-­ups. The shots are full of information, and the slow pacing presumably gives the spectators time to study the details and to think about what they are seeing. The application of these principles to cinema did not prove entirely suc‑ cessful; literal and didactic, the work smacks of a theoretical justification af‑ ter the fact. While the long shots showed several people engaged in different activities—­stirring a pot, cleaning rice, or baking bread—­t hey supplied little detail. The camera is too far, the lighting too dim, and the acting too under‑ stated for those unfamiliar with village life in southwest Iran to decipher ex‑ pressions or details. While the activities are ethnographic, the shots are bereft of ethnographic understanding, turning villagers’ actions into ritualized be‑ havior. The principles as employed here certainly discourage any emotional involvement with the characters, but they do not necessarily promote an un‑ derstanding of their sociopolitical situation. Those who manage to sit through the film, however, are rewarded by its exploration of the psychological disruptions of modernity in the life of Rooy Bekheir, of her rebellion against the patriarchal order, and of the social dis‑ ruptions that affect the larger society beyond the frame. Although the film 376

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does not deal with national problems, the encroachment of modernity on vil‑ lage life and the timing of the film’s production—­just before the revolution—­ allow us to back-­read those problems into it. In that sense, the film can be seen as a prophetic, woman-­centered work about the incipient uprising. Late Pahlavi authoritarianism forced the writer Golshiri and the director Farmanara to express symbolically their opposition to escalating political sup‑ pression and claustrophobia. Their Tall Shadows of the Wind was produced by Telfilm and Farmanara’s own Iran Biograph Center. The film had a size‑ able budget of around $200,000 and tells a story of authoritarian power and opposition to it. It notes that humans create deities—­capitalism, Marxism, ­Islam—­to whom they fall captive. This visually engrossing film begins with a slow tracking shot of a large group of villagers seated on the ground, chant‑ ing. As the shots truck, pan, and cut from one somber face to another, a Zoro­ astrian chant is heard: “May he come to help us, may he come to care for us, may he come to comfort us, may he come to untie our knots, may he come for our victory, may he come for our happiness, may he come for our justice.” The villagers are praying for a liberator. Throughout the sequence, the wind whis‑ tles and blows the villagers’ colorful shawls. This mystical beginning sets the tone. The villagers construct a scarecrow and install it in the fields outside the village. It has only one leg and wears a long black robe; its head and face are wrapped with white cloth. When a bus fails to ascend the steep grade into the village, the driver Abdollah (Fara‑ marz Gharibian) sends the passengers and his assistant to the village for help. Meanwhile, he ambles along toward a brook. While drinking vodka from his pocket flask, he notices first one pebble, then another, then another falling into the brook. A cut to the scarecrow in the distance creates the impression that it is responsible for throwing the pebbles. Abdollah reaches into the brook and retrieves one of them. This tiny monolith becomes a symbol of power and liberation. Abdollah walks toward the scarecrow and faces its mysterious wrapped face, which is reminiscent of René Magritte’s surrealist painting The Lovers (1928). He draws features on the scarecrow and puts his own hat on its head. The scarecrow is thus empowered. But will it prove a liberator or an oppres‑ sor? This is the film’s question. Back in the village coffeehouse, the villagers congratulate Abdollah for his lifelike rendering of the scarecrow’s face. That night, while Abdollah and his mother are sleeping, in a parallel editing sequence, the villagers furtively talk in their beds about what Abdollah has done to the scarecrow at the same time that outside, the empty alleys seem alive with premonition. Ahmad Pezhman’s a d issid ent c inema

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lush mix of Persian and Western score gives the images force. A similar paral‑ lel sequence is used again later when villagers whisper fearfully inside while the wind howls angrily outside and strange things begin to happen (a woman becomes possessed and hysterical and chickens and dogs turn up dead). When Abdollah’s fiancée Nargess (Nadia Khalilpur) disappears and later is found dazed and possessed near the scarecrow, where she seems to have buried something—­perhaps the child conceived by the evil scarecrow—­terror seizes the villagers. Abdollah visits the scarecrow at night to dig up the burial site, but his shriek reveals that he has mutilated his toes with the shovel, and his wound later develops gangrene. He refuses amputation for fear of becom‑ ing one-­legged, resembling the scarecrow. Now the power has worked its way full circle, and it is beginning to consume its creator. Before he dies, Abdol‑ lah has a visually stunning dream. A group of sixteen black-­robed scarecrows are lined up across a hilly field. Suddenly, a large group of villagers, including Abdollah and his schoolmaster friend Mohammad (Said Nikpur), all of them wearing shocking red outfits and carrying red banners, run across the fields toward the scarecrows. High-­angle shots establish the battle lines. Close-­ups express the intensity of the villagers’ emotions. Abdollah gives a war cry, and the villagers attack the scarecrows and burn them, leaving only their charred skeletons. A long dissolve between one such skeleton and the dying driver in his bed completes the identification of the scarecrow with the driver. But it makes the scene of the rebellion of the masses against their oppressors a dream. When he awakens, Abdollah reaches in his pocket and, with his last breath, hands Mohammad the little stone, transferring the mission of libera‑ tor to him. Late that night, Mohammad is at his desk. The wind blows his papers around. He rises, puts the stone on the papers to weigh them down, and reso‑ lutely walks toward the window and gazes outside. He has made up his mind to carry on the mission left to him by the driver, to destroy the scarecrow. The last shot shows the stone on a sheet of paper bearing the following line from the dissident poet Ahmad Shamlu: “The sea is jealous of the drops of water you have drunk from the well.”34 The film examines how power and fear are created, sustained, and de‑ stroyed by their subjects. Traditional societies, it posits, turn to mystical forces for answers. In the process, they create political leaders, religious guides, and deities, such as the scarecrow, whom they can no longer control. Tall Shadows of the Wind is ambivalent about intellectuals’ abilities to combat these fears and figures. The intellectual Mohammad is rational and progressive, but he is politically impotent; separate from average people, he somewhat resembles 378

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the new-­wave filmmakers themselves. The driver is uneducated but enlight‑ ened; the headmaster is educated but given to speculation, and there is no evi­ dence that he will be capable of carrying the torch that the driver has passed on to him. The film suggests that irrational fear eats at a community, dissolv‑ ing existing structures and preventing rational solutions. In this atmosphere, authoritarianism finds fertile ground. Rising levels of fear are correlated with the increasing powerlessness of the community in the film. As fear mounts, the music becomes more haunting and infuses the scenes with suspense. The director has purposely employed color for expressive purposes. At the begin‑ ning, colors are bright and intense. Fear subdues them, making the dream sequence at the end shockingly vivid by contrast. To fend off the threat of self-­created gods and irrational fears, the film sug‑ gests, individuals must themselves discover the sources of power and fear—­ the winds—­and seek collective action, as represented by Abdollah’s dream of the battle between the black and the red forces. The film’s symbolic iconog‑ raphy was both enlightening and politically radical for its time. The most ob‑ vious symbol was the scarecrow. Dressed in a long, black robe and imbued with mystical powers, it symbolized retrogressive religion, particularly Islam, which the regime had dubbed “black reaction.” On the other hand, the villag‑ ers, dressed in red and carrying red banners in Abdollah’s dream, symbolized “the people,” which progressive filmmakers and revolutionary groups claimed to represent. At the height of the clandestine guerrilla struggle against the Shah and his security forces, the film offered another world, the world of armed resistance—­a radical political solution rare in Iranian cinema. Yet this other world was not just anti-­Shah but also anticlerical. The showdown in the dream between black forces (Islamists) and red forces (communists) was pre‑ scient; after the Shah, the Islamic government engaged in a nationwide battle that decimated its leftist opponents, who had been supporters. It is a testimony to Farmanara’s astuteness as a socially conscious film‑ maker and to the power of symbolic filmmaking that the film was viewed with disfavor by both the Pahlavi regime, under which it was produced, and the Islamic Republic regime, under which it was first publicly exhibited. As Farmanara told me in an interview, “Ironically, both the Shah and the Is‑ lamic regimes interpreted the scarecrow that in the film terrorizes a village as symbolizing their own rule and tried to ban it” (Naficy 1985f) Indeed, af‑ ter only three days of public exhibition in Tehran after the revolution, dur‑ ing which audiences applauded the film, the Forbidden Acts Bureau accused Farmanara of making “anti-­Islamic” films, and the authorities banned it. And when in March 1983 Farmanara returned to Iran after four years of ex‑ a d issid ent c inema

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ile, he was prevented from exiting, held hostage in his own country, on ac‑ count of the film (Naficy 1985f ). According to Golshiri, the authorities viewed and reviewed the film’s dream sequence carefully several times, even frame by frame, counting the scarecrows to make sure they were not twelve, for had they been twelve, their destruction would have symbolized the destruc‑ tion of the twelve Shiite imams, an act of supreme sacrilege. Fortunately for Farmanara (and for Golshiri), they discovered a varied number of scarecrows in each shot, and thus gave Farmanara an exit permit, but the film was never released (1990b/1369:52). After three years of voluntary exile to Europe, Golestan returned in the fall of 1970 to make his second and last feature movie, The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley, an allegorical farce produced, directed, written, and edited by him for gfw that made savage, if broad, fun of the avarice and corruption of the newly rich, particularly the Shah and his longtime prime minister Hov‑ eyda, with whom Golestan was friends. A nameless, wily villager represents the Shah (played by Parviz Sayyad), who very much resembles Sayyad’s popu­ lar comic movie character, Samad. Sayyad emerges as the key figure in the film not only because he is the protagonist but also because he contributed to the movie in other ways, particularly by providing 200,000 of the 1,200,000 tomans budget. The movie begins as a fairy tale: while an invisible narrator sets the scene of new road construction in the countryside, the villager is plowing his field with his single cow.35 In the process, he comes across a hidden underground treasure-­trove, full of gold and precious stones, which he wastes on a bizarre material life: a second wife, all sorts of household utilities that require electric‑ ity, gas, and piped water not available in his village, an assortment of statues of naked women, and a building that resembles a giant erect penis flanked by two domes. This waste parodies what the Shah, the government, and the up‑ per classes did with oil, the national treasure. Like some buildings of the time, the one acquired by the villager is phony and rickety, but its Styrofoam exterior looks like solid marble. A wise school‑ teacher, who like Hoveyda is a bit of a dandy and carries a cane and sometimes wears a flower in his lapel, becomes an advisor to the newly rich farmer and gradually is transformed against his own inclination, perhaps like Hoveyda, into a sycophant architect of the farmer’s new vision. The inauguration of the new building and the wedding of the farmer, now dressed in formal black tails, are elaborate, much like the Shah’s twenty-­five hundredth anniversary celebration. During an intricate, long tracking shot of the celebrants greed‑ ily devouring food along a table full of delicacies, the farmer grandiloquently 380

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63  Villagers celebrate a rich farmer’s wedding next to the phallic tower of his new home in Golestan’s The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley. Courtesy of Ebrahim Golestan.

claims that earlier Iranian architecture was characterized by one dome and two minarets but that the new architecture demands two domes and one min‑ aret. A brief cut to the erect minaret between two spherical domes delivers the punch line. Further satirizing the elaborate language of the Shah’s panegyric nationalism, the teacher-­t urned–visionary architect connects the two domes/ testicles to the concept of duality in Iranian philosophy, exemplified by the battle of light and dark, good and evil, and day and night (figure 63). This is a decidedly angry film that leaves no aspect or social class of the Shah’s era unscathed, even though much of it is painted with a broad comic brush. The pervasive structure of surveillance is spoofed as various characters—­the gendarme, the mayor, the coffeehouse owner, and the jeweler —­comically duck behind a bush or a rock as each one tries to spy on the other to find out the location of the treasure-­trove. The nationalist gendarmes, bu‑ reaucrats, Westernized intellectuals, traditional poets, entertainers, simple peasants, village heads, merchants, and businessmen and their ambitious wives are all satirized. Soon the dynamite blasts for the new road make the foundations of the phallic house tremble, destroying it completely—­also shak‑ ing off the various leeches and sycophants gathered around the newly rich farmer. In the end, all is in ruins and he is left alone and bereft—­an uncanny foretelling of the Shah’s end nearly a decade before it actually happened.36 Golestan released a statement before the screening of the film during his Chicago retrospective that alluded to the movie’s anger and comedy, as well as to its ending.37 It said in part: “The aim was to show the main and essen‑ tial components of a society and the consequences unavoidable for being that way. The prediction of what was bound to happen was made some nine years before it did. And it did. I never intended to ridicule anyone; the comedy, the a d issid ent c inema

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anger, and the pity were already inherent in the situation. My slight attempts at comedy were fruitless, since anger at reality left no room for frivolity.” The farmer and other village leaders remain surprisingly oblivious to the conse‑ quences of their actions, as did the Shah and government officials. What is all the more surprising is that, according to Golestan, obliviousness was not limited to government officials. It extended to the cast and crew, who knew nothing about the allegorical dimensions of the movie (with the exception of perhaps Sayyad), and to the film censors, to Savak officials, and to film exhibi‑ tors. Golestan claimed that high-­level Savak officials and government digni‑ taries saw the film at a private screening at the Moulin Rouge Cinema but “they did not recognize themselves. They thought it was a continuation of Say­ yad’s comic television series involving the character Samad.” When the film opened at Capri Cinema, spectators responded so enthusiastically that Goles‑ tan’s wife and his son, Kaveh, urged him to hide the film’s negative to safe‑ guard it against what they thought would be the imminent confiscation by the police. He took their advice. Yet the film remained on screens for nearly thirty days. “The spectators understood the film’s allegory, that is why they liked it and that is why my family was fearful for the original negative,” he said.38 Af‑ ter that initial successful exhibition, the film was pulled off the screens sud‑ denly and without explanation, never to be shown inside the country again.39 Perhaps some official finally got the joke. Abbas Milani in his biography of Hoveyda gives two reasons for the can‑ cellation. One explanation that Golestan himself had heard from friends was that The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley was screened for the Shah and Empress Farah in their palace so they could judge the controversial film for themselves. During the film, Hoveyda apparently offered a running com‑ mentary about the work’s symbolism, causing the ban. The other explanation came from a famous but anonymous “security official,” who claimed that it was he who banned both the film and the book that Golestan subsequently wrote based on the film by ordering that all copies of both be withdrawn. He also claimed that he wrote a “fifteen-­page report and interpreted” the “dan‑ gerous meanings” of the film and the book, which he sent to the Shah, with a copy to the prime minister.40 Civilians in the government apparently op‑ posed the film’s ban, but the security official prohibited it because he be‑ lieved the country’s security at stake. One night after the film was banned, Golestan and Hoveyda met again, at the residence of Feraidun Hoveyda, the prime minister’s brother. During their conversation an argument broke out between the prime minister and Golestan, which escalated into an ugly mu‑ tual personal attack. According to Milani, Hoveyda had made a snide com‑ 382

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ment about Golestan’s shirt, which caused him to take it off and angrily throw it at the official, telling him, “smell it, it smells of conscience . . . not of the putrid smell of someone who has sold his soul.” In a following conversation over cognac, Hoveyda tried to exculpate himself by complaining of the Shah’s increasing authoritarianism, claiming that he had been “betrayed,” that he himself opposed the single-­party system. The last time the two friends and adversaries met was at an official function for the French president Jacques Chirac, during which Hoveyda introduced Golestan as “our country’s best writer and filmmaker, whose works we regularly censor” (quoted in Milani 2001:340–41). Despite its overall verve, humorously concise dialogue, accurate charac‑ terization of Iranian types, elaborately staged tracking shots, dramatically as‑ saultive handheld sequences when the farmer first breaks the news to his family and village (filmed by Golestan himself), and its political prescience, The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley is a flawed film, for its humor is often broad, heavy-­handed, and condescending, both toward the diegetic characters and toward the spectators. It resembles Golestan’s broad satire of effeminate intellectuals in Mudbrick and Mirror. It is as though the film does not trust the spectators to get its message. Long dialogues between charac‑ ters drive the film’s message home in rather obvious language. This flaw may have stemmed from Golestan’s seething anger at the state of affairs and the passivity of all strata in the face of rampant corruption and moral degradation. Considered in the context of Golestan’s earlier art and archaeology docu‑ mentaries, The Hills of Marlik (Tapehha‑ye Marlik, 1963) and Iran Crown Jew‑ els (Ganjinehha‑ye Gowhar, 1965), The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley takes on a different intertextual resonance: one critical of the state but self-­ critical as well. In the latter film Golestan makes savage fun of the treasures the farmer discovers by having characters, particularly the gendarme who symbolizes the state, mouth platitudes about antique treasures being part of the Iranian national heritage, thus requiring preservation rather than being sold off to the highest bidder. This critique of the language of national heri‑ tage extends to the filmmaker’s institutional documentaries in which price‑ less crown jewels and unique ancient archaeological objects were lauded and celebrated as valuable national treasures (even if in these films allusions were made to the injustices and violence by which these treasures were produced or acquired). Kimiai’s The Deer (Gavaznha, 1975), made for Misaqiyeh Film Studio, was screened at the Tehran International Film Festival, in whose official publica‑ tion Kimiai explained the meaning of the film’s enigmatic title. He remem‑ a d issid ent c inema

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64  The phoenix-like rise and transformation of a heroin addict into a revolutionary hero in Masud Kimiai’s The Deer. Seyyed Rasul (Behrouz Vossoughi) punches the walls with fury. Frame enlargement.

bers as a schoolchild his teacher telling the class that deer have ugly legs but beautiful horns; and that what saves them in a tight spot is their speed, thanks to their ugly, scrawny legs, while that which snares them is their long, pretty horns. The reverse is true of the film’s main characters: two close friends with a vast potential for social good fall victim to vice—­one to heroin addiction, the other to robbery.41 What keeps them in the end from giving in totally to corruption is their innate innocence and purity, as well as their childhood friendship (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:696). The film’s opening title sequence, designed by Kiarostami, which juxtaposes close-­ups of harsh and tangled barbed wires with delicate feathers and floating dandelion seed balls, makes visible the contrast between beauty and innocence, on the one hand, and ugliness and corruption, on the other. Qodrat (Faramarz Qaribian), on the run after committing armed robbery, seeks shelter with a childhood friend, Seyyed Rasul (Behrouz Vossoughi), who lives with a theater actress in a poor multifamily house. When they were students, Seyyed was a brave young man, but now, as an addict, he has fallen on hard times. Under the spell of their renewed friendship, however, Seyyed begins to rise, phoenixlike, from his own ashes in a dramatic scene in which Qodrat and Seyyed angrily punch their closed fists into the wall to prove both their deeply rooted friend‑ ship and their renewed sense of power and courage to fight back (figure 64). The first proof of that renewed empowerment comes in the form of Seyyed’s murder of his ruthless heroin dealer; then he beats the greedy landlord whose humiliating behavior he had tolerated; finally he saves not his own addicted skin but his friend. Police put the house under siege, evacuating all the ten‑ ants but Qodrat. Seyyed volunteers to act as a go-­between, but as he enters the house to mediate, he decides instead to join his friend. In the subsequent shootout Seyyed is fatally wounded, telling his friend, “It is better to die by a bullet than to die of a natural death in the gutter.” Presumably, both men per‑ ish in the shootout, for the camera exits the building as it is engulfed in fire. 384

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65  Security forces amass for the ending shootout, which helped turn The Deer into a “guerrilla movie.” Frame enlargement.

What made the film controversial and caused the spectators to read it politi­ cally was how Kimiai coded it. Qodrat was armed, on the run, and at times spewed out utterances in defense of “the people.” The film’s ending shootout was also coded politically, for Kimiai amassed a disproportionate number of policemen and staged an elaborate security operation for it, giving the impres‑ sion that the two friends were not just ordinary criminals but urban guerril‑ las fighting an unjust regime (figure 65). In the same vein, the multifamily house and the neighborhood poor could be interpreted as symbolizing the so‑ ciety that sympathetically harbors the guerrilla fighters. Some spectators saw in Seyyed the reincarnation of Qaisar, as did Vossoughi himself who, in act‑ ing the part of Seyyed, kept Qaisar in mind as his model (Zeraati 2004:274). This was not the defiant Qaisar of the earlier movie, Qaisar, who had obtained justice for the underdog; this character is defeated by unjust social circum‑ stances and addiction. The political resistance seen here quickly spread so‑ cially, and after the film’s successful screening at the Tehran International Film Festival the film was banned. The mca brought in the producer of The Deer, Mehdi Misaqiyeh, and its star, Vossoughi, to explain the politics of the movie, whose script and festi‑ val exhibition the ministry had previously approved. Savak also summoned Vossoughi, accusing him of knowingly acting in an antigovernment “guer‑ rilla movie” ( film‑e cheriki), a charge that he rejected, pointing to the movie’s official production and exhibition permits and to the top acting award that he himself deservedly received at the Tehran festival from Empress Farah. However, the young Savak agent, while confessing to having seen all of Vos‑ soughi’s movies and liking them very much, threatened him with death: “See, it is so easy to annihilate you,” he said, offering the story of a staged car ac‑ cident late one night as one possible method. Vossoughi said that for “six months this nightmare and terror was with me.” Ashraf Pahlavi, too, who saw the movie in the royal court’s cinema with Vossoughi, reacted angrily, telling a d issid ent c inema

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him: “Don’t you think that we know what is happening in the country? . . . We know it all. We know that such things exist, but it is not necessary to show them in the movies” (quoted in Zeraati 2004:288, 290). It is interesting that in this case neither the producer nor the director, who were responsible for the movie, were apparently threatened. Vossoughi internalized this censorship; from then on he took care to make only apolitical films. After a year of tampering with the film, altering some of the dialogue and reshooting and reediting parts of it with fewer police in the final shootout, the makers of The Deer were finally allowed to release it in a popular chain cinema, where it did very well, earning some 2,600,000 tomans during its first run. The most dramatic change occurred at the end. While the award-­ winning festival version showed the two protagonists being gunned down by the heavily armed, massive police force, the censored version has Qodrat turn on his friend Seyyed and shoot him in a dispute. In the latter version, the men are not killed but arrested, on which occasion they promise that after their prison term, they will seek honorable jobs and become productive citizens. Such eruptions of the social into the diegetic—­K imiai’s politicized coding, the state’s imposition of drastic changes, and Vossoughi’s internalization of censorship—­constituted some of the distortions that draconian Pahlavi cen‑ sorship forced on filmmakers and spectators hungry for social relevance and political commitment. Censorings, sometimes applied serially to a single film over a period of time, pose a problem for the analysis of Iranian movies be‑ cause it is difficult to determine the final text. In fact, there may not be a sin‑ gle authoritative film, as each censored movie may have several different ver‑ sions and any given critic may not have seen all of them. The censored version of The Deer screened widely, but what permanently carved the film into the minds of Iranians of a certain age was its exhibi‑ tion in the throes of the revolution in the summer of 1978 at the Rex Cinema in Abadan, during which Islamist arsonists torched the theater, burning to death hundreds of innocent spectators. Since the installation of the Islamic Republic, the film has proven that it has “legs.” Ordinary people have liked and praised it, while intellectuals have had negative reactions to it partly be‑ cause of its popularity and financial success and partly because of what they regard as Kimiai’s “opportunism and demagoguery” and his “pandering” to the people’s emotions (Najafi 1990/1369:322). Other new-­wave films, such as Kimiai’s Journey of Stone (Safar‑e Sang, 1978) and Naderi’s Elegy (Marsiyeh, 1978), whose treatment of social discontent would place them in this section on resistance and rebellion, are discussed later.

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Avant-­Garde, Minimalist, and Formalist Styles Some important new-­wave directors produced works that appeared to be apo‑ litical. Yet these films were political in a larger and deeper sense in that they were iconoclastic both vis-­à-­vis commercial movies and new-­wave films in their authorial and formalist innovations and philosophical concerns. Three filmmakers stand out: Kimiavi, Shahid Saless, and Kiarostami, all of whom began their careers during the Pahlavi era but continued to make films dur‑ ing the Islamic Republic either inside Iran or in Europe. As a result, I discuss them only partially in this chapter.

Parviz Kimiavi (b. 1939) Kimiavi, born in Tehran, was trained in filmmaking at the premier French film school, the Institut des Hautes-­Études Cinématographiques (idhec). After working for French television for three years, he returned to Iran and worked for nirt, where he made many documentaries and several feature films, until the revolution of 1978–79. In all of these he employed an autho‑ rial, surrealist, and avant-­gardist style consisting of real people enacting ei‑ ther their own lives or fictionalized versions thereof; the seamless mixing of fantasy and documentary; ironic, humorous, contrastive, and critical juxta‑ positions of worlds, elements, and scenes; fragmented, nonlinear narrative structures; dialogues often developed with the aid of eccentric, outsider char‑ acters; and the director’s self-­inscription, cinematic self-­reflexivity, and autho‑ rial self-­referentiality. Many of these stylistic features surfaced early, in what may be called Kimi‑ avi’s “lyrical documentaries,” P as in Pelican (P‑e Mesl‑e Pelikan, 1972), a short-­ subject film, and The Stone Garden (Bagh‑e Sangi, 1976), a feature-­length film, both of them international award winners. Both films follow an open form. In them he casts isolated, real-­life, odd old men, who are not professional ac‑ tors, as protagonists. These appear to be crazy outcasts but ultimately they re‑ veal themselves to be mystical seers. Instead of being recessive and brooding, living in claustrophobic spaces, these characters are loquacious, rebellious, and outgoing, living in a ruin and an open desert, respectively. They offer a variant to the paradigm of the lone strangers who tell us something about, and comment on, both the diegetic society and the larger society beyond the screen. Despite, or perhaps because of, severe poverty, each character has de‑ veloped a rich imagination and an alternative reality, enriching his barren and isolated life. a d issid ent c inema

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66  In Parviz Kimiavi’s experimental documentary P as in Pelican, Aqa Seyyed Ali Mirza’s life in a ruin is enriched by imagination and poetry. Publicity photo.

P as in Pelican centers on Aqa Seyyed Ali Mirza, who has been living alone in an old ruin outside the northeastern desert town of Tabas for forty years. He is the object of neighborhood children’s cruel harassment. The film pres‑ ents him as a wise poet who transcends his tormentors and reality (figure 66). This is emphasized in the film’s ending sequence, which in elegiac and lyri‑ cal slow motion shows Mirza joyfully chasing a white pelican in the pool of the town’s historic garden, Bagh‑e Golshan, a scene that is intercut with the similarly slow-­motion crumbling of the ruins which he has made his home. Life, joy, beauty, togetherness, and the liquidity of water win over death, ugli‑ ness, and the solidity of the ruins. The mysterious pelican making this beau‑ tiful garden and pool at the edge of the desert her home had become a legend, bringing joy to visitors in Tabas. In the devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake of 16 September 1978, Tabas and the garden were completely destroyed, leav‑ ing thousands dead. The pelican survived but succumbed soon thereafter, making P as in Pelican a cinematic document not only of a past joyous reality but also of a wish against future ruins and devastation. In Stone Garden, Darvish Khan Esfandiarpur, a deaf-­mute shepherd, lives with his wife and two sons in a remote desert in the southeast, near Kerman. By hanging scores of rocks and stones like so many leaves from bare tree branches and poles he has created a magic garden. He tells the camera that he began his enterprise after being inspired by a glorious vision of an angelic sage during a spiritual desert sunrise (figures 67a and 67b). His detractors, on the other hand, call him a nut or a charlatan. Yet enough rural folk believe him to turn his garden into a religious shrine, to which they make pilgrim‑ age in buses and pickup trucks, and where they tie their colored wish cloths and ask for miracles and mercy. In the meantime, a gendarme arrives to draft Darvish Khan’s eldest son for military service, causing his mother to worry 388

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67a, 67b  In Kimiavi’s Stone Garden, a saintly vision induces the deaf-mute shepherd Darvish Khan Esfandiarpur to create an alternative surrealist reality by assembling a garden of stones. Frame enlargements.

about who will take care of the flock. The film is full of Kimiavi’s ironic jokes and asides, often poking fun at authority figures or at the contradictions of modernity. In one scene, Darvish Khan’s son drives the old man’s herd of sheep by riding a motorcycle, instead of employing the traditional method of herding on foot. In another scene, a cleric steals a stone from a tree as though stealing a fruit. In yet another scene, repeated several times, various official visitors to Darvish Khan engage in interminable rounds of exchang‑ ing phony pleasantries (accismus/taarof ) while the ground beneath them lit‑ erally spins. Further, reminiscent of the Luddite turn in Kimiavi’s film The Mongols, which critiques modern communications, Darvish Khan cuts off the telegraph and telephone lines as soon as company technicians have put them up. It is via these lines that a gendarme tries to reach the draft board to get permission to postpone the son’s draft. Intertextuality and self-­referentiality, hallmarks of Kimiavi’s authorial signature, work Aqa Seyyed Ali, the protago‑ nist of P As in Pelican, into The Stone Garden, where he plays a similar vision‑ ary role. In the end, the army takes away Darvish Khan’s son, and the villag‑ a d issid ent c inema

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ers rebel against him and his wife, accusing them of stealing their offerings to the saints. As much as they had shown reverence for the stone garden earlier, they now demonstrate disdain. Instead of kissing the stones they now spit on them. Soon, public health agents arrive to spray the area with ddt and other chemicals. A chagrined Darvish Khan ends up hanging himself from one of the trees, becoming the newest addition to his stone garden. But even here hu‑ mor is present: he hangs himself by the foot. As he told me in an interview, Kimiavi became interested in isolated and eccentric figures when he attended middle school in Naishapur. One day, the literature teacher asked the students to find a subject for their essay not in the cliché topics assigned in those days but in their personal research. This un‑ usual freedom brought Kimiavi to a blind and bald bean-­seller on the edge of a bazaar. The essay the young Kimiavi wrote about him caught the teacher’s attention, who liked it very much but refused to read it to the class because it contained a poem critical of their hometown: “One is bald, one is blind, and the other is mute / damn to the city of Naishapur” (Naficy 1989:92). His in‑ terest in the bald and blind bean-­seller was not political but ethnographic, and that same interest drew him to the eccentric and disabled characters in both P as in Pelican and The Stone Garden. Blindness and deafness can also be read as symbolizing censored and silenced intellectuals. Yet instead of imposing the forceful seriousness of closed-­form aesthetics, Kimiavi has his charac‑ ters transcend those limitations by the power of their playful imagination. In both, the dramatic, open locations externalize the characters’ imagined and surreal internal worlds. The lone eccentric character with a poetic vision became so ingrained in Kimiavi’s vocabulary that a decade later it insinuated itself in another film, this time in France. In his moving The Trench (La Tranchée, 1981), he focused on an isolated poor man on the margins of French society who lives a rich imaginary life in a war trench. Perhaps each of these madmen is a victim of the epistemic violence and disruptions of modernity. Each of them is also a poet and philosopher who transcends his own circumstances and reflects on and judges his own society as well as humankind. Like the madmen of his films, Kimiavi is a lone poet and a philosopher who discovers and ruminates on life, art, beauty, and hope where lesser directors find only death, ugliness, hopelessness, and cynicism. Kimiavi also made three thought-­provoking and highly visual fictional fea‑ tures in which his signature style found further expression. Thematically, The Mongols (Mogholha, 1973) deals with the fear of the Other—­Mongols, mo‑ dernity, and technology, particularly television—­but treats it playfully. Here 390

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he memorably parallels the Mongol invasion of Iran and the resulting wide‑ spread destruction of the social and economic fabrics of society in the Mid‑ dle Ages to the country’s invasion by cinema and television in the twentieth century. The history of the Mongol invasion is the subject of a university the‑ sis by the protagonist’s wife (Fahimeh Rastegar), while cinema history is the subject of a television show that the protagonist (Parviz Kimiavi) is working on. Bored with each other personally, the couple relate to each other through their common interests in history. The man is also concerned with the cur‑ rent history of television in the making, as the television network that em‑ ploys him assigns him to supervise the installation of a new microwave tower for television reception in the remote desert town of Zahedan. While on this trip, whose ostensible aim is to spread television to the far corners of the coun‑ try, the invading Mongols of his wife’s thesis appear in the desert, sealing the parallel between the current media invasion and the past Mongol invasion (in some scenes the Mongols even carry television antennas instead of weapons). Realism, surrealism, symbolism, and comic fantasy conjoin to create strik‑ ing visuals, contrasting narratives, and biting criticism. For example, the Mongols, dissatisfied with their filming conditions, self-­reflexively complain about it to the director and accuse him of not doing his job well, and when they become aware of the protagonist’s marital problems, they take his wife’s side. In a village, a curtain reciter performs the story of the Shiite martyrs for a large audience when a throng of men dressed uniformly in tribal outfits ar‑ rives bearing a television set, which they install in a room. Soon, the steady tone of the television test pattern draws away the curtain reciter’s audience, symbolizing modern media’s threat to traditional performances (figures 68a and 68b). In another scene, which critiques the media’s destructive power and the Pahlavi regime’s censorship and mistreatment of intellectuals, Kimi‑ avi’s head is placed in a guillotine; when the blade drops, it looks like a televi‑ sion screen barreling down on his neck, and what rolls off is a can of 35mm film, not his head (figures 69a and 69b). Beyond self-­inscription and self-­ reflexivity, the film contains moments of self-­referentiality in which charac‑ ters from Kimiavi’s past films appear, updating us about what has happened to them since Kimiavi’s previous film. That this film, which was the first feature to seriously explore the disrup‑ tions of Iranian traditions by television, was funded by nirt’s film subsidiary, Telfilm, shows again that the state ideological apparatuses were not mono‑ lithic. Voices of dissent could be heard in the atmosphere of relative freedom at nirt, given the liberalism of its director, Ghotbi (Gaffary 1983–84:65). The film is expansive because of Kimiavi’s deft humor and irony, rare in new-­wave a d issid ent c inema

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68a, 68b  Modernity, symbolized by television, invades villagers’ traditional curtain-reciting session in Kimiavi’s The Mongols. Frame enlargements.

69a, 69b  A darkly comic representation of film censorship and of media’s power to deracinate. The director of The Mongols is beheaded. What rolls off the guillotine, however, is not Kimiavi’s head but a film can. Frame enlargements.

features. It received universally positive critical appraisal and, remarkably, it did well at the box office. The critic Hushang Taheri wrote the following in Cinema magazine: “Without a doubt The Mongols is not only the best and the brightest film in this year’s festival [Tehran International Film Festival] but also surely it is the most distinguished film in the entire history of Iranian cinema” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:664). The release of Kimiavi’s English-­titled movie O.K. Mister (1979) coin‑ cided with the revolution. Like The Mongols, this film is both closed and open and embodies fear and rebellion. Starring Gaffary as William Knox D’Arcy, the English-­Australian who signed the first contract for oil exploration with Iran in the early 1900s, the film makes devastating fun of the way oil and oil wealth distorted Iranian society and turned it into a consumerist monster in the 1970s. D’Arcy enters a resistant village to seek permission for oil explora‑ tion, creating a scheme to win the villagers over. He imports a blonde West‑ ern beauty, the mythical Cinderella, to attract them. With her come all sorts of consumer products like Coca Cola, toys, and radio and television sets. Villag‑ ers adopt this caricature of Western consumer society, abandoning all of their own cultural forms, including their own language. They comically attempt to speak English all the time, and one local man even marries Cinderella. Only one old man holds out against this foreign onslaught; and finally the villagers see the light and rebel. However, in the end, the entire village is smothered by trashy oil by-­products, as huge sheets of billowing plastic fill the alleyways up to the rooftops, flowing in them like floodwater.42 O.K. Mister’s criticism was so biting that, according to Gaffary, when Mahmud Jafarian, nirt’s deputy director in charge of liaison with the se‑ curity services, read the screenplay for approval, he wrote on the margins: “This is the biggest attack against imperialism that is possible in a movie.” Apparently, Gaffary—­himself a nirt deputy director for cultural affairs—­ had to work with Kimiavi to tone down the criticism and to improve the dia‑ logues (Gaffary 1983–84:65). Like The Mongols, this film was produced by the state. Yet since it was completed during the revolution and contained unveiled women, it never screened inside Iran, even though its anti-­imperialist mes‑ sage would have suited postrevolution politics. O.K. Mister was shown only abroad, including in a commercial cinema in Los Angeles in the early 1980s.

Sohrab Shahid Saless (1944–98) Shahid Saless was born in Tehran, received film production training in Aus‑ tria and France, and began making films in Iran in the late 1960s as a contract a d issid ent c inema

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employee of the mca, earning 9,000 tomans monthly. He made twenty-­t wo documentaries and short films there, several of them about the performing arts and dances, designed for foreign distribution through Iranian embas‑ sies and consulates. He directed his first feature, A Simple Event (Yek Ettefaq‑e Sadeh, 1973), under the guise of working on a twenty-­minute film. Unlike Kimiavi, who had a generally optimistic and expansive view of the world and a playful and open style, Shahid Saless was pessimistic and followed a reces‑ sive and closed film style. His action—­staged with meticulous Chekhovian naturalism—­is filmed in a signature minimalist, formalist style: slow pace; a rather static and observational camera prone to long takes, long shots, and slow pans; and a concern for the life of ordinary people and their daily rou‑ tines, rendered with an ironic and objective distance. Space is closed and pre‑ ordained; time is still or passing slowly. Unlike some new-­wave filmmakers, Shahid Saless generally shunned symbolism. A Simple Event concerns the daily routines of a student, who lives in Ban‑ dar Shah at the end of the south-­north rail line with his alcoholic fisherman father, and his sick mother who soon dies. Because he has to help his father’s fish smuggling business and take care of his mother he falls behind in his studies and is forced to do homework and extra work during the recess period when every other student is playing. This joyless life of drudgery was a high contrast to the time during which it was filmed, the twenty-­five ­hundredth anniversary celebration of the Iranian monarchy. The characters are played by nonactors, but the film treats these ordinary people with dignity, the dignity that the state withdrew from its citizens. Critics praised it; it influenced rising filmmakers such as Kiarostami. Jamal Omid called it a “sincere, noble, and truthful” work; Feraidun Moezimoqaddam characterized it as a “long poem”; and Jamsheed Akrami, playing on its title, called it “a significant event” (in Omid 1995/1374:659–62). Shahid Saless himself called it “the noblest film I ever made in my life” (quoted in Sar Reshtehdari 1998:45). With this semi‑ nal film he made a name for himself nationally by winning the top directo‑ rial award from the second Tehran International Film Festival. In 1998 a bi‑ lingual English-­Persian anthology was published posthumously, containing the film’s screenplay, interviews with the director, and critical writing, to cele‑ brate the twenty-­fifth anniversary of the release of this small but weighty film (Shahid Saless 1998/1377). First evidence of his realist-­minimalist style surfaced in this film—­a style that intensified with his exile in Germany. It was more emphatically on dis‑ play in his next film, Still Life, produced by the pfc and Sayyad, which consti‑ tuted a rigorous work of great power that catapulted Shahid Saless onto the 394

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70a, 70b  Sohrab Shahid Saless’s minimalist and formalist style in Still Life. We witness the static frontal framing of the old man smoking against window frames next to a ticking clock and a long take of his wife patiently threading a needle. Frame enlargements.

international arena. Filmed in eleven days, it became a breakthrough film for him. His formalist experimentation created a sensitive portrayal of an elderly railway guard and his family living at an isolated rural junction. Its attention to daily details and to the nuances of suppressed feelings and relationships, combined with the depiction, at once harsh and poetic, of the life of the guard, of his family, and of his approaching retirement, had a powerful impact on audiences at home and abroad. Time passes slowly but inevitably like a calm but deadly powerful river, sweeping away everything in its path. The guard and his wife are forced to vacate their small house to make room for a new young guard, and their son is drafted, leaving them alone. In one scene last‑ ing seemingly for minutes, the guard’s aged wife, filmed in extreme close-­up, attempts to thread a needle to repair her son’s uniform. With weak eyesight and trembling fingers she tries many times but misses; she wets the thread and tries again and again, the camera holding the shot. In one public viewing I attended, when she finally succeeded in passing the thread through the nee‑ dle’s eye, the movie-­house audience burst into jubilant applause (figures 70a and 70b).43 In the film’s last shot, the guard stares at himself for quite some time in the small blemished mirror hanging on the wall. Does he see years of memories of silent living, eating, smoking, and sleeping in that room with his a d issid ent c inema

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wife? Or a vision of an uncertain squalid future, a vision emphasized when he removes the mirror to leave, revealing a defaced wall behind? The scene can be read as a reverse “mirror phase”; the old man’s gaze at himself does not produce the misplaced empowered self as the Other or its resultant jubilant smile. What he sees is the reality of the face of a defeated old man losing his ground to modernity and to youth. Mesmerized, he keeps staring. Both A Simple Event and Still Life were entered in the Berlin International Film Festival, where they both won awards, the latter the Silver Bear (for best film). Such awards brought to Iranians a sense of pride, helping reverse mo‑ dernity’s epistemic violence. Ironically, Iranians (mis)recognized themselves in the dark mirror that Shahid Saless held before them. That films such as those of Shahid Saless had become a source of pride was evident from the critic Feraidun Moezimoqadam’s review in Sinema 53 magazine: “I feel proud and honored. My international friends all congratulate me, and the Iranian residents and students in Germany (even those with criticism) are delighted and proud . . . I think the highest reward that Shahid Saless received was the compassionate looks of Iranians who had made their way to Berlin from all around Germany and witnessed that he was not returning home with empty hands, thanks to his films” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:691). In Iran only Still Life received a public screening, and only in one movie house, Capri Cinema. It did unexpectedly well. Despite, or perhaps because of, its success, the gov‑ ernment did not give the director a production permit for his next film, Quar‑ antine (Qarantineh), causing Shahid Saless to voluntarily exile to Germany, where in twenty-­three years he made fifteen films.44 Exile internationalized Iranian filmmakers in a more fundamental way than either their training abroad or their participation in film festivals. Of Shahid Saless’s movies made in exile, the only one shown in Iran before the revolution, in a packed audi‑ torium in the Iran-­Germany Cultural Society, a venue for the Tehran Inter‑ national Film Festival, was his Far From Home (In der Fremde/Dar Ghorbat, 1975), coproduced by the pfc, Telfilm, and the Probis Company of Hamburg, starring Sayyad in the lead role. Like his other exilic films, this one steered clear of Iranian matters, but it dealt with a personal issue: life as an immi‑ grant in an inhospitable foreign land. With this film the director’s closed-­ form aesthetics became more prominent (figure 71). It deals with Turkish industrial guest workers in Germany. An alienated worker named Hussein (Sayyad) maintains a crushingly routinized job as a beaten-­down but earnest operator of a factory’s monstrously noisy machines. While work gives him income and a much-­desired structure, it is a prison. His austere life outside the factory is laden with fear and lonely; his attempts to enter German soci‑ 396

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71  Far from Home, Shahid Saless’s first dystopic movie of exile, which intensifies his closed-form filming. The film poster, designed by Morteza Momayez, reflects the rigors of this kind of filming.

ety fail. Even though he shares an overcrowded communal apartment with other guest workers, he feels isolated. Hussein’s only contact is a younger man named Kalim, who claims to have a German girlfriend. He borrows money from Hussein to sustain this relationship—­money that he gambles away and never returns. In the end, the girlfriend turns out to have been imaginary, a figure of desire with which both men emplaced themselves in the midst of their total displacement. An urgent letter forces Kalim to return to Turkey—­a return that is dreaded, foreclosing his dream of freedom and connection to Germany, even though his actual experience of Germany is far removed from that idyllic German dream of an elsewhere (Fernweh). In this dystopic figura‑ tion of the exilic return, Far From Home ran counter to the accented films that celebrate actual or imaginary returns. Shahid Saless himself never returned to Iran. What the L.A. Reader’s film reviewer Dan Sallitt noted about Shahid Sa­ less’s later film Utopia (1982) is true for his earlier films as well. He contended that one of the filmmaker’s many accomplishments in that film was the mu‑ a d issid ent c inema

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tual reinforcement of the concrete and the symbolic. “The concrete behavior keeps the film from floating off into metaphysical realms, and the abstraction of style gives the story an odd sense of universality without straining the de‑ mands of realism.”45 The exhibition of Far From Home at the Berlin Interna‑ tional Film Festival, the controversy over its not winning the top prize, and the news of its winning awards elsewhere all helped keep Shahid Saless’s name and Iranian new-­wave cinema in play in international film circles. The sustained internationalization of Shahid Saless and other new-­wave directors through their travels abroad, their exile in Europe and the United States, and the exhibitions of their movies in international festivals contributed to the perception of a “national cinema” in Iran during the Pahlavi period.

Abbas Kiarostami (b. 1940) Kiarostami is the most celebrated Iranian filmmaker in the world. He was born in Tehran, where he received his bachelor of arts in painting from the Fine Arts College of the University of Tehran in 1973. It took him thirteen years to complete the degree because he had to support himself by working at jobs that seem to have had a decisive impact on his cinematic style. He worked for Tehran’s highway office, where he supervised road repairs at night while attending daytime classes. His concern with the road as a cinematic trope may have roots in this early experience. In 1961 Kiarostami began working in advertising agencies, designing book covers and posters and advertising films. He was at Tabli Film, the ad agency headed by Bijan Jazani, a painter who became an anti-­Shah Marxist theorist and the leader of the Fadaiyan‑e Khalq urban guerrillas, who was imprisoned and eventually “assassinated in prison” in 1975 along with other leaders (Beh‑ rooz 1999:54). Kiarostami’s first fifty advertising films featured no women, a fact that surprised him when it was brought to his attention. The lack of women in principal roles continued until Ten (Dah, 2001), which starred a female taxi driver.46 His 150 brief advertising films influenced his later style. As he noted, “You had to tell the introduction, the body, the message, and the theme and convince the viewers quickly, immediately, and concisely” (Ba­harlu 2000a/1379:17). He learned temporal precision and economy, hall‑ marks of his style. Institutional conditions also had an impact on his career and cinema. He made most of his films with commercial advertising agencies and govern‑ mental agencies. At the ad agencies he made films for clients such as the Melli Shoe Company or Arj, a household utility company. Agencies told him they 398

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were “good films,” but since they did not sell products, “they were bad films for them” (Kiarostami quoted in Omid 1995/1374:677). In the late 1960s, the cidcya hired him to make the center’s and his own first nonadvertising film, Bread and Alley (Nan va Kucheh, 1970), and all his subsequent short-­subject and feature movies until 1994. For a time he headed the cidcya’s film sec‑ tion. Most of his films at the center involved children as primary diegetic sub‑ jects, but the works were not necessarily aimed at children. “I don’t consider myself in any way as a director who makes films for children,” Kiarostami said. “I’ve only shot one film for children; all the rest are about children” (quoted in Elena 2005:33). Some of Kiarostami’s stylistic features emerged with maturity (discussed in another chapter), but several, such as realism, sly humor, and a focus on lone male leads who are on a quest of some sort, revealed themselves from the start. In his Traveler (Mosafer, 1974), for example, he focuses on a small-­town child fascinated with soccer, who, to reach Tehran to see an important match, resorts to all sorts of shenanigans and devious means to collect the money he needs for his long sleepless trip. In one of these schemes he takes pictures of children and adults without any film in his camera, though he does charge a fee. Once he finally gets to the stadium, he is too early; tired, he takes a nap nearby, and sleeps deeply. When he wakes from a guilt-­ridden nightmare, he realizes that he has missed the match; the stadium is empty. Although morally correct, the film’s ethical lesson—­that crime does not pay—­is not heavy-­handed, and this lack of didacticism forms a constitutive element of Kiarostami’s style. Rather, the child’s deceptiveness, resourceful‑ ness, and dashed hopes are all rendered with terse economy, humanist under‑ standing, and incisive humor. The boy’s empty-­camera photo scam implies the filmmaker in the act of swindling, like the character—­t his too occurs in many of Kiarostami’s films. His use of nonprofessional actors and his ability to obtain natural acting from them became another hallmark. A final stylistic feature was his recording of synchronized sound during filming, instead of filming mos and postdubbing the dialogue. This enhanced the film’s realism. In his last feature before the revolution, Report (Gozaresh, 1977), Kiar‑ ostami focused on one week in the life of a minor civil servant (Kurosh Af‑ sharpanah), his wife (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and their two-­year-­old baby in a rented apartment. The civil servant feels alienated not only from his work but also from his family and his roots (reflecting Kiarostami’s own family and professional situation at the time). Both his problems at work and the con‑ flicts with his wife at home escalate into a terrific public row, beatings, and attempted suicide (the latter revisited in Taste of Cherry). Apartment living in a d issid ent c inema

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itself was at the time an alien but an increasing form of dwelling in Tehran’s modern sectors. The film’s honesty and violent realism in depicting this new lifestyle and the range of acting displayed by the two principal performers, not to mention their extraordinary child, was greeted as a breakthrough by film lovers and general audiences. Of how he obtained such realistic acting from an infant, Kiarostami said in an interview in Cinema 6 that during the twenty days of filming, they tried to convince him that he had two sets of parents, his real ones, and his acting, daytime ones, who treated him as real parents are supposed to treat their children, satisfying all his needs for food, bathroom breaks, naps, love, and hugs. Kiarostami also defended his practice of synch-­ sound filming for the enhanced realism that it offered the actors, even though the sound quality did not turn out as clean as in postdubbed films (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:740–41). As the first Kiarostami film to be commercially ex‑ hibited, The Report was screened in Cine Monde Cinema in Tehran for eight weeks to good box-­office sales. Avant-­garde filmmakers, like socially conscious directors, suffered from heavy censorship in content and form. Faramarz Otan, an Iranian Baha’i who had studied filmmaking in Sweden, made several films for nirt that were mutilated. His The End of One Day (Paian‑e Yek Ruz, 1973), a formally inter‑ esting, subjective, self-­reflexive narrative about a woman and a filmmaker whose interactions during filming form part of the narrative, was heavily cen‑ sored. It was reduced from fifty-­four to twenty-­four minutes. It begins with the cameraman and soundman saying: “Let’s go to town to film the first per‑ son we see,” which allows them to record shocking scenes of poverty among hovel dwellers in Tehran streets, where loose newspapers carry pictures of President Nixon’s visit to Tehran accompanied by Prime Minister Hoveyda. As Otan told me, the censors seized on poverty and nudity, including the wom‑ an’s shower scenes, all of which were cut (Naficy 1982b). The censors also changed the film’s title from The End of One Day to Lens (Lenz). nirt aired this version four times. Otan’s other film, Parallelogram (Chaharzel’i, 1973), a surrealistic film about four characters in an old empty mansion in Tehran (Moshir al-­Dowleh’s house), where the borders between reality and imagina‑ tion and past and present are blurred, was also heavily censored. Among its risqué narratives was one of incest between a daughter and her father, where the daughter rubs her breasts before a mirror while thinking of her father, whose image is conjured up in the mirror. Among violent scenes, there is that of a butcher slaughtering a live chicken, whose bloody, headless body flutters about furiously in the throes of death. Doors open and close, a revolver ma‑ terializes, and in the end, the daughter apparently commits suicide with this 400

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weapon. The film’s original sixty-­eight minutes were cut down to forty, both for the movie’s risqué adult theme and graphic violence. The closed form’s for‑ mal attributes abound in both of Otan’s films.

Collaboration of Writers and Filmmakers As demonstrated throughout this volume and particularly in this chapter, the collaboration of modernist oppositional writers and dissident filmmakers en‑ hanced the quality of resulting new-­wave movies. However, this collaboration was not always amicable or straightforward. Writers and directors sometimes clashed over credits, at other times over the process of adaptation.47 Most of the writer-­director disagreements brewed or were settled privately. However, one that flared into a public controversy was Kimiai’s adaptation of Dowlataba‑ di’s novel Osaneh‑ye Baba Sobhan (The Story of Baba Sobhan) for his film The Earth (Khak, 1973). When the film was released, the novelist took the unusual step of publishing an angry booklet, Baba Sobhan Buried in the Earth: An Ad‑ dendum to the Film “The Earth” (Baba Sobhan dar Khak: Zamimeh‑ye Film‑e Khak), in which he detailed his many objections to the film.48 He protested to the process of adaptation, which was undertaken without his assistance, and to the many fundamental changes that Kimiai had made to the characters and the story line. These latter included turning the wife of the landlord into a for‑ eign Western woman and changing the primary relationship of the characters from one based on feudal relations to one based on colonialism (Dowlatabadi 1990/1369:287–318). The relationship among novelists, screenplay writers, and directors is a fraught one in all cinemas of the world, but it was more so in Iran, whose film industry was improvisational, autocratic, and contingent, where profes‑ sional union bylaws, national laws, and international laws protecting author‑ ship and adaptations were neither fully developed nor enforced. Nonethe‑ less, modernist fiction writers seemed magnetically attracted to cinema for several reasons. One was the financial reward of writing for films. Because most writers could not make a living from their own art (Hillmann 1982: 23–24), they found it necessary to find employment in the public school sys‑ tem, the government bureaucracy, or the private sector. They wrote during their spare time and moonlighted as screenplay writers, particularly for com‑ mercial movies. Many writers and traditional poets such as Ali Kasmai, Ho‑ sain Qoli Mostaan, Mohammad Maimandinezhad, and Mehdi Sohaili, as well as modernist poets such as Esmail Nuriala and Ahmad Shamlu, worked in a d issid ent c inema

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the commercial cinema sector in the 1950s and 1960s. The modernist poet Mehdi Akhavan Saless worked at the gfw, supervising the dubbing of docu‑ mentaries. Working on screenplays was financially rewarding for the writ‑ ers, particularly in the 1970s. For example, as Farmanara told me, Golshiri received $3,500 and $14,000, respectively, for writing the screenplays of his movies Prince Ehtejab and Tall Shadows of the Wind, which made for large amounts at the time (Naficy 1985f). The adaptation of their works for the screen conferred prestige and recognition on the writers, which in turn bene­ fited the sale of their works. Golshiri admitted that the film adaptation of his Prince Ehtejab was wholly responsible for whatever fame he enjoyed beyond the small readership of modernist Persian literature (Golshiri 1976:250). The success of the film, and perhaps the subsequent arrest of Golshiri on political charges, helped enhance the readership and sales of his book. According to Farmanara, the book’s first run had a circulation of two thousand, only eight hundred copies of which had been sold by the time the movie came out. When the film was in distribution, the book was reprinted five times. Perhaps uneven censorship frightened some writers away from publica‑ tion, and the deep respect that the new-­wave films garnered attracted them to screenplay writing in the 1970s. Moreover, the reach of the movies, with nearly three hundred thousand movie-­house seats in 1973–74 (see chapter 3), far surpassed the average print run of one thousand to three thousand for books. Indeed, the possibility and desirability of reaching a wider audience was the reason that Golestan, after publishing several translations and collec‑ tions of short stories, turned to making feature films (Hillmann 1982). Both writers and filmmakers benefited from collaboration, as movies affected the art of the writers as well. In cases where a movie was turned into a literary work, such as Golestan’s The Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley, the cinematic influences were clearly detectable (Sprachman 1982). The in‑ fluence is sometimes less obvious, but it has been suggested that the stories of Mostaan, who wrote extensively for commercial movies, were greatly influ‑ enced by filmic techniques. More research is necessary to establish the fact of influence and the forms it took. Extensive film viewing has also been credited with having a major impact on writers’ stories and styles. Kimiai claims that Iranian stories written after the spread of cinema differed vastly from those written prior to its inception. In his opinion, the differences occur in plot de‑ velopment, rhythm, and mode of expression (quoted in Naficy 1985c:246). Baraheni’s contention that Charlie Chaplin’s movies influenced Saedi’s one-­ act pantomimes and possibly his physical carriage is also worth examining (Baraheni 1994/1373:291–305). The point is that contemporary literature and 402

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cinema mutually enriched each other. Mehrjui paid the ultimate homage to a writer when, speaking of Mehdi Akhavan Saless, he stated that “one of my dreams is to one day make a film that matches the beauty, the depth, and the strength of Akhavan’s Akhar‑e Shahnameh [both a celebrated poem and the title of his anthology of poems]” (quoted in Akrami 1996/1375:58). In the stifling political atmosphere of the 1970s, the act of collabora‑ tion itself had psychological, political, and professional value for both writ‑ ers and filmmakers, since it drew them closer as an oppositional and pro‑ fessional community. Modernist writers and new-­wave filmmakers knew and respected one another and shared views. They all belonged to the disen‑ chanted leftist intelligentsia. Filmmakers collaborated with modernist writers in forming the Writers’ Association of Iran (Kanun‑e Nevisandehgan‑e Iran) in 1967. The forty-­nine founders counted among them several filmmakers-­ cum-­w riters: Baizai, Nader Ebrahimi, Farideh Farjam, Heshmat Jazani, and Nuriala. Golshiri and Saedi, whose works formed the backbone of the new-­ wave cinema, were also very active members. As Mohammad Ali Sepanloo notes, membership varied over the years as the politics of the association and its members underwent transformations and as the association disbanded and restarted several times. Nevertheless, this was the first civil-­society for‑ mation that defined and fought for the professional rights and free expression of all writers, which included those who wrote for publication, oral presenta‑ tion, theater, cinema, radio, and television (Sepanloo 2002:44). The associa‑ tion spearheaded the writing of some of the famed “open letters,” signed by scores of intellectuals and addressed to government officials, that became im‑ portant stimuli for political resistance both during the Pahlavi regime and during the period of the Islamic Republic. Despite the affinities noted, a key difference exists between poetry and cinema that seems to have eluded those most invested in the two arts’ link‑ age. Since the 1950s, classical poetry and modern poetry, also known as new poetry (sh’r‑e no) have been opposites. Modern poetry no longer followed the “rigid formal rules and generic division of the classical poetry. . . . The appar‑ ent unevenness of poetic lines on the page and the irregularity of the rhyme and meter that make the new poetry visibly and audibly different from the classical models render it conceptually opposed to them” (Karimi-­Hakkak 1995:3). The change from stilted classic structure to free-­verse expression en‑ abled the poets to better express modern subjectivity and authorial person‑ ality. In the realm of cinema in the same period, a gradual retreat from the premodern artisanal mode of production was occurring, which meant that formerly chaotic and idiosyncratic texts were replaced by a modern hybrid‑ a d issid ent c inema

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ized mode with rule-­bound production and textuality. Modernity in the mode of expression necessitates modernity in the mode of production. But moder‑ nity for each form followed an opposite trajectory, from order to improvisatory freedom or the reverse.

Gathering Storm: The Emergence of a Culture of Resistance New-­wave movies’ depictions of fear, anxiety, and rebellion, and the mere fact of their creation, constituted acts of resistance both against the dominant commercial filmfarsi cinema and against the authoritarian political system. Undoubtedly, this cinema and its influence on the intelligentsia and the stu‑ dent population was one of the sparks that ignited the revolution. This influ‑ ence did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it was part of the emerging forma‑ tions, dispositions, contingencies, discourses, and microphysics of power and protest that amplified each other rhizomatically. There was, for example, the formation of the pfc and of the Writers’ Association of Iran, which signaled a gathering political storm and facilitated both the making of new-­wave films and their favorable reception. Ironically, some oppositional formations were state institutions ostensibly charged with propagating the official culture of spectacle, even while they contributed to the Shah’s fall.

The Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (CIDCYA) The work of the cidcya in film production and publishing contributed to the formation of the culture and literature of resistance. If the reason behind cre‑ ating the cidcya’s film division, as some critics claimed, was to keep dissident intellectuals “busy” and to create a “display window” for “festival products” (Mehrabi 1984/1375:352), the effort succeeded, though not in the way the au‑ thorities may have wanted it, for the resulting high-­quality films proved coun‑ terhegemonic on two important grounds. They were not commercially made, and they did not follow the commercial cinema’s entertainment formulas and genres. Free from capital and the box office, the films addressed intellectual and pedagogical concerns that filmmakers and the cidcya considered impor‑ tant. This involved extensive work on the screenplays. Kyumars Purahmad relates that as a novice filmmaker he had to rewrite his first screenplay for the center thirteen times before it met with the approval of its head of production, Ebrahim Foruzesh (Purahmad 2001/1380:274). This was a far cry from the 404

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improvised screenplays of filmfarsi. Also, in the age of Pahlavi positivist spec‑ tacles, the center encouraged critical thinking, not loyalty. The films’ protag‑ onists were generally determined children who never gave up, who through logic, guile, or sheer obstinacy bore ahead toward their goals—­characters and characteristics that migrated into the feature films that some of the center directors made. The films’ tone tended to be somber and philosophical. One critic called them “black and pessimistic” (Mohammadi 1994/1373:57), while another characterized their humor as “darkly ironic” and “sarcastic” (Talebi‑ nezhad 1994/1373:63). Among the filmmakers supported by the cidcya were key future cinéastes including Baizai, Kiarostami, Kimiai, Naderi, Purah‑ mad, and Arsalan‑e Sasani. The cidcya also supported a productive group of film animators, among them Farshid Mesghali, Morteza Momayyez, Nafiseh Riahi, Nurreddin Zarrinkelk, Aliakbar Sadeqi, and Parviz Naderi, who put Iranian animated films on the world map (Mehrabi 1984/1363:352–76; Omid 1995/1374:1027–33). The cidcya’s film division also created a childrens’ film archive for which it purchased films from around the world. At Plaza Cinema in Tehran it screened Iranian and foreign children’s movies on a regular basis at a nomi‑ nal fee (two tomans a ticket). Soon, the center began to teach amateur, Super 8 film­making to children by establishing small workshops in its network of li‑ braries in major cities, which attracted many children and young adults to the art. This and the efforts of the Free Cinema Society went a long way to create a nationally recognized amateur cinema. Finally, the cidcya’s annual Inter‑ national Children’s Film Festival grew into a respectable international venue for cultural and cinematic exchanges. The cidcya’s books division published a plethora of beautifully designed, colorful, and illustrated original works and translations, some of which con‑ tained symbolically coded stories that adults and children read as subversive, making them part of the emerging resistance literature. Samad Behrangi’s story The Little Black Fish (Mahi‑ye Siah‑e Kuchulu, 1968), which Mesghali ele­ gantly illustrated, achieved a mythic impact. In it, a little fish in a school of fish in a lagoon, against the advice of her elders and risking her life, swims away from familiar surroundings in hopes of reaching the freedom of the oceans and the unknown world beyond. This simple quest narrative became an allegory for the young student rebels gathering clandestinely to form un‑ derground guerrilla groups, both inside and outside the country, against the Shah’s regime and who willingly put aside their personal safety to sacrifice themselves for the common good and for the liberation of their country. Empress Farah, the cidcya’s chief benefactor, stated in her diary that the a d issid ent c inema

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center’s editorial board was reluctant at first to publish The Little Black Fish because of its political message, but it finally green-­lighted its publication because it did not want to give the opposition any further ammunition. Yet when this back story was leaked, the public endowed the book with “all the virtues of the resistance” (Pahlavi 2004:147). She is only partly correct, in that being censored or banned often bestowed on sometimes inferior works a higher artistic status than they deserved. However, this occurred because the regime had stifled most of the meaningful and legal means of artistic and political protest. When Behrangi, a leftist, pro-­Soviet schoolteacher work‑ ing in the northeast of the country drowned in the Aras River, as his friend Saedi claims, rumors fanned by Jalal Al‑e Ahmad had it that Savak foul play had done him in (quoted in Mojabi 1999/1378:188–89). For most people the rumors of murder achieved mythic truth, because the author’s watery death for the cause of political liberation resonated with his story of the little black fish’s self-­sacrifice. Fiction corroborated reality; Behrangi became the little black fish. The martyrology of dissident intellectuals and artists sacrificed by a ruthless monolithic regime would during the next decade accumulate more members, such as the leftist-­t urned-­Islamist writer Al‑e Ahmad, the Muslim sociologist Ali Shariati, the Marxist poet Khosrow Golsorkhi, the Marxist civil servant–filmmaker Keramatollah Daneshian, and the Marxist theater director Said Soltanpur, as well as many leaders of the guerrilla movements. Behrangi’s metaphor of the little black fish was received so politically that no movie could be made of it under the Shah. Yet shortly after the estab‑ lishment of the Islamic Republic, Afkham Makui made The Little Black Fish (1980), an eighteen-­minute animated film based on Behrangi’s tale, for the national television network, now renamed Voice and Vision of the Islamic Republic (vvir).49 At least one of Behrangi’s stories was filmed during the Pahlavi period. Hasan Tehrani wrote and directed the live action film The Tale of the Peach Tree (Qesseh‑ye Derakht‑e Holu, 1971) for the cidcya, which was based on “One Peach, a Thousand Peaches.” Most of the cidcya’s diverse movies were designed to offer their pedagogi‑ cal lessons to their main subjects—­children and young adults—­in the form of entertaining and imaginative tales. However, even if they were not coded as political, the stories that encouraged independent thinking, bravery, ini‑ tiative, truthfulness, the fighting of oppressive bullies, and cooperation for the common good could be interpreted as political, because these qualities went against those of subservience and loyalty to authority that the regime de‑ manded from its citizens. Perhaps some of the most counterhegemonic and anti-­imperialistic films of this period were produced by the animation work‑ 406

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shops and animators housed within, or commissioned by, the mca and the cidcya. The tale of this dynamic animated cinema waits to be fully written.50

Television Confessions, Recantations, and Show Trials Co-­optation and censorship compromised and hamstrung political parties, trade unions, and the mass media, making dissent impossible. The few chan‑ nels of dissenting expression were the illegal guerrilla movements (intellec‑ tuals talked ominously of “the octopus of censorship”). An armed uprising occurred in February 1971, just before the twenty-­five hundredth anniver‑ sary celebrations, when a small band of heavily armed Marxist guerrillas, later known as the Peoples’ Fadaian Organization of Iran (pfoi, Sazman‑e ­Fadaian‑e Khalq‑e Iran), attacked a gendarmerie post in the village of Siahkal near the Caspian Sea. In March, after weeks of hunting, thirteen men were captured, charged with the attack, and executed, subsequently becoming leg‑ ends because they had dared to take action against the Great Octopus and had shown its vulnerability. Even though the armed action resulted in material failure, it offered a sense of psychological victory and motivated several other Muslim and Marx‑ ist revolutionary groups, as well as democratic groups of varying ideologies and tactics, to break through the thick fog of fear, despondency, and impo‑ tence that had fallen over the land. Perhaps surprised by the depth and au‑ dacity of the opposition, the government took a harsh view of it, and between 1971 and 1977 it annihilated at least 368 opposition figures. Of these, 197 were killed in fighting, 93 were executed, 45 were tortured to death, 15 dis‑ appeared, 9 committed suicide, and 9 were murdered in prison. The major‑ ity belonged to three groups: the Marxist pfoi, the Muslim Mujahedin, and the Peoples’ Mujahedin Organization of Iran (pmoi, Sazman‑e Mojahedin‑e Khalq‑e Iran), a Marxist-­Islamist offshoot of the Muslim Mujahedin (Abraha‑ mian 1999:102–3). New prisons, or new wings of existing ones, were built to deal with the emerging rebellion. By the mid-­1970s, the number of political prisoners in the country had reached a new peak of at least seventy-­five hun‑ dred (108). The government staged televised confessions, recantations, and trials for the captured dissidents to discredit them and to put the fear back into the pop‑ ulace, particularly into the young, educated men and women attracted to the guerrilla movement. The numbers of college students had grown exponen‑ tially, providing a rich ground for antigovernment movements.51 Some fifty thousand to sixty-­six thousand Iranians were studying in the United States a d issid ent c inema

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in the 1970s, more than from any other country (Matin-­Asgari 2002:225; Green 1982:30). Many of these returned to teach in Iranian universities in the 1970s, widening intellectual horizons and raising educational standards.52 This large, newly educated class attracted to modernity, personal freedom, democracy, individuality, and to the alluring guerrillas, had to be persuaded of the legitimacy of the regime and dissuaded from joining its opponents. This resulted in the intersection of film, media, and politics in the service both of dissent and its suppression, which took paths that became more and more curious. In October 1973, Savak announced that a group of twelve “anarchists with Marxist and Tudeh tendencies” had been arrested on charges of plotting to as‑ sassinate the Shah and to kidnap Empress Farah and the crown prince, Reza, at the cidcya’s International Children’s Film Festival.53 Among these were several cameramen and a filmmaker, who had studied at nirt’s Cinema and Television College: Daneshian, Abbasali Samakar, Taifur Patai, and Moham‑ mad Reza Allamehzadeh.54 The government tried the group in a televised military tribunal, an event that mesmerized the population but backfired, as it served to consolidate the image of dissident intellectuals and guerrillas as fearless leaders and heroic martyrs. A bit of media background is germane. In the 1970s, the government created a curious type of television program, aired by nirt, that characterized many totalitarian states. Reminiscent of Sta‑ lin’s show trials of 1937–39, arrested and tortured dissidents were forced to confess to, and recant, their political “crimes” before television cameras. Pop‑ ularly called “Savak Shows,” these programs typically involved an interview: the dissident was interrogated and goaded into recounting his or her crimes by an anonymous man, dressed in civilian clothes, who was euphemistically called “a security official” (maqam‑e amniati). Often this official was none other than the head of the internal security division of Savak, the feared but debonair Parviz Sabeti. One of the first people to have his recantation tele‑ vised was Parviz Nikkhah, a physicist educated in the United Kingdom, a member of the Confederation of Iranian Students abroad, and a man active in the Marxist Revolutionary Organization. He had been arrested in 1965 as a member of a group that had attempted to assassinate the Shah.55 Although the assassination charge was later dropped, the other charges sufficed to con‑ demn Nikkhah and his cohorts to ten or more years of imprisonment. Af‑ ter six years, Nikkhah had a crisis of faith and underwent a conversion, be‑ coming a staunch believer in the Shah’s White Revolution, a belief that he declared in news conferences and published statements, which the regime widely disseminated. 408

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According to Ervand Abrahamian, the success of Nikkhah’s conversion and recantation caused Savak to torture political prisoners not only to gain information from them but also to convince them to appear in public recanta‑ tions. Nikkhah and eight other confederation leaders gave public recantations in the form of radio, television, and press interviews, in which they admitted that they had made mistakes and had failed to recognize the progress that Iran had made under the White Revolution. They warned Iranian students not to be swayed by leftist and communist propaganda against the regime (1999:114–15). These media recantations became part of the Shah’s culture of spectacle by which the omnipresence of his power was consolidated. Soon, Nikkhah was released and began working for nirt, where he rose in the ranks to become the head of the research and news analysis department and reput‑ edly a liaison for Savak. No longer its mere subject, Nikkhah became the ar‑ chitect of that culture and power, presiding over the televised confessions and recantations of others. The Savak Shows intensified fear of Savak as omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent and discredited the dissidents, because many of them broke down under torture and recanted. In the military tribunal of 1973, at least two of the accused, the poet Golsorkhi and the filmmaker Daneshian, openly de‑ fied the military judge, denied his charges, bravely declared that they were Marxist-­Leninist, and offered impassioned analyses of the country’s sociopo‑ litical inequalities, oppression, economic injustice, and backwardness. Gol‑ sorkhi’s defense proved particularly moving as he was an eloquent speaker and cleverly tapped into both the Shiite Karbala paradigm of martyrdom and the Marxist analysis of class struggle—­t he two engines driving the guerrilla groups and the revolution to come. He said: “I begin my defense with the words of Imam Hossein, the great martyr of Middle Eastern masses. I, who am a Marxist-­Leninist, first sought social justice in the school of Islam, and then arrived at socialism. I do not bargain in this court for my soul or for my life. I am only an insignificant drop in the immense ocean of suffering that is the struggling people of Iran.”56 He tapped into Shiite Islam’s ideology of defiance and martyrdom and indirectly into the third world liberation and de‑ colonization discourses inspired by Marxism and popularized by thinkers like Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Albert Memmi, and Kwame Nkrumah and by revolu‑ tionary leaders like Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Mao Zedong. These Shiite and third word ideologies formed part of the discourses of au‑ thenticity and nativism that Iranian intellectuals such as Al‑e Ahmad, Shari‑ ati, Behrangi, and Golsorkhi had mobilized in defense of “the masses” and “the people,” and that others like Ayatollah Khomeini would later mobilize in a d issid ent c inema

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defense of the Islamic community (ummat) and the world’s “barefoot people” (pa berahnehha) and “disinherited people” (mostazafan). The desire to give voice and to shape this authentic culture of the people had become the driving force behind the new-­wave film movement, starting with Mehrjui’s The Cow and Kimiai’s Qaisar. Ironically, the government simultaneously attempted to co-­opt the discourse of authentic culture by spearheading the various official authenticating cultures and arts festivals. Not only Golsorkhi’s uncompromising words and decisive delivery but also his fearless interaction with the members of the military tribunal were elec‑ trifying, because for the first time an opposition leader had dared not only to talk in his own defense on live television but also to simply talk back. At one point, he declared that he had been tortured to the point of urinating blood, whereupon an off-­screen voice shouted, “He is lying.” He continued. Soon, one of the military judges interrupted Golsorkhi’s analysis of the ills of the country under the Shah, ordering him, “In your last defense, defend yourself and do not ask me any questions. You are given notice to defend yourself, for your own benefit only.” Golsorkhi shot back: “I have nothing to say for my own benefit. I only speak in defense of my people. If I don’t have the freedom to do so, I would rather sit down.” The judge replied: “You have the freedom to defend yourself only.” Golsorkhi said: “Then, I will sit down,” and he sat in his seat, ending his defense. Beginning with the dramatic statement that “there is an undeclared mar‑ tial law in our country,” Daneshian nevertheless chose a less confrontational tack, for whenever the judge interrupted him to order him to stick to his own defense, he said that he would get there soon or that he had only a few more sentences to read before getting to his own defense. However, his artful eva‑ sions and sly civility frustrated the military tribunal. He was ordered to “stop telling stories, tales, and spreading propaganda. Only speak in your own de‑ fense.” A shocked Daneshian, staring directly at the judges’ bench, declared, “If you consider all these to be stories and tales, I will hand in my defense in writing,” and then he, too, took his seat, terminating his defense (figures 72a and 72b). Five months after the television trial, in February 1974, the military ap‑ peals tribunal, headed by Major General Ahmad Behravan, condemned to death by execution five of the accused who had refused to recant (Patai, Gol‑ sorkhi, Daneshian, Allamehzadeh, and Samakar); the remaining seven, who recanted and pleaded for royal mercy, were condemned to imprisonment ranging from three years to life (Agheli 1997/1376:281). The original planners of the kidnapping plot at the film festival were the 410

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72a, 72b  A military show trial of dissidents and filmmakers that electrified the nation in 1973. The poet, Khosrow Golsorkhi (above), and the filmmaker, Keramatollah Daneshian, vigorously defend their Marxist ideologies. They are later executed. Frame enlargements.

cameraman Samakar and the filmmaker Allamehzadeh. Because of their pro‑ fessional association with nirt and the cidcya, respectively, they had access to politically sensitive places and events involving the royal family. As Sama‑ kar tells it in his biography, the fact that the security people considered nirt cameramen “one of them” because of their security clearances tempted them to spearhead the kidnapping plot (2001:36). Allamehzadeh was to receive an award for one of his short films from Empress Farah at the festival, while Sa‑ makar, filming the event for the television network, was to hide a weapon in his camera. Daneshian and Patai were to play supportive roles. Their plan was to kidnap the empress and the crown prince and to hold them hostage out‑ side the country until a number of political prisoners and guerrillas had been released from Iranian jails (133–45). The figure of the underground guerrilla fighter had assumed such a romantic and heroic dimension as to have become mythic, capturing the imagination of many youths, or of anyone who har‑ bored resentments against the government and the ruling elite. Thus, their release would itself have been considered a heroic act and worth the risk. As Samakar notes: “The guerrillas were at the pinnacle of our thoughts, and they ruled over our psyche and soul. They were an invisible element endowed with a d issid ent c inema

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fantastic powers—­invigorating and exciting powers” (99). Even inside pris‑ ons, both ordinary and hardened criminals, as well as, sometimes, seasoned guards, interrogators, and torturers showed extra respect toward political pris‑ oners and guerrillas. Yet none of the various plots of which the twelve were accused had been implemented or had gone beyond preliminary discussions. In essence, they were being tried and punished for thinking and discussing the plots. Unlike the previous and later Savak Shows, the airing of this military tribu‑ nal had the opposite effect of what was intended, a boomerang media effect, because of the defendants’ defiance and because the trial itself demonstrated the lack of due process—­no independent lawyers, evidence, witnesses, and protection against self-­incrimination. The show proved a government blun‑ der, causing angry demonstrations in high schools and universities, which resulted in the closure of Tehran University after the death of several students and policemen (Matin-­Asgari 2002:142). Philosophically and psychologically, this trial demonstrated the omnipresence of the security forces but it failed to establish their omnipotence. Thus it drove a wedge into the monolithic and hegemonic panoptic structure that Savak had carefully nurtured, and this wedge would widen into deep cracks to bring the edifice down. The two most outspoken and defiant defendants, Golsorkhi and Daneshian, were soon executed publicly in Tehran’s Chitgar Square, while the Shah com‑ muted the death sentences of Allamehzadeh, Samakar, and Patai to life in prison. With their execution, Golsorkhi and Daneshian achieved that glorious and mythic position of guerrilla martyrdom—­beatitude. The mere mention of their names even today engenders passionate respect and reverence, and bad and mutilated copies of the tapes of the tv trial are sold in Iranian grocery stores, video stores, and bookshops in the United States and on the Internet. Golsorkhi’s last words, uttered in his will years before the revolution, are pre‑ scient, even prophetic: “Rest assured that the deprived masses of Iranians will take revenge for the spilled blood of their children. Trust that from each drop of our blood will arise a new martyr [ fadai] to pierce the enemy’s heart. Have faith that the illegal government of Iran, which the black 28th of Mordad [the coup of 1953] imposed on Iranians by the United States, is in the throes of death and sooner or later a violent revolution by the oppressed masses will bring it down” (quoted in Samakar 2001:260). Allamehzadeh, along with his cohorts, spent several years of his life sen‑ tence in various prisons, and, as he told me, they were released only during the revolution (Naficy 1998). However, the plight of these dissident filmmak‑ ers was not over. For after a period of political activity under an increasingly 412

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intolerant Islamic Republic, working for the pmoi’s culture and art commit‑ tee, both Samakar and Allamehzadeh found it necessary to escape the coun‑ try for Europe, where they received political asylum. The full, uncensored tape of the televised tribunal was screened by vvir soon after the success of the revolution in March 1979, casting a new spell on a younger generation of would-­be revolutionaries who had only heard about the mythmaking tribunal. Years later, a leftist émigré filmmaker in Los Angeles with an mfa from ucla film school, Rafigh Pooya, made a documentary feature about the events leading up to the revolution of 1978–79, In Defense of People (Dar Defa’ az Mar‑ dom, 1981), in which the footage of the televised military tribunal and the Gol‑ sorkhi and Daneshian defenses served as narrative backbones. From time to time, the film cuts away from the trial visually, while keeping its soundtrack as voice-­over for additional documentary and evidentiary footage, which serve to illustrate the truth of the defendants’ statements. Pooya’s footage acted as the trial lawyers that the defendants did not have. Years later, Allamehzadeh and Pooya would collaborate in exile on an anti–Islamic Republic feature film, The Guests of Hotel Astoria (1989). Saedi, too, was forced into one of these Savak Shows in the mid-­1970s, by interrogators who tortured him to gain a public television recantation, not a private confession.57 This is how he relates the darkly comical scene: “[After some torture] I would go on a fast in protest and demand that I must have a trial. They would say, no, you must have an interview, . . . and they took me by force to the television station.” Before the show, the Savak interviewer gave the writer both the questions he was going to ask him and the answers that he was expected to give on the air. The director of the show in the control room was Nikkhah. These details are important because they help to explain why Nikkhah was one of the two high-­level nirt officials who would be executed in the early days of the revolution.58 According to Saedi, he did not answer the questions as the interrogator had scripted them, so Nikkhah abruptly ended the show and Savak tortured Saedi further. Dissatisfied with the aborted Sa‑ vak Show, the government subsequently published in the daily Kayhan (19 June 1975) an apparently concocted confession by Saedi with his picture to discredit him (quoted in Mojabi 1999/1378:194–95). The controversial writer and literary critic Baraheni, too, was arrested in 1973, partly for an article titled “The Culture of the Oppressor and the Culture of the Oppressed” in the daily Ettela’at, in which he had argued that Iranians suffered from “double alienation” due to a government cultural policy that alienated them from their true histories and accomplishments and from those of the West (Baraheni 1984/1373:311–18). He was tortured in prison, where Sa‑ a d issid ent c inema

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beti urged a television recantation interview on him that would buy him his freedom. Baraheni refused. He was offered as interviewers either Sabeti, Nik‑ khah, Farhang Farrahi, or Iraj Gorgin (Baraheni 1977:196). After 102 days of imprisonment, the international campaign launched by pen and by the Committee for the Artistic and Intellectual Freedom of Iran (caifi) in New York finally succeeded in obtaining his freedom. On his release, nirt aired a heavily edited version of a statement from Baraheni that he had recorded for later broadcast, which gave the impression that he had broken down and “confessed” as a condition of his release. According to Mohammad Falsafi, the caifi’s acting secretary, the text of the broadcast that the government had printed in the two major dailies, Kayhan and Ettela’at, was so mutilated, gar‑ bled, and varied that they could “only with difficulty be attributed to the same person.”59 Subsequently, Baraheni left for exile in the United States and Can‑ ada, where he worked to expose the Shah’s repressive system. 60

Audiocassette: The Little Medium That Could Since the 1950s audiotapes were used to record and to listen to religious ser‑ mons in Islamic countries, such as in Afghanistan (Roy 1990:187), and the tapes of Ayatollah Khomeini’s famous speech of 15 Khordad 1342 (5 June 1963), his sermons when he was under house arrest in 1964 in Qom, and his sermons from exile in Iraq from 1965 onward were all recorded and distrib‑ uted in Iran (Sreberny-­Mohammadi and Mohammadi 1994:119–20). How‑ ever, it was the revolution of 1978–79 that catapulted the small medium of audiocassette into the pantheon of the big media in terms of its sociopoliti‑ cal impact as an oppositional means of religious and political communica‑ tion within and beyond national borders (Naficy 1995a). The French philoso‑ pher Michel Foucault, who was an early supporter of the Islamic Revolution and who on his second trip to Iran in November 1978 observed the operation of one “grassroots cell of information,” presciently declared, “If the Shah is about to fall, it will be due largely to the cassette tape. It is the tool par excel‑ lence of counterinformation” (quoted in Afary and Anderson 2005:219). The political impact of the audiocassette began in the decade leading to the revolution, during which tapes of clandestine anti-­Shah radio broadcasts beamed from abroad, such as those by the pmoi, provided a link between guerrilla organizations and their members and sympathizers. However, it was the use of audiocassettes in the 1970s by two charismatic leaders that demonstrated their power. This medium differed in significant ways from the “big media” of broad‑ 414

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casting, which in Iran, as in much of the developing and Islamic worlds, were state monopolies pressed into serving national development and moderniza‑ tion projects and repressive governments. The big media followed a vertical architecture: production, distribution, exhibition, and control were central‑ ized. Big media required highly trained technical and professional staff and an industrial production mode. Because of their hegemonic and homogeniz‑ ing roles, large segments of the population distrusted these media, which is one of the reasons why the televised trials of dissidents backfired. The audiocassette, on the other hand, was architecturally both vertical and horizontal in that it was potentially a two-­way, grass-­roots medium, re‑ usable, durable, portable, and inexpensive. The production and distribution of cassettes was not centralized. Their reception was flexible and cheap. They could hold studio-­recorded productions or impromptu interviews, speeches, sermons, Quranic recitations, music and songs, and documentary materials. Cassettes could be listened to individually or collectively and at different times and in diverse locations. Women and ethnoreligious minorities could enter the public sphere through listening to, retaping, and exchanging cassettes: the receivers of cassettes could become transmitters. Audiocassettes were not prone to centralized censorship and control, and they could be employed as an effective diversifying, participatory medium in support of alternative causes, minority aspirations, or revolutionary ideologies. Cassettes became forces for change because the central hegemonic control of mass media by a repressive government created a need for them; popular social, religious, and educational institutions distributed them; and charis‑ matic leaders provided content. Traditional economic and professional for‑ mations provided financial assistance, networking, and linkage with expa‑ triate groups, and an orally oriented population enabled the cassettes’ social functioning. The ready availability, accessibility, and use of national and in‑ ternational telephones, low-­cost publishing and duplicating, clandestine ra‑ dio stations broadcasting from abroad, widely distributed “open letters” and samizdats by leading intellectuals, and exile periodicals and radio programs abroad also proved instrumental in the further relay and propagation of cas‑ settes’ messages to and from the nation-­state. Two points of caution, however. First, each of these enabling conditions re‑ mained insufficient by itself to transform the little medium of audiocassette into one with a mighty social impact. Linkage, cross-­fertilization, and inter‑ textuality among sociopolitical, economic, cultural, technological, and artistic forces were essential. Second, as I have illustrated elsewhere (Naficy 1995a), the use of such a potentially democratic, grass-­roots “peoples’ medium” by op‑ a d issid ent c inema

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positional forces against the Shah did not necessarily guarantee a progressive, democratic, or humane outcome in the following regime. The enabling institutions and formations for the wide oppositional uses of cassettes included a network of between sixty thousand and two hundred thousand mullahs with organic ties to the people and to some ninety thou‑ sand mosques throughout the country (Tehranian 1980:17–18). The mosques and bazaars were important sites of information and nodes of communi‑ cation, whose messages their allied institutions amplified and recirculated (Rawan 2001). These included numerous seminaries (howzeh‑ye elmiyeh); re‑ ligious councils (heiat‑e mazhabi), often sponsored by bazaar merchants and guilds; and shrines (emamzadeh) to which the heiats organized pilgrimages. Additionally, there were taziyeh amphitheaters (tekkiyeh), religious and sec‑ ular salons (dowreh), religious community centers (hosainiyeh), and secular colleges and universities. Whether located in cities or in villages, in these locations and gatherings religious leaders, scholars, and preachers lectured, gave sermons, led prayers, recited verses from the Quran, and recounted tales of lamentation for the martyrdom of Shiite imams (rowzeh). Mourning cere­ monies for the “martyrs” of the anti-­Shah movement, repeated at seven-­day, forty-­day, and annual intervals, and annual religious processions and taziyeh passion plays also took place at appropriate sites. The established networks of bazaars and crafts guilds throughout the country and the emerging networks of anti-­Shah leftist, Islamist, and guerrilla organizations provided financial backing, human power, and ideological support that further interlinked and imbricated these disparate institutions and practices. All of these constituted venues in which more cassettes could be taped and distributed. Annabelle Sreberny-­Mohammadi and Ali Mohammadi also cite the roughly 130,000 pil‑ grims allowed after an accord between Iran and Iraq in 1976 to visit the Shi‑ ite holy sites in Iraq, such as Karbala and in particular Najaf, where Ayatollah Khomeini was residing, as another important group feeding the above reli‑ gious institutions and networks with cassettes (1994:120). During the 1970s, many of the speeches of the French-­educated religious scholar Shariati, who combined a revisionist Islamist rereading of Shiite ide‑ ology with Fanonist liberation ideology and various European philosophies such as Marxism and phenomenology, were recorded at Mashhad Univer‑ sity and at the famous Hosainiyeh Ershad in Tehran. His most influential concept, “return to the self” (bazgasht beh khishtan), which ruled the 1970s, complemented Al‑e Ahmad’s discourse from the 1960s of Westonitis. While Fanon’s “return to the roots,” a key phase in forming an independent post‑ colonial “national culture,” was basically secular, emphasizing racial, colo‑ 416

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nial, and historical elements as bedrocks of the national culture (Fanon 1963), Shariati’s and Al‑e Ahmad’s “return to the self” emphasized religious roots. Like the intellectuals of the earlier Qajar and the first Pahlavi periods, they wanted modernity; yet they wanted it not in its fusion with the West, but in its refusion with the East. Unlike Shariati, who was basically a religious thinker, Al‑e Ahmad had been a secular leftist who had once belonged to the Tudeh Party, had broken with it in the 1950s to create with Khalil Maleki the inde‑ pendent leftist party Third Force (Niru‑ye Sevvom), and toward the end of his life in the mid-­1960s manifested pro-­Islamic religious tendencies. Although their outlooks diverged, both hoped that refusion would result not in self-­ othering but in self-­empowerment. In advocating this return, even Shariati did not absolve Islam from the need to reform. His critique targeted the West and Weststruck Iranians, but also traditional Islamic thought. He advocated Islamic reformation, which he called “Islamic Protestantism,” to activate new social movements. This caused Shiite clerics and their supporters to charge that he was “an infidel, a materialist, a Sunni, and a Marxist” (Boroujerdi 1996:115). Finally, Shariati reinterpreted the Shiite martyrdom paradigm to justify uprisings against unjust contemporary rulers. Shariati was a charismatic performer and an eloquent speaker, and his lectures were electrifying. They were piped into the streets outside the ho‑ sainiyeh, causing crowds of listeners and traffic jams on Friday afternoons. His students and supporters taped his speeches and published and distrib‑ uted them nationwide (Rahnema 2000:177). Many were sold and passed on clandestinely in Iran and abroad through the aforementioned nexus of insti‑ tutions and network formations (some people spent as much as a month and half worth of their salaries to purchase the tapes). Shariati did not live to see the consequences, as he died of a heart attack in London in 1977 in circum‑ stances that fed rumors of Savak foul play. These proved to be false. By the mid-­1970s, Ayatollah Khomeini, too, had begun sending from his exile in Iraq increasingly radical antigovernment messages via leaflets and cassettes. The tapes were transcribed and distributed via similar channels. When in early 1978 he was forced into a double exile to France, his access to Western mass media increased manyfold, as did his taped messages, which seemed more resolute than ever, uncompromisingly calling for the ouster of the Shah. These were either transmitted via telephone lines to banks of cas‑ sette recorders in Tehran and other cities or transported by visitors for dupli‑ cation and distribution. Sreberny-­Mohammadi and Mohammadi state that two tape machines in Khomeini’s residence worked constantly, recording and duplicating his speeches and announcements for transmission by telephone a d issid ent c inema

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to Iran (1994:120–21). The Canadian journalist Carole Jerome relates that once Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti took her to a small room in his home in Tehran, which was “crammed” with electronic equipment, including “tape machines, a patch console, recording gear and telephone,” where he asked her, ”You remember the phone at Neauphle [Neauphle-­le-­Château, the vil‑ lage outside Paris where Khomeini resided in exile]?” Then he answered his own question: “Well, this is the other end” (1987:108–9). The anthropologist ­Mehdy Naficy notes that in Yazd, Ayatollah Saduqi’s house was turned into a cassette manufacturing center: for four or five hours a day, half a dozen phone lines received Khomeini’s taped messages from Paris and duplicated them on cassettes at high speed for distribution (1993:231–32). These cassettes and their transcripts were passed clandestinely among the population in univer‑ sities, high schools, bazaars, industrial plants, and among family members. They were also sold in shops, apparently outselling music tapes in 1977.61 In his dispatch of November 1978 published in the Italian paper Corriere Della Sera, Foucault provides an accurate if somewhat poetic description of the tapes’ widespread uses: “But one can find, outside the doors of most provin‑ cial mosques, tapes of the most renowned orators at a very low price. One en‑ counters children walking down the most crowded streets with tape recorders in their hands. They play these recorded voices from Qom, Mashhad, and Is‑ fahan so loudly that they drown out the sound of cars; passersby do not need to stop to be able to hear them. From town to town, the strikes start, die out, and start again, like flickering fires on the eve of the nights of Muharram” (quoted in Afary and Anderson 2005:219–20). The medium of the audiocas‑ sette proved a highly suitable oppositional weapon. Revolutionary speakers such as Shariati and Khomeini turned their pronouncements into powerfully crafted messages by taking advantage of the intimacy of the “live” lecture situ‑ ation, the narrative structure of Iranian oral and folk traditions, and the rhe‑ torical, symbolic, and performative patterns of religious sermons, recitation, and mourning rituals—­so familiar to Iranians, literate or not, and used so effectively in filmfarsi movie genres. Second, the taped messages suited the oral orientation of the increasingly globalized electronic news media, which were eager for sensational sound bites. The political impact of the messages increased vastly when the release of each cassette or message became the source of news, quoted by Western news organizations, the Persian-­language programs of Western broadcasting agencies (particularly the bbc), and the clandestine antigovernment radios operating from outside Iran. Each impor‑ tant taped pronouncement from Khomeini or quotation based on it would cause widespread reaction in Iran, which would in turn lead to another mes‑ 418

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sage, escalating the effect of the previous one. This complex interconnection of forces, media, technologies, personalities, and narrative forms turned the traditional local pulpit (Fathi 1979) into a powerful, interactive, transnational, long-­distance electronic one. Both the distribution and reception of these cassettes defied the perva‑ sive censorship system of the Shah’s government, turning the exchange of tapes or the mere listening to them into acts of commitment and opposition. Immediately after the revolution, a wide array of religious and revolution‑ ary tapes were distributed by the aforementioned networks and by the newly formed Islamic agencies such as the Reconstruction Crusade, which claimed that in 1983 alone it distributed 74,789 audiocassettes nationwide, with a pro‑ fusion of other audiovisual materials (Naficy 1992b:198). In the immediate post­revolution era, for a variety of sociopolitical reasons—­not least of which was the fall of the Pahlavi regime—­t he enabling mechanisms were disabled, causing the Islamist audiocassette genie to be put back into the bottle. Yet with the regime’s takeover of the television and radio networks and of cinema, the vertical, one-­way, authoritarian system was reinstated, opening the way for exile-­produced Iranian pop, rock, rap, and hip-­hop music from Los Ange‑ les and elsewhere. Soon, young Iranians would generate their own hybridized popular music inside Iran within a dynamic and forceful underground music scene documented illuminatingly in Amir Hamz’s and Mark Lazars’ Sounds of Silence (2006).

Ten Nights of Poetry Another significant event that helped nourish both the growing culture, liter‑ ature, and media of resistance and the impending revolution were the ten con‑ secutive nights of poetry and talks, starting on 10 October 1977, that the re‑ vived independent Writers Association of Iran co-­organized with the Goethe Institut at the site of Iran-­Germany Cultural Society in Tehran. The event cre‑ ated a supercharged atmosphere among both security people and intellectu‑ als. Armed police and security agents with military vehicles surrounded the site, but according to Saedi between 10,000 and 20,000 people attended the events each night, without any mishaps. The atmosphere at what was popu‑ larly dubbed the Ten Nights of Poetry was both “celebratory” and “combative” (quoted in Mojabi 1999/1378:204). Incredible as it may seem, given the fear of the state’s disciplinary appara‑ tuses, over fifty speakers rose to criticize the government for its violations of the constitutional rights of assembly, representation, and expression and ofa d issid ent c inema

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fered many examples of draconian censorship and thought control. On the third night, Shams Al‑e Ahmad declared that he had a list of one thousand books that had been banned, which he did not read to save time. However, he read the names of twenty-­six prominent writers and poets whose “pens were banned” (mamnu’ al-­qalam), including some of those who spoke at the Ten Nights of Poetry. Among these writers were several whose works the new-­ wave directors had adapted into successful movies, including Golshiri and Saedi. He also read a list of the titles of novels, poetry books, and nonfic‑ tion works that had been banned from school libraries, all written by promi‑ nent writers, some of which were adapted into new-­wave films. Finally, he read a list of words that the the mca Office of Censorship (Edareh Negaresh) had banned, including the following: night (shab), winter (zemestan), tulip (la‑ leh), peony (shaqayeq), jungle/forest ( jangal), red rose (gol‑e sorkh), and guerrilla (cherik) (Moazen 1978:vol. 1:118–19). A majority of these words had symbolic political meanings. On the fifth night, another writer, Baqer Momeni in a speech on censorship and its pathology, noted more banned words based on those struck from his own works: police (polis), fence (parchin), and Babri Khan (Moazen 1978:vol. 2:256). One new-­wave filmmaker and playwright also spoke: Baizai. Titled “On the Situation of Theater and Cinema,” his speech critiqued not only official censorship but also the various unofficial, indirect measures, such as harass‑ ments, impediments, snubs, rejections, and rivalries, to which filmmakers were subjected by financiers, producers, exhibitors, local civil and police officials, and labor unions, which amounted to insidious forms of censorship for theater and movie directors. The consequences were manifold, one of them being that the unproduced works of playwrights and screenplay writers out‑ numbered those produced. This problem afflicted Bazai himself more than any other new-­wave filmmaker or playwright: during his four-­decade-­long ca‑ reer, which spanned both the Pahlavi period and that of the Islamic Repub‑ lic, he published the plays and screenplays of more than a dozen unproduced works. He claimed that the multiple parties involved with filmmaking com‑ promised the reality on-­screen, but that total censorship was impossible, for that which is not allowed expression will eventually slip out. This slippage created artworks that were indirect, knotted, and convoluted (ironically, his own films are prime cases in point). In addition, censorship threatened art‑ ists with silence, forcing them to pour everything they knew into each work, fearful that they may not get another chance. Their works thus became un‑ necessarily complicated and unwieldy. Finally, he stated that widespread cen‑ sorship had forced audiences to expect all the arts to be political and all artists 420

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to act as mouthpieces of various causes and social ailments. This forced one medium—­cinema—­to perform the work of another that was even more cir‑ cumscribed by censorship, the press. He concluded by saying that expecting the movies to perform the task of an editorial was a disservice to cinema, to the press, and to their clienteles (quoted in Moazen 1978:vol. 1:120–25). The fear of pervasive government censorship had additional consequences. Filmmakers and television program makers internalized the censorship ap‑ paratus and became their own worst censors, sometimes without knowing it. This is one of the conditions of the panopticon. To avoid censorship or entan‑ glement with Savak, many artists evaded taking risks and became overly cau‑ tious. Worst of all, they learned not to take responsibility for their own works or to believe in them sufficiently to fight for them. They could always, and many did, blame the shortcomings or problems of their works on others, or they could claim, and many did, that the censors in the mca and nirt were either too stringent or not sufficiently vigilant. These consequences of censorship bedeviled and shaped both the commer‑ cial and new-­wave cinemas. Audiotapes of the Ten Nights of Poetry and books containing transcripts of speeches and poems were widely distributed, feeding the hungry resistance networks, which coalesced around the flag of secular and leftist students. The Ten Nights collectively served as an enabling spark to the gathering revolu‑ tion. The apparent death of one student at one of the nights’ events when the police tried to close it down fed the fire. Only after the widespread Tabriz dem‑ onstrations (popularly known as the “uprising”) a few months later would the anti-­Pahlavi Islamist forces come to the fore. While the pfc’s products were highly promising, this programmatic effort at creating an alternative cinema movement did not produce many films, and it lasted only for one decade. In fact, despite the group’s remarkable output in terms of high quality, innovation, and controversy, new-­wave film represents only a small portion of the fifty-­nine to ninety-­two feature films produced annually in the 1970s, a majority of which were escapist filmfarsi movies. An uncanny relationship existed between filmfarsi movies, particularly the tough-­guy films, and new-­wave films. While filmfarsi movies often looked to the West, their narrative system, based on oral storytelling and characteriza‑ tion, was deeply Iranian. On the other hand, the new-­wave films often looked to Iranian and Persian roots, while their narrative system, based on realism, surrealism, neorealism, avant-­gardism, and the classical Hollywood style, was highly Western.

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Crisis Grips the Industry The gathering storm also engulfed the film industry. By the mid-­1960s, Holly­wood studios, which had exported their movies to Iran via Beirut, opened their own offices in Tehran: Twentieth Century–Fox, United Artists, Paramount, Columbia, Metro-­Goldwyn-­Mayer, and Warner Bros. Faced with the American juggernaut, independent domestic importers began importing French, Italian, and Spanish movies. The British Arthur Rank Company con‑ tinued to be represented by the Rashidian brothers, who had participated in the cia/m16 coup against Mosaddeq in the 1950s. The importers of Holly‑ wood majors monopolized the top movie houses in northern Tehran, while the independents with their European products occupied primarily the cen‑ tral movie houses. This left the cinemas of the poor South End to Iranian filmfarsi movies. The flooding of the top markets with foreign action and sex movies forced domestic commercial producers to join the deluge. Film mar‑ kets became saturated with foreign movies and their local imitations. Signs of crisis began to surface. In 1969, six movie houses in Tehran burned, and two of them perma‑ nently closed down.62 This reduction in venues temporarily drove up the ex‑ hibition cost, and a recent increase in the fees of cast and crew raised produc‑ tion costs. This minor crisis became more pronounced in the early 1970s, when the annual fiction feature output reached its all-­time high of ninety-­t wo movies in 1972 (see table 6). By adding sex and action to compete with for‑ eign movies, domestic producers brought on government censorship and de‑ lays in the release of films, which hurt them and their investors. The outlook was bleak because the domestic film industry could not really compete with the higher-­quality and cheaper foreign movies. As a result, despite achieving the highest output in 1972, of the forty-­six movies exhibited in that year’s first six months, only nine earned a profit, seven hoped to break even, while the re‑ maining thirty faced “absolute failure.” The film industry was slow to respond to the situation, and the production of movies already in the works continued. However, some producers, such as Ali Abbasi, called for government intervention to slow both the import and the exhibition of foreign movies so as to prevent the “certain annihilation of the national cinema” (Omid 1995/1374:601–2). The government did not in‑ tervene, and the negative effects of the free flow of imports showed them‑ selves in the steady downward spiral of domestic productions in the following few years. In 1973 the output fell from ninety-­t wo to eighty-­t hree, and it took a precipitous fall a year later, when it hit sixty features, a figure that dimin‑ 422

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ished by at least ten films every year thereafter. Producers were also driven into bankruptcy at an alarming rate, so that by 1974, of the 120 established feature-­film producers, only twenty remained financially solvent and active (Daryoush 1974:211). The political economy of this deteriorating situation involved several ele‑ ments. Import laws made it more lucrative to import movies than to produce them domestically. As a result, many producers went into film importation. A crisis of creativity, compounded by heavy and arbitrary censorship, com‑ promised the new-­wave films, and a drive by commercial studios toward the lowest common denominator led to the production of movies that matched neither the aspirations nor the realities of most spectators’ lives. Mounir Ab‑ boud reported, “song and dance mixture, scenes of physical violence, the ap‑ peal to sentimentality and attempt at historic portrayals have all failed. Peo‑ ple are no longer attracted to the cinema even by bare bosoms and bottoms” (1973:n.p.). Mostafa Izadi Najafabadi’s book presented a massive compilation of quotations from periodicals against the intrusion of sex, violence, and amo‑ rality in domestic movies and television (1974/1353). The dissatisfaction con‑ tinued throughout the decade, as in the late 1970s an mca survey of filmgoers in Tehran reported that 34 percent of the sample blamed the lack of quality movies on low audience attendance, while 82 percent of the same sample de‑ clared that if better quality movies were offered, they would be willing to pay a higher ticket price (Ministry of Culture and Art 1977/2536:23, 29). A quarter of the box office sales went for taxes—­5 percent national and 20 percent to municipalities—­which the producers felt excessive. Inflation was pushing the cost of raw stock, equipment, services, and salaries, while an imperial decree by the Shah, who had vetoed the cabinet’s plan of a price increase, kept ticket prices low for years. Fixed ticket prices were a feature of his anti-­inflation drive; they showed resistance to the Motion Picture Ex‑ port Association of America (mpaa), which in the wake of the quadrupling of oil prices by opec in 1974 wanted Iran’s government to increase the price of movie-­house tickets by 400 percent. Jack Valenti, the president of the mpaa, in a letter to the minister of culture and art, claimed that the low ticket prices subsidized Iranian moviegoers. The real impetus behind this mpaa action was Charles G. Bluhdorn, the chairman of Paramount’s parent company, Gulf + Western Industries, which had vast oil interests. He was annoyed at fixed-­ price movies in Iran, held below African and Middle Eastern countries. Amer‑ ican film companies were making around $2.5 million annually then from ex‑ porting between 100 and 125 movies to Iran, a figure Bluhdorn wanted raised commensurately with the rise in oil prices. That oil was an important factor in a d issid ent c inema

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this affair is proven by the fact that only Paramount boycotted Iran. When Val‑ enti’s agreement with Iranians to raise prices 40 percent through increases in admission prices and a reduction in taxes fell through because of a rebellion by Iranian “local authorities,” Bluhdorn thought Valenti had not been sufficiently forceful. He threatened to leave the mpaa cartel (Segrave 1997:223– 24). By spring 1975, when further negotiations also failed, five other majors joined Paramount in its boycott. Starting 31 March 1975, Warner Bros., United Artists, Twentieth Century–Fox, Paramount, Universal, and Metro-­Goldwyn-­ Mayer joined in “halting all shipment of their films to Iran” (Columbia stayed out). Iranians counteracted by placing the distribution of foreign movies in the hands of domestic companies. Within a year, in a typically opportunistic move by Hollywood, Warner Bros., Columbia, United Artists, and Twentieth Century–Fox moved back into Iran, creating their own “domestic” company, the Film Importers Association (now Paramount stayed out). The embargo led to an influx of kung fu movies from Hong Kong and of sexual comedies and spaghetti westerns from Italy. These were cheap, and drove Iranian film producers, waiting to exhibit their films with high interest rates (of up to 28 percent) accumulating daily, into bankruptcy. These two fac‑ tors, combined with the government’s desire to appear as a “champion of the masses” by keeping the most popular pastime inexpensive, forced inflation-­ ridden domestic film production to simply stop making movies. Low budgets for movies procured at high interest rates created so much instability that even a short lag time between a film’s completion and its re‑ lease could drive producers into bankruptcy. The widespread censorship of political themes meant that completed films waited months or years for ex‑ hibition permits. Recall that Mehrjui’s The Cycle waited for three years be‑ cause of a medical association’s objection to it. Haritash’s Naked Till Noon with Speed (Berahneh ta Zohr ba Sor’at, 1976) waited for twenty-­seven months be‑ cause a loathsome money-­changer’s business called Imperial could be inter‑ preted as referring to the government (Omid 1995/1374:709). As Haritash told me, this film was banned because it was about a university student and had political overtones. Authorities ordered re-­editing that shortened the film by thirty minutes (Naficy 1979a). Haritash’s Doorman (Saraydar, 1976) was also banned for some months, and he was prevented from exporting it because it dealt with poverty, while his Kingdom of Heaven was not exhibited publicly after its negative reception during its debut at Tehran festival. Naderi’s Elegy (1978) was confiscated for three years, perhaps due to its superrealist portrayal of social marginalia, which countered official positivist representations. All these delays, cuts, and censorship measures jeopardized the producers finan‑ 424

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cially and forced the directors into timidity, symbolism, obfuscation, indirec‑ tion, and the extensive rearrangement of scenes, characters, and dialogue, which contributed to the films’ chaotic narratives (Zand 1976/2535, Moezimo‑ qaddam 1973–74/1352–53). The commercial movie industry considered nirt’s and the mca’s support for new-­wave features and documentaries, nirt’s production of television se‑ rials, and its broadcast of feature movies tantamount to government competi‑ tion with the private sector (Badie 1978b). The government, bent on absolute control, perhaps wanted no opposition in any field. By the mid-­1970s, all po‑ litical parties had been banned or dissolved; they were replaced with the all-­ encompassing Rastakhiz (Resurgence) Party to which all people had to vol‑ untarily belong! The same tendency seemed to operate in the motion-­picture area. One government, one party, and one broadcasting organization were already in place; now was the time to monopolize motion-­picture production and distribution. The industry was too complicated, however, and, at any rate, time ran out on this effort. Ironically, new-­wave films eroded domestic film production by fragment‑ ing the audience. Tired of formulaic filmfarsi movies, some spectators sought relief in the new-­wave films, which because of pervasive censorship were un‑ able to meet their heightened expectations. Unsatisfied by their compromised films and unhappy about their elitism or the abstruse and abstract filmic lan‑ guage employed partly to evade censorship and partly to display authorial uniqueness, the audience turned once again to foreign movies. Faced with dismay among the spectators, disarray in the domestic indus‑ try, boycott by American film distributors, and the resultant fall in available movies, the government finally acceded to the mpaa demand. In May 1976 it increased movie-­house admission prices by 35 percent, allocated a sizable credit to filmmaking, created the Film Import Association to negotiate with Hollywood majors the streamlining of imports, and invested in coproduction projects with European and American companies.63 The changes created a rapid resurgence of film activity. Deals were made to import blockbuster mov‑ ies from Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros. such as Godfather I, (1972, dir. Francis Ford Coppola), The Sting (1973, dir. George Roy Hill), The Tow‑ ering Inferno (1974, dir. John Guillermin), Earthquake (1974, dir. Mark Rob‑ son), and Godfather II (1974, dir. Francis Ford Coppola). Coproduction proj‑ ects, however, did not result in large financial returns to Iran. Payam Film Organization produced Ali Hatami’s powerful Broken-­Hearted (Suteh Delan, 1977), about a mentally retarded man, ably played by Vossoughi, who is taken care of by his brother (Jamshid Mashayekhi). And almost immediately, the a d issid ent c inema

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fidci commissioned several new-­wave films, including Haritash’s Kingdom of Heaven, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s Chess of the Wind (Shatranj‑e Bad, 1976), Baizai’s nostalgic The Crow (Kalagh, 1977), and Kiarostami’s landmark first feature, The Report (1978). 64 After spending four years in censorship dormancy, Mehrjui’s The Cycle was finally released and screened in Tehran starting in March 1977 at Atlan‑ tic Cinema (for five weeks) and Diana Cinema (for six weeks). With the excep‑ tion of its special screening at the Shiraz Festival of Culture and Art, this was its first commercial public exhibition. The film was also screened by the Paris and Berlin film festivals in 1977 and 1978, respectively, winning awards and praise, and it was subsequently exhibited commercially in France, Britain, and the United States. International audiences used to hearing about the re‑ pressive regime of the Shah were surprised at the candor with which the film exposed and criticized corruption in the medical system. According to Meh‑ rjui, the film’s preproduction research and production had opened not only his own eyes to the serious problems of corruption in the country’s blood-­ supply system but also those of public health officials. The film’s release, like‑ wise, had a real social impact, as it led to the establishment of a national blood bank, the Blood Transfusion Organization of Iran, whose director was highly supportive of the film and of its wide exhibition (Omid 1995/1374:736).65 Naderi’s Elegy, made for Khaneh Film‑e Iran, like many of the director’s films focused primarily on a single protagonist and followed his downward spiral in an alienated urban setting. Naderi’s realism is generally less bound by a tight, dialogue-­driven narrative than that of other realists, such as Kimiai and Mehrjui, for many of his films have moments in which his observational camera is freed from the exigencies of the plot, revealing the director’s back‑ ground in photography. In this, Naderi’s style resembles Kiarostami’s. Elegy allowed him to indulge in those digressional observational moments while relating the story of Nasrollah (Manuchehr Ahmadi), who is released from prison after eight years. Having lost his only family member, his mother, he makes a meager living by roaming the streets with his air gun and a card‑ board target, offering passersby a chance to shoot at the target for a small fee. His life improves when he becomes a close friend of a curtain reciter and a luti who derives his livelihood from his dancing monkey. Yet these friend‑ ships eventually come to sad ends, as the luti dies of an illness and the curtain reciter marries a lottery ticket seller, leaving the protagonist with the lonely monkey. Despondent, one day he releases the monkey in the outskirts of town and wanders off aimlessly in the city. Naderi’s precise observations produce a realistic, critical, and ultimately sad portrait of life on the margins of Ira‑ 426

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nian modernity, one countering the official rosy picture. It is perhaps this un‑ varnished portrayal that relegated the film to the closed cycle of production-­ censorship-­archiving for three years. Its release and screening in April 1978 by Capri Cinema in Tehran coincided with Mehrjui’s The Cycle, but it did not do as well as the latter film in terms of box-­office sales. Kimiai’s Journey of Stone (1978) was prescient about anti-­Shah feeling. It fo‑ cuses on a cruel landlord and miller. Villagers bent on escaping his monopoly carve out a huge millstone, but the landlord prevents them from construct‑ ing a mill, until a wanderer (Said Rad) enters the village. Like a gunslinger entering a besieged Western town, he galvanizes the residents to rise. They roll the gigantic stone wheel down to the village, in the process destroying the landlord. Despite this sudden jolt of production, the crumbling of industry infra‑ structures continued. The downward spiral of production caused a major chain of twelve Tehran movie houses to fold in 1977 due to a lack of films. 66 While bemoaning the demise of this chain cinema, the industry trade maga‑ zine, Setareh Sinema (Movie Star), reported that only one movie had received an exhibition permit in March 1976, compared to fourteen in the same month the previous year. Two months later, the daily newspaper Kayhan listed fifteen reasons for the film industry’s deep crisis: —­ The steep rise in the price of raw film stock —­ The steep rise in laboratory costs for film processing —­ The steep rise in salaries and fees at all levels of the industry —­ The steep rise in the cost of movie advertising —­ An interest rate of 28 percent that money-­lenders charged movie investors —­ The unauthorized exhibition of movies in small provincial towns (whose income was neither reported nor passed on to producers) —­ A tax of 20 percent that municipalities levied against the gross income of each film —­ The payment of an additional 5 percent of the gross to the mca —­ Censorship of the movies —­ A refusal of the first-­grade movie houses in Tehran to show Iranian movies —­ A lack of cooperation between mca officials and the film industry —­ A lack of cooperation between other government ministries and departments and the film industry —­ Insufficient support of the domestic industry in its competition with low-­ quality but popular foreign movies

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—­ nirt’s competition with film exhibitors by broadcasting feature movies —­ A lack of appropriate regulations governing the distribution of movies Alarmed by these and other press reports of the crisis, the sole authorized government-­r un political party, Rastakhiz, convened a series of meetings with industry representatives, professional film unions, and relevant government officials to examine the industry’s problems and to devise solutions. The re‑ sult was a letter written in May 1977 to the mca chief Pahlbod, in which the case studies of two movies, Khachikian’s Anxiety (Ezterab, 1974) and Hasan Mohammadzadeh’s Middlemen (Vasetehha, 1974), were presented to highlight the film industry’s dire financial situation. Citing production figures, box-­ office earnings in Tehran and in the provinces, and various taxes, the letter proved that both movies, and by extrapolation the entire film industry, were losing money. In the end, it offered sixteen itemized solutions to the crisis. The minister of culture and art and the officials in charge of film produc‑ tion and supervision at the mca discussed the solutions and presented their own plans for the speedy improvement of the industry to the Rastakhiz Party. These measures were as follows: —­ Reduce the municipality taxes on domestic films if their first-­r un box-­ office earning is less than their production cost. —­ Recognize cinema as an industry, so that filmmakers may be entitled to the benefits of that designation. —­ Facilitate the export and sale of Iranian movies. —­ Tie the exhibition of foreign movies to the exhibition of domestic movies. —­ Force the exhibitors of Iranian movies to pay the movie producers their percentage from each night’s box office. —­ Allow the exhibitors of Iranian movies to charge as little for movie tickets as the market bears. —­ Reduce the cost of advertising domestic movies on television and in the press. —­ Limit the exhibition of low-­quality foreign movies or increase their taxes. —­ Increase the number of low-­price movie houses and create an equitable rating system for them. —­ Create a company to import all the raw stock for the industry at a reduced bulk rate. —­ Increase cooperation among public and private-­sector organizations for the purpose of producing movies. —­ Combine small or incomplete studios into larger entities and offer them financial and technical support to increase the quality of their films. 428

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—­ Carefully investigate the membership of various unions to make sure that only appropriate people are involved in and represent them. —­ Engage the appropriate film industry union representatives in governmental decisions pertaining to the industry. —­ Train new cadres of young people for the industry either at home or through scholarships for study abroad. While laudable, these measures were only recommendations. They do show the extent of the problems and the types of solutions that might have been implemented—­solutions that other cinemas had implemented in their com‑ petition with global Hollywood. The mca plan remained silent about one ma‑ jor issue: what to do about prior censorship, postproduction censorship, and the outright banning of films. In subsequent Rastakhiz Party meetings with industry representatives and government officials, more proposals were dis‑ cussed. A Plan for Expanding Iranian Cinema was announced and a commit‑ tee was appointed to draft an implementation proposal for the prime minister. Yet both the proposed plan and the implementation plan ran into internecine warfare among various industry factions, pitting, for example, the represen‑ tatives of domestic film producers and directors against those of film exhibi‑ tors and importers. The result was that the ball was kicked back into the mca’s court, where the ministry tried to implement some of its own recommenda‑ tions. So much for a planned, national solution, engineered by the official party, to fix the film industry’s problems.67 The crisis continued to deepen: in 1977 forty-­six films were made; in 1978 sixteen. Misaqiyeh Film Studio, a major commercial production center, closed its doors in 1977 after its last movie, The Fish Die on Land (Mahiha dar Khak Mimirand, 1977), directed by Amir Mojahed and Mohammad Delju, was re‑ leased to a lukewarm reception. It was not the only studio to go under. By the last year of the Pahlavi regime, of fifty-­eight film studios only sixteen re‑ mained in operation. Once ticket prices were raised, the Americans lifted their export embargo of Iran, helping flood the market with what looked soft-core to Iranians. In early 1978, just before the revolution, the daily newspaper Kayhan reported that of Tehran’s 120 moviehouses, 67 were showing “seksi” or “sexploitation” movies, most from Italy and the United States. The mca announced in Febru‑ ary 1978 that it would ban such movies.68 Similar plans had been announced previously to little effect. In the meantime, exhibitors clamored with mca officials and with the Tehran mayor’s office for further hikes in ticket prices, for lowering their taxes, and for accountability in their insurance plans, claiming

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that insurers did not honor their contracts. This latter issue would soon turn out to be important as movie houses became targets. Film importers joined the exhibitors, who set a deadline to go on strike. In fact, Kimiai’s Journey of Stone was exhibited under the threat of strike; Kimiai forced the exhibition, as he and his composer-­producer, Esfandiar Monfaredzadeh, needed to pay their investors. After a one-­day strike, on 2 August 1978, about 108 Tehran movie houses went on strike. A few exhibitors broke ranks to honor their contracts with film owners and distributors. More negotiations took place with the mca chief, one lasting eight hours. In the meantime, political demonstrations and strikes in various industries became militant and the security forces violent. Soon revo‑ lutionaries would begin to burn down movie houses. During the previous two years of turmoil, the government had countered by promoting an image of Iran as an “island of stability” in a turbulent re‑ gion. It had done so by creating a massive, modern, centralized broadcasting system and a state-­supported culture industry at home, and by creating what I described in chapter 2 as reinforcing concentric circles of influences that bounded the Shah and his regime to the United States, involving presidents, businessmen, public relations firms, congressional leaders, and media report‑ ers. An outspoken writer, Ali Asghar Hadj Seyyed Javadi, charged that in its effort to so represent Iran, the government was presenting by means of mov‑ ies and television “every dissident as a spy, a saboteur, a drug addict or a car‑ rier of arms and explosives” (1978:10–11). Cinéastes, such as Kimiai in his The Deer, manipulated such representations in reverse by coding drug addicts and gun-­toting criminals as freedom-­fighting guerrillas. Noted writers and mem‑ bers of the Writers Association of Iran met with Hoveyda to complain about widespread censorship of the arts, and they wrote “open letters” to him pro‑ testing the “total cultural sterility” afflicting the land, all to no avail. 69 A year later, on 15 June 1978, Saedi in a news conference in New York City spoke to the censorship issue. He stated, “Despite the claims of government officials, harsh and stifling censorship in today’s Iran has destroyed all ut‑ terances of opinions and all freedoms of the pen and of expression. The ex‑ traordinary domination and supervision of the state does not only control the peoples’ daily existence and routines but also aims to control the way each of them thinks, even in their moments of privacy.” He complained that censor‑ ship had become internalized, forbidding even the use of common words. He went on: “The multicentered censorship apparatus [the Octopus] is playing it smart. On the one hand, it destroys and, on the other hand, it constructs. It prevents all independent thinking, and it promotes its own authorized think‑ 430

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ing. It bans all original cultural works but constructs a false and useless cul‑ ture for the people. It stops an artistic film, but allows the influx of valueless commercial foreign movies into the country, or it commissions highly expen‑ sive propaganda and phony films” (quoted in Mojabi 1999/1378:167–70).70

Difficult times were ahead. Film production dropped steadily. Martial law was declared and the military took over nirt. Many filmmakers stayed to bat‑ tle the pressures, threats, and persecutions, but with the transformation of the revolution from one based on liberation from the Pahlavi regime to one channeled into forming an Islamist government intolerant both of alterna‑ tive worldviews and of Pahlavi-­era entertainers, a massive exodus of media personnel occurred, as well as an unprecedented silencing of those who re‑ mained. These are documented in volume 3 of the current work, as are the new structures, regulations, and procedures that transformed Pahlavi cinema into an Islamicate cinema. Some of the new-­wave directors who stayed filmed documentary footage of the unfolding revolution, and after a period of forced hiatus, they began to make feature films under the Islamic Republic, contributing to the rise of a new auteur cinema, to which I devote a chapter in volume 4. These in‑ cluded Mehrjui, Kiarostami, Kimiai, Hatami, Naderi, Shirdel, Sinai, Baizai, and Taqvai. In the meantime, new talented filmmakers arose after the revolu‑ tion, putting Iranian cinema on the world map of dynamic cinemas. Some of these new filmmakers were women, to whom I devote another chapter in vol‑ ume 4. Those who went into exile belonged to both the commercial and new-­ wave cinemas, and some of them made films with mixed results in the dias‑ pora: Naderi, Shahid Saless, Sayyad, Tayyab, Allamehzadeh, Aslani, Taheri, Golestan, and Nabili. All of these, and many more newcomers who turned to filmmaking abroad, collectively created an Iranian diaspora cinema—­an ac‑ cented cinema—­t he subject of yet another chapter in that volume. Finally, a deepening sociopolitical struggle over the cultural invasion of Iran and ultimately over the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic emerged be‑ ginning in the 1990s, fanned by a new form of public diplomacy, chiefly be‑ tween Iran, the United States, and the Iranians in diaspora. The antagonis‑ tic parties recruited all sorts of mutual domestic, diasporic, and international film, television, radio, and Internet media and formations to serve this diplo‑ macy and to encourage or to fight fundamental reforms in Iran. A chapter in volume 3 examines this new crucial development.

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no t es

Chapter 1  International Haggling 1 Initially called Anjoman‑e Ravabet‑e Iran va Emrika (Iran-America Relations Society), it was later renamed Anjoman‑e Iran va Emrika (Iran-America So­ ciety). 2 Nilla Cram Cook, “Memorandum of Understanding: Department of Stateowi,” 14 January 1945, microfilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 1. This memo‑ randum, addressed to the U.S. embassy in Tehran, is marked “secret.” 3 Eventually, this responsibility was given solely to the Interior Ministry, which held it until the creation of the Ministry of Culture and Art in 1965. 4 Cook’s contract with the State Department made her responsible for deliver‑ ing the following services: scheduling, supervising, and operating all screen‑ ings of films for the noncommercial film circuit for which the U.S. embassy supplied documentary films. She was to supervise the maintenance of all the film equipment under the control of the embassy and on loan to the film cir‑ cuit. She also provided periodic written reports about both the state of nefc films and equipment and the state of commercial movies shown in Iran. See “Enclosing Contract between Embassy and Miss Nilla Cram Cook for Opera‑ tion of Non-commercial Film Circuit in Iran,” cuscf–Iran, 1945–1949, writ‑ ten by A. Ward, Counselor of the Embassy to the Secretary of State, letter no, 137, 5 November 1945, microfilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 1. 5 “Famous Iowans: Cook, Nilla Cram,” Des Moines Register, http://www .desmoinesregister.com (last accessed 5 January 2011). 6 Nilla Cram Cook, “Memorandum of Understanding: Department of Stateowi,” 15 February 1945, cuscf–Iran, 1945–1949, microfilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 1. 7 “Davenport girl, Nila [sic] Cook, Once Follower of Gandhi,” Des Moines Reg‑ ister, 31 January 1948. The Eleanor Fitzgerald papers at the archives of the

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, contain letters Nilla Cook wrote in the 1930s from India to Fitzgerald (her stepmother), as well as a few photographs of Cook as a child and as a young woman in a Greek toga. See M. Eleanor Fitzgerald (1877–1955) Papers, 1915–1974, Manuscript Collection 13, Univer‑ sity of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. 8 This contention offers another reason, beside weariness of war movies, for the requests made to the British Council by the British consuls of Ahvaz, Ker‑ manshah, Hamadan, and Tabriz to send more documentaries for their local film shows. 9 On the politics and aesthetics of live comic forestage skits (called pishpardeh‑ khani), see the book-length interview with Entezami (Golmakani 1997:22–28). 10 Mohammad Ali Zarandi, a ballet dancer trained in Cook’s studio, was a key actor in the feature film Love Bandit (Rahzan‑e Eshq, also known as Rahzan, dir. Siamak Yasami, 1955) (Tahaminejad 1986/1365:39). 11 T. Cuyler Young, “Memorandum: The Non-theatrical Film Circuit in Iran,” at‑ tached to letter no. 8, 11 June 1945, written by Wallace Murray, American am‑ bassador in Tehran, to the secretary of state. “Transmitting Memorandum on the Non-theatrical Film Circuit in Iran,” cuscf–Iran, 1945–1949, microfilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 2–3. 12 Ibid., 2. 13 Ibid., 3–4. 14 Western Electrical Research Products Inc. (erpi), was a subsidiary of Western Electric and at&t, set up in 1927 to commercialize equipment for the field of sound motion pictures. A collection of sound films for the classroom were re‑ leased under erpi Films. In the 1940s, Encyclopaedia Britannica Films pur‑ chased the erpi Films collection and distributed it.   The American embassy film library holdings were divided into several cat‑ egories. One list contained the following number of films in each category: five sports films, twelve military training films, five agricultural films, two in‑ dustry films, two social films, one music film, and six Technicolor films (the latter were presumably entertainment films). 15 The Iran-America Society continued to show individual films as well as to sponsor important festivals of American movies throughout the reign of Mo‑ hammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. 16 T. Cuyler Young, “Memorandum of Understanding: Department of State— Office of War Information, October 1944,” cuscf–Iran, 1945–1949, letter no. 220 to the secretary of state, 1 March 1945, microfilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 4. 17 Nilla Cram Cook, “Bearing of Present Raw Film Shortage on Future of Amer‑ ican Film Interests,” 6 July 1945, cuscf–Iran, 1945–1949, dispatch no. 33 to the U.S. embassy in Tehran, microfilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 1. 18 Nilla Cram Cook, “Sixteen Millimeter Provincial Film Circuit,” 1 June 1945, cuscf–Iran, 1945–1949, addendum no. 3 to T. Cuyler Young, microfilm pub‑ lication M 1202, roll 11, 1.

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19 J. Sanderson, “The British Council,” Shiraz, 12 December 1944, British Pub‑ lic Record Office, bw 49/1, 1943–1946, 2. 20 Cook, “Bearing of Present Raw Film Shortage on Future of American Film Interests,” 1. 21 The concept of foreign service and consular staff as a lighthouse comes from the writings of the British diplomat Sir Arnold Wilson, who during the Consti‑ tutional Revolution meticulously surveyed and mapped southern Iran for con‑ structing oil pipelines, oil refineries, ports, and railways. He states: “The F.O. [Foreign Office] house their people fairly well and have a very fine lot of men in the Consular Service, whose job it is to be lighthouses—islands of British culture, British ideas, and English civilization, in the choppy seas of foreign waters” (Wilson 1941:198). 22 “British Cultural Propaganda,” report by C. G. Bidwell, British Public Record Office, bw 49/1, 1943–1946, 7–9. 23 T. Cuyler Young, “British Documentary Films in Iran,” cuscf–Iran, 1945– 1949, letter no. 10, 18 June 1945, microfilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 1. The letter, marked “confidential,” has an attachment that contains the titles of all thirty-six films. 24 “Anglo-Persian Institute—Tehran, Annual Report 1946–47,” British Public Record Office, bw 49/4, 1945–1948, Tehran Report. 25 “Anglo-Persian Institute, Isfahan,” British Public Record Office, bw 49/1, 1943–1946. According to this report, my father, Aboutorab Naficy, was among the physicians attending this film screening on 17 March 1944. 26 “Anglo-Persian Institute—Tehran, Annual Report 1947–48,” Tehran Report, 6. The films shown in 1946–47, all nonfictional, included: Mr. English at Home (silent film with running live commentary), How the Telephone Works, The Hidden Kingdom, Coastal Village, Morning Paper, and Good Sport. 27 In the month of Aban (coinciding with November–December), for example, talks were given by Mr. P. Gibbs alongside screenings of the documentary films North East Corner and Royal Mile; by L. S. Pearson alongside The History of the English Language; and by Miss. F. Gladman alongside Around the Village Green, Fast Trains to Town, and London Transport. 28 “Anglo-Persian Institute—Tehran, Report for June 23–July 23, 1947,” British Public Record Office, bw 49/4, 1947–1948, 1–2. 29 “Anglo-Persian Institute—Tehran, Annual Report 1946–47,” British Public Record Office, bw 49/4, 1947–1948, 3–4. 30 “Anglo-Persian Institute—Tehran, Report for April 1947,” British Public Rec­ ord Office, bw 49/4, 1947–1948, 3. 31 When in 1946 the Democratic Republic of Azarbaijan was created, the theater group of the Iran-Soviet Cultural Relations Society was transferred to form the republic’s state theater (Ranjbar Fakhri 2004/1383:523) 32 See Soviet Propaganda Film—Iran, Tabriz 1945–46, YouTube, http://www .youtube.com (last accessed 3 January 2011). 33 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Appendix L to sr-6 Iran, Soviet Activities

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in Iran,” 7 April 1948, 39. Microfiche 1981-18a, Declassified Documents Ref‑ erence System (Arlington, Va.: Carrollton, 1981). The society’s members in ad‑ dition to Galishian, Naficy, Alavi, and Keshavarz were Amir Alam, Aliasghar Hekmat, Abdol Samad Kambakhsh, Karim Keshavarz, Rafi’ Amin, and Nabil Samii. 34 Ibid., 37. 35 The cinemas that specialized in showing Soviet newsreels and other war films were Setareh, Homa, Jahan, Tehran, and Rowshan (Omid 1995/1374:103). The managers of the Mayak Cinema in Tehran were Grisha Zakhari and his wife, a Jewish émigré couple from Georgia. After the apparent kidnapping of Gri‑ sha and his exile to Siberia, his wife, known as Mrs. Mayak, ran the cinema. The manager of Tehran Cinema was also a Georgian Jewish émigré named Gugan, who used to show German films but with the war switched to Soviet movies. There were other Tehran movie houses that showed Soviet movies: Rey Cinema, Berelian (Diamond) Cinema, and Atlas Cinema (Tahaminejad 2004a:38–42). 36 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Appendix L to sr-6 Iran, Soviet Activities in Iran,” 7 April 1948, 41. Microfiche 1981-18a. Declassified Documents Ref‑ erence System (Arlington, Va.: Carrollton, 1981). 37 “Gozaresh‑e Nakhostin Ejra‑ye Sorud‑e Ey Iran, Ey Marz‑e Porgohar. . . . ,” Marz‑e Porgohar (Los Angeles), January 2001, 30–31. For more on the contrast between the popular and the official anthems, see Mir Alinaqi 2005:25, 27. 38 U.S. Department of State, Office of Intelligence Research, “Factors Significant for or Conditioning the Effectiveness of a U.S. Information Program,” 28 Jan‑ uary 1949, oir Report no. 4849, 92. Microfiche 1980-201b. Declassified Doc‑ uments Reference System (Arlington, Va.: Carrollton, 1980). 39 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, “Appendix L to sr-6 Iran, Soviet Activities in Iran,” 7 April 1948, 38. Microfiche 1981-18a. Declassified Documents Ref‑ erence System (Arlington, Va.: Carrollton, 1981). 40 According to his wife, after his arrest, Savak searched the entire Tabli Film premises and forced its board of directors to remove Bijan Jazani as a ceo, replace him with two trusted Savak dependents, and change the company name to Pakhsh Iran. Mihan received 450,000 tomans as compensation (Ja‑ zani 1999/1378:84). 41 Young, “Memorandum: The Non-theatrical Film Circuit in Iran,” 5. 42 In October 1945, responding to Cook’s letter of 14 July complaining of film shortage in Iran, the Department of State told its embassy in Tehran that the Foreign Economic Administration had revised the country group classifica‑ tion of Iran, thus henceforth allowing Iranian importers to import films pur‑ chased for use in Iran without any objections. cuscf–Iran, 1945–1949, letter no. 159 by Byrnes Acheson addressed to Tehran embassy, 18 October 1945, mi‑ crofilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 1. 43 Cook, “Bearing of Present Raw Film Shortage on Future of American Film Interests,” 1.

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4 Young, “Memorandum: The Non-theatrical Film Circuit in Iran,” 7. 4 45 Nilla Cram Cook, “Importance of Supplementary 35mm. Equipment to Suc‑ cess of Long-Term Non-theatrical Motion Picture Programs,” cuscf–Iran, 1945–1949, addendum no. 2 to the U.S. embassy in Tehran, 20 May 1945, mi‑ crofilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 1. 46 Cook, “Bearing of Present Raw Film Shortage on Future of American Film Interests,” 2. 47 Ibid. 48 Cook, “Memorandum of Understanding: Department of State-owi,” 14 Janu‑ ary 1945, 3. 49 Ibid., 1. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Cook, “Memorandum of Understanding: Department of State-owi,” 15 Feb‑ ruary 1945, 1. The former Soviet-U.S. alliance during the Second World War created curious situations after it turned into Cold War enmity. In 1951, for ex‑ ample, after the start of the Cold War, the pro-Soviet American feature films Days of Glory and North Star were still being screened in Tabriz, causing a flurry of correspondence between Iranian and U.S. officials. The controversy had two sources, commercial and political. The films were being screened without a proper license from their American distributor, rko Radio Pictures, and such pro-Soviet films counteracted the effectiveness of the U.S. embassy’s anti-­Soviet information program. See, among other dispatches, no. 2226, 30 March 1951, cuscf–Iran, 1950–1954, reel 41, 1. 53 Cook, “Memorandum of Understanding: Department of State-owi,” 14 Janu‑ ary 1945, 1–2. 54 There were so many wartime newsreels about Iran that in my filmography on Western films about Iran, Iran Media Index (Naficy 1984c), I broke them into topical categories (sections 116–24): American forces in Iran; British forces in Iran; Germans in Iran; Soviet forces in Iran; lend-lease: delivery and unload‑ ing; lend-lease: assembly and repair; lend-lease: transportation to Russia; Pol‑ ish refugees in Iran; the Tehran Conference; and the oil industry during the Second World War. The Tehran Conference footage shows primarily the Al‑ lied leaders and their staff. The young and inexperienced Shah is given short shrift not only by the Allied leaders but also by the newsreel cameramen, as he generally does not appear in the films I have seen; if he does appear, he is often filmed from the side or from a distance. 55 Mohammad Tahaminejad describes the contents of some of these newsreels, which were found in the Iranian archives (2004a). It is not certain whether these were shown in Iran at the time or not, but it is likely. 56 For the items these newsreels showed on Iran, see Naficy 1984c. 57 For the newsreel, see The Occupation of Iran, Gaumont British News, 25 Sep‑ tember 1941, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBKGl7Q-l14 (last accessed 6 January 2011).

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58 Shahrokh was the son of a prominent Zoroastrian member of the Majles, Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh, who for thirty years capably represented the Zoro­astrian community and headed the Majles’s audit office, printing press, and library. According to his niece, Nesta Ramazani, Bahram Shahrokh was “an eloquent and persuasive speaker” who was married to a German woman, and he was not only the voice-over narrator of German newsreels but also the announcer of Nazi radio’s Persian-language service. Despite his appar‑ ently pro-Nazi sympathies, rumors circulated about his being a double agent, working simultaneously for the Allied and Axis powers during the Second World War (Ramazani 2002:256). The historian Ervand Abrahamian states that Arbab Keikhosrow Shahrokh, who had been a loyal supporter of Reza Shah since 1921, was gunned down in Tehran streets in 1941 because of his son’s broadcast of a series of pro-Nazi speeches “against his father’s wishes” (1982:163). However, both the date and the manner of death that Abrahamian gives appear to be incorrect, as Shahrokh’s memoir, edited by his grandson, notes that the father died on 2 July 1940, without mentioning any violence (Shahrokh and Writer 1994:189). 59 As Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi states in his autobiography, Mission for My Country, at the time many German commercial concerns had representa‑ tives in Iran, Iranians were studying in Germany, German professors were teaching in Iran, and Germany had donated a large collection of pro-Nazi and other books to Iran’s National Library. In addition, Germany broadcast hours of Persian-language radio propaganda to Iran, distributed news and propa‑ ganda material to the Iranian press through its official news agency, and es‑ tablished propaganda centers in Iranian cities (Pahlavi 1960:66). The famous German diplomat-spy in Iran, Wilhelm Wassmuss, also known as “the Ger‑ man Lawrence,” was so popular with Iranians, particularly because of his role in fomenting an anti-British uprising among the Tangestan tribesmen, that a blue-eyed, blond puppet character was added in his honor to the puppet shows that traditionally performed in coffeehouses (Behnam 2000/1379:38). 60 Another aioc film, Rig 20 (1952), about a fierce fire, the first in the company’s fifty-year history of drilling, won the first prize at the Venice Film Festival. 61 White House, Operations Coordinating Board, “Detailed Development of Ma‑ jor Actions Related to Iran, nsc 5504,” 16 June 1955. Microfiche 1993-243, 1. Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.: Carrollton, 1993). 62 White House, Operations Coordinating Board, “Memorandum for the Board Assistants—Subject: Internal Security in Iran,” 18 June 1957. Microfiche 1989-96, 4. Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.: Car‑ rollton, 1989). 63 While Schiller focused on the collective operations of diverse U.S. govern‑ ment and private-sector economic, cultural, philanthropic, and media organi‑ zations abroad (Schiller 1989, 1971), the journalist Michael Mooney centered on their impact on the home front (1980).

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64 Point IV (Asl‑e Chahar) was a program of economic and technical assistance by the United States. 65 White House, Operations Coordinating Board, 22 May 1957. Microfiche 198996, 11. Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.: Carrollton, 1989). 66 That these efforts at enhancing the Shah’s prestige were bearing some fruit is indicated by the following anecdote. The Persian service of the Voice of Amer‑ ica (voa) offered to its listeners a copy of a calendar that bore pictures of the Shah’s trips abroad. This resulted in the largest single mail response that voa had ever received in one month, over fifteen thousand letters. White House, Operations Coordinating Board, “Detailed Development of Major Actions Re‑ lated to Iran, nsc 5504,” 2. 67 For a full filmography of Iran News newsreels, see Issari 1979, 1989; and Na­ ficy 1984c. 68 For a list of titles and contents of Iran-Washington Report and American Sketches newsreels, see Naficy 1984c:218–20. 69 U.S. Department of State, Office of Intelligence Research, “Factors Significant for or Conditioning the Effectiveness of a U.S. Information Program,” 101. 70 One of these was Family of Man (1957), a twenty-six-minute film about the fa‑ mous photography exhibition that Edward Steichen created for the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955, which traveled to sixty-eight countries. Three-hundred prints of this film, which promoted a kind of pro-American “sentimental humanism,” were struck in twenty-two languages, including Persian, and distributed worldwide by the usia. For more on this film and the exhibition, see Sandeen 1995. 71 “Combined Annual Motion Picture Report,” by Robert M. Carr, Counselor for Economic Affairs, U.S. embassy Tehran, no. 230, 18 August 1951, cuscf–Iran, 1950–1954, reel 41, 14. 72 Letter from C. Edward Wells, public affairs officer, American Embassy, Teh‑ ran, no. 299, 31 October 1950, cuscf–Iran, 1950–1954, reel 41, 4. 73 These specialists did not all hail from Syracuse University but were selected from many universities and from among freelance and Hollywood produc‑ tion people. For their names, specializations, and affiliations, see Issari 1989: 342–43. 74 In the 1920s and the 1930s the French also had created a system of mobile film units, which showed educational films on sanitation and public health in France and in its various African colonies. For these, see Bloom 2000–2001. 75 The team also made thirty-eight filmstrips on health, agricultural, and edu‑ cational issues, which were extensively used by Point IV technical assistance programs and shown throughout the country by the mobile film units. 76 These films are North of Iran (Shomal‑e Iran, 1951), Tehran, Capital of Our Country (Tehran, Paitakht‑e Keshvar‑e ma, 1953), From the Land of Medes to the Safavid Capital (Az Sarzamin‑e Mad ta Paietakht‑e Salatin‑e Safavieh, 1954),

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From the Edge of the Desert to the Cradle of Achaemenian King of Kings (Az Kenar‑e Kavir ta Mahd‑e Shahanshahan‑e Hakhamaneshi, 1954), and Abadan, Land of Black Gold (Abadan, Sarzamin‑e Talai‑e Siah, 1953). John Humphreys directed the series, Viruir Babayan and M. A. Issari wrote and narrated it, and the archaeologist Mohammad Taqi Mostafavi, a member of the Fine Arts Ad‑ ministration, provided technical assistance. 7 7 On usia/usis productions, see, in addition to Issari 1989, Omid 1995/1374: 849–51. 78 Letter by C. Edward Wells, Public Affairs Officer, U.S. embassy, Tehran, no. 271, 27 August 1951, cuscf–Iran, 1950–1954, reel 41, 2. 79 For Issari’s eyewitness account of film screenings in Iranian villages and au‑ dience reactions, see Issari and Paul 1977:chap. 5. 80 The American embassy in Tehran reported that before the usis mobile units were operational, there was only one privately owned Iranian 16mm mobile film unit in the country. Abdolhosain Rezai operated this unit, which showed “very old” feature films to rural audiences near Mashhad. “Combined Annual Motion Picture Report,” by Robert M. Carr, Counselor for Economic Affairs, U.S. embassy Tehran, no. 230, 18 August 1951, cuscf–Iran, 1950–1954, reel 41, 12. 81 Quoted in letter from Ernest H. Fisk, 24 July 1951, cuscf–Iran, 1950–1954, reel 41, 1. 82 H. S. Sepanlou and Elaine D. Smith, “Combined Annual Motion Picture Re‑ port,” 18 August 1951, cuscf–Iran, 1950–1954, reel 41, 8. 83 “Sal‑e Avval‑e Komak‑e Asl‑e Chaharom‑e Truman Beh Payan Rasid,” Ettela’at‑e Mahaneh no. 57 (November 1952/Azar 1331), 25. 84 Letter by Walter C. McPherson, assistant public affairs officer, U.S. Embassy, Tehran, no. 631, 9 November 1951, cuscf–Iran, 1950–1954, reel 41, 1. 85 White House, Operations Coordinating Board, “Detailed Development of Ma‑ jor Actions Related to Iran, nsc 5504,” 2. 86 U.S. Department of State, “Attachment to ica Report,” 22 June 1956. Micro‑ fiche 1992-87. Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.: Car­ roll­ton, 1992). 87 The State Department film Strategic Iran (1952), which emphasizes the strate‑ gic importance of Iran and of Iranian oil to the West, is a reverse military film, in the sense that it was not designed to educate the Iranian armed forces but the U.S. forces, which might have had to fight to defend that strategic asset. 88 White House, Operations Coordinating Board, “Progress Report of the ocb on Nuclear Energy Projects Related to Information Programs (including nsc 5431/1),” 1 December 1954. Microfiche 1990-158, 5. Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.: Carrollton, 1990). 89 U.S. Department of State, “International Cooperation Administration Evalu‑ ation of Iran Program,” 15 August 1957. Microfiche 1994-18, 168. Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.: Carrollton, 1994).

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90 Ibid., 169. 91 Ibid., 170. 92 Ibid., 168.

Chapter 2  The Statist Documentary Cinema 1 “Development of Tourist Traffic to Persia,” 8 June 1934, written by the United States chargé d’affaires, William H. Hornibrook, Records of the Department of State relating to Internal Affairs of Iran, 1930–1939 (Washington: National Ar‑ chives Microfilm Publication, 1981), M 1202, roll 5, target 2, letter no. 100, 2. 2 Nilla Cram Cook, “Memorandum of Understanding: Department of Stateowi,” 15 February 1945, cuscf–Iran, 1945–1949, microfilm publication M 1202, roll 11, 2. 3 M. A. Issari kindly put at my disposal a copy of this letter of 21 July 1965 that Bennett had written to him. 4 He codirected the following films with David Oliver: Azarbaijan Day (1952), about the defeat of the procommunist autonomous movement in Azarbaijan; Education Corps in Iran (Sepah‑e Danesh, ca. 1954–64), about the activities of the knowledge corps’ men and women in spreading literacy in villages; Tribal Schools (Madares‑e Ashayeri, 1964), about the tent schools among the Qashqai tribes; Toward a Modern Iran (1963), on the progress made in Iran during the 1950s; Peace Corps in Iran (Sepah‑e Solh dar Iran, 1965), about the activities of the American Peace Corps volunteers; and CARE (ca. 1954–65), on the care organization’s activities.   In addition, he directed the following films himself: Civic Action (1965), on the civic programs of the Imperial Iranian Army; CENTO Helps the Farmers (ca. 1954–65), on the agricultural developments achieved through the cento programs; Earthquake Village (1963), on Point IV aid to victims of an earth‑ quake in Iran; Fulbright in Iran (1965), on the Fulbright program in Iran; and Exercise Delaware (1965), about the military exercises in the Khuzestan region between the U.S. and Iranian military, which involved airlifting the troops of the American Strategic Air Command from Fort Campbell to Iran. This latter activity was included as part of the U.S. armed forces newsreel The Big Pic‑ ture. See Issari 1989:182–83; Naficy 1984c:190–204. 5 Like Mozaffar al-Din Shah Qajar, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi liked to watch movies in his palace. Empress Soraya reports in her memoirs that al‑ most every night the royal family gathered at the Ekhtesasi Palace, where af‑ ter dinner they watched movies lent to them by one of the commercial exhibi‑ tors or by the “House of America” (Esfandiary 1964:60). After Soraya and the Shah divorced and she moved to Europe, Soraya appeared in Three Faces of a Woman (I Tre Volti, 1965), a tripartite movie directed by three directors. Soraya appeared as herself in Michelangelo Antonioni’s segment, “Il Provino.” She also appeared in Robert Day’s She (1965). Her official website reports that when the Shah heard that she was to appear in a movie, he was “so infuriated

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that the whole world would now [see] his ex-wife in romantic scenes that he ordered all the copies be bought and destroyed.” Soraya kept one print, which was sold at the auction of her estate in Paris in May 2002 alongside all her personal effects. See her website, http://www.bakhtiarifamily.com/soraya.php (last accessed 7 January 2011). 6 The film may have been withdrawn from public screenings in its time, but decades later it appears to have assumed the status of historical document. The Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History in Los Angeles screened A Mother for Shamsi during its annual conference-cum-film festival twice in 1999 and 2001, among other films made by Iranian Jewish filmmakers. See the center’s website, http://www.cijoh.org (last accessed 7 January 2011). 7 “Complaints of Iranian Photographic Equipment Dealers and Motion Picture Theater Owners,” no. 215, American Embassy, Tehran, cuscf–Iran, 1950– 1954, reel 41, 1. 8 Ibid., 170–71. Among the confidential State Department central files are let‑ ters indicating rivalry between the State Department/usis and American film companies, in particular Paramount Studios, over filming Point IV materials in Iran. For an example, see letter no. 2191, 28 March 1951, cuscf–Iran, 1950– 1954, reel 41. 9 ntsc stands for National Television Standard Committee. 10 secam stands for Système Électronique pour Couleur avec Mémoire. 11 The deputy director of nirt, Kambiz Mahmoudi, reported to unesco that in 1977 only 30 percent of nirt’s First Network programming consisted of for‑ eign serials and feature movies (1977:13). This is lower than the 40 percent that Elihu Katz and Dov Shinar reported in 1974. The reason might be that the former work covers only First Network’s programming, while the latter in‑ cludes the entire output of nirt. 12 Mehrdad Pahlbod headed the mca from 1964 to 1978 and Reza Ghotbi nirt from 1971 to 1978. Both left Iran just before the revolution of 1978–79 re‑ moved the Shah; they both live in the United States. 13 In addition to producing the regular newsreels, the mca cameramen filmed many news films of the Shah’s activities, in particular his travels abroad, often accompanied by the Empress. Released under the general title of Royal Travel to . . . , each film covered an official trip to one country, including to the fol‑ lowing listed in the mca’s film archives in the mid-1970s: Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Ethiopia, France, Germany, India, Kuwait, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Romania, Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, Thai‑ land, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. Most were filmed in color, with sound, and they were stand-alone films that ranged in length from ten minutes (Royal Travel to Kuwait) to forty minutes (Royal Travel to India). 14 The films that in the early 1980s were denied certification included The Kill‑ ing Ground (1979), an Emmy-winning abc News documentary critical of toxic waste disposal in the United States; Susanna Styron’s and Pam Jones’s In Our Own Backyards (1981), which was critical of the health hazards posed

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by uranium mining and milling operations; and Nick Broomfield’s and Joan Churchill’s critically acclaimed Soldier Girls (1981), which showed some of the negative sides of the basic training of women recruits. Filmed during the Ira‑ nian hostage crisis, the last film follows a platoon of fifty women recruits un‑ dergoing fourteen weeks of basic combat training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. In one scene the platoon is shown running and chanting the following: “I want to go to Iran, I want to kill an Iranian; pillage, plunder, burn, rape.” 15 The titles of the films are indicative of the issues and the lessons to be learned: Said Learns about Asphyxiation, Said Learns about Gardens, Said Learns about Microbes, Said Learns about the Penalty of Neglect, Said Learns to Dress a Simple Wound, Said Learns to Read, Said Learns to Read a Map, Said Learns to Save a Life, Said Makes a Reading Book, and Said Prepares a Meal at School. All of these are dated 1951–59. For titles of all the usia and usis/Tehran films, see Issari 1989:345–47. 16 This was an episode of a four-part film about marriage traditions in four coun‑ tries, Iran, India, Italy (Sicily), and Canada. Allan Wargon is credited as the di‑ rector of the entire documentary, which the website of the National Film Board of Canada (nfb) quaintly describes as a film that “contrasts the arranged mar‑ riages of Eastern cultures with the free choice of marriage partners in our Western culture” (http://www.nfb.ca; last accessed 7 January 2011). Golestan had cast Farrokhzad as a lead in Why the Sea Has Become Stormy (Chera Darya Tufani Shodeh, 1961), based on a short story by Sadeq Chubak, but the film was never completed. 17 Another notable film about disability is Ahmad Faruqi Qajar’s A View of An‑ other World . . . (Didi az Doniya‑ye Digar, 1966), filmed inside the Razi Insane Asylum, which partly focused on mentally ill artists. 18 For more on the voice-over narration’s adaptation of biblical passages, see Tahaminejad 2002:56–61. 19 “Jalseh‑ye Jenjali‑ye Kanun‑e Film: Vaqti Jozamiha Mikhaband,” Zanan, ­August–September 1995/Mordar-Shahrivar 1374, 38. This issue of the maga‑ zine contains a dossier on The House in Black (21–43), containing several ar‑ ticles that span the film’s thirty-three-year history. 20 Karim Emami, “Recollections and Afterthoughts,” Forugh Farrokhzad’s Open Forum website, http://www.forughfarrokhzad.org (last accessed 7 Jan‑ uary 2011). 21 Farrokhzad lost the custody of her biological son, Kamyar, to her husband, Parviz Shapur, when they divorced. Ironically, Hossein followed her model and adopted a boy in Germany, Roman Toulany, who appears with him in some scenes in Moon Sun Flower Game. 22 On 4–6 May 2007 an unprecedented retrospective of Golestan Film Work‑ shop’s films in Chicago screened most of Golestan’s documentaries and his two features films (including Farrokhzad’s The House Is Black), and in a sym‑ posium at Northwestern University, Tom Gunning and I analyzed the films. Called “Ebrahim Golestan: Lion of Iranian Cinema,” this multisited event

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was cosponsored by various institutions and key individuals within them: Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa (Columbia College), Hamid Naficy (Northwestern Uni‑ versity), Will Schmenner (Northwestern University Block Cinema), Barbara Scharres (Gene Siskel Film Center), and Julia Gibbs (University of Chicago Film Center). Golestan appeared at all the events and for the first time in four decades interacted with the audience after the screenings and the symposium. 23 For extensive readings on her cinematic career, including the screenplay of The House Is Black, see Haidari 1998/1377. Also see Naficy 1978/1357:341–44. Several films have been made about Farrokhzad, an unusual homage to a poet, which testifies to her stature and deep impact on Iranian intellectuals. Naser Taqvai wrote and directed for nirt a nineteen-minute black-and-white 16mm documentary, Forugh Farrokhzad 1313–1345 (1967), which contains shots of her grave and her burial, as well as eulogies offered by her friends and an interview with her. For the text of the film’s voice-over narration, see Haidari 1990a/1369:150–51. The list of nirt film archive holdings before the revolution, which I have in my possession, also contains a thirty-eight-minute 16mm film, Forugh Farrokhzad, whose director is not identified. It was broad‑ cast as part of the Today’s Literature (Adab‑e Emruz) program. Toward the end of the century, Naser Safarian made a trilogy of sixty-minute documentaries about Farrokhzad. The first film, Green Cypress (Sarv‑e Sabz, 2000), explores her brief life and biography, while the second, Cup of Soul (Jam‑e Jan, 2000), deals with her poetry and includes interviews with many poets, writers, and intellectuals who read and interpret her work, including the often referenced but rarely seen interview that the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci con‑ ducted with Farrokhzad. The third film, The Pinnacle of the Wave (Owj‑e Mowj, 2000), is devoted to her films. That Farrokhzad continues to be controversial nearly four decades after her death is borne out by the obstacles that Safar‑ ian says “various groups” put in his way. He reported in January 2003 that a group of “unidentified” people beat his film crew and absconded with the foot‑ age for the first film (its negative?), which they then destroyed. And now that the films are complete, he faces many difficulties in promoting and distribut‑ ing them (Asheghaneh, January 2003/Dey 1381, 13). 24 With the international renown of Iranian cinema in the 1990s, this film was resubtitled and put into commercial circulation in the United States by Facets Multi-media. However, the effort to subtitle the film for screening at the New York Film Festival in 1997 during the Iranian cinema retrospective became controversial, as Golestan objected to the new translations of the film’s voiceover soundtrack. The Iranian film scholar and filmmaker Jamsheed Akrami, who collaborated on the subtitling with the festival director Richard Peña, dis‑ covered that there was more than one version of The House Is Black. The origi‑ nal, which had been in circulation for decades, appeared to differ from the ver‑ sion that the New York festival had obtained for screening from the Locarno Film Festival. Specifically, Akrami identified in the latter eight voice-over pas‑ sages that the “original” did not contain, although it kept all the visuals of the

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original (the transcripts from the original had been published before). Some of these missing passages were complete sentences, while others were parts of sentences, which had been removed with precision. He conjectured that they could not have been torn accidentally through overuse or misuse of the film print in the projector. Without knowing the film’s production history and the provenance of the release print, it was impossible to determine the reasons for their removal. The director, Farrokhzad, was now dead and the producer, Golestan, apparently uncooperative. Akrami published his findings in the journal Mahnameh‑ye Sinemai‑ye Film, at the end of which, referring to one of the director’s poems and claiming that “it is the voice that remains,” he lamented that “Farrokhzad’s voice has not remained on earlier versions of the film.” Then, he asked, “Why?” Months later, in a vitriolic eight-page letter published in the same periodical, Golestan offered his answer: he denied that another version of the film existed and instead accused Peña, Akrami, and others of incompetence, ignorance, evasiveness, underhandedness, and un‑ ethical behavior in their translation of the original narration and subtitling. His barrage of nitpicking and outlandish charges did not shed light on the mystery of the missing passages, and they motivated further printed letters from the accused, which clarified only some of the issues (Akrami 1997/1376, 1999/1377; Golestan 1998; Peña 1999/1377). The mystery surrounding the existence of a second film version and the identity of whoever had edited out passages from the film’s soundtrack and for what reason remained, even af‑ ter a new book-length interview with Golestan was published a few years later (Jahed 2005/1384). Golestan’s controlling and protective attitude regarding his life, work, legacy, image, and the films of Farrokhzad produced by his company fed the mystery instead of solving it. For a screening of The House Is Black at the Northwestern University symposium in May 2007, we rented the copy of the film that Golestan had given to the Cinémathèque Française, which bore French subtitles. We handed out a printed English text of the sub‑ titles to spectators, which Golestan himself had prepared. Golestan had an‑ other public row, this time with Rose Issa, the cocurator of a major festival of Iranian art at the Barbican in London (Golestan 2001a, 2001b, and Issa 2001). 25 An unsubstantiated rumor circulated in the 1970s that the mca had spon‑ sored a film about the lepers, The House Is Bright, (Khaneh Roshan Ast), to counter Farrokhzad’s The House Is Black. 26 Golestan had broken his leg just before shooting began, causing him to ask Stuart Legg at the National Film Board of Canada for help in finding someone to assist in shooting the film. This resulted in the hiring of Pendry, who had worked with the famed Dutch documentarian Bert Haanstra. 27 This is less the case with the English voice-over by Thomas McLeod, a Cana‑ dian diplomat in Tehran whom Golestan recruited, which is less flowery and mostly descriptive. 28 For the narration of Golestan’s major documentaries, see Golestan 1998. 29 The four other Gaffary documentaries on the oil industry are Fars Island

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(Jazireh‑ye Fars, 1960), Life of Oil (Zendegi‑ye Naft, 1962), Oil Communication (Mokhaberat‑e Nafti, 1963), and Pars Sea (Darya‑ye Pars, 1966). 30 In 2004, Farzin Rezaeian directed a forty-minute film, Persepolis Recreated, in which he lavishly restored the Persepolis Palace. In reworking Rah­nema’s Persepolis in the age of computer graphics and digital visualization, it uses the real-life images of the present remains of this vast, about twenty-five hundredyear-old ceremonial palace as the foundation on which to simulate and visu‑ alize both what the palace would have looked like in its glory days and what it looked like when it was sacked and burned by Alexander two hundred years later. In its lavish three-dimensional visualization of the palace, its people, and the objects within it (down to massive carpets), the film seems to pay homage to the Shah’s efforts in 1971 to recreate the Persepolis as an Iranian ur-national chronotope. That the production of Persepolis Recreated in Iran and its screening in the United States was supported in large part by the Iranian government points to the power of this chronotope in forming the national consciousness of Iranians, regardless of the regime or government in power. Even a regime, such as the Islamic Republic, which at first opposed any secu‑ lar or non-Islamic icons and monuments, could not evade its hold. For more on this film and the accompanying book, see the website of the private pro‑ duction company Sunrise Films, http://www.sunrisefilmco.com. 31 “Zaban‑e Sinema; Tasvir va Tadvin,” Hamshahri, 6 July 1998/15 Tir 1377. 32 This film, made for nirt, is not readily available, although its complete screenplay is (see Tahaminejad 1993/1372). The film was banned soon after its completion and was screened only twice in public, once at an Azad Cinema gathering, the other at the First Festival of Student Films at Isfahan Univer‑ sity (Naficy 2005b). 33 That this acceptance was not widespread is indicated by the fact that Rezai himself was physically attacked and injured by a religious fanatic, who be‑ lieved that filming sacred sites desecrates them, causing Rezai to leave Iran for a permanent exile in the United States. 34 Tayyab continued to make films about Iranian religions in the 1990s, as well as undertaking major photography and filming assignments about Iranian landscapes and deserts. Among these is the film The Soul of the Mother Earth Complained (Va Angah Ravan‑e Jahan Geleh Kard, 1993), about the desert city of Yazd and the Zoroastrian religion, particularly the Zoroastrians’ annual pilgrimage to the shrine of Pir‑e Sabz, or Chak Chak, in the mountains near Yazd, which he transforms into an aesthetic experience. According to Tayyab, the film’s title comes from a moving Zoroastrian hymn: “The soul of mother earth complained / Why did you create me? / Who transformed me into a phys‑ ical body? Anger, darkness, injustice, violence, and envy / Have conquered the world / I have no friend and no mentor other than you.” See “Afsun‑e Kavir,” Hamshahri (7 July 1998 / 16 Tir 1377). 35 The playwright and social critic Gholamhosain Saedi, who was trained as a psychiatrist, wrote a valuable book, the first, about zar ceremonies, Ahl‑e Hava

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(Tehran, 1966), after conducting research in the Persian Gulf. Since then, the anthropologist Shahnaz Nadjmabadi has conducted further research on zar in that area (Nadjmabadi 2004). 36 For more on Taqvai’s life and works, see Haidari 1990a/1369 and Baharlu 2003/1382. 37 Sympathetic Western filmmakers also made films of these exotic Qaderi prac‑ tices. The most notable is Brian Moser’s Dervishes of Kurdestan (1973), which avoids the generalizations and prejudices typical of ethnographic films about Iran, treating his subjects with understanding, candor, and respect. Made for the Disappearing World series of British Granada Television, it presents an ac‑ count of the daily life and religious beliefs of Qaderi dervishes in the village of Bayveh, near the Iraqi border. It details the routine activities of the der‑ vishes as they work in the fields, herd sheep, and attend a wedding, explaining their life in their own voice-over narration. All along, the film provides am‑ ple evidence of the dervishes’ devotion to their master, who can purportedly protect them from harm when they perform their extraordinary ceremonies, which are similar to those in Tabari’s A Few Moments with Qaderi Dervishes. These include a man attached to a 220-volt electric current, passing the cur‑ rent through his body and turning on a light bulb that is placed on his head, without any wires and socket, and several children licking a red-hot iron spat‑ ula without apparent injury. At the same time that the film acknowledges the comfort and security the dervishes derive from their devotion to their master, it shows his economic exploitation of them. 38 After the anti-Shah revolution of 1979, several fictional films dealt with the tribes and their way of life. Like their prerevolution Iranian and Western coun‑ terparts, these films tended to romanticize the tribes, view them through a fil‑ ter of nostalgia, and posit them as simpler and more authentic than modern citizens. Among the best of these are Masud Jafari Jozani’s In the Wind’s Eye (Dar Cheshm‑e Tond‑e Bad, 1988) and Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh (1995). 39 Western filmmakers’ attempts at updating Grass and at making their versions of tribal migration resulted in better and more sophisticated documentaries. The British filmmaker Anthony Howarth’s visually beautiful and evocative People of the Wind (1978) presents the daily activities of the Babadi subtribe of the Bakhtiari, cooking, milking, herding, migrating, participating in a wed‑ ding, shopping, and trading. In an internal monologue, Jafar Qoli, the tribal chief, decries the government’s efforts at settling the migrating tribes, declar‑ ing that, “migration is what we are.” He also talks about tribal rivalry, feuds, and the manner in which reconciliation and coexistence are achieved. The British actor James Mason delivers the chief’s thoughts and speech in Eng‑ lish, while the Iranian British singer and writer Shusha Guppy sings several famous tribal ballads on the soundtrack in Persian. Had it not been released simultaneously with the revolution, the film would likely have energized a new wave of tourism to Iran. 40 By the mid-1970s rapid modernization had intensified the impulse toward

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salvage ethnography by means of photography and cinematography. Sasan Veissi, the director of Telfilm, told me that he was embarking on an encyclo‑ pedic project to document on film all the plants in the Iranian plateau (Naficy 1976/1355). 41 Other films the center produced were Evolution of Higher Education in the Pahlavi Era (Tahavvol‑e Amuzesh‑e Ali dar Asr‑e Pahlavi, 1975), directed by Azad Homayunnezhad, and What Is the Free University? (Daneshgah‑e Azad‑e Iran Chist?, 1976), directed by Javad Hashtroudian. The center also commis‑ sioned the new-wave filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui and the writer Hushang Golshiri to collaborate in the production of up to four thirty-minute historical documentaries on the Ashkanian Empire. Each man received sixty thousand tomans to start the research phase, but a tightening university budget and other exigencies forced the project into dormancy. The center’s photographers accompanied the university geologists on field trips, where they documented their travels and produced scientific photographs. Audiovisual specialists at the center produced audiotapes and slide tapes for various courses. Several educational films were slated for dubbing into Persian. Finally, the center es‑ tablished the Little Cinema (Sinemay‑e Kuchak), a film club that screened new and classic films in collaboration with the mca, nirt, the cidcya, and Sinema‑ye Azad. 42 My narrative about their travel and filming is based on the documentary film The Omidvar Brothers (Baradaran‑e Omidvar, 1981), directed by Bijan Mir‑ baqeri for the Center for the Development of Documentary and Experimental Film (Markaz‑e Gostaresh‑e Sinema‑ye Mostanad va Tajrebi), which contains interviews with Issa and a visit with him to the brothers’ childhood home in Tehran, as well as film clips of their adventures. It is also based on the broth‑ ers’ published travelogue and films (Omidvar 2001/1380). 43 Interestingly, in Mecca the Omidvars met the construction mogul Ben Ladin, the “Rockefeller of Saudi Arabia,” presumably the father of the infamous mas‑ termind of the airplane bombing of the Pentagon and the New York’s twin towers on 11 September 2001, Osama bin Laden, who feasted them on a great meal in his tent, including on sheep’s eyes (Omidvar 2001:430). 4 4 See http://www.omidvar-brothers.com/En/Dastavard.aspx?type=mu. 45 “Avvalin Jahangardan‑e Iran,” bbc Persian Service, 24 December 2004, http:// www.bbc.co.uk. 46 “Didari az Qaleh‑ye Shahr‑e No,” Khandaniha, 30 June 1959 / 8 Tir 1338, 15. 47 Women’s Prison is available on YouTube, Women’s Prison (Prison de Femmes)– Kamran Shirdel, http://www.youtube.com (last accessed 8 January 2011). 48 “Shadi‑ye Yek Filmsaz,” Ayandegan, 22 April 1979 / 2 Ordibehesht 1358, 12. 49 Fortress: The Red Light District is available on YouTube, although the Eng‑ lish title that is attached to it is “Women’s Quarter,” http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=1dyG9q7hnJ8&feature=player_embedded# (last accessed 23 January 2011). 50 Such a use of the classroom as a site to dramatize the contradictions of Ira‑

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nian society between the ideal and the real, and between the official and the popular, is probably picked up from Farrokhzad’s film The House Is Black. 51 See the film on YouTube under the title “Teheran Is the Capital of Iran,” http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_Uc4BoKKSo&feature=related (last accessed 23 January 2011). 52 Mehrjui’s The School We Went to plays with the contrast between the inside and the outside in Iranian culture most directly. The film centers on the Shams‑e Afaq School for boys in Tehran, where a student named Kaveh Ka‑ mali organizes a group of youngsters to stage a play. The assistant principal forbids it, setting the stage for the film’s major confrontation. With the autho‑ rization of a sympathetic teacher of literature, Kaveh writes a critical article in the school’s newspaper, which compares the front yards and backyards of the school. The front yard, he declares, is filled with apparent justice and friend‑ ship, while the backyard, hidden from outsiders, is filled with lies and injus‑ tice—no freedom is allowed there. This essay causes the confiscation of the paper, which in turn motivates students and instructors alike to take action. The ethical center of the film is the school librarian who sympathizes with the students. With much humor, a sharp eye for the children’s worldview, and a keen ear for their dialogue, Mehrjui explores the nature of repressive author‑ ity through the eyes of youngsters who prove to be adept at deconstructing the hypocritical world of the adults who say one thing and do another. The origi‑ nal title of the film, The Backyard of the Adl‑e Afaq School (Hayat‑e Poshtie‑ye Madreseh‑ye Adl‑e Afaq) pointed to this difference between back and front, out‑ side and inside, private and public. Mehrjui was forced to change it before the work’s release, eight years later. 53 The narrator of the Persian-language version is Golestan himself and that of the English-language version is Brian Spooner, who later became a professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. 54 In the postscreening session about the film in Chicago, Golestan related that in an audience with the Shah, the latter asked him to make the film on the crown jewels, the “pride of our country, which shows the power and greatness of our past,” ending with a question: “Isn’t that so?” (Nah intor?), to which Golestan in his usual frankness had replied, “No.” When the Shah asked him why, he responded that “these precious stones were probably gifts of lazy re‑ gional governors or of foreign leaders. There is no glory in them.” Sensing the Shah’s displeasure with his answer, he quickly recovered: “But they became a pride of our country when your father designated them as guarantors of our currency.” At this the Shah beamed broadly, asking him to repeat it to Em‑ press Farah. When Golestan demurred, the Shah himself did so. 55 The only versions of the film that Golestan approves of are the one he de‑ posited at the Cinémathèque Française in Paris (with French subtitles) and the English version that University of Chicago Film Center owns. The Ci‑ némathèque Française has many of Golestan’s documentaries and fiction films. In the English-speaking world, the University of Chicago Film Center

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is the only place that owns 35mm prints of his films: his features, Mudbrick and Mirror and The Secret of the Treasures of the Jenni Valley, and four of his ­documentaries—Wave, Coral, and Rock; The Hills of Marlik; Iran’s Crown Jew‑ els; and A Fire. 56 Instead of extolling the achievements of the Shah’s grandiose syncretic West‑ ernization policy, The Temptation of Power (La Tentation de la Puissance, 1976), made by the French filmmakers Gordian Troeller, Marie Defarrage, and Fran‑ çois Partant, critically examines the policy’s social, economic, and cultural toll on society. It paints a realistic and grim picture of Iran, graphically and methodically analyzing the disastrous social and economic consequences of such programs as the White Revolution, land reform, comprador industrial‑ ization, foreign-dominated agribusiness, massive military spending, military adventurism, and widespread political repression. It concludes that the Shah’s top-down revolution was not as benign as its title implies, that it was not made for the people, or even in spite of them, but against them, and it presciently anticipates the bottom-up revolution that would topple the Shah in just two years. The film was not shown in Iran, but it was widely circulated among op‑ positional and leftist Iranians and Westerners abroad in commercial cinemas, universities, churches, and schools. 57 The inclusion of the train story in children’s textbooks as a model of civic re‑ sponsibility is reminiscent of another story printed in textbooks of the 1950s in Iran about the Dutch boy Hans Brinker, the hero of Haarlem, who saved his town by inserting his finger into a dike. 58 The Night It Rained is available on YouTube, The Night It Rained—Kamran Shirdel, http://www.youtube.com (last accessed 8 January 2011). 59 Although delivered in English, the narration is overly poetic and flowery, as though it was translated from the ornate and wordy narrations of institutional lyrical realist films. 60 In Tehran, the film shows the glittering lights and streets, including the movie palaces Miami Cinema and Universal Cinema, with their giant multi‑ colored, neon-lit marquees flashing. 61 This is the version I saw at the Ministry of Culture and Art in Tehran in 1977. 62 In 2002, Mehrdad Azarmi donated a copy of the Oscar-nominated The Lovers’ Wind to the ucla Film and Television Archive. I curated the screening of a pristine copy of this film owned by ucla for the twentieth annual celebration of Iranian films at ucla in February 2011. 63 Nearly a decade later, Lamorisse’s widow, Claude, and his son, Pascal, reed‑ ited the film based on Lamorisse’s notes and released it as Le Vent des Amour­ eux (1978), which was nominated for the best documentary Oscar in 1979. The full film and its preamble are available online at http://ubu.com/film/ lamorisse_vent.html and http://ubu.com/film/lamorisse_postscript.html, re‑ spectively (last accessed 8 January 2011). 64 The Greek-French filmmaker Agnès Varda made an epistolary film, One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (L’un Chante, l’Autre Pas, 1976), involving a love between an

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Iranian man and a French woman. While making that feature in Iran, Varda filmed a short movie in Isfahan (six minutes long, shot inside the Shah/Imam Mosque), Plaisir d’Amour en Iran (1976), which features the two lovers from One Sings, the Other Doesn’t in an affectionate tribute to what the film suggests is the sensual design of Iranian mosques, visual arts, and poetry that echo the lovers’ “voluptuous emotions.” The film is available on YouTube, http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=m3uNpwoA_7U. 65 The discovery in Egyptian deserts in 2009 of what are thought to be the re‑ mains of the Persian army of Cambyses II, a force fifty thousand strong said to have drowned in a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 bc, moves Lovers’ Wind from the realm of cinematic fantasy and mythology to reality and history. It is said that a hot khamsin wind was the cause of the soldiers’ demise (Lorenzi 2009). This archeological finding about the ruinous effects of evil winds from Africa also gives credence to the claims of another documentary, Taqvai’s The Sorcerer’s Wind (1970). 66 For an illustrated and supportive account of this event, see: National Geo‑ graphic, March 1968, 301–20. 67 For an analytic report on the politics and aesthetics of the musical portions of the Shiraz festival, see Gluck 2007. 68 Among these were Houshang Shafti’s Iran’s Industrial Achievements (Pish­ raftha‑ye Sanati‑ye Iran, 1971), Pars Film Studio’s Life History of the Shah (Tarikhcheh‑ye Zendegani‑ye Shah, 1971), Esmail Kushan’s A Day in the Life of the Shah (Yek Ruz az Zendegi‑ye Shah, 1970), Homayun Purmand’s Shahyad Monument (Shahyad‑e Aryamehr, 1971), Mostafa Farzaneh’s Cyrus the Great (Kurosh‑e Kabir, 1971), and nirt’s Inheritors of Cyrus the Great (Mirasdaran‑e Kurosh‑e Kabir, 1972). 69 For a French take on the event, see Persepolis, a twenty-eight-minute program aired by the French network ortf, in which the journalist Léon Zitrone re‑ ports. It is available online through the Iranian at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YU_ug4smbKg&feature=player_embedded. 70 It must be noted that for the occasion of the twenty-five hundredth anniver‑ sary, many valuable as well as propagandistic, literary, artistic, historical, eth‑ nographic, archaeological, and linguistic studies were commissioned. For extensive primary documents about these projects and various events, see Ha­­ didi 1998/1377. For a critical account from an eyewitness to the anniversary celebrations, see Ball 1982:434–36. For a sympathetic account by one of the ar‑ chitects of the event, Abdolreza Ansari, see Kadivar 2002. 71 The first seven programs were titled Origins and Evidence, Heroes of History, Guardians of the Sacred Flame, The Shadow of God on Earth, The Descent of the Hordes, Half the World, and The Predators. 72 Anthony Mayer, letter to the editor, Iranian Studies 14, nos. 1–2 (1981), 132. Mayer wrote this letter in response to my article, which had suggested the series pulled its punches in dealing with the Shah as its sponsor (see Naficy 1979b).

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73 For more on the series, see Mayer 1977 and the entire June 1977 issue of American Cinematographer, which is devoted to Crossroads of Civilization. 74 Resistance 5, no. 3 (1977), 15–17. 75 Ibid., 15. 76 The three films, which ranged between forty-eight and fifty-two minutes, were filmed on 16mm. They are: Beginning of Human Achievements to Elamite Cities (100,000–640 B.C.), Life on the Iranian Plateau (3,000–800 B.C.), and The First World Empire (800–530 B.C.). According to Issari, after the demise of the Ancient Iran project, all the footage and research materials collected for the series were sent back to nirt via Manuchehr Asgarinasab, who worked for the network. 7 7 Individual programs were titled Overview, Oil, Mobility; Home Life; Pam and Jim; Changing Culture; and Television. 78 For a detailed analysis of the Western news reporting bias in favor of the Shah and his government up to and beyond the revolution of 1978–79, see Ad‑ ams and Heyl 1981; Said 1981; Naficy 1984c; Beeman 1984; Tehranian 1984; Mowlana 1984; Kamalipour 1995; Dorman and Farhang 1987; Dorman and Omeed 1979; Dorman and Omeed 1978; and Naficy 1995b.

Chapter 3  Commercial Cinema’s Evolution 1 Abgushti film refers to abgusht, a stew made of lamb, potatoes, chickpeas, tomato, and other vegetables, which is eaten with bread. It is a favorite meal of the tough guys and the lower classes and is featured frequently in stew‑ pot and tough-guy movies. Bandtonbani film literally means “pajama pants–­ drawstring” film, referring to poorly written, low-quality comedies. Roya­ pardaz, literally meaning “dream weaving,” refers to the tendency of these films to engage in escapist entertainment full of fantasy, comedy, tears, mu‑ sic, and dance. 2 For a further discussion of the various labels for and the views of film crit‑ ics about the commercial cinema and filmfarsi movies, in addition to sources cited in the text, see Moazezinia 1999/1378:7–10; Abdi 1999/1378; and Taha‑ minejad 1986/1365. See also “Miz‑e Gerd‑e Sinema‑ye Iran, 1,” Farhang O’ Zendegi, no. 18 (1975/1345), 59, 67, in which such filmmakers and the critics Houshang Kavusi, Jalal Sattari, Khosrow Sinai, and Farrokh Gaffary discuss the causes of “sleazy” films. 3 For more about Kavusi’s history in film criticism, production, and in the es‑ tablishment of film magazines and cinema clubs, see the following interview with him, “Nasl‑e Avval‑e Montaqedin: Yek Rishehyabi,” Daftarha‑ye Sinema, no. 3 (1981/1959), 25–33. 4 The next three provinces in terms of ticket-sale volume were Khorasan, with 643,642,074 rials, Isfahan with 122,970,760 rials, and Gilan with 68,266,875 rials. 5 “Banu Delkash,” Khandaniha, no. 82 (1953/1332), 25. 6 The anthropologist Michael Fischer, who lived in Yazd in the early 1970s,

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states that the city had had three cinemas but that one had gone out of busi‑ ness. Of the remaining two, a Zoroastrian and a Baha’i owned Sohail Cinema, “but a Muslim manager fronted for them,” and Mahtab Cinema was Muslim owned. According to Fischer, hostility to the cinema was deep and strong, as the first movie house, which a Zoroastrian had opened in the 1930s, had been closed long ago and the Yazdis claimed that the patrons of the contemporary movie houses were not long-time Yazdis but outsiders who had moved in for work (2004:159). 7 Such wild variations point not only to real changes but also to possible mis‑ takes and to the unreliability of government statistics, which should be con‑ sulted with some caution. 8 Variety, 29 October 1952, n.p. 9 A good example is Siamak Yasami’s Top Dog (Avval Haikal, 1960), which was very popular and emerged as the top box-office earner of the year. 10 These local production figures do not include the number of feature films, which may have been produced but denied an exhibition permit or whose exhibition permits were delayed (sometimes for years) due to government censorship. 11 The original Persian is this: “Yeki sakht masjed, yeki sinema. / Yeki gasht gomrah, yeki Rahnema. / To khod dideh‑ye aql ra bazkon, / Tafavot behbin az koja ta koja” (Fischer 2004:159). 12 I thank Houchang Chehabi for letting me know about this travelogue. 13 “Yek No’ Zendegi: Majera‑ye Aks va Aksforushi,” Khandaniha, no. 1958/1337, 14–17. 14 After a while, the first two partners, disappointed with the film business, emi‑ grated to other countries (Omid 1995/1374:241–42). 15 “Iran Executes Six Men on Brothel Charges,” Los Angeles Times, 14 July 1979. 16 One by the name of Mr. Fatal lent money at the high rate of 15–18 percent, for which he paid a heavy price, when after the revolution his business was expro‑ priated while he was in London (Omid 1995/1374:352). 17 For boureka films, see Shohat 1989; Loshitzky 2001; and Yosef 2004. 18 For a list of commercial film studios established between the Second World War and 1965, see Issari 1989:257–63. 19 Setareh Sinema magazine reported that by 1959, sixty-three studios and film production centers were operating in Iran (Omid 1995/1374:321. The accuracy of Iranian statistics is always somewhat suspect. 20 Jamal Omid contends that Kushan directed some of Pars Film Studio’s movies but gave the credit to others as payment or in gratitude (1995/1374:239–40). 21 Mehdi Misaqiyeh, too, while running Misaqiyeh Studio, produced, directed, and wrote some of the studio’s films and served as the president of the film in‑ dustry union, fighting both to bring down the skyrocketing fees of the movie stars and to streamline film censorship (Baharlu 2000e/1379:267–70). 22 Among the movies that deal with motorcyclist film runners is Masud Kimiai’s Reza the Biker (Reza Motori, 1970), starring Behrouz Vossoughi.

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23 For more on film clubs and film archives, see Omid 1995/1374:947–63, and Baharlu 2000c/1379. For more on Gaffary’s various filmic activities, see Gaffary 1996. 24 In other cities, the local representatives of these national institutions formed screen committees that issued permits to local exhibitors. 25 The classification of the movie houses evolved over the years. As noted earlier, in the 1970s movie houses were classified as “distinguished” (momtaz), “first class,” “second class,” and “third class.” 26 For the full text of these regulations, comprising nine chapters and seventyseven articles, see Shoai 1975/1354:5–15. 27 In Parviz Khatibi’s Governor for a Day (Hakem‑e Yek Ruzeh, 1952), a Qajar-era peasant is mistaken for a governor, as a result of which he is able to rule for a few days until he is discovered to be an imposter. Although dealing with a bygone royalty, which the Pahlavis themselves had deposed, the movie was banned because it had “insulted” the institution of monarchy (Khatibi 1994: 115–16).

Chapter 4  Family Melodramas and Comedies 1 Culturally significant popular genre films are sometimes named after popu‑ lar national or regional foods, such as boureka films in Israel, masala films in India, and abgushti films in Iran, not to mention regional, national, or autho‑ rial reworkings of other nation’s genres, such as the western, which has pro‑ duced the following subgenres: the burrito western (Robert Rodriguez’s west‑ erns), the spaghetti western, the curry western, the kraut western, the dim sum western (John Woo’s westerns), or the sashimi Western (the animated tv series Samurai Jack, for example). 2 Such multifunctionality was one reason for his claim that “Iranian cinema owes me a debt, for most commercial film directors are following my foot‑ steps by imitating my stories and even borrowing my dialogues, songs, and dance ideas” (quoted in Moazezinia 1999/1378:14). 3 For Fardin’s full filmography, see Rahimipur 2000. 4 With the onset of the anti-Shah revolution, Khatibi escaped Iran in 1977 for exile in the United States, where he continued to produce comic songs and television shows with assistance from his wife, Zinat Khatibi, such as MullaEating Story (Qeseh‑ye Molla Khorun, 1981), which made broad fun of, and cri‑ tiqued, the Islamic Republic. He also worked with exile radio programs, such as Familiar Voice (Seda‑ye Ashena) (Khatibi 1994:212–13). 5 For examples of this situation, see Omid 1995/1374:235–38. 6 “Mohammad-Ali Fardin, 70, Iranian Film Star,” New York Times, 11 April 2000. 7 See, for example, Mahnameh‑ye Sinemai‑ye Film, April 2000/Ordibehesht 1379, and Gozaresh‑e Film, April 2000/Farvardin 1379. For more on the contribution of wrestlers and other sportsmen to Iranian cinema, see Fathi 1997/1376.

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8 Jamshid Farrahi filmed silent footage of Vossoughi’s tumultuous appearance in Tabriz, footage that Vossoughi owns (Zeraati 2004:154–61). 9 Although Shahla received credit for producing the film, a friend of her hus‑ band, Esmail Riahi, supplied most of the funds. Since he did not wish his name to appear on-screen as a producer, Shahla took that credit (Arian 2003/ 1382). 10 When in June she was called before the court for publishing her autobiogra‑ phy, several wearers of velvet hats and rich toughs who were fans of Mahvash “escorted” her to the courthouse with their documents proving house owner‑ ship to bail her out. The court levied a bail of 4,000 tomans, which she paid. See “Mahvash Yaqi Shodeh Ast,” Tehran Mossavar, June 1960/Khordad 1339, n.p. 11 According to Erik Nakjavani, she chose her moniker Delkash based on the name of a well-known Persian musical mode called gusheh‑ye delkash (2000:3). 12 The ballad begins with these words: “What have you seen from my cruel and unreliable heart” (cheh didi az man‑e sangin del‑e bietebar akhar). 13 “Ghazalha va Dash Mashdiha‑ye Latif‑e Radio,” Khandaniha, no. 1959/1337, 29. 14 Also, see http://googoosh.com (last accessed 10 January 2011). 15 Mohammad Reza Shah’s wives were variously called “queen,” “empress,” and “Shahbanu.” For more on their star status, see Sadr 2003/1381:142–46. 16 Some critics noted the similarity of this presentational acting style in com‑ mercial movies, particularly in comedies, to that in the traditional ruhozi the‑ ater, but generally as a condemnation, not as style. See the criticism of Henrik Estepanian’s Returnee from Paris (Az Paris Bargashteh, 1960) in Post‑e ­Tehran‑e Sinemai, no. 139 (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:333). The movie was banned be‑ cause of nudity. 17 Baikimanverdi was very prolific. In 1968, he appeared in eight commercial movies and in 1977 in nine. Overall, he acted in about 120 features. Like other major movie stars, he also produced, directed, and wrote screenplays for films. One year after the Iranian revolution, in 1980, he emigrated to West Germany and later to the United States, where he led an apparently sad and ordinary life in exile, resorting to his precinema profession, driving taxicabs and trucks. He died in Arizona in 2003. 18 On adaptation in Iranian cinema, see Moradi 1989/1368. 19 For some data on this relationship, see Abedini 1990/1369:chap. 2. 20 The original negatives of many of Pars Film Studio movies, filmed on flam‑ mable nitrate stock, were destroyed in a fire that burned down the studio, in‑ cluding Tempest of Life, Prisoner of the Emir, Spring Variety, Disgraced, Mother, and Drunk with Love (Omid 1995/1374:220). 21 For a detailed analysis of the formal features of Persian popular romances, see Hanaway 1970: 226–87 and Hanaway 1971a. 22 “Oral tradition” is not a homogeneous category. Finnegan’s three criteria of production, transmission, and performance are meant to assess what is “oral”

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in a given oral tradition. In some cases, the composition uses writing but the performance is oral. In other cases—as that of Homer according to Parry (1987) and Lord (1976)—the composition, transmission, and performance are all oral and, in fact, all the same: this is the concept of “composition in perfor‑ mance.” For more on this, refer to the works of John Miles Foley (1988). 23 For more on Naqqali, see Mahjoub 2003/1382:vol. 2. 24 Naghmeh Samini, too, studied the thematic similarities of commercial mov‑ ies with newspaper serials and “social romances” (1999/1378). 25 The story behind Soodi Sharifi’s “Movie Set” (figure 38) germane to this con‑ text is this: Struck by how to convey in her photography the overwhelming crowdedness and contradictoriness of Iranian society during her return vis‑ its from the United States, she discovered in the Persian miniatures’ multi‑ perspectivalism an expressive vehicle. She combined the original manuscript painting The Portrait of Khosrow Is Shown to Shirin, by Muhammadi in the Khamseh of Nezami created for Shah Tahmasp I (1539–43), with the photo‑ graphs of contemporary Iranians filming a scene in the same poses as char‑ acters in that painting. She cut and pasted these photos into their appropri‑ ate places in the scanned original using Photoshop. She thus transformed a scene of pictorial presentation, where a messenger is showing a portrait of the forlorn lover Khosrow to his beloved Shirin, into a film production set and a scene of hybridized representation. She removed certain figures, changed aspects of other figures (the figure in center showing Khosrow’s portrait to Shirin is now holding a film clapperboard), replaced others with production personnel (applying makeup, setting up camera, someone on cell phone), or added entirely new contemporary figures (man watering the garden with a hose). Mediated and indirect glancing is overdetermined in both Muhamma‑ di’s original manuscript painting and Sharifi’s movie set photograph, and in the latter women dominate: Three women in the set are looking through cam‑ era lenses. Other men and women watch and listen to each other in person or by means of technology (cell phones). Incongruous multiple visual motifs and planes are observable simultaneously. The modern and the ancient, real and idealized, and photographed and painted are wonderfully juxtaposed. 26 For themes in literary works, see Taslimi 2004/1383 and Abedini 1990/1369. 27 Princess Ashraf’s telling reaction to the social import of Baluch, expressed to its star Behrouz Vossoughi, was this: “The things that you show in the movie are in the news as well. The news tells you that Baluchestan is without water and grass, and that the life of the people there is bad. There is no rea‑ son for you, too, to go to these places and to make films about them” (Zeraati 2004:220). 28 Sayyad transplanted the Samad character into exile, unleashing him against the Islamic Republic in television shows and theatrical plays, which toured throughout Europe and North America. 29 For more on the career and films of Samuel Khachikian, see Haidari 1992/ 1371.

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30 The linkage between Iranian national identity and land, literally the earth of Iran, is powerful, existential, and highly cathected for ordinary people and rulers. For example, it is said that Reza Shah carried a pot of Iranian earth with him when he was forced into foreign exile in 1941 and that his son, Mo‑ hammad Reza Shah, also took some Iranian earth with him into his exile in 1979. Empress Farah placed some of this earth under his pillow on his death‑ bed in Egypt. 31 Mohammad Reza Shah was a fan of the movies. As he states in his autobi‑ ography, he frequently watched them in the “residential palace” at night and took pleasure in the “change of mood and pace” they provided. He particularly liked historical and detective movies (Pahlavi 1960:318–19). He believed in the movies’ didactic power: in one meeting with the cabinet he “explained” to the ministers the importance of the documentaries in informing the people of “progress on our development programme” (323). In addition, he had busi‑ ness interests in the movies, for his Pahlavi Foundation invested in the pro‑ duction of Iranian films and in the construction of movie houses (190). 32 For more on point of view in Iranian cinema, see Haidari 1990b/1369. 33 Indeed, the Indian popular cinema has much in common in this regard with Iranian commercial cinema (Dissanayake and Sahai 1992; Thomas 1995; Prasad 1998). 34 For a list of these singers in commercial movies of the 1950s, see Sepanta 1987/1366:322–25. 35 Most of the early features in the 1950s were filmed on 16mm stock, as Iranian cameramen had been able to purchase used 16mm cameras and equipment from the Americans after they evacuated from Iran in the late 1940s. Filming on this format was cheaper and raw stock was readily available at the time. 36 On the concept of “functional near-equivalency” between originals and dubbed versions, see Durovicová 2003a:2. 37 Alex Aqababian was the son of Satenik Aqababian and Satopari Aqababov, who ran Pari Cinema, the first mixed-gender cinema in Iran in 1928 (Muzeh‑ye Sinema‑ye Iran 2004/1383:78). 38 The studios dubbing films into Persian in Italy included the following: Cine Studio, Niece Film, Lux Film, Ferno Film, and Titanus Film. 39 For the Film Dubbers’ Union constitution, see Omid 1995/1374:944–45. 40 On occasion, however, certain voice-over artists developed their own fan base. For years, Hushang Kazemi dubbed the voice of Raymond Burr, the star of the American television series Ironside. When he traveled abroad for a period and another veteran voice artist, Manuchehr Esmaili, was brought in as his replacement, audiences objected, demanding Kazemi’s reinstatement. 41 Here some examples of the work done by female voice-over artists: Taji Ah‑ madi dubbed the voices of Claudia Cardinale and Jane Fonda; Iran Bozorg‑ mehr often dubbed Doris Day; Zhaleh Kazemi dubbed Sophia Loren; Ma‑ hin Kasmai dubbed the voices of Maria Schell and Foruzan. Male voice-over artists did the following work, for example: Manuchehr Esmaili dubbed the

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voices of Peter Falk, Terry Thomas, Peter Sellers, Anthony Quinn, Charlton Heston, and Reza Baikimanverdi; Parviz Bahram dubbed Naser Malekmotii in the Sultan‑e Sahabqeran television serial; Abdolhosain Tahami dubbed the singing voice of Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady; Changiz Jalilvand dubbed the voices of the domestic tough guys Mohammad Ali Fardin and Iraj Qaderi and of the foreign toughs Paul Newman and Marlon Brando; Khosrow Khosrow‑ shahi dubbed the voices of Alain Delon and Al Pacino; Iraj Doustdar usually dubbed John Wayne’s voice, and he dubbed Charlton Heston’s voice in Ben Hur and El Cid; Mohammad Ali Zarandi dubbed the voice of the British comic Norman Wisdom. Naser Tahmasb dubbed the voices of Dustin Hoffman and Dirk Bogarde; Hasan Abbasi dubbed Stan Laurel; Ataollah Kameli dubbed the voices of Kirk Douglas and Ezztollah Entezami; Jalal Maqami dubbed Robert Redford; Manuchehr Valizadeh dubbed Robert Wagner; and Siamak Yasami dubbed Fernandel (Mehrabi 1984/1363:442–46). 42 The censors, for example, changed unfaithful wives into harmless mistresses or fiancées in Jules Dassin’s Phaedra (1962) and Richard Brooks’s The Profes‑ sionals (1966) (Akrami 1992b:585). 43 For the kind of alterations achieved during dubbing before and after the Is‑ lamic Revolution, see Jairani 1985/1363.

Chapter 5  Males, Masculinity, and Power 1 See, in addition to Akbari 1973/1352; Tahaminejad 1986/1365; Karimi 1990; Mehrabi 1984/1363, 1978/1357; Moazezinia 1999/1378; and the special “dos‑ sier” section of Mahnameh‑ye Sinemai‑ye Film, containing seven articles on lutis: “Parvandeh‑ye yek Mozu: Lompanism dar Sinema‑ye Iran,” Mahn‑ ameh‑ye Sinemai‑ye Film, July 1990/Tir 1369, 15–36. 2 For English translations of Al‑e Ahmad’s Gharbzadegi see: Gharbzadegi (Westernstruckness), trans. John Green and Ahmad Alizadeh (Lexington, Ky.: Mazda, 1982); Plagued by the West (Gharbzadegi), trans. Paul Sprachman (Del‑ mar, N.Y.: Caravan, 1982); Occidentosis: A Plague from the West, ed. Hamid Al‑ gar, trans. Robert Campbell (Berkeley: Mizan, 1985). 3 For example, in both dash mashti and jaheli genres, Majid Mohseni produced, directed, wrote the screenplay, and starred in Generous Tough (Lat‑e Javan‑ mard, 1958); Amin Amini directed, cowrote the screenplay, and edited The Wise Girls (Dokhtaran‑e Bamarefat, 1964); Mohammad Ali Fardin produced, directed, wrote the screenplay, and starred in Prettiest of Them All (Khoshgel‑e Khoshgela, 1965); Said Kamyar produced, directed, and wrote the screenplay for Thick Neck (Gardan Koloft, 1965); Hosain Madani was the producer, direc‑ tor, and screenplay writer of both Wise Ones (Bamareftha, 1963) and Ignorant Toughs and Dandies (Jahelha va Zhigoloha, 1964); and Siamak Yasami pro‑ duced, directed, and wrote or cowrote the screenplays for Twentieth-Century Man (Aqa‑ye Qarn‑e Bistom, 1964), Qarun’s Treasure (Ganj‑e Qarun, 1965), and Shamsi the Champion (Shamsi Pahlevun, 1966). 4 For the historical roots and evolution of lutis, consult the following, among

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others cited: Kashefi Sabzevari 1970/1350; Khanlari 1969a/1348, 1969b/1348, 1969c/1348, 1985/1364; Mahjoub 2000; and Kazemeini 1964/1343. 5 Among a range of negative terms for the toughs are the following: lokhti, pacheh pareh, penti, moft khor, bezan bahador, arbadeh kesh, arbadeh ju, cho‑ maq dar, qaddareh band, gardan koloft, bi sar o pa, qalandar, rend, owbash, sar keshan, ashrar, ajamer, and arazel. Among further neutral and positive charac‑ terizations are the following: shater, fata, shabro, sarhang, mehtar, and esfahsa‑ lar. Some of the English equivalents are: rowdies, cutthroats, ruffians, hooli‑ gans, thugs, hoodlums, bums, runners, messengers, lowlifes, scums, rogues, pederasts, champions, generous and brave ones, loafers, rabble-rousers, clubwielders, and bandits. 6 The luti and lat characters are not unique to Iranian society, literature, and cinema. For the Sicilian Mafia, see Blok 1974; for British peasant rebels, see Hobsbawm 1959; for French sans-culottes, see Cobb 1970; for Arab al-fotowah, see Armbrust 2000; and for American toughs, see Wilkinson 1984. As far as cinema is concerned, there are many similarities among the three national genres of American western, Japanese samurai, and Iranian luti movies. For a comparison between westerns and samurai movies, see Anderson 1982. 7 The anthropologists Sekandar Amanolahi and Edward Norbeck have written about a group of rural lutis, an outcast tribal group in southwest Iran, who make their living as “entertainers, circumcisers, and beggars” (1975:4). Ac‑ cording to them, other tribes consider the food these lutis prepare, their pro‑ fessions, and even their persons to be religiously defiling (haram). It appears that performing music constituted the main reason for their defilement. The connection between this rural, ethnic, and tribal subgroup and the urban lutis under study here is unclear but fascinating. 8 Abolqasem Jannati Atai describes how lutis with nicknames, such as Hasan the Cat (Hasan Gorbeh), Smoky Hosain (Hosain Dudi), and Sheikh Trumpet (Shaikh Shaipur), acted as buffoons and clowns, entertaining audiences by telling gross jokes or risqué stories and by making funny facial gestures and taking odd body postures (1954/1333:56). Bahram Baizai also discusses the lutis as entertainers (1965/1344:166–216). Naser Najmi focuses both on the luti entertainers (1991/1370:528–37) and on the enforcers and religious orga‑ nizers (1991/1370:554–62). For more on the lutis’ role in organizing religious ceremonies, see also Mostofi 1997:376–77. 9 For examples of lutis’ role as middlemen, cooperating with clerics, see Nateq (1983/1362:40–57); for accounts of their subservience to local power elites in the Fars province, see Sirjani (1982/1361:257); for instances of their acting as armed thugs on behalf of the elite in Azerbaijan, see Ghaffari (1982/1361:146– 53); and for an account of contemporary lutis acting as a coercive formation during the Pahlavis, see Shaban Jafari’s autobiography as told to the journal‑ ist Homa Sarshar (Sarshar 2002). 10 Zurkhaneh is traditionally translated as “house of strength,” but I prefer “house of power,” for this term not only alludes to the association of zurkha­

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neh with physical and spiritual strength but also with political power, with the use of muscle power in the service of political ends. 11 Significantly, the theorization of “inner purity” in modern terms occurred in the 1970s, when both Westernizing and nativist tendencies among edu‑ cated Iranians reached their height and when a negative perception of Irani‑ ans held that interaction with them was “fraught with insecurity, fear of dou‑ ble dealing, and cynical expectations” (Fischer 1980:140). This theorization was timely as it helped to explain the complexity of this behavior in a cultur‑ ally meaningful and morally justified way. A cultural salon, the Culture and Personality Circle, consisting of Iranian and American intellectuals, met on a regular basis to discuss such issues, which resulted in few but key publica‑ tions. See Bateson et al. 1977 and Fischer 1980:140–42. 12 Scholars have offered similar analyses about the impact of Indian classical epic narratives, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and of the Is­ lami­cate and Persian epic and oral literatures, on Indian popular films, such as masala movies; for a review, see Lutgendorf 2002. 13 For the original short story of “Dash Akol” in Persian, see Hedayat 1965. For the English version, see Hedayat 1979. 14 For example, Esmail Kushan directed Hosain the Kurd (Hosain‑e Kord, 1965) and The Cunning Nasim (Nasim‑e Ayyar, 1967), Shapur Yasami directed The Illustrious Amir Arsalan (Amir Arsalan‑e Namdar, 1955), and Aman Manteqi di‑ rected The One and Only Champion (Pahlevan Mofrad, 1971)—all of them for Pars Film Studio. 15 For more on Kimiai’s career and films, and for reviews of Dash Akol, see Qu‑ kasian 1990/1369 and Naficy 1985c. 16 Dash Akol was shown at the third and the fifth Tehran International Film Fes‑ tival in 1974 and 1976, respectively. It won best film, best cinematography, and best supporting actor prizes from Sepas Film Festival, and the Diploma of Praise from the Tashkent Film Festival in 1972. Dash Akol has also been screened publicly in U.S. cinemas and is available on video. 17 The quotations in the film synopsis are translated from the film’s soundtrack. 18 For more on The Blind Owl, see Beard 1990 and Hillmann 1978. 19 Surprisingly, Hedayat, who was an iconoclast and in all likelihood a homosex‑ ual, did not bring this back story into his short story. On his possible homo‑ sexuality, see Katouzian 1991; Beard 1990; and Farzaneh 1988. 20 For example, the refrain of Aqasi’s parodic song goes like this: “Dash, dash, dasham man, nashmeh‑ye khashkhasham man, ru chamana abpasham man, ashehq‑e donbakam man, sayyad‑e ordakam man” (I am a dash [slick brother], I am a lover of poppies [opium], I water the lawns [perhaps by peeing on them], I am a lover of drums, I am a hunter of ducks). 21 For a comprehensive history of wrestling, houses of power, and wrestling champions throughout the ages, see the five-volume book by Mehdi Abbasi (1998/1377). Also, see Partow Baizai 1958/1337 and Kazemeini 1964/1343.

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22 Films made by foreigners about luti lifestyles chiefly focus on the zurkhaneh and traditions and rituals associated with it. In my book Iran Media Index, several filmstrips, documentary films, and newsreels of this nature are cited (Naficy 1984c): Life and Leisure (1976); Tehran’s Largest Bank and Zurkhaneh (1971); Iran Scenes: A Persian Gymnasium (Movietone News, 1959); Odd World: Tehran, Capital of Iran (1967); Zurkhaneh (1973); Iran News #3 (1954); and Iran News #281 (1961). The only significant documentary made in Iran that at‑ tempts a historical analysis of the institution of zurkhaneh is Hajir Daryoush’s stylish The Sacred Pit (Gowd‑e Moqqadas, 1964). Parviz Kimiavi’s Zurkhaneh: The House of Power (Zourkhaneh: La Maison de Force, 1988), which he made in Paris, attempted a similar effort at analysis. For more on features and docu‑ mentaries about sports in general, see Fathi 1997/1376. 23 For more details on the clothing of old lutis and ayyars and their accessories, see Khanlari 1969b/1348, 1985/1364; Mostofi 1997:408–12; and Hanaway 1970:164–66. 24 A sampling of these expressions are given below as examples, with their Eng‑ lish equivalents: “bi khialesh” (don’t worry about it), “inqadeh leftesh nadeh” (quit dragging your feet), “khodeto nagir, geda” (don’t be stuck up, you beg‑ gar), “tu sar‑e mal nazan” (don’t sell the item short), “bezan rowshan shim” (let’s get high), “nokaretam lakerdar” (you’re the boss, tough guy), “dareh gan‑ desh dar miad, shekam goshneh” (the cat’s out of the bag, greedy gut), and fi‑ nally, “berim dava khori” (let’s go get drunk). 25 Shaban Jafari (Shaban the Brainless), in his book-length interviews with Homa Sarshar (2002), gives many examples of such colorful nicknames for actual lutis in Tehran. Among them are: Mostafa the Crazy (Mostafa Di‑ vuneh), Asghar Tattoo (Asghar Khaldar), Ismail the Bald (Ismail Kachal), Mostafa the Cow-Killer (Mostafa Gavkosh), Mohsen the Monster (Mohsen Ghul), Qasem the Blind (Qasem Kuri), Mahmud the Dog (Mahmud Sagi), Reza the Cow (Reza Gavi), Hosain the Executioner (Hosain Mirghazab), ­Mehdi the Butcher (Mehdi Qassab), and Naser the Liver Seller (Naser Jiga‑ raki). He also speaks of a famous female luti called Parvin the Policeman’s Wife (Parvin Azhdan Qezi). Sina Mirzai in his book about Tayyeb Haj Rezai gives additional nicknames for Tehrani tough guys (2002/1381): Mohammad the Cheeky (Mohammad Porru), Three-Headed Hasan (Hasan Sehkaleh), Hasan the Oil Seller (Hasan Nafti), Gluttonous Kazem (Kazem Porkhor), Scary Asghar (Asghar Khofnak), Esmail the Leopard (Esmail Palang), Hasan from Qom (Hasan Qomi), Ahmad the Genie (Ahmad Jenni), Pigeon-Breasted Morteza (Mortaza Sinehkaftari), Limber Reza (Reza Sholi), Hasan the Tai‑ lor (Hasan Khayat), Qasem the Train (Qasem Teren), Mohammad the Far‑ rier (Mohammad Nalband), Naughty Ali (Ali Shaitun), Gholamreza the Ant (Gholamreza Murchehi), Horned Hosain (Hosain Shakhi), Khosrow the Deaf (Khosrow Kareh), Southpaw Hasan (Hasan Chapeh), Hosain the Mouse (Ho‑ sain Mushi), Blue-Eyed Ebram (Ebram Zaghi), Black Asghar (Asghar Siah),

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Tiny Hosain (Hosain Rizeh), Hare-Lipped Abdol (Abdol Labshekari), and Ho‑ sain the Perfume Seller (Hosain Atri). Several luti strongmen bore effemi‑ nate nicknames, such as Lady Mahmud the Cantor (Mahmud Khanom‑e Mor‑ shed), Lady Hosain (Hosain Khanom), and Hosain the Bride (Hosain Arus), presumably because they were handsome, blond, or blue-eyed. 26 For an analysis of the portrayal of women in cinema, particularly in luti films, see Eshqi 1990/1369. 27 For names given to women by ayyars in popular romances, see Hanaway 1970:240–41. 28 According to his father, Khalil Tahmasebi, another Fadaiyan‑e Eslam mem‑ ber who assassinated Prime Minister Razmara, lived next door to their house (Shokrollah and Turanpur 2000/1379:145). 29 For more on this and other shifts in the luti genre, see Karimi 1990; Eshqi 1990/1369; Esbati 1990/1369; Baharlu 1990/1369; Talebinezhad 1990/1369; and Sadr 1990/1369. 30 For more on the wide critical reactions to Qaisar, see Moazezinia 1999/1378; Qukasian 1990/1369; and Omid 1995/1374:524–37. 31 According to Mofid in his interview with me, the origin of the fedora hat goes back to Reza Shah’s decree that forced men to wear the Pahlavi hat. Un‑ happy with this decree, the tough guys subverted it by wearing under the fe‑ dora their traditional felt hat, making the dome of the fedora stand very high (Naficy 1984a). For more on the clothing and personal articles of the toughs in the 1970s, see Esbati 1990/1369. 32 He wore fashionable and neat clothing consisting of a black fedora hat, a fulllength black overcoat whose collar was lined with velvet, and a massive gold and turquoise ring. He wore a large gold pendant around his neck on which was carved the phrase “Ya Ali” (Mirzai 2002/1381:88, 97). 33 In Wise Girls (Dokhtaran‑e Bamarefat, 1964) two women disguise themselves as male lutis. The female star of Thick Neck (Gardan Koloft, 1965) also dis‑ guises herself as a male driver. 34 The genres listed in their research were the crime thriller (polisi-jenai), the drama (deram), the romance (eshqi), historical films (tarikhi), the western (ves­tern), the musical (muzikal), the comedy (komedi), and martial arts films (karatehi). 35 These figures on the tough-guy movies are rather impressionistic, but they help give an idea of the evolution and trajectory of these films. They are based on my analysis of content summaries of films provided by Omid (1987a/ 1366, 1987b/1366) and on my own viewing of a large number of them. I used the following conventions of the genre to identify the films from their de‑ scriptions: song-and-dance routines; women dancers; café life; tough-guy life; zurkhaneh champions; drivers of automobiles, buses, and trucks; loafers and rabble-­rousers; and prostitutes. Almost a third (266) of all films (901) made between 1930 (when the first fiction feature was made) and 1975 dealt with

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one of these themes. See also Mostafa Zamani-Nia 1984/1363 and Ministry of Culture and Art 1975/1354, 1976a/2534, 1976b/2534. 36 “Hafteh‑ye Gozashteh Nagahan Sinema‑ye Iran Motovaqef Shod!,” Film va Honar, no. 389 (1972/1351). 37 I have gleaned this information from advertisements for the movies in the fol‑ lowing periodicals: Film va Honar, 6 April 1972/17 Farvardin 1351; Kayhan, 31 December 1974/10 Dey 1352; and Kayhan, 18 March 1975/27 Esfand 1352. 38 Azar Ahmadieh, a member of the High Council of Film responsible for film licensing, mentions these characteristics as reasons for the government cen‑ soring jaheli films (“Goftogu ba Yeki az A’za‑ye Showra‑ye Ali‑ye Film,” Far‑ hang O’ Zendegi, no. 18 [1975/1345], 91–99). 39 See Naficy 1984b and “Miz‑e Gerd‑e Sinema‑ye Iran, 2,” Farhang va Honar, no. 18 (1976/1345), 81–82. 40 “Hafteh‑ye Gozashteh Nagahan Sinema‑ye Iran Motovaqef Shod!,” Film va Honar, no. 389 (1972/1351). The report by the Hollywood trade paper Variety about the edict stated that the government had banned sequences that “show hooligans’ revenge, pigeon flying by pigeon fanciers, gambling on sidewalks, slums, actors with torn clothing and sexual relations.” See “Iranian Film In‑ dustry Blasts Government Ruling that Bans Slums, Sex Scenes,” Variety, 26 July 1972, n.p. 41 Tamasha, no. 364, (1978/2537), 8–9. 42 Ali Mortazavi told me that pigeon flying was banned only because the large number of pigeon fanciers who flew and raced their birds in the vicinity of Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport had caused difficulties for the planes, as pigeons were sometimes sucked into jet engines (Naficy 1984b:18). There were other moral and social reasons for the ban, as pigeon fanciers gambled with their pigeons, raced them, stole each other’s birds, and caused fights. In addition, operating from rooftops, they voyeuristically looked into other peoples’ homes, violating the Islamic rules of gender segregation and privacy. Moreover, while engaged in pigeon flying, they were not pro‑ ductive members of society. As hooligans, they whiled their time away and initiated the degeneration of the neighborhood’s morals by attracting other young boys. Finally, their private passion for the birds and for flying took on a sexualized and homoerotic dimension, which went against the rules of normalizing social decorum. For similar reasons, pigeon flying is currently banned in the Islamic Republic. For more on this topic, see Goushegir 1997. Gholamreza Sarkub’s film Khan Nayeb (1979), whose protagonist is a pigeon fancier, was banned for a while, until some of the offending scenes were removed. 43 “Iranian Film Industry Blasts Government Ruling That Bans Slums, Sex Scenes,” Variety, 26 July 1972, n.p. 4 4 Ibid. 45 “Dar Filmha, Jahelha‑ye Dashneh Behdast ra Bejay‑e Bozorgan‑e Akhlaq

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Moarrefi Mikonand,” Kayhan, 9 September 1975/18 Shahrivar 1354, 10. See also “Jahel Bazi‑ye Sinemai Chashni‑ye Filmha‑ye Farsi,” Kayhan, 10 Septem‑ ber 1975/19 Shahrivar 1354, 5. 46 See “Honarpishehgan‑e Sinema beh Dadgah‑e Enqelab Ehzar Shodand,” Ettela’at, 11 March 1980/22 Esfand 1358. The Revolutionary Court similarly summoned singers and entertainers for preliminary investigation. Among those named were Faeqeh Atashin (Googoosh), Leila Foruhar and her father Jahangir Foruhar, Firuzeh, Feraidun Farrokhzad, Ahdiyeh Badii, Tuti Salimi, Puneh, and Parvaneh known as Homaira. Failure to appear before the court was prosecutable. 47 “Shab Shekan,” Mahnameh‑ye Sinemai‑ye Film, no. 28 (1985/1364), 38–39. 48 “Filmi keh Pahlu‑ye Jashnvareh‑ye Fajr ra Darid,” Kayhan‑e Havai, 10 Febru‑ ary 1993 / 21 Bahman 1371, 2. 49 “Ayyaran va Tarraran,” Mahnameh‑ye Sinemai‑ye Film, no. 37 (1986/1365), 41. 50 Cleverly, the film uses only brief excerpts of these songs, long enough to be recognized and appreciated by those who knew them but short enough not to arouse the censors’ ire. According to Parviz Parastui, who played one of the transplanted Jahels, he patterned his performance after that of famous Shahera tough guys and even sang a jaheli song in the style of the singer Aghasi, which was edited out from the film (Sharifi 2003/1382:96). 51 The most successful theatrical performance in the Islamic Republic was a ja‑ heli play, Golden Teeth (Dandun Tala, 1999), written and directed by Davud Mirbaqeri, which by 2000 had earned nearly 90 million tomans. Despite this unprecedented public reception, critics were not so sanguine, with one con‑ demning the “jaheli culture,” which has “no place in our society anymore . . . and must be forgotten.” See “Farhang‑e Jaheli az Bain Raft,” Hamshahri, 16 Dey 1378/6 January 2000, Adab va Honar page. 52 Many plays dealt humorously with the tough guys’ exploits in Europe and North America. Many of these toured to cities with large displaced popula‑ tion of Iranians, helping consolidate an Iranian diasporic community. Among these were the comic plays of the Andaruni Group, spearheaded by Maryam Akhundi, based in Germany, in which the female director and star of the show cross-dressed as a champion or as a tough guy and made fun of them, their homosexual tendencies, and their special singing style. Another play, Courtship (Khastegari), written, directed, and starring the well-known toughguy actor Morteza Aqili, toured the United States in 2002. In it he humor‑ ously revived some of the tough guys’ style of conduct, dress, and language in the context of a modern courtship in the diaspora. Some of these plays were videotaped, aired on Iranian exile television, and sold on video in Iranian stores. 53 Iranian Television aired Jaklyn’s Mafia music video in 1990. 54 Jam‑e Jam Television aired Heart to Heart in March 1992. 55 Mahmoud also has one series called Abgooshti, containing thirty-three car‑ toons of famous stewpot movies. These cartoons are regularly featured online

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in the Iranian, an electronic newspaper edited by Jahanshah Javid. See the pa‑ per’s website at http://www.iranian.com. 56 The cover of the Eskenas cassette tape shows a U.S. dollar bill on which the picture of the singer has replaced the image of George Washington.

Chapter 6  A Dissident Cinema 1 An example is Shah or Iran, a segment of cbs’s Sixty Minutes, hosted by Mike Wallace, which aired on 10 March 1974 (Naficy 1984c:110). 2 nirt created a sophisticated research organization, a “think tank,” called Ira‑ nian Communications and Development Institute, headed by a former op‑ positional student activist, Majid Tehranian, which worked on broadcasting planning and strategies. The institute organized seminars, invited Western scholars, and published an English-language journal, Communications and Development Review, which Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi edited. 3 At least three books offer annotated directories of short-subject films and films made for children and young adults, many of them by the cidcya’s film‑ makers. These are Mehrabi 1989/1368, 1990/1369; and Jahangirian 1988/ 1367. 4 Empress Farah Pahlavi, the cidcya’s chief benefactor, translated and illus‑ trated the book The Little Mermaid (Pahlavi 2004:146). 5 Since the fall of the Shah in the revolution of 1978–79, many rumors about nirt’s alleged responsibility for speeding up the revolution have circulated. As Farrokh Gaffary, the deputy director of nirt, notes, accusations were made, even by the Shah, that communist agitators had been active at nirt and had engaged in antinational activities (Gaffary 1983–84:45). 6 These included Shiraz’s Festival of Culture and Arts (headed by Farrokh Gaffary), the Folklore Festival in Isfahan (Mahmud Khaliqi), Tus Arts Festival in Mashhad (Ziaeddin Sajjadi), the Center for the Preservation and Propagation of Iranian Music (Dariush Safvat), the Center for Collecting Regional Music (Fowzieh Majd), the Center for the Study of Cultures (Dariush Shayegan), the Workshop for Teaching Music to Children and Young Adults (Said Khad‑ iri), the Center for Traditional Rituals and Performances (Gaffary), the The‑ ater Workshop (Bijan Saffari), the Center for Folk Culture (Abolqasem An‑ javi Shirazi), the Sinema‑ye Azad Society (Basir Nassibi), the Cinémathèque (Amirhushang Kavusi), the College of Cinema and Television (Feraidun Me‑ kanik), Soroush Publications, which published Soroush and Tamasha mag‑ azines and books on media (Iraj Gorgin, later Reza Mirhosaini and Karim Emami), the Open Theater (Davud Rashidi), the Communications and De‑ velopment Institute (Majid Tehranian), the Social Research and Public Opin‑ ion Evaluation Center (Ali Assadi), the Iranzamin Research Group (Feraidun Rahnema), and Pars Ballet (Abdollah Nazemi). nirt also maintained the City Theater of Tehran and a chamber orchestra. 7 For Empress Farah’s description of the history and impact of Shiraz’s Festi‑ val of Culture and Arts, see Pahlavi 2004:227–38. For a documentary on the

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festival, see Naser Taqvai’s The Fifth Shiraz Festival of Culture and Arts (1971), made for nirt. 8 For more on film festivals, see Omid 1995/1374:965–90. 9 And those that made money, such as Caravans, coproduced by fidci and Ibex (Elmo Williams), allegedly took advantage of the revolutionary situation in Iran to cook the books and to show loss (Omid 1995/1374:751). However, this movie benefited one of its Iranian stars, Behrouz Vossoughi, who because of acting in it was able to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild in the United States, which facilitated his application later for a permanent-resi‑ dency green card (Zeraati 2004:334). 10 For more on the three progenitors of the new wave, Gaffary, Golestan, and Rahnema, see Mohammad Kashi 2001/1380. 11 Mehrjui not only received his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from ucla but also translated into the Persian Herbert Marcuse’s The Aesthetic Dimension. It also contains a longer essay by Mehrjui, “Zibashenakhti‑ye Vaqeiyat” (“Aes‑ thetics of Reality”), which acts as an introduction (see Marcuse 1987/1368). 12 Soon after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, Saedi, who opposed the rule of the mullahs, left Iran for exile in Paris, where he died in 1985. According to the filmmaker Reza Allamehzadeh, who visited Saedi in Paris before his death, Saedi had worked up a screenplay with Mehrjui, who had moved to France for several years after the revolution, for a film about Iranian immigrants and exiles. This promising project was torpedoed when the Ira‑ nian regime, fearful of the lethal combination of Saedi and Mehrjui working on the same film, persuaded Mehrjui to return to make his movies in Iran (1991:219–21). For more on Saedi’s career and works, see Mojabi 1999/1378. 13 “Persian Filmmakers Map Expansion into International Market: Eye Co-pro‑ ductions,” Variety, 12 November 1969, n.p. 14 For a collection of reviews of Mehrjui’s films and interviews with him, see Zeraati 1996/1375. Also see, Omid 1995/1374:538–49. 15 Of the new-wave films, the following were banned for months or years, as ex‑ plained in the text: Farmanara’s Tall Shadows of the Wind; Golestan’s Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley; Kimiai’s Baluch and The Deer; Mehrjui’s The Cow and The Cycle; Naderi’s Elegy; Sayyad’s Dead End; Taqvai’s Tranquility in the Presence of Others. 16 The Cow was also perhaps the first Iranian movie shown in a commercial cin‑ ema in the United States in the early 1970s. It was shown in Los Angeles and proved to be an eye-opening film for the large Iranian student body that op‑ posed the Shah and his government. 17 For a reader on neorealism, see Overbey 1978. 18 On Karimi’s take on neorealism, see Omid 1995/1374:582–83. 19 These were: — A message for the Italian filmmakers, cinema is a way of expression and communication in the true sense of this world.

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— Topical scripts inspired by concrete events; great historical and social issues are tackled from the point of view of the common people. — A sense of detail as a means of authentification. — A sense of the masses and the ability to surprise (De Sica) or manipulate them in front of the camera (De Santis, Visconti); the protagonists are captured in their relationship to the masses. — Realism; but reality is filtered by a very delicate sensitivity. — The truth of actors, often nonprofessionals. — The truth of the décor and a refusal of the studio. — The truth of the lighting. — Photography reminiscent of the reportage style stresses the impression of truth. — An extremely free camera; its unrestricted movements result from the use of postsynchronization (quoted in Liehm 1984:131–32). 20 Originally, there were sixteen filmmakers who broke away, but this number increased to at least nineteen. The original signatories were Bahram Baizai, Naser Taqvai, Manuchr Anvar, Nemat Haqiqi, Hushang Baharlu, Masud Kim‑ iai, Behrouz Vossoughi, Esfandiar Monfaredzadeh, Zakaria Hashemi, Ali Hatami, Parviz Sayyad, Dariush Mehrjui, Ezatollah Entezami, Ali Nasirian, Davud Rashidi, and Hajir Daryoush. Jalal Moqaddam, Khosrow Haritash, and others were added later. 21 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations about the pfc in this section are from Shoai 1975:381–88. 22 “Film Cooperative Emerges as Key Unit in Tehran Production,” Variety, 14 August 1974, n.p. 23 The film did not do well domestically at the box office, although Iranian intel‑ lectuals and the Cannes International Film Festival that year praised it. 24 Zakaria Hashemi had been a bodybuilder before this film, and the pictures of his bodybuilding days adorn his one room apartment in Mudbrick and Mirror. Later he became a director and a novelist, and after the revolution he served in the war with Iraq as a filmmaker and wrote affectingly about it (see chapter 1 of volume 4 on the postrevolution documentaries). 25 Of historical importance is the anecdote that Golestan related in his post‑ screening discussion of the film in Chicago (5 May 2007). He was filming af‑ ter the so-called 1963 uprising, which had led to Ayatollah Khomeini’s exile, an event that has since been construed to have been widespread and a precur‑ sor to the revolution of 1978–79. His anecdote cast doubt on how well known Khomeini was in what was thought to be his power base, the bazaar. Golestan had placed a picture of the ayatollah in a shop in the bazaar for filming, but the shopkeeper asked whose picture it was. 26 The film subtly critiques the state by showing how the ineffectual police and justice system fail to serve citizens under the watchful eyes of the Shah and Empress Farah peering from their mandatory portraits on all official walls.

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Particularly pointed is one poster, which lauds the coup of 1953 against Mo‑ saddeq by calling it a “resurrection,” not a “coup.” 27 Golestan believes that his experience as a newsreel cameraman made this se‑ quence so realistic. 28 For a more detailed version, see Qukasian 1991a/1370:49–51. 29 For further readings on Farmanara’s career and films, see Rastegar and Aqiqi 2002/1381; and Qukasian 2001. 30 For samples of Fereydoun Hoveyda’s film criticism published from the late 1950s to the late 1960s in Cahiers du Cinéma, translated into English, see Hill‑ ier 1985, 1986. 31 Derambakhsh also made The Last Days of Sadeq Hedayat (Akharin Ruzha‑ye Sadeq Hedayat, 1977). The list of nirt film archive holdings before the revo‑ lution contains another 16mm film called Sadeq Hedayat, which is thirteen minutes long, whose director is not identified. In the 1980s, Ali Limondai de‑ voted a one-hour special of his weekly television show, Iranian, to Hedayat. 32 Khosrow Haritash adapted the short novel of another modernist writer, Bah‑ ram Sadeqi, for his Kingdom of Heaven (Malakut, 1976) for the fidci. Like The Blind Owl, this too is a difficult, hallucinatory, closed-form short novel and film, narrated by the protagonist. The protagonist’s narration establishes in‑ dividual consciousness and subjectivity and clarifies the film’s attempt at vi‑ sualizing his inner world. Kingdom of Heaven was screened only once at the fifth Tehran International Film Festival and caused much controversy about Haritash’s subjective approach, the difficulty of comprehension, and the type of characters used. Haritash responded that the novel itself is subjective and complicated, requiring several readings for comprehension, and that his char‑ acters are all symbolic, in the same way that time and place in the movie and the novel are indeterminate. “Modernism does not reveal all issues; rather, it conceals some of them behind the veil of ambiguity and ambivalence” (quoted in Omid 1995/1374:710). 33 Nabili postdubbed the sound effects and voices, which because of the difficulty of finding a professional dubber who could render children’s voices with‑ out dramatizing them, took six months (Shafa 1992–93:42). 34 This line is taken from Shamlu’s poem titled “Sorud Bara‑ye Mard‑e Rowshan keh Beh Sayeh Raft” (literally: A Song for the Enlightened Man Who Went into the Shadow). 35 The film was shot in the hills of north Tehran, in a place that according to Golestan was actually named Darreh‑ye Jenni (Haunted Valley), hence my re‑ tention of Jenni in the film’s title as an untranslated proper noun. 36 Begun in the fall of 1970, the film took nearly a year and a half to complete— until the end of 1972—principally due to the large size of the cast and crew, unusual for Golestan’s modus operandi, and due to his taking on multiple functions in the creation of the film, which slowed the process. 37 Several entities collaborated to create an unprecedented retrospective of Gole­ stan’s feature films and documentaries in Chicago, including a symposium

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on his works, in all of which he participated for the first time in nearly four decades. Under the title “Ebrahim Golestan: Lion of Iranian Cinema, a Selec‑ tive Retrospective,” the films were shown at the Gene Siskel Film Center and the symposium was held at Northwestern University (4–6 May 2007). These events were organized at the Gene Siskel Film Center by Barbara Scharess, at Columbia College by Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, at Northwestern University by me, and at the University of Chicago Film Center by Julia Gibbs. Golestan took questions from the spectators after each screening. The symposium at North‑ western University consisted of a talk by Tom Gunning of the University of Chicago on Mudbrick and Mirror and one by me on the gfw and The House Is Black, followed by the screening of The House Is Black and Golestan’s ques‑ tion-and-answer session with the spectators. 38 According to Golestan, he was arrested and imprisoned briefly before the film’s public exhibition, not because of the film but because in the papers of two people who had been arrested Savak agents had found a sentence from one of Golestan’s stories to the effect that “I went to see the fireworks, but rain came and made the gunpowder wet.” This had been interpreted as a reference to armed struggle. 39 In the 1980s, it was briefly screened in a cinema in Los Angeles, to Golestan’s protest, perhaps because he had not authorized it. 40 According to Golestan in his postscreening appearance in Chicago on 4 May 2007, he wrote the book in ten days on the “cutting table” as he was edit‑ ing the film, using the film’s soundtrack as a guide. When the printed book was submitted for approval, Golestan found out from a friend on the cen‑ sorship board that the mca would not give it a license because of two allit‑ erative words, jendeh (whore) and jasus (spy), which he did not want to ex‑ cise or change. Finally, he found a clever solution, one typical of the type of cat-and-mouse games of resistance that intellectuals played with censors: he printed one copy of the book in which the two pages with these words had been changed and presented that version to the censors, leaving the rest of the three thousand run intact. The censors approved the changed copy. The un‑ changed book was released just before the Noruz holidays, a deliberate timing to take advantage of government offices’ closure for a few weeks, allowing the book to find its readers. Within two weeks the censors caught onto the ruse and ordered all copies collected. By that time, only fifteen books remained, which were then confiscated. 41 According to the film’s star Behrouz Vossoughi, the film’s original title was the sensational Execution by Firing Squad (Tirbaran), to which the mca ob‑ jected, forcing it to be changed (quoted in Zeraati 2004:292). 42 The film was shot in the small village of Chaleh Qarreh between Natanz and Kashan in central Iran, whose walls Kimiavi painted to show the changes that Westernization had brought to it. 43 According to a Japanese reviewer, the same audience applause occurred when Still Life was screened in Japan in 1974 (Omid 1995/1374:692).

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4 4 For more on Shahid Saless’s works at home and in exile, see Naficy 2001:199– 207 and Dehbashi 1999. 45 Quoted in the film’s publicity package, without a date or page number. 46 For more on Kiarostami’s uses of women in his films, see Saeed-Vafa and Rosenbaum 2003:68–71. 47 For example, Golshiri, who collaborated with Mehrjui on the screenplay of his movie Alamut, about Hasan Sabbah and the Assassins, complained in a meeting that Mehrjui, Golshiri, and I had in the mid-1970s that the director did not give the writers whose works he adapted sufficient screen credit, for he listed them second to himself in the screenplay credits. Mehrjui argued, on the other hand, that by taking the lead in fundamentally transforming the written story into a screenplay, the director must receive the first credit. Not all new-wave directors felt this way about the assignment of screenplay cred‑ its, and not all collaborations resulted in a similar arrangement. For example, in another collaboration involving an adaptation of Golshiri’s work, Tall Shad‑ ows of the Wind, Golshiri received the first credit for screenplay writing while the director, Farmanara, received the second credit. 48 Produced by the Misaqiyeh Film Studio, Kimiai’s The Earth focused on the peasants’ deep bond with the land and on the disastrous attempts by the for‑ eign bride of a feudal landowner to evict the farmers from her land on the death of her husband. 49 The change of political regime caused a change in approach to animation, from indirect criticism to direct criticism and propaganda movies, and the vvir commissioned many anti-Pahlavi propaganda animated films. 50 For a history of animated films during the Pahlavi and Islamic Republic pe‑ riods, one containing an annual listing of films and brief biographies of the animators, see Javaherian 1999. 51 According to Ervand Abrahamian, between 1963 and 1979, enrollment in inter‑ nal colleges grew from 24,885 to 154,215; enrollment in foreign colleges grew from 18,000 to more than 80,000; and enrollment in technical, vocational, and teacher-training institutions rose from 14,240 to 227,497 (1999:112–13). 52 Mehrzad Boroujerdi’s analysis shows that by the 1975–76 academic year, of the 5,430 Iranian faculty members teaching at universities and institutions of higher education, 3,037 (almost 60 percent) had received at least one de‑ gree from a foreign university (1996:131). According to Afshin Matin-Asgari, among the American universities, the University of Southern California had the highest enrollment of Iranian students in the entire country in the 1970s, with nine hundred Iranians in a student body of twenty-five thousand. ucla, California State universities, and other universities and colleges also had a sizable Iranian student body, which brought the number of Iranian stu‑ dents in the Los Angeles area to around fourteen thousand in the late 1970s (2002:225). 53 Empress Farah Pahlavi mentions only the charge of kidnapping (2004:191), while Agheli mentions only assassination (Agheli 1997/1376:vol. 2:277). Ab‑

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bas Samakar, one of the accused in the kidnapping plot, mentions both kid‑ napping and assassination (2001). 54 Daneshian had left his filmmaking studies at the nirt college unfinished, al‑ legedly because school officials disliked his socially critical film Dowlat Abad, about poverty in Tehran’s South End (Samakar 2001:256). Samakar was a film cameraman for the Shiraz and Tehran nirt stations, generally involved in recording news events; Patai was a Kurd and a television studio camera‑ man for nirt, and Allamehzadeh was a filmmaker who had made short films for the cidcya, among others. All three had graduated from the nirt college. The other accused were: Khosrow Golsorkhi, Manuchehr Moqaddam Salimi, Morteza Siahpush, Farhad Qaisari, Ebrahim Farhangrazi, Rahmatollah Jam‑ shidi, Shokuh Farhangrazi (Mirzadegi), and Maryam Ettehadieh. 55 For more on the history of the Confederation of Iranian Students, various anti-Shah oppositional groups, and Nikkhah’s story, see Matin-Asgari 2002. 56 All trial quotations are taken from the soundtrack of Pooya’s film In Defense of the People, which contains the trial footage. For the full transcript of his de‑ fense, see Golsorkhi 1998/1377:199–204. 57 Another sensational press interview with a famous personality in 1972 in‑ volved Parviz Qelichkhani, a star soccer player. See Abrahamian 1999:116–17. 58 Abbas Samakar states that before deciding on the plot to kidnap the empress and the crown prince, he and Allamehzadeh had discussed assassinating Nik‑ khah because of his operations against nirt dissidents (Samakar 2001:38). 59 Mohammad Falsafi, Harper’s, January 1975, 99. 60 For Baraheni’s further elaborations on the story of his alleged television con‑ fession, which he vehemently denies, see Baraheni 1975:38–52. 61 In his PhD dissertation, Yaron Shemer notes that some directors of “Miz‑ rahi cinema” in Israel, particularly Yamin Messika, adapted Khomeini’s “cas‑ sette revolution” as a model for distributing their protest films in informal and ­direct-sale venues, such as in the streets and in bus stations, instead of attempting to break into the mainstream “Ashkenazi hegemony” that com‑ pletely controlled the music, film production, broadcasting, and distribution industries (2005:251–52). 62 Sadi and Feri closed down permanently, while Pacific, Olympia, Asia, and Iran opened up within a few months (Omid 1995/1374:548). In February 1973, six men were condemned to death for setting fire to the Land Reform Organi‑ zation’s vehicles and the Taj Cinema (Agheli 1997/1376:vol. 2:282). 63 “Iran Filmmakers Shake Off Setbacks, See Bright Future,” Variety, 10 May 1976, 67, 90. 64 On Farmanara’s participation in the operation of the fidci, see the interview with him in Rastegar and Aqiqi 2002/1381:153–67. 65 Having gained considerable knowledge about the system, Mehrjui subse‑ quently made a documentary for the Blood Transfusion Organization of Iran. 66 The movie houses were Alvand, Astara, Europa, Kayhan, Marlik, Miami, Nia­ gara, Ray, Shahram, Sharq, Syvlana, and Uranus.

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67 This section about the film industry crisis and the Rastakhiz Party’s attempt to head off troubles is based on Omid 1995/1374:719–27. 68 “Qaichi‑ye Sansur Bara‑ye Badanha‑ye Lokht Lebas Miduzad,” Kayhan, (5 Feb‑ ruary 1978/16 Bahman 2536), 5. 69 “First Open Letter of the Writers,” Index on Censorship 7, no. 1 (1978), 19–20. 70 In his speech at the Ten Nights of Poetry, he had charged that government cen‑ sorship and support for the arts had bred a class of artists he called “pseudo­ artists” (Saedi 1978/1357).

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inde x

Abbasi, Ali, 207, 422 Abboud, Mounir, 423 Abgushti films, 154, 199, 231–32, 284 Abrahamian, Ervand, 22, 148, 409 Acorn (Afshar Naderi), 109–11 Acorn (Taheridoust), 109, 110–11 Actors’ Syndicate, 168 Adl, Shahryar, 97, 98 Adorno, Theodor, 150, 264 Advertising: American-style, 65, 69; cost of, 157–58, 427; before films, 158–59; of films, 23, 117, 160, 334, 398; movie‑ going and, 165; in periodicals, 3; stars and, 176, 208 Aesthetic Dimension, The (Marcuse), 348 Afat, 304, 305 Afghani, Ali Mohammad, 327 Afrashteh, Mahmud, 22 afrts (Armed Forces Radio and Televi‑ sion), 46, 66 Afshar, Toghrol, 183, 219, 245 Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (Mohtasham), 152 Aghravi, Naji, 172 Agrama, Faruk, 335 Ahu’s Husband (Mowlapur), 327, 336 aioc (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company), 13, 31, 32, 77, 91, 156 Air-dome cinemas, 157, 158 ajjdc (American-Jewish Joint Distribu‑ tion Committee), 58–59

Akbar Dilmaj (Parvizi), 244 Akbari, Ali Akbar, 262 Akhavan, Morteza, 174 Akhavan, Mostafa, 174 Akhavan Saless, Mehdi, 402, 403 Akhbar Cinema, 13, 14 Akhbar-e Iran, 36–39, 46, 53, 55–56, 72 Akram, 158, 166, 172, 209–11, 248, 304, 305, 322 Akrami, Jamsheed, 102, 338, 370, 394 Aksoy, Orhan, 306 Alam-e Honar (magazine), 175 Alami, Akbar, 98 Al-Atrash, Farid, 159 Alavi, Bozorg, 3, 13, 18, 23 Alborz Cinema, 52 Alborz Film Studio, 170, 180, 204, 253 Al-e Ahmad, Jalal, 22, 79, 264, 303, 406, 416–17 Al-e Ahmad, Shams, 420 Allamehzadeh, Mohammad Reza, 126–27, 408, 410, 411, 412, 413, 431 Allied Forces, 1, 2, 3 All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (voks), 16–24 Al-Rashid, Harun, 54 American Bazaar, The (Issari), 59 American Forces Radio Network, 3 American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (ajjdc), 58–59 American Sketches (newsreel), 38

Amini, Ali, 325–26 Amini, Amin, 239 Amirarjomand, Laili, 70 Amir Arsalan (Kushan), 205 Amir Arsalan (television serial), 67 Amirebrahimi, Shahpar, 304, 305 Amirmoez, Alireza, 13 Ancient Fairy Tales (Nabili), 374–75 Ancient Iran (film series), 141–43 Ancient Tales of Iran (television serial), 68 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (aioc), 13, 31, 32, 77, 91, 156 Anglo/Persian Cooperation (newsreel), 29 Anglo-Persian Institute (api), 12–16 Anglo/Soviet Control (newsreel), 29 Animated films, 405–7 Antonioni, Michaelangelo, 119, 183 Anvar, Manuchehr, 134 Anxieties of Unknown Origin (Saedi), 370 Anxiety (Khachikian), 428 api (Anglo-Persian Institute), 12–16 Aqa, Seyyed Ali, 389 Aqababian, Alex, 119, 253 Aqamalian, Armais, 234 Aqanikian, Hekmat, 334 Aqili, Mehri, 252, 311 Aqili, Morteza, 317 Aram, Ahmad, 22 Arani, Taqi, 3, 22 Aras Khan (Malekmotii), 234 Arbab, Mohammad Karim, 175–76 Arba’in (Taqvai), 104–5, 129 Arhamsadr, Reza, 256 Aria Film Studio, 253 Ariana Cinema, 60, 139 Armed Forces Radio and Television (afrts), 46, 66 Army Air Force Film Report (newsreel), 28 Arranged marriage theme, 232–33 Arrival of HIM the Shah into Tabriz, The (newsreel), 53 Artesh Cinema, 10, 52 Artesh Film Studio, 5, 51–55, 61, 62

498

i nd e x

Arthur Rank Company, 422 Artisanal production mode: continua‑ tion of, 67, 148, 175, 177, 333; critique of, 310; multifunctional, 203–5, 222; negation and, 364–265; shift to hybrid mode, 34, 49, 147–48, 154, 156, 166, 304, 341, 403–4 Asgarian, Ali Asgar, 106 Asgarinasab, Manuchehr, 95 Ashraf, Princess, 87 Asian Youth Film Festival, 334 Aslani, Mohammad Reza, 426, 431 Asr-e Talai Studio, 152, 170, 252 Atashin, Faeqeh, 172, 209, 211–12 Atlas Film Studio, 171 Atomic Energy in Medicine (film), 46 Atomic Energy Works for Peace (film), 46 Atoms for Peace Program, 46 Attapour, Orod, 98 At the End of Darkness (Malakuti), 235 Audience. See Spectatorship Audiocassettes: censorship and, 415, 419; Khomeini’s use of, 416–18 Ayandegan (newspaper), 182 Azarbaijan: Democratic Party defeated in, 53–54, 238; independence move‑ ment in, 21, 238; nationalism and, 18, 21; popular movies in, 14; Shahsavan nomads in, 107; Soviet forces expelled from, 28, 31 Azarbaijan Day (documentary), 53 Azar Cinema, 21 Azarian, Serzh, 169–70, 232 Azari autonomy movement, 21, 238 Azhir Film Studio, 170, 260 Babadaghi Leper Colony, 82 Baba Karam (music video), 322 Baba Shamal (periodical), 2 Baby Dandy (R. Safai), 204 Badie Film Studio, 37, 78, 174 Badie, Mohsen, 60, 174, 221 Badiya, Reza, 63 Baghasarian, Johnny, 170 Baghdad Pact, 36–37

Bahar, Malek al-Shoara, 22 Bahar, Mehrdad, 266 Bahar, Shamim, 87 Baharmast, Ahmad, 51 Bahrami, Sadegh, 54, 221 Baikimanverdi, Reza, 219–20, 268, 311 Baizai, Bahram, 89, 335, 350, 356, 363–68, 403, 405, 420, 431 Bakhtiar, Taymur, 189 Bakhtiari tribe, 107–8 Bald Hasan (Hatami), 333 Ballet of Azerbaijan, 9 Baluch (Kimiai), 234, 292, 373 Banai, Puri, 208, 304, 311 Baqeri, Ebrahim, 191 Baqerpur, Esmat, 175, 209, 210–11, 220, 234, 248, 304–5 Baraheni, Reza, 345 Barmaki, Jafar, 54 Barnouw, Erik, 62 Bashu, the Little Stranger (Baizai), 343, 344 Baxter, Neilson, 89 Bayal’s Mourners (Saedi), 345 bbc (British Broadcasting Corporation), 3, 61, 77, 99, 115, 418 Beale, Betty, 144 Beaver, Walter, 244 Behazin, 22 Beheshti, Mohammad, 418 Behind the Doctor (film), 14 Behrangi, Samad, 405–6 Beirut Agreement (1948), 72 Bennett, Lowell, 55 Bergman, Ingrid, 187 Berlin International Film Festival, 398 Berthomieu, André, 252 Beshkan Dance Academy, 323 Beyond Laughter (television serial), 317, 318, 319 Beyond the Barrier of Sound (Sinai), 126 Bhuhdorn, Charles G., 423 Bibian, Manuchehr, 319 Bicycle Thieves, The (De Sica), 339–40 Bigdeli, Naser Majd, 173

Bill, James, 143, 170–71 Bineshpazhuh, Shahkar, 324 Bird of Happiness (Chanakia), 335 Bita (Dariush), 233 Black Eyes (Sepanta), 222 Black Friday, 108 Black Mehdi and the Hot Pants (Fatemi), 244, 303, 306 Black ’n’ White (magazine), 58 Black Veins (Gaffary), 91 Blind Owl (Derambaksh), 371–72 Blind Owl, The (Hedayat), 274, 289, 368, 371–72 Blood and Honor (Khachikian), 54, 153 Boghosian, Arkadi, 170 Bohlul (Bahrami), 54 Bojnurd Folkdances (Shahid Saless), 96 Borchgrave, Arnaud de, 144 Borges, Jorge Luis, 290 Borna Tone Studio, 253 Boulting, Roy, 13 Boureka films, 172–72 Bozorg, Alavi, 3, 13 Branded with Shame (Shamlu), 221 Breadwinners of Illiteracy (Taqvai), 102 Brecht, Bertolt, 376 Bride of the Tigris, The (Mohtasham), 54, 152 Bride of Tigris (Shabpareh and Mohtasham), 152 Bride on the Run (Kushan), 221 British and Russian Forces (newsreel), 29 British Broadcasting Corporation (bbc), 3, 61, 77, 99, 115, 418 British Council, 12–16, 24, 26, 34, 55, 182 British Embassy, 14, 55 British Foreign Office Embassy Informa‑ tion Department, 16 British Movietone News (newsreel), 14, 28, 29, 30, 36 British Paramount News (newsreel), 28, 31–32 British Pathé Tone (newsreel), 28 Brokaw, Tom, 144

ind ex

499

Broken Column (Shafti), 95 Broken-Hearted (Hatami), 425 Büchner, Georg, 370 Buñuel, Luis, 85 Burdett, Winston, 32 Bush, George W., 46 Bushehri, Mehdi, 70 caifi (Committee for the Artistic and Intellectual Freedom of Iran), 414 Canby, Sheila, 229 Capri Cinema, 171, 371, 382, 396, 427 Caravan Film Corporation, 3 Caravans (Fargo), 334 Carnegie Foundation, 35 Carnival of Flowers (Sani al-Saltaneh), 98 Cassettes: censorship and, 415, 419; Khomeini’s use of, 416–18 cbs Broadcasting Inc, 32, 57, 77, 95, 330 Censorship: archived films and, 355, 371, 427; audiocassettes and, 415, 419; authoritarianism and, 195; avantgarde films and, 400; certification as, 73; conditions for banning, 185–86; by Cook, 4–9, 25–26; criticism of, 419– 21; of documentaries, 26, 50, 118, 126; doubling, dubbing, and, 254, 258; effects of, 70, 176, 259–60, 328, 407, 421–31; exhibition permits and, 424; filmfarsi movies and, 247, 259–60; film output and, 221–22; Golestan and, 78, 88, 125, 126; hybrid produc‑ tion mode and, 184, 259; by Islamic Republic, 313; by mca, 149, 160, 183, 184, 191, 194, 259, 300, 308, 332, 347, 353–56, 385, 419–21; by Ministry of Education, 5, 9, 193; by Ministry of the Interior, 5, 26, 332; Mohammad Reza Shah and, 356, 406; narrative chaos and, 247; nepotism in organiza‑ tions and, 330; new-wave films and, 183, 346, 347, 351, 354, 355, 400, 402, 420, 421, 423; by nioc, 332; by nirt, 133, 332, 400, 414, 421; pfc and, 354; of press, 421; pro-Shah films and,

500

i nd e x

239; public morality and, 8; radio and, 191; regulations for, 184–95, 307; representation of, 391, 392; script approval and, 133; self-censorship, 259, 260, 386, 421, 430; techniques to avoid, 88, 90, 97, 128, 235, 373, 421, 424–25; of television programming, 421; tough-guy films and, 262, 264, 307; by usia, 73; women and, 186, 193, 314–15, 393 Center for the Dialogue of Civilizations, 68 Center for the Intellectual Develop‑ ment of Children and Young Adults (cidcya): animated movies and, 348; book publishing and, 331, 405; cultural impact and, 331, 333, 404, 405; Empress Farah and, 330, 332, 405; film animators and, 405, 406, 407; film festival and, 408; filmmak‑ ers and, 399, 405, 406, 411; film style, 128 cento (Central Treaty Organization), 36–37, 38 Centonization, 214 Central Film Studio, 253 Central Intelligence Agency (cia), 17, 19, 171; coup d’état of 1953, 31, 204, 280, 422 Central Treaty Organization (cento), 36–37, 38 Ceramics (Tayyab), 95 Certificates of International Educational Character, 72–73 Chair de l’orchidée (Chéreau), 334 Chaknavarian, Loris, 95 Champion of Champions (Siamak Yasami), 19 Chanakia, Fabi, 335 Chance, Love, and Accident (Madani), 211, 241 Chaplin, Charlie, 14, 345, 402 Chaplin Studio, 170 Charley and a Half (Zvuloni), 173 Chéreau, Patrice, 334

Chess of the Wind (Aslani), 426 Children’s cinema, 331, 405 Children’s Holiday Film Shows, 15 Christopher Columbus (MacDonald), 187 Chronicle of a Summer (Rouch and Morin), 110 Chubak, Sadeq, 22, 79, 335 Churchill, Winston, 28 cia (Central Intelligence Agency), 17, 19, 171; in coup d’état of 1953, 31, 204, 280, 422 cidcya. See Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults Cine-clubs, 182–83, 334 Cinema Owners’ Syndicate, 168 Cinemascope, 325 Cinema 6 (periodical), 400 Cinema-Theater Rex, 170, 171, 220, 252, 386 Clair, René, 253 Cleanliness Brings Health (documentary), 41 Clean Water (documentary), 42 Cocteau, Jean, 253 Cold War: beginnings of, 31; ideological struggles of, 4; newsreels on, 31–32; public defense programming in, 35; superpower geopolitics in, 45, 62; U.S. policy and, 34, 37 College of Cinema and Television (nirt), 69, 71, 127, 334 Columbia Pictures, 422, 424 Combat Film Report (newsreel), 28 Committee for the Artistic and Intellec‑ tual Freedom of Iran (caifi), 414 Communication and Development Institute, 68 Communism, 21, 33, 34, 35, 44, 47, 62. See also Cold War Congress, U.S., 48, 143 Congress of Iranian Writers, 21 Consecrated to Life (documentary), 46 Constantin, Simik, 170 Cook, George Cram, 5

Cook, Nilla Cram, 6, 24–27, 52, 70; as censorship czar, 4–9, 25–26 Cooper, Gary, 209 Cooper, Merian C., 106 Copyright, 167–68 Cordova, Frederick de, 198 Countercoup (Roosevelt), 171 Course of the River, The (Rahbar), 219 Courtship (E. Golestan), 81 Cow, The (Mehrjui), 337, 338; censorship of, 332, 346, 424, 426; as part of new wave, 349; plot elements of, 336–40; screenplay of, 345; as seminal film, 410; style of, 284, 341; success of, 346–47, 348; themes of, 343–45, 362, 368 Crisis in Iran (newsreel), 31 Cronyism, 70–72, 330 Crossroads of Civilization (film series), 140–41 Crow, The (Baizai), 426 Crown for the Nation, A (S. Golestan), 60 Cry of Exultation (Foruhar), 321 Cry of the Mojahed (Madanian), 312 Crystal Cinema, 33, 164, 251 Cultural exchange, 16, 35, 63, 80, 230, 241, 284, 306, 317 Cultural Report of Iran (mca), 158 Culture Inc, 34–35, 37, 62 Culture of spectacle, 47, 53, 60, 136–38, 309, 328–30, 340, 404–5, 409 Cycle, The (Mehrjui), 332, 355–56, 424, 426, 427 Cyrus the Great (Issari), 141 Dailaman Dance (Shamlu), 96 Dallalfar, Arlene, 107–8 Dancer of Love, The (Tabari), 105 Daneshian, Keramatollah, 406, 408, 409–13 Dardarian, Jaklyn, 320–21 Dariabandari, Najaf, 78 Dariush, Hajir, 71, 335 Dariush, Parviz, 81

ind ex

501

Dariush Film Studio, 119, 253 Darrieux, Danielle, 251 Daryabaigi, Ali, 232, 248 Daryoush, Hajir, 71, 335 Dash Akol (Hedayat), 270, 278–79, 285 Dash Akol (Kimiai), 272, 273, 275, 333, 334, 368; acting style in, 284; casting for, 283–84; character development in, 277–80; critical praise of, 270–71; homosexuality and homosociality in, 287–88; language in, 286–87; lifestyle in, 280–82; masculinity in, 276–77, 287–88, 289–91; nostalgia and, 284–86; plot of, 271–74, 276; style of dress in, 283; violence in, 282; women’s representation in, 289–91, 293 Dash mashti subgenre, 269–70; conven‑ tions of, 26–294 Dastmalchi, Abbas, 102 Davai, Parviz, 151, 154, 191 Dawn of Explosion (Nuri), 312 Dawn of the Capricorn (Faruqi Qajar), 128 Dayhim, Mahin, 252 Dead-End (Sayyad), 350, 352, 355, 362–63 De Carlo, Yvonne, 187 Decoin, Henri, 251 Deer, The (Kimiai), 256, 285, 384, 385; censorship and, 386; coding and, 292, 313, 430; making of, 268; plot elements in, 313, 383–85; social justice and, 302 Defarrage, Marie, 480 n. 56 Defense Audiovisual Agency, 46 Delgado, Fernando, 251 Delju, Mohammad, 429 Delkash, 175, 209, 210–11, 220, 234, 248, 304–5 DeMille, Cecil B., 187 Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, 53 Department of Propaganda and Radio, 9 Derambaksh, Kyumars, 129 Derambaksh, Mohammad, 54 Dervishes, 105, 269, 447 n. 37

502

i nd e x

Desert Caravans (Derambaksh), 129 Desert Hawk, The (Cordova), 198 Desert of Tartars, The (Zurlini), 334 Desert Victory (Boulting), 13 De Sica, Vittorio, 339 Desired Ones, The (Ovadia), 172 Des Moines Register (newspaper), 5 Destiny (Aksoy), 306 Deulig Weekly (newsreel), 28 Dezadurian, Rubik, 170 Diana Cinema, 117, 169, 252, 253, 426 Diana Film Studio, 54, 153–54, 169, 170, 253 Dickman, Irving R., 58 Dilmaj, 15, 42–43, 75, 244, 247, 256 Disgraced (Kushan), 175, 210–11, 220, 234 Disney films, 39 Documentaries: agricultural, 14, 40; avant-garde, 129–33; censorship of, 26, 50, 118, 126; in civil government, 62–63; contrapuntal strategies in, 76, 84–85, 106, 119, 120–21, 123, 128; coproduction of, 133–43; dubbing of, 39–40; ethnographic, 99–1–6; on film history, 97–99; fine arts and, 92–97; on indigenous technolo‑ gies, 111–13; industrial, 81, 89, 91; institutional, 75–76; mca and, 64; medical, 14; official style of, 50–51, 72–75; poetic realist, 76, 79–80, 82–84, 88, 91, 125; on public health, 41; on religious culture, 101–6; on social protest, 118–28; state control of, 50–51; textual formation in, 49, 62; on travel, 113–18; on tribes, 106–11; of usia, 47–48, 54; of usis, 39–48, 49, 52–53, 55, 56, 65; Western com‑ mercial, 28–33. See also Educational films; Newsreels Domestic Prey (Bahrami and Daryabegi), 221 Doniya (journal), 3 Doorman (Haritash), 424 Dossier (Sabbaghzadeh), 312

Doubling, 251, 256, 258. See also Dubbing Douglas, William O., 31 Dowlatabadi, Mahmood, 335, 401 Downpour (Baizai), 363–65, 367 Drama and Opera Performers’ Society, 18 Dreams Betrayed (Akrami), 99 Drive-in cinemas, 157 Dubbing, 256, 257; censorship and, 254, 258; of documentaries, 39–40; early film studios and, 169, 251–59; educational films and, 10–11; film studios specializing in, 170; hybrid production mode and, 250–51; nirt and, 170; for television, 258; union, 254. See also Live screen interpreters Dysentery (documentary), 41 Earth, The (Kimiai), 235, 401 Eastern Man and Western Woman (Qarib), 244 Ebrahimi, Ahmad, 249 Ebrahimi, Nader, 68, 403 Ebram in Paris (Kushan), 221, 303 Ebtehaj, Gholamhosain, 51 Educational certificates, 72–73 Educational Film Festival, 333 Educational films: audience identifica‑ tion and, 74; censorship of, 5, 26; dubbing and, 10–11; educational certificates for, 72–73; Educational Television Channel and, 66, 71; mobile film units and, 439 n. 74; nefc and, 5, 10, 24–25, 26; Soviet, 18; by Syracuse Team, 40; usis and, 39–41, 64 Educational Television Channel, 66, 71 Education Corps (documentary), 56 Eighth Day of the Week, The (Rejaiyan), 240–41 Eisenhower, Dwight, 34 Elegy (Amir Naderi), 386, 424, 426 Elton, Arthur, 78, 80 Elwell-Sutton, L. P., 13

Emad, Siavash, 190 Emami, Esmail, 106 Emami, Karim, 78, 84, 326–27 Emami, Ruhollah, 78 Empire Marketing Board (emb), 12, 80 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 32 End of One Day, The (Otan), 400–401 Enemy of Women, The (Khatibi), 171, 187–88 Entertainer (Nuriala), 221 Entezam, Abdollah, 91 Entezam, Nasrollah, 31 Eqbal, Manucher, 189 erpi (Western Electrical Research Products), 10 Esfandiari, Ali, 22 Eshqi, Salar, 191 Eskenas (Bineshpazhuh), 324 Esmal in New York (Madani), 275 Estepanian, Henrik, 191 Etemad, Akbar, 138 Etemadzadeh, Mahmud, 22 Eternal Flame (S. Golestan), 60, 138–39 Eternal Night (Allamehzadeh), 126–27 Eternal Return (Delannoy), 253 Ettela’at (newspaper), 182, 413, 414 Ettela’at-e Mahaneh (magazine), 44 Ettela’at Haftegi (magazine), 19 Exchange relations, 16, 35, 63, 80, 230, 241, 284, 306, 317 Exhibition Committee, 184–87, 188, 190–91 faa. See Fine Arts Administration (faa) Fahmi, Ahmad, 171, 212 Faijani, Mohammad, 63 Fakur, Karim, 152 Family themes, 231–32 Fannizadeh, Parviz, 255 Fanon, Frantz, 368, 416 Farah, Shahbanu, 55; arts and, 212–13, 330, 332, 385; censorship and, 356; cidcya and, 405; coronation of, 60; film festivals and, 385, 411; kidnap‑ ping plot and, 408; marriage of, 65;

ind ex

503

Farah, Shahbanu (cont.) nepotism and, 66, 69–70, 330; private screenings for, 87, 271, 382; regency and, 328, 329; Society for Assistance to Lepers and, 87–88 Fardin, Mohammad Ali, 169, 177; career decline of, 206; improvisation and, 217–19, 245; on investigation list, 311; lip synching and, 248; in Man from Tehran, 334; Qarun’s Treasure and, 198–202, 241; as superstar, 204–7; as wrestler, 201, 268 Far from Home (Shahid Saless), 396–97, 398 Fargo, James, 334 Farhang Club, 16 Farhang Scientific Company, 16 Farmanara, Bahman, 335, 340, 368–70, 379–80 Farman Khan (A. Safai), 234, 297 Farrokhzad, Forugh, 82, 102–3, 342; Golestan and, 81–88, 90, 359 Faruqi Qajar, Ahmad, 128 Farzaneh, Mostafa, 22, 93, 183 Fatalism theme, 237–38 Fate (Aqanikian), 334–35 Fatemi, Nezam, 244, 306 Fawziah, Queen, 14, 212 Fear and Hope (Obadia), 172, 212 Fekri, Moezoddin, 238 Female seduction theme, 233–34 Ferdows, Sohaila, 208, 299, 304, 305 Ferdowsi, Abolqasem, 20, 139, 224, 342, 353 Ferdowsi Cinema, 173 Ferdowsi Films, 176 Feri Cinema, 115 Ferrara, Giuseppe, 340 Festival of Young Filmmakers’ Cinema, 334 Festivals: exile, 127; foreign, 194, 346– 47, 398, 426; growth of, 71–72, 176; Khomeini and, 329; in Pahlavi era, 308–9, 328; as showcases, 333–34; state sponsorship of, 51

504

i nd e x

Few Moments with Qaderi Dervishes, A (Tabari), 105 ff. See Filmfarsi movies F for Fake (Welles), 334 fidci (Film Industry Development Corporation of Iran), 70, 143, 330, 333, 334, 348, 355, 356, 426 Film clubs, 182–83, 334 Filmco Films, 172 Film distribution, 24, 156, 158 Film Dubbers’ Union, 254 Film equipment: British Council and, 16, 24; in mobile units, 41; nefc and, 5, 10; small studios and, 169; U.S. investment in, 62; usis and, 64 Film exhibition: censorship and, 9, 424; émigré producers and, 172; film rota‑ tions, 56; improvisational, 9; licenses for, 5, 8, 26, 191, 354; permits for, 160, 184; provincial movie houses and, 157; regulation of, 191–92; spinoffs and, 165–66. See also Movie houses; National Educational Film Circuit; Spectatorship Filmfarsi movies: censorship and, 247, 259–60; characteristics of, 149, 221, 229–30; continuity in, 216–17, 219; discontinuity in, 245–48; edict against, 308–9; fantastical, 246; female stars in, 207–9; genres of, 152–54, 173; in Hebrew, 172–73; improvisation in, 215–22, 302; investi‑ gation of actors in, 310–11; miniature paintings and, 226–29; oral tradition and, 223–25; popularity of, 151–52, 154; repetition in, 229–30, 245; screenplays of, 221; sound synching in, 216; state intervention and, 149; themes of, 230–44; urban settings for, 235; village films, 234; Western‑ ization in, 150, 240–41, 310. See also Stewpot films; Tough-guy films Film festivals: exile, 127; foreign, 194, 346–47, 398, 426; growth of, 71–72, 176; Khomeini and, 329; in Pahlavi

era, 308–9, 328; as showcases, 333–34; state sponsorship of, 51 Film importation, 422–24 Film Importers Association, 424 Film Industry Development Corporation of Iran (fidci), 70, 143, 330, 333, 334, 348, 355, 356, 426 Film-Or, 173 Film Shows in the Garden, 15 Film studios: commercial, 50, 71, 168– 76, 334–35; coproductions by, 334–35; decline of, 429; establishment of, 173–76; ethnic influences on, 169–73; evolution of, 169; filmfarsi and, 149; increase in, 173–74; independent, 50, 71; integration of, 174–76; new-wave cinema and, 333; nonfiction films and, 50, 71; star-owned, 207 Film va Honar (periodical), 308 Fine Arts Administration (faa), 27, 49, 52, 60, 180, 181; Audiovisual Depart‑ ment, 63; film style and, 73, 74; mca and, 65 Finnegan, Ruth, 223, 225 Firdausi (Sepanta), 222 Fire, A (Golestan and Farrokhzad), 81, 125 Fire without Smoke (television serial), 68 Fischer, Michael, 276, 341, 453–54 n. 6 Fish Die on Land, The (Mojahed and Delju), 429 Flaherty, Robert, 90, 183 Flames of Persia (S. Golestan), 60, 138–39 Flaming Poppies, The (documentary), 107 Fleming, Victor, 187 Floor, Willem, 287 Forbidden Acts Bureau, 379 Ford Foundation, 35 Foreign Bride (Vahdat), 243 Foreign-bride movies, 242–44 For God’s Sake Give Generously (R. Safai), 221 Forsi, Bahman, 129 Fortress (Shirdel), 119–21

Forugh Farrokhzad (Taqvai), 102–3 Foruhar, Leila, 321 Foruzan, 200, 201, 208, 248, 334; on investigation list, 311; star system and, 304–5 Foruzesh, Ebrahim, 404 Foucault, Michel, 414, 418 Fox News (newsreel), 28 Francisci, Pietro, 253 Free Cinema Film Festival, 333 Free Cinema Society, 405 Free University of Iran, 71, 111 From Shout to Assassination (S. Tehrani), 312 Frost, David, 140 Funeral of Reza Shah, The (newsreel), 45 Gabriel, Teshome, 368 Gaffary, Farrokh: censorship and, 371, 393; on continuity, 217; documenta‑ ries and, 91; film clubs and, 182–83; gfw and, 79; as Kavusi critic, 152; as part of new wave, 336, 350; as nirt official, 138; Savak and, 189–90 Gaffary, Hosainali, 189 Galishian, Grigori, 17 Gamble of Life (Kasai), 211 Game of Love (Beaver), 244 Gandhi, Mahatma, 5 Gaumont British News (newsreel), 28, 29, 32 General Department of Cinema Affairs, 191 General Post Office (gpo) Film Unit, 12, 80 Generous Tough, The (Mohseni), 234, 261, 294 gfw. See Golestan Film Workshop Ghaffari, Simin, 311 Ghazal (Kimiai), 290 Ghotbi, Reza, 66, 70, 330, 331, 332, 371 Gilda (Vidor), 326 Girl Cries Out, A (Parvizi), 221 Girl from Shiraz, A (Khachikian), 245 Gitanilla, La (Delgado), 251, 252

ind ex

505

Glass (Haanstra), 91–92 Godard, Jean-Luc, 119 Goethe Institut, 419 Gogol (Sato), 334 Gol Aqa (Aqamalian), 234 Golden Army of Genghis Khan (film), 52 Golden Heel (Fatemi), 306 Goleh, Feraidun, 244, 302 Golestan, Ebrahim, 79; censorship and, 78, 88, 125, 126; documentaries by, 80, 88, 124, 125; Farrokhzad and, 81–88; as freelancer, 78; gfw and, 71, 76–80, 88, 90; mca and, 60, 124, 138–39; multifunctionality of, 81; name change of, 76; nioc and, 33; poetry used by, 88, 89, 96; Tudeh Party and, 22 Golestan, Esmail, 55, 60–61, 78, 81, 88, 89, 99, 138 Golestan, Kaveh, 121 Golestan, Shahrokh, 55, 60–61, 78, 81, 88, 89, 99, 138 Golestan Film Workshop (gfw), 71, 170, 173; art cinema and, 78; auteur‑ ist fiction and, 80; creation of, 77; documentaries by, 88, 124, 125; multifunctionality and, 79; personnel of, 76; sale of, 90–91 Golestan Palace, 97, 99 Golnesa (Azarian), 232 Golnesa in Paris (R. Safai), 203–4, 243 Golshan, Faezeh, 156 Golshan Cinema, 156 Golshiri, Hushang, 270, 334, 335, 345, 368, 373, 377, 380, 402, 403, 420 Golsorkhi, Khosrow, 406, 409–13 Golsorkhi, Mehdi, 5, 9–10, 24, 51–52, 53, 55, 61, 151–53 Googoosh, 172, 209, 211–12 Gopalan, Lalitha, 246 Gorgani, Fakhreddin, 22 Gorji, Ahmad, 171, 212 gpo Film Unit, 12, 80 Grass (Cooper, Schoedsack, and Har‑ rison), 106–7

506

i nd e x

Great Game, The (film), 15 Greene, Richard, 187 Greenpark Productions, 32 Green Room Theater, 55 Grierson, John, 12, 80, 182 Grimes, J. H., 15–16 Group-53 communists, 2, 21, 23 Guests of Hotel Astoria, The (Pooya), 413 Güney, Yilmaz, 362 Gypsy Girl, The (Delgado), 251, 252 Haanstra, Bert, 91 Habib, Mounir, 172 Habib, Nuri, 175 Habibi, Imam Ali, 268 Hadj Seyyed Javadi, Ali Asghar, 430 Haeri, Tusi, 81 Hafez, Mohammad, 20, 342, 353, 355 Haggling, 185, 217, 219, 258 Hailing, 44, 185, 258 Haji Aqa, the Movie Actor (Ohanians), 99, 240 Haji Jabbar in Paris (Soruri), 242 Haj Mossavar al-Mokly (Sinai), 96 Hakimian, Habibollah, 170 Haleh, 304, 305 Hamilton, John, 37 Hamlet film studio, 170 Hamoon (Mehrjui), 269 Hamz, Amir, 419 Hanaway, William, 224, 274–75, 276 Hangval, Mahmud, 78, 81 Hangval, Shahrokh, 78 Haqiqi, Nemat, 102 Harirforush, Ismail. See Kushan, Ismail Haritash, Khosrow, 129, 255, 347, 424, 426 Harmonica (Amir Naderi), 348 Harrison, Marguerite, 106–7 Hashemi, Zakaria, 268 Hatami, Ali, 68, 333, 425, 431 Havelock, Eric, 223 Hazardous Crossroads (Khachikian), 153, 170, 239

Hearst Metrotone News (newsreel), 28, 32, 46 Heart to Heart (Morteza), 321, 322 Hedayat, Sadeq: Dash Akol film and, 270–75, 284–85; as martyr, 372; return from exile of, 2; self-described, 368–69; Tudeh party and, 22 Henduja, Nandaras, 172 Her Eyes (Alavi), 23 Heroin (Shervan), 311 Hidden Treasures (television series), 98 Hillmann, Michael, 213 Hills of Marlik (E. Golestan), 96, 383 Hip-hop genre, 324 Hoek, Lotte, 105 Hogi, Salman, 172 Holivud (periodical), 9, 13, 14 Hollywood movies: banned, 8, 26; critique of, 77; exportation of, 422–25; in little cinemas, 11–12; as model, 214–15; new wave influenced by, 421; realism in, 20, 246; shorts, 10; U.S. Embassy and, 24 Homa Cinema, 172 Homay Cinema, 19, 20, 220 Homayun Cinema, 165 Homeless (television serial), 67–68 Homework (Kiarostami), 124 Hope, Bob, 186 Horkheimer, Max, 150, 264 Hosainiyeh Ershad, 416 Hosain the Cop (R. Safai), 204 House Is Black (Farrakhzad), 85–87; poetic realism in, 82–84, 88; versions of, 444–45 n. 24 House of Culture, 17, 18, 23 House of God, The (Rezai), 101–2 Hoveyda, Amir Abbas, 125–26, 326, 328, 380, 382–83, 400, 430 Hoveyda, Fereydoun, 371, 382 Humphrey, John, 43 Hybrid production mode, 155; audience and, 306; censorship and, 184, 259; chaotic narratives in, 247; dubbing, doubling, and, 250–51; improvisation

and, 188, 213–22, 228, 244, 350–51; institutionalization of, 177; multi‑ functionality and, 203–5; new-wave cinema and, 328, 336; shift from artisanal mode, 34, 49, 147–48, 154, 156, 166, 176, 212, 229, 304, 333, 341, 403–4; spontaneity of, 303; star system and, 205–13; textual forma‑ tions and, 202–29; tough-guy genre and, 270 Imbrie, Robert, 74 Improvisation: in editing, 244–45; ethos of, 148, 213–14; film exhibi‑ tions and, 9; filmfarsi and, 215–22, 302; in hybrid production mode, 186, 215–22, 228, 350–51; in music, 213–14; narrative, 237; in oral poetry, 224; translators and, 257–58 Inanoqlu, Turker, 335 In Defense of People (Pooya), 413 Indigenous technologies, 111–13 International Children’s Film Festival, 71, 333, 405, 408 International Police (television serial), 254 In the Land of the Shah (film), 29 In the News (newsreel), 32 Into the Night (Sayyad), 212 Into the Wilderness (Omidvar brothers), 117 Iraj, 199 Iran (Soviet film), 14 Iran: Between Two Worlds (Richter), 32 Iran: Brittle Ally (cbs Reports), 32, 33 Iran: Old Faces and New (film series), 144 Iran: The Land of Religions (Tayyab), 102 Iran-America Relations Society, 3, 10, 11, 18, 123 Iran Cine-Club, 183 Iran Cinema, 11, 19, 20, 24, 156–57 Iran Crown Jewels (Golestan), 383 Iran-e no Cinema, 157, 252 Iran Film Studio, 37, 101, 180, 253

ind ex

507

Iran-Germany Cultural Society, 419 Irani, Ardeshir, 99, 211, 248 Iranian cinema: American influence on, 169–70; American investment in, 62; crisis in, 422–31; ethnic influ‑ ences on, 169–73; genre statistics, 166–67; improvisation and, 215–22, 401; national cinema genres, 154, 172; official documentary filmmaking, 55–62, 100; patronage in, 171, 327; politics and, 164; production output, 177–79, 221–22; professionalization of, 176, 204–5, 330, 336; propaganda and, 5; religiosity and, 163; state role in, 325–26; vertical and horizontal integration in, 174–76 Iranian Cinema, from the Constitution to Sepanta (Tahaminejad), 98 Iranian communist party, 18; banned, 239; demonstrations and, 164; intelli‑ gentsia and, 22; periodicals of, 19, 77; political meetings and, 23; popularity of, 31; Savak and, 408 Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization, 100 Iranian Homeland (nirt program), 95 Iranian in Latin America (A. Omidvar), 117 Iranian Revolution (1978–79), 31, 262, 414 Iranian Society of Film Critics, 168 Iran Nama Film, 189 Iran News (usis newsreel), 36–39, 46, 53, 55–56, 72 Iran News Review (usis newsreel), 37–38 Iran News Special Release (usis news‑ reel), 37–38 Iran Occupied (newsreel), 29 Iran-Rockefeller and Near East Founda‑ tions, 40 Iran’s Crown Jewels (E. Golestan), 124–25, 383 Iran-Soviet Cultural Relations Society, 3, 13, 17–19, 21, 23 Iran Television, 38, 66, 211

508

i nd e x

Iran-Washington Report (usis newsreel), 38–39 Irving, Clive, 140, 141 Isfahan (Sattar), 93 Isfahani in New York, An (Nazerian), 242–43 Isfahani in the Land of Hitler, An (Vah‑ dat), 243 Isfahan Medical Association, 14 Islamic Protestantism, 417 Islamic Republic: auteur cinema in, 431; censorship in, 124, 128–29, 136, 313, 379, 420; dubbing in, 258; exile and, 412–13; Fardin and, 206; female performers in, 211, 311; film patronage and, 327; Foruzan and, 311; industry purification in, 311; lutis and, 315, 320, 324; open form and, 357; orality and, 228; political resistance in, 403; religiosity in, 163; sexuality in, 314, 363; as source of fear, 344; visuality and, 228 Islamic Revolution (1978–79), 31, 262, 414 Issari, Mohammad Ali: British Council and, 13; as cameraman, 102; on German newsreels, 30; as official documentary filmmaker, 55–60; as pioneer, 61; Syracuse Team and, 63; usis and, 37, 41, 42, 45, 56; U.S. stud‑ ies and, 141–43 Jackson, Ronald, 112 Jacobson, Arnold, 11, 13 Jafari, Shaban, 171, 280, 319 Jafar Khan is Back from Europe (Moqad‑ dam), 16 Jaffe, Samuel, 58 Jahangiri, Shabnam, 304 Jahel and the Student, The (Shervan), 311 Jaheli subgenre, 269–70, 294; conven‑ tions of, 301–5; edict against, 308–9. See also Qaisar Jahels. See Tough guys Jaklyn, 320–21

Jamal, Samia, 159 Jam-e’ Mosque (Tayyab), 95 Javaheri, Mahmud, 22 Javits, Jacob, 143–44 Javits, Marion, 144 Jazani, Bijan, 23, 403 Jazani, Heshmat, 403 Jazani, Mihan, 23 Jerome, Carole, 418 Joan of Arc (Fleming), 187 Journey (Baizai), 348 Journey of Stone (Kimiai), 292, 386, 427, 430 Journey to Adventure (travel series), 144 Jowdat, Hosain, 16 Junk prints, 159 Kahzak, Nasrin, 304, 305 Kairbakhsh, Parvin, 200, 201, 208, 248, 334; on investigation list, 311; star system and, 304–5 Kamali, Sasan, 137 Kameli, Ataollah, 258 Kardan, Parviz, 67, 68 Kardavani, Azizollah, 170 Karimi, Nosrat, 130, 131, 256 Karimi, Reza, 209 Karimi-Hakkak, Ahmad, 373 Kasai, Abbas, 211 Kashani, Ayatollah, 43, 77 Kasmai, Ali, 154, 175, 221, 233–34, 256, 401 Katayun, 304, 305 Katouzian, Homa, 270 Kavusi, Amir Hushang: censorship and, 191, 194, 195, 220; cine-clubs and, 183; dubbing and, 256; as film critic, 89, 295, 301, 326–27; filmfarsi and, 149, 152, 215; improvisation and, 217 Kayhan (newspaper), 130, 182, 413, 414, 427, 429 Keene, Ralph, 32 Kennedy, John F., 33 Keshavarz, Karim, 3, 16, 18 Keyvan, Morteza, 22

Khachaturian, Sanasar, 169 Khachikian, Samuel, 54, 55, 153, 157, 187, 236, 428; censorship and, 245, 259–60; Iranian noir cinema and, 170–71, 239; as studio owner, 170–71; Western influence on, 326–27 Khairbakhsh, Parvin, 200, 201, 208, 248, 334; on investigation list, 311; star system and, 304–5 Khakdan, Valiollah, 174 Khaleqi, Ruhollah, 20, 21 Khaliqi, Mehdi, 51–52 Khaneh Film-e Iran, 426 Khatibi, Parviz, 18, 53, 54, 170, 171, 204, 217, 239, 248–49 Khazai, Malekjahan, 68 Kheradmand, Hasan, 234 Khojastegi, Banu, 16 Khomeini, Ruhollah, 57–58; cassettes of, 416–18; in exile, 137, 280, 329, 417, 418; poor people and, 237, 409–10; views of, 264 Khorasan Folkdances (Shafti), 97 Khorvash, Fakhri, 207, 315 Khoshabeh, Ilush, 268 Khosrowshahi, Khosrow, 254 Kia, Alavi, 189 Kiarostami, Abbas, 124, 255, 295, 296, 335, 350, 384, 387, 398–401, 405 Kimiai, Masud, 207; acting styles and, 284; adaptation and, 401; auteur cin‑ ema and, 431; as authorial force, 335, 350; authorial formation of, 292–94; biography of, 291–92; cidcya sup‑ port and, 405; coding and, 383–86; Googoosh and, 212; Islamic Republic and, 313; new wave and, 352; nostalgia and, 284–86; social justice and, 373; village films and, 234; as writer, 302, 402, 426 Kimiavi, Parviz, 95, 106, 387–93; as part of avant-garde, 105–6, 128; influence of, 350; nirt and, 95, 105–6; open form and, 357; surrealism and, 340, 342

ind ex

509

Kingdom of Heaven (Haritash), 255, 347, 424, 426 King for a Day (Khatibi), 249 King Kong (film), 2 “King of Kings” (anthem), 21 King of the Universe (television serial), 68 Kinley, Myron, 81 Kolthum, Um, 159 Kuh-e Nur Film Studio, 172 Kurdish Dance (Shafti), 97 Kurosawa, Akira, 346 Kushan, Ismail, 33, 71; coproductions and, 335; dubbing and, 251–52; Film Producers Syndicate and, 325; foreign bride movies and, 303; improvisation and, 217–18; influence of, 204; multifunctionality and, 204, 220; narrative chaos and, 205; studio ownership by, 168, 174. See also Pars Film Studio Labbakhi-Nezhad, Farideh, 368 Laili and Majnun (Sepanta), 222 Lamorisse, Albert, 133, 135 Landers, John, 144 Land without Bread (Buñuel), 85 Last Passage, The (Parvizi), 235 Laughing Windows, The (Fatemi), 221 Laurel and Hardy, 14 Lazars, Mark, 419 Lenczowski, George, 144 Lend-Lease to Russia (newsreels), 29 Lens (Otan), 400–401 Less, Gunther, 144 Levine, Irving R., 144 Liakhov, Vladimir, 6 Licenses, 5, 8, 26, 191, 354 Lichenski, Georges, 170 Light of the Time (Gaffary), 91 Linen, James A., 144 Lip-synching, 199, 241, 248, 255 Little Black Fish (Makui), 406 Little Black Fish, The (Behrangi), 405–6

510

i nd e x

Live screen interpreters, 15, 42–43, 75, 244, 247, 256 Long Live Auntie (Khatibi), 238 Lord, Alfred, 223 Lorenz, Pare, 14 Loretta, 22 Lor Girl, The (Sepanta and Irani), 99, 211, 248 Lost Cinema, The (Akrami), 99, 102, 338 Lost Reels (Zahedian), 98 Louisiana Story (Flaherty), 90, 183 Lovers, The (Magritte), 377 Lovers’ Wind, The (Lamorisse), 133–36 Lumpenism, 262–63 Luti movies. See Tough-guy films Lutis. See Tough guys Macbeth (Welles), 22 MacDonald, David, 187 Madanian, Mehdi, 312 Madani, Hasan, 275 Madani, Hosain, 211, 241 Mafia (Jaklyn), 320–21 Magic Lantern (S. Golestan), 99 Magic Lantern, The (Reipur), 99 Magritte, René, 377 Mahdavi, Zhaleh, 271 Mahini Hasanzadeh, Mohammad Hosain, 127 Mahjubi, Manuchehr, 67 Mahmoud, 323 Mahmoudi, Kambiz, 66, 361 Mahvash, Banu, 158, 166, 172, 209–10, 211, 248, 304, 305, 322 Maimandinezhad, Mohammad, 221, 401 Majalleh-ye Iran va Amrika (periodical), 3 Makhmalbaf, Mohsen, 98–99 Makui, Af kham, 406 Malekan, Khosrow, 313 Maleki, Khalil, 22, 417 Malekmotii, Naser, 208, 234, 239, 284, 295, 297, 301–4, 311–12 Male temptation theme, 233–34 Manazer-e Iran (Poselski), 19 Man from Tehran, A (Agrama), 335

Man of the Amazon (Omidvar brothers), 116 Mansouri, Hossein, 86 Mansur, Ali, 189 Manteqi, Aman, 307, 312 Marandi, Hasan, 68 March of Time (newsreel), 31 Marcuse, Herbert, 348 Mardom (periodical), 77 Marjan, 304, 305 Marjan (Riahi), 207, 210 Marker, Chris, 85 Marx Brothers, 2 Marxism, 23, 231, 409, 416 Masculinity. See Stewpot films; Toughguy films; Tough guys Mashhadi Ebad (Sabahi), 170 Mashhad University, 416 Masumi, Parvaneh, 207 Matinson, Leslie, 334 Mayak Cinema, 19, 20, 23, 26, 165 Mayer, Anthony, 140–41 mca. See Ministry of Culture and Art McCarthy, Joseph, 34 mcig, 100, 206, 314 Media: autonomy of, 71; big, 414–15; cen‑ sorship of, 7, 407; cross-fertilization of, 176, 204; educational film circuit and, 27; emergence of, 208; foreign imports, 148; global circulation and, 222, 322, 324, 418–19; ideology and, 35, 62–63, 68–70, 163; image forma‑ tion and, 126, 143–45; influence of, 166, 284, 301; on land reform, 237; martial law and, 431; national identity and, 100; national spectacles and, 137; Pahlavi campaigns and, 143–45; power of, 47; professionalization of, 330; propaganda and, 53, 66; recanta‑ tions and, 408–9; resistance and, 412, 419; statistics in, 158; Western mediawork, 114, 145. See also Press Medical Films, 13, 14 Medvedkin, Alexander, 36 Mehring, Margaret, 141

Mehrjui, Dariush, 124, 234; authorial formation and, 345; censorship and, 332, 346–47; commercial movies and, 353; influence of, 350; Islamic Repub‑ lic and, 431; as part of new wave, 335; on political commitment, 348; style of, 341 Men of Dawn (Nuriala), 221 Mesdaqi, Hamid, 232 Mesghali, Farshid, 405 Messenger from Heaven (Khachikian), 187, 259 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (mgm), 11, 24, 65, 422, 424 Metropole Cinema, 207, 220 mgm (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), 11, 24, 65, 422, 424 Michigan State University film series, 141–42 Mickey Mouse, 15 Middlemen (Mohammadzadeh), 428 Midnight Cry (Khachikian), 153, 171, 326 Milani, Abbas, 382 Milani, Farzaneh, 289 Milani, Naqi, 22 Millspaugh, Arthur, 6 Minasian, Herand, 78, 170, 333 Minasian, Soleiman, 78, 96, 170, 333, 360 Ministry of Culture and Art (mca): actors and, 336; animated films and, 406–7; audience surveys, 160–61, 166, 205, 306, 423; budget, 70; censorship by, 149, 160, 183, 191, 194, 259, 300, 308, 332, 347, 353–56, 385, 419–21, 429; college programs and, 333; copyright and, 167–68; creation of, 49, 63–65; cultural report by, 158; Empress Farah and, 332; Exhibition Committee of, 184–87, 188, 190–91; exhibition permits and, 160, 184, 188, 346; film confiscation and, 125; film‑ farsi and, 308; film festivals and, 328, 333–34; film promotion and, 133, 194;

ind ex

511

Ministry of Culture and Art (mca), (cont.) fine arts and, 92–93; foreign screen‑ ings and, 73; funding and, 336, 346, 354; General Department of Cinema Affairs and, 191; Golestan and, 60, 124, 138–39; gross revenues and, 427; High Council of Exhibition and, 184; homogeneity and, 331; mobile film units and, 156; movie houses and, 159; National Film Archive, 183; nirt and, 68, 69, 70, 71, 139, 331, 371; Office of Supervision and Exhibition and, 191; private sector and, 177; production centers and, 330; propaganda aims of, 73; Reipur and, 99; response to film crisis, 427–29; responsibilities of, 133; Saless and, 96, 393–94; score commissions by, 139; Shafti and, 107; Shirdel and, 119–23, 130; Sinai and, 96; strikes and, 430; Tayyab and, 95, 102, 129; technical support and, 140; ticket prices and, 429 Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guid‑ ance (mcig), 100, 206, 314 Ministry of Education: audiovisual center, 40; film circuits and, 27; mca and, 64; nefc and, 4. See also Syracuse Team Ministry of Information and Publica‑ tion, 175 Ministry of the Interior: Department of Theaters, 4–5, 9, 11, 26; Exhibition Committee and, 184, 191; tourism and, 51 Mirbaha, Reza, 112 Mirbaqeri, Davud, 314 Misaqiyeh, Mehdi, 171, 191, 309 Misaqiyeh Film Studio, 171, 174, 334, 348, 370, 373, 374, 383, 429 MI6, 31, 171, 204, 280, 422 Missile X (Matinson), 334 Mission Impossible (television series), 33, 317, 318 Mistaken identity theme, 237–38

512

i nd e x

Mitra Film Studio, 71, 169, 251, 252. See also Pars Film Studio Mizogouchi, Kenji, 376 Moayyad, Heshmat, 368 Mobile film units: British, 13–14, 16; Exhibition Committee and, 185; French, 439 n. 74; mca and, 93, 156; military and, 52; nefc and, 24; oppo‑ sition to, 43; Soviet, 19; usia and, 45; usis and, 10, 27, 36, 39–44, 45, 55–56 Mode of production: censorship and, 221–22; improvisational, 186, 228, 350–51; shift from artisanal to hybrid, 34, 49, 147–48, 154, 156, 166, 304, 341, 403–4. See also Artisanal produc‑ tion mode; Hybrid production mode Modernity: characteristics of, 229; clash‑ ing aesthetics and, 327; documentary films and, 33; identity and, 242; indi‑ vidualism and, 231; nationalism and, 3, 101, 342; new-wave cinema and, 327, 340–41; tough-guy films and, 310; Westernization and, 240–41, 301, 310 Moezimoqaddam, Feraidun, 394, 396 Mofid, Bahman, 319 Mohajer, Bijan, 72 Mohajerani, Ataollah, 206 Mohammad, Zaer, 374 Mohammadi, Ali, 416, 417 Mohammad Reza Shah: accession of, 1; assassination attempts on, 408; authoritarianism of, 184, 194–95, 212; autobiography of, 158; coronation of, 60; criticism of, 125–26, 372; dependence on U.S. of, 45, 329; dress codes and, 240; exile of, 58; goals of, 1–2, 56; iconography of, 308; image creation and, 14, 19–20, 28, 29, 31, 36–37, 38, 49, 143–44; Khomeini vs., 57–58; marriage and, 65, 212–13, 332; media controlled by, 69; megaloma‑ nia of, 328–29; modernization and, 242, 302; monarchic genealogy and,

126; National Educational Film Cir‑ cuit and, 25, 51; official photographers and, 59–61, 125–26; opposition to, 312, 379–82, 404–21; price controls and, 423; propaganda and, 47–48, 53, 61, 238–39; reinstatement of, 31, 54, 73, 145, 280; religious tolerance and, 194; unpopularity of, 139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 235; U.S. media and, 139–45; Westernization and, 328; White Revolution of, 33, 87, 96, 118, 122, 137, 148, 237, 310, 326, 329, 408–9, 450 n. 56 Mohassesi, Mohammad Said, 92 Mohseni, Majid, 154, 234, 242, 261–63, 294 Mohtasham, Nosratollah, 54, 152 Moin, Mohammad, 22 Mojahed, Amir, 429 Mojtahedi, Hamid, 236 Momayyez, Morteza, 397, 405 Momeni, Baqwe, 420 Moment of Truth, The (Rosi), 183 Monfaredzadeh, Esfandiar, 430 Mongols, The (Kimiavi), 340, 342, 389, 390–93 Monsieur Beaucaire (Marshall), 186 Montage culture, 138, 148–49, 214, 327 Montgomery, Bernard Law, 14 Moqaddam, Hasan, 16 Moqaddam, Jalal, 188, 218, 327, 358 Morad Barqi (television serial), 68–69 Moradi film studio, 169 Mordadian, Mehri, 252 Morin, Edgar, 110 Mortazavi, Ali, 161, 197, 302, 307 Mosaddeq, Mohammad, 29, 164; coup and, 31, 34, 73, 77, 115, 145, 238, 422; expulsion of British and, 171; nation‑ alization and, 32, 39, 159; United Nations and, 33 Moshiri, Ataollah, 64 Mostaan, Hosain Qoli, 221, 401 Mostofi, Abdollah, 6

Motazedi, Khanbabakhan, 51, 52, 55 Mother for Shamsi, A (Issari), 58 Motion Picture Export Association of America (mpaa), 62, 423–24, 425 Motovasselani, Mohammad, 242 Mottahedeh Group, 173 Mottahed Movie House Group, 173 Moulin Rouge Cinema, 165, 174, 382 Moulin Rouge Film Company, 174 Mourning of the Fourth Day, The (Shirdel), 123 Movie houses: air-dome, 157, 158; attendance at, 22, 306; chains of, 173; classification of, 158–59; commercial, 2, 19, 36, 39, 52, 53, 102; conditions in, 2, 157; construction of, 198, 255, 333; decline of, 195, 427; destruction of, 163–64; distribution of, 162; drivein, 157; film rotations, 56; first- and second-run, 173; importers and, 422; as lighthouses, 13; little cinemas, 11–12, 25; nationwide, 156–59; regula‑ tion of, 184, 191–92; Soviet, 16, 23, 26, 436 n. 35; star-owned, 207; statistics on, 155–56; strike, 430; ticket prices at, 156, 159, 423–24, 425, 429. See also Film exhibition; Spectatorship Movie Set (Sharifi), 227 Movie stars: advertising and, 176, 208; creation of, 161; genre-driven, 207–8; hybrid production mode and, 205–13; television and, 209; women as, 207–9, 304 Movietone News (newsreel), 32, 46 Mowlapur, Davud, 327 Mr. Gullible (Mehrjui), 234, 333 Mr. Haji the Movie Actor (Ohanians), 99, 240 Mr. Mehdi Arrives (Zhurak), 306 Mr. Officer (television serial), 67 Mrs. Qamar’s House (television serial), 67 Mudbrick and Mirror (E. Golestan), 79, 81, 88, 90, 336, 347, 358–61, 383

ind ex

513

Mujahedin, 407 Multifunctionality, 81, 203–5, 207, 222 Murrow, Edward R., 32 Music videos, 320–24 Mustachioed Uncle (Baizai), 348 My Road to India (Cook), 5 My Uncle Napoleon (Taqvai), 68 Nabili, Marva, 68, 374–75 Nadereh, 208 Naderi, Afshar, 108, 109–11 Naderi, Amir, 207, 335, 350, 352, 405 Naderi, Nader Afshar, 108 Naderi, Parviz, 405 Naderi, Said, 313–14 Naderpour, Nader, 22 Naficy, Hamid, 79 Naficy, Mehdy, 418 Naficy, Mohammad, 69 Naficy, Nahal, 69 Naficy, Said, 18, 22 Nafisi, Azar, 289 Naft Cinema, 156 Najafabadi, Mostafa Izadi, 423 Naji Aghravi Company, 169 Najibzadeh, Ahmad, 302 Naked Till Noon with Speed (Haritash), 424 Naqshineh, Gholamhosein, 18, 54, 238 Nashuri, Fatemeh, 16 Nasimian, Farajollah, 170 Nassibi, Basir, 95 National Anthem, 3, 21, 51, 56 National Broadcasting Company (nbc), 65, 77, 115, 137, 139, 144 National Educational Film Circuit (nefc), 4–12, 24–27, 30, 40, 51, 52, 62 National Film Archive, 183 National Film Board of Canada, 81 National Film Center, 182, 183 National identity: cinema and, 4, 100, 194, 269, 320, 326; film quality and, 326; Israeli, 172–73; land and, 457 n. 30; Shiraz festival and, 138; song

514

i nd e x

and dance and, 248–50; tough-guy movies and, 269, 320 National Iranian Film Festival, 333–34 National Iranian Oil Company (nioc), 33; Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and, 77; film production and, 50, 71, 78, 91, 356; as film underwriter, 135, 330; freelance filmmakers and, 190 National Iranian Radio and Television (nirt), 65, 67; audience surveys, 306; budget, 70; College of Cinema and Television, 69, 71, 127, 334; creation of, 49–50; Educational Television Channel, 66, 71; Exhibition Com‑ mittee and, 184; film festivals, 328, 330, 334; film organization, 71; film production centers, 330; homogeneity and, 331; industrial film broadcasting by, 92; martial law and, 431; mca and, 68, 69, 70, 71, 139, 331, 371; msu commission, 141–43; nepotism in, 70–71, 330; private sector vs., 425; as publisher, 182; score commissions by, 139; state ideology and, 149, 391; strike and, 108; television serials, 67–68. See also Telfilm Nationalism, 20, 27, 97; antimonarchy, 39, 159; Azari, 18; in children’s films, 163; dubbing and, 258; modern, 3, 101, 342; promotion of, 54, 135; rise of, 31 National Musical Society, 20 National Opera and Ballet, 5, 8 National Syndicate of Film Industries, 353 Naus, Joseph, 6 Nazerian, Shaollah, 242–43 Nazi Ministry of Propaganda, 251 nbc (National Broadcasting Company), 65, 77, 115, 137, 139, 144 Neal, Stephen, 265 nefc (National Educational Film Cir‑ cuit), 4–12, 24–27, 30, 40, 51, 52, 62 Negahban, Ezzatollah, 96 Neglect (Kasmai), 220, 233–34

Neige sur les Pas, La (Berthomieu), 252 Neighbors, The (television series), 312 Neorealism, 349–52 Nepotism, 70–72, 330 News (newsreel), 48, 72 News of the Day (newsreel), 30 Newsreels: American, 28, 31–32, 46; British, 13–14, 28–29; competition in, 4; German, 28–29, 30, 251; of Iranian government, 51; official style in, 52, 72–75; oil films, 31–33; Shah travel films, 442 n. 13; Soviet, 19; of usia, 38; of usis, 36–39, 47–48, 52, 55, 65; wartime, 21, 28–30; Western commercial, 28–33, 46. See also Documentaries New-wave cinema: animated films, 405–7; audience fragmentation and, 425; authorial formation in, 345–49; censorship and, 183, 328, 346, 347, 351, 354, 355, 400, 402, 420, 421, 423; closed vs. open forms in, 356–57, 358; collaboration in, 335–36, 401–4; coproduction in, 334–35; criticism of, 347–48; culture of resistance and, 404; emergence of, 336–40; fear as theme in, 358–72; as filmmaking moment, 352–53; Hollywood influ‑ ence on, 421; hybrid production mode and, 328, 336; iconoclastic styles in, 387; luminous truth in, 340; masterdisciple structure in, 350; modernity and, 327, 370; neorealism in, 349–52; nepotism and cronyism in, 330; poetic realist style in, 342; resistance and rebellion theme in, 372–86; rural themes in, 234–35; screenplays in, 401–4; spectatorship of, 222–23, 347–48; support for, 333–36, 347; surrealism and, 340–41; textual formation in, 340–45; themes of, 342–45, 358, 373; Westernization in, 234–35, 358; Western training for, 335; women in, 207 Night Breaker, The (Malekan), 313

Night Has a Thousand Eyes, The (Far‑ rows), 22 Nightingale of the Farm (Mohseni), 154, 234 Night It Rained, The (Shirdel), 129–33, 342 Night of the Hunchback, The (Gaffary), 239, 336, 347, 358 Nikkah, Parviz, 408–9, 413 nioc (National Iranian Oil Company), 33; Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and, 77; film production and, 50, 71, 78, 91, 356; as film underwriter, 135, 330; freelance filmmakers and, 190 nirt. See National Iranian Radio and Television Noqlali (Khatibi), 18, 53, 204, 238 Noruz (Shirdel), 123–24 Nuclear power, 46 Nurai, Shahid, 17 Nuri, Parviz, 87, 152, 342 Nuriala, Esmail, 130, 221, 401–2, 403 Nuriala, Partow, 289, 371 Nushin, Abdolhosein, 22 Oath (film), 20 Obadia, Gorji, 171, 212 “O Bejeweled Land” (anthem), 21 Occupation of Iran, The (newsreel), 29 Octopus (television serial), 67 O’ Deer Savior (Kimiavi), 105–6 Oedipus Rex (Pasolini), 183 Office of War Information, U.S., 10, 26 Ohanians, Ovanes Gregory, 99, 240 Ohanians film studio, 169 Oil films, 28–31, 31–33, 88–89 Oil Operating Companies, 89 O.K. Mister (Kimiavi), 340, 350, 393 Olov, Showkat, 304, 305 Omid, Jamal, 6, 8, 99, 187, 394 Omidvar, Abdullah, 113–18 Omidvar, Issa, 113–18 One Golden-Voiced, One Golden Hand (R. Safai), 151 One Step to Death (Khachikian), 153

ind ex

515

On Top of the World (Omidvar brothers), 116 Operation Ajax, 145, 171 Oral tradition, 9, 213, 222–25, 257, 274–75, 291, 455–56 n. 22 Organization Plan, 148 Orient Films, 334 Ornamentation in performing arts, 214 Osaneh-ye Baba Sobhan (Dowlatabadi), 401 Osanlu, Parviz, 63 Otan, Faramarz, 400–401 Ovadia, George, 162–73 Ovanessian, Arby, 91, 138, 327, 332, 342 Ovedisian, Anik, 170 Ovedisian, Henrik, 170 Page, Mary Ellen, 224 Pahlbod, Mehrdad, 60, 330 Pahlevan, Abbas, 68 Panic (Khachikian), 326 Parallelogram (Otan), 400–401 Paramount News (newsreel), 28, 32 Paramount Studios, 11, 28, 32, 174, 422, 423–24, 425 Paria, 304 Park Cinema, 252–53 Parry, Milam, 223 Pars Film Studio, 152, 153–54, 174–75, 211, 217, 220, 270, 303, 325, 335 Partant, François, 480 n. 56 Partow, Maziyar, 63 Party in Hell, A (Khachikian and Sar‑ vari), 157 Parvizi, Khosrow, 221, 235, 242, 244 Parvizi, Rasul, 22 Pasal, Iraj Sabet, 65, 211 P as in Pelican (Kimiavi), 269, 387, 388, 389, 390 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 183, 346 Patai, Taifur, 408, 410, 411, 412 Pathé Sound News (newsreel), 28, 32 Patriot, The (Naqshineh), 18, 54, 238 Patronage, 171, 327 Payam-e No (periodical), 3

516

i nd e x

pen, 414 Pendry, Alan, 89 People of Iran (documentary), 40 People’s Fadaian Organization of Iran (pfoi), 23, 407 People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (pmoi), 407, 413, 414 Persepolis (Rahnema), 93–95 Persepolis Recreated (Rezaeian), 446 n. 30 Persian miniatures, 228–29, 364, 376 Persian Miniatures (Farzaneh), 93, 183 Persian Oil Industry, The (documentary), 29 Persian Story (Keene), 32, 33 Peykan (Shirdel), 91–92 Pezhman, Ahmad, 377–78 pfc (Progressive Filmmakers’ Coopera‑ tive), 168, 334, 353–56 pfoi (People’s Fadaian Organization of Iran), 23, 407 Pigeon Towers (Mirbaha), 112 Pioneers (television series), 99 Pishehvari, Jafar, 18, 21, 53, 54, 204, 238 Pishehvari’s Uprising (Khatibi), 18, 53–54, 204, 238–39 Pishvaian, Jalal, 304 Plaza Cinema, 405 pmoi (People’s Mujhedin Organization of Iran), 407, 413, 414 Poetic realism, 76, 79–80, 82–84, 88, 91, 125, 342 Poetry event, 419–21 pogo (Public Opinion Guidance Organi‑ zation), 11, 17, 18, 25, 27, 51 Point IV program, 36, 42–44, 62 Poirier, Léon, 113 Police films, 15 Pooya, Rafigh, 413 Popular Tradition Festival, 328 Poselski, Iosif, 19 Postman (Mehrjui), 235, 370 Potsdam Conference (Lorenz), 14 Power and the Land (Lorenz), 14 Power themes, 238–40

Press: censorship of, 421; diplomacy and, 3; film journalism, 179–82; film reviews and, 14, 182–83; freedom of, 80; golden age of, 2–3, 117; on land reform, 237; pro-Soviet, 20–21; usis and, 35, 37. See also Media Pretty Pickpocket, The (Inanoqlu), 335 Prince Ehtejab (Farmanara), 341, 368–70 Prisoner of the Emir (Kushan), 175, 216 Probis Company, 396 Production mode. See Artisanal produc‑ tion mode; Hybrid production mode; Mode of production Progressive Filmmakers’ Cooperative (pfc), 168, 334, 353–56 Projection of England, The (Tallents), 12 Propaganda: British, 12; films, 17, 20, 21, 25–26, 44, 50, 63, 76, 80, 138–39, 175, 187, 238–39; German, 438 n. 59; mca and, 73; media and, 53, 66; military and, 54; nefc and, 24, 27; role of, 5, 23; against Shiite Islam, 185; Soviet, 21, 26, 44–45, 187, 409; by usia and usis, 34, 36, 48, 72 Propp, Vladimir, 223, 224 Provincetown Players, 5 Public diplomacy: attempts at, 7; British, 12; four-partner, 24–27; Iranian, 135, 143–45; negotiations on, 4; Soviet, 17, 20; strategies of, 3; U.S., 20, 34–36, 41 Public Opinion Guidance Organization (pogo), 11, 17, 18, 25, 27, 51 Pul (Black Cats), 321 Purahmad, Kyumars, 404 Puran, 305 Purkamali, Samad, 78 Pursaid, Ismail, 221, 241 Qaderi, Iraj, 311 Qaisar (Kimiai), 207, 230, 298, 299; awards won by, 336; cross-dressing and, 305; decline of genre and, 307–10; dialogue and, 302; fatalism and, 238; as inspiration, 348, 385; as jaheli, 270, 295; making of, 268; new

wave and, 333, 410; plot of, 232, 233, 293, 295–301; popularity of, 294, 307; social justice and, 373; social realism and, 336; stylistic conventions of, 301, 340; subjectivity and, 278, 284; tough-guy genre and, 261–62; Turk‑ ish remake of, 306–7 Qajar, Soraya, 17 Qaliov, Sobhan, 17 Qanat Tradition of Iran, The (Mirbaha), 112 Qanbari, Hamid, 257 Qarib, Shapur, 244 Qarun’s Treasure (Siamak Yasami), 199, 201, 203; camera techniques in, 245–47; chivalry and, 225; cowriters of, 203; Fardin and, 205, 206, 248, 258; Foruzlan and, 208, 248, 258; as genre, 232; narrative chaos and, 246–47; oral tradition and, 224; plot of, 198–202; songs and, 241, 281–82; success of, 151, 155; themes of, 236–41 Qavam, Ahmad, 31 Qavanlu, Nurieh, 251 Qezel, Arsalan (Shapur Yasami), 153–54 Quarantine (Shahid Saless), 396 Quran, 2, 5, 6 Radi, Akbar, 270–71 Radio: advertising and, 208; Allied control of, 3–4, 6–7; clandestine, 414, 415, 418; as corrupting force, 163; cross-fertilization and, 176, 250; Islamic Republic control of, 419; public recantations and, 409; Shah and, 212; Soviet, 18, 45; tourism and, 51; unavailability of, 41; usis and, 35; writers and, 403 Radio Corporation of America (rca), 3 Radio Free Iran, 251, 257 Radio Iran, 211 Radio Mottafeqin, 13 Radio Tehran, 2, 3, 13 Rafi, Shahrokh, 154 Rahbar, Saber, 219

ind ex

517

Rahbar (periodical), 77 Rahnema, Feraidun, 22, 67, 78, 93–95, 183, 335 Ra’in, Esmail, 78 Raisfiruz, Mehdi, 154 Ramazani, Nesta, 8, 9 Ramezan Yakhi, Hosain, 267 Rap, 324 Rape (Mesdaqi), 232 Rashidian, Asadollah, 170–71, 280, 422 Rashidian, Qodratollah, 170–71, 280, 422 Rashidian, Saifollah, 170–71, 280, 422 Rastakhiz Party, 425, 428–29 Ray of Hope (Saker), 188 Raypur, Bahram, 152 rca (Radio Corporation of America), 3 Reconstruction Crusade, 419 Red Desert, The (Antonioni), 183 Red Lion and Sun Society, 64 Regulations for Cinemas and Perform‑ ing Arts Institutions, 184. See also Censorship Reipur, Bahram, 99 Rejaiyan, Hosain, 240 Reminiscence (Haritash), 129 Renowned Amir Arsalan, The (Shapur Yasami), 153, 157 Repentance (Pursaid), 241 Repetition: in filmfarsi, 229–30, 245; in performing arts, 214 Report (Kiarostami), 255, 399–400, 426 Republic of Uzbekistan (film), 20 Return (Khachikian), 236 Returned from Paris (Eshqi and Estepan‑ ian), 191 Rey Film Studio, 54 Rezaeian, Farazin, 446 n. 30 Rezai, Abolqasem, 63, 101–2, 180 Rezai, Tayyeb Hajj, 188, 191, 280, 301 Reza Motori (Kimiai), 286 Reza Shah Pahlavi: abdication of, 1; banned traditions and, 2, 3; com‑ munism and, 2, 13; exile op, 1, 29, 53; film production under, 148; funeral

518

i nd e x

of, 45, 52–53; intellectuals and, 21; monarchic genealogy and, 136; as Nazi sympathizer, 29–30; pogo and, 25, 51 Rhythm (Tayyab), 129 Riahi, Ismail, 172 Riahi, Nafiseh, 405 Riahi, Shahla, 207, 208 Richter, Kenneth, 32 Rivalry in the City (Gaffary), 190 Robinson, Edward G., 23 Rockefeller, David, 143 Rockefeller, Nelson, 143 Rockefeller Foundation, 35 Rommel, Erwin, 14 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 28 Roosevelt, Kermit, 145, 171 Rose, Ernest, 28 Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 82 Rosi, Francesco, 183 Rostam and Sohrab (Raisfiruz and Rafi), 154 Rouch, Jean, 110 Round the World with Empty Pockets (Shabaviz and Parvizi), 242 Rowen, Carl, 144 Rowshanfekr (magazine), 174 Royal Family of Persia, The (film), 14 Roya-ye Shirin (Clair), 253 Runaway Girl (Decoin), 251–52 Rural Associations (E. Golestan), 124 Sabahi, Samad, 170 Sabbaghzadeh, Mehdi, 312 Sabeti, Parviz, 408 Sacred Pit, The (Daryoush), 129 Sadeqi, Aliakbar, 405 Sadeq the Kurd (Taqvai), 232, 374 Sadi, 20, 353 Sadoul, Georges, 349 Saduqi, Ayatollah, 418 Saedi, Ali Akbar, 345 Saedi, Gholamhosain, 335, 345, 370, 419, 420, 430 Saeed-Vafa, Mehrnaz, 82

Safai, Ahmad, 234 Safai, Reza, 151, 203–4, 219–20, 221, 243 Safavid Architecture (Tayyab), 95 Safizadeh, Fereydoun, 107–8 Safizamir, Shahla, 304, 305 Saidi, Kobra, 208, 299, 304, 305 Saker, Sardar, 172, 188, 209 Saleh, Seyyed Ebrahim, 195 Sallitt, Dan, 397–98 Salome (Zhurak), 248, 249 Salvage style, 100, 107, 108, 300 Samad’s Adventures (Sayyad), 68 Samakar, Abbasali, 408, 410, 411, 412 Samii, Mehdi, 125 Samii, Mohammad Ali, 186 Samson and Delilah (DeMille), 187 Sana Film, 173 Sanderson, J, 12 Sani al-Saltaneh, Ebrahim Khan Akkas‑ bashi, 99 Sarkub, Gholamreza, 304, 311 Sato, Junya, 334 Sattar, Mohammad Qoli, 93 Savak, 59, 312; censorship and, 184, 189–90, 239, 300, 332, 371, 382, 385; confiscations by, 121; creation of, 187; Faiziyeh Seminary and, 362; fear of, 344, 361, 364, 385, 406, 421; human rights and, 118; leadership of, 189; nirt and, 67; show trials and, 408–14; spying and, 308, 358, 362; studio closures and, 126; torture and, 345, 408–9 Sayyad, Parviz, 67, 68; as authorial force, 335; as creator of Samad, 234; dubbing and, 255; exile of, 396; in Far from Home, 396; National Syndicate of Film Industries and, 354–55; as producer, 356, 394; in Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley, 380; as social critic, 362–63 Sayyar, Mohammad Qoli, 63 Schiller, Herbert, 35 Schoedsack, Ernst, 106 School We Went To, The (Mehrjui), 124

Screen News Digest (newsreel), 28 Sealed Soil, The (Nabili), 375–77 Sea Tulip (Baqeri), 191 Secret of the Jujube Tree, The (Moqad‑ dam), 218 Secrets of Sexual Fulfillment (Mahvash), 209 Secrets of the Treasure of the Jenni Valley, The (E. Golestan), 79, 90, 125–26, 340, 361, 380–83, 402 Selected Images from the Qajar Era (Makhmalbaf), 98 Sepanloo, Mohammad Ali, 403 Sepanta, Abdolhosain, 9, 17, 99, 211, 222, 248 Sepass Film Festival, 333 Sepideh, 304, 305 Sepid O Siah (magazine), 275 Sergeant Ghazanfar’s Family (Gaffary), 239 Setareh Cinema, 19, 26, 180 Setareh Sinema (magazine), 152, 190, 194, 208, 211, 427 Seventeen Days to Execution (Kavusi), 152 Shaban the Brainless, 171, 280, 319 Shabaviz, Abbas, 242 Shabdiz, Sirus, 63 Shabpareh, Mohammad, 54, 152 Shadow, The (Amini), 239 Shafti, Houshang, 63, 93, 95, 97, 107 Shahab film studio, 170 Shah and Soraya’s Trip to Shiraz, The (S. Golestan), 60 Shahbaz, Hasan, 68 Shahid Saless, Sohrab, 35, 78, 96, 335, 340, 350, 362, 387, 393–98, 431 Shahin-e Tus (Fakur), 152 Shahin Studio, 170 Shahnameh (epic poem), 139, 222, 224, 229, 237, 295, 299, 309 Shahnavaz, Homayun, 68 Shahnaz, Hasan, 406 Shahnaz, Hosain, 129 Shahnaz Cinema, 52

ind ex

519

Shah of Iran Reviews Troops (newsreel), 29 Shah of Iran Visits the United States, The (newsreel), 45 Shahriar Studio, 54 Shahrohk, Shah Bahram, 30 Shahrzad, 208, 299, 304, 305 Shahsavan Nomads of Iran, The (Safiza‑ deh and Dallalfar), 107, 108–9 Shaibani, Jamshid, 63 Shaikhi, Jamileh, 207 Shamlu, Ahmad, 22, 96, 103, 221, 342, 378, 401–2 Shariati, Ali, 303, 406, 416–17, 418 Sharifi, Soody, 227, 228–29 Sharq Cinema, 20 Shayegan, Dariush, 68 Shelterless (film), 171–72 Shelterless Years (television serial), 68 Shervan, Amir, 216, 217, 222, 311 Shiite Islam: audiocassettes and, 416; critique of, 106; ideology of, 225, 409–10; laws and filming, 73, 192, 194; martyrdom paradigm, 409, 417; propaganda against, 185; rejection of, 358; rituals of, 77, 102, 104, 106, 129, 267 Shiraz Festival of Culture and Arts, 137, 138, 328, 332, 346, 371, 426 Shirazi, Ahmad, 102 Shirdel, Kamran, 91–92, 119–24, 129–33, 335, 350, 431 Shirin and Farhad (Sepanta), 222 Shiva, Azar, 305 Short-subject cinema, 50, 331, 349 Showman, The (Mirbaqeri), 314–15 Shuster, Morgan, 6 Siasat (newspaper), 19 Siavash in Persepolis (Rahnema), 95, 336, 347 Silent movies, 98, 169, 345 Simple Event, A (Shahid Saless), 394, 396 Sina Film Studio, 170 Sinai, Khosrow, 96, 126, 431

520

i nd e x

Sin City (Zarandi), 236 Sinema-ye Azad, 71 Sinner, The (Garami), 221 Smith-Mundt Act (1948), 35 Snake Fang (Kimiai), 313 Social and class themes, 234–37 Society for Assistance to Lepers, 87–88 Society of the Iranian Film Industry, 168 Sohaili, Mehdi, 221, 401 Soldier of Islam, The (Manteqi), 312 Somerville-Large, Peter, 164 Son of Iran Has No News from His Mother, The (Rahnema), 95 Soraya, Empress, 55, 60, 212 Sorcerer’s Wind, The (Taqvai), 103–4 Soroush (magazine), 182 Soruri, Mosheq, 242 Sounds of Silence (Hamz and Lazars), 419 South of the City (Gaffary), 188–90, 259, 261, 332, 336 Soviet Propaganda Film—Iran, Tabriz 1945–46 (film), 18 Soviet Union: agitprop trains and, 36; Azari Nationalism and, 18; departure from Iran and, 31; diplomatic strategy of, 3; as external threat, 54; film imports and, 160; lend-lease and, 7, 27, 28; movie houses and, 13, 23, 26, 436 n. 35; newsreels of, 19; occupation by, 1, 3, 16, 20; propaganda films of, 17, 23, 45; Tudeh Party and, 21–22. See also Cold War Sovkino, 16, 19, 20 Spectacle: authenticity and, 341–42; culture of, 47, 53, 60, 136–38, 309, 328–30, 340, 404–5, 409; of excess, 281, 293; syncretic, 136, 309 Spectatorship: audience identification, 74; audience profiles, 161–63, 167, 362; experience, 157–58; formation, 161–66; fragmentation in, 425; improvisation and, 214; of new-wave cinema, 222–23, 348

Sports films, 15 Spring, The (Ovanessian), 341 Spring Variety (Kushan), 175 Sreberny-Mohammadi, Annabelle, 416, 417 Stalin, Joseph, 28, 164, 408 Star Cinema, 164 Starless Sky, The (Mojtahedi), 236 Star system: advertising and, 176, 208; creation of, 161; genre-driven, 207–8; hybrid production mode and, 205–13; television and, 209; women in, 207–9, 304 Star Twinkled, A (Badie), 221 State Department, U.S., 27, 39, 44, 47, 64 Stewpot films, 154, 199, 231–32, 284 Still Life (Shahid Saless), 355, 362, 394–96 Stone Garden (Kimiavi), 269, 387–90 Storm Over Our Town (Khachikian), 170, 245 Story of Miserable Feraidun, The (Fran‑ cisci), 253 Stranger, The (Welles), 22 Stranger and the Fog (Baizai), 340, 342, 343, 344, 365–68 Strangers (film), 317, 318 Strategic Iran (U.S. Dept. of Defense), 32 Street Barbers (Taqvai), 102 Stuart Memorial College, 55 Studio for the Revival of the Classical Arts of Iran, 9 Sufism, 266 Sumikh, Salim, 172 Sunrise (Minasian and Minasian), 333 Sun Shines, The (Saker), 172, 209 Super 8 filmmaking, 71, 75, 333, 405 Supreme Court, U.S., 31 Surgery of Chest Diseases (film), 14 Swallows Return to Their Nests (Mohseni), 234 Sword Dance (Taqvai), 96 Syncretic Westernization, 18, 55, 73, 80, 114, 136, 264, 308, 328

Syracuse Team, 28, 40, 47, 49, 61, 63, 107 Syracuse University Audiovisual Center, 40, 61 Tabari, Manuchehr, 105 Tabatabai, Shurangiz, 304 Tabli Film, 23, 398 Tafakkori, Asghar, 53 Tafazzoli, Mohammad, 22 Taghavi, Hayedeh, 81 Tahaminejad, Mohammad, 98, 225 Taheri, Abolqasem, 29 Taheri, Aslani, 431 Taheri, Barbod, 65, 75, 363 Taheri, Hushang, 393 Taheridoust, Gholam Hosain, 109, 110–11 Taidi, Farzaneh, 240 Taj Cinema, 156 Takestan Day (newsreel), 53 Tale of the Peach Tree, The (H. Tehrani), 406 Tales from a Book of Kings (documen‑ tary), 139 Tallents, Stephen, 12 Tall Shadows of the Wind (Farmanara), 340, 342, 343, 344, 350, 377–80, 402 Tamasha (magazine), 182 Tangestan Braves, The (television serial), 68 Taqvai, Naser, 68, 95, 102–5, 335, 350, 370–71, 431 Tarian, Varto, 22 Taslimi, Susan, 207 Tavalloli, Feraidun, 22 Taxi Meter (Taqvai), 102 Tayyab, Manuchehr, 93, 95, 102, 129, 431 Taziyeh: documentary on, 106; influence of, 219, 225, 246, 366; return of, 2, 416; toughs and, 267, 268, 277, 281, 284 Taziyeh of Martyrdom, The (Asgarian), 106

ind ex

521

Tehran Cement Company, 190 Tehran Cinema, 19, 22 Tehran Conference, The, 28 Tehran Daily News (periodical), 3 Tehran Film Festival, 333 Tehrani, Hasan, 406 Tehrani, Hosain, 129 Tehrani, Shahnaz, 311, 312 Tehranian, Majid, 68 Tehran International Film Festival, 334 Tehran Is Iran’s Capital (Shirdel), 121–23 Tehran Nights (Shapur Yasami), 232 Tehran Radio, 2, 3, 13 Telenews (newsreel), 32, 57 Telephone, The (Taqvai), 102 Television Picture Export Association, 62 Television programming: American investment, 62; American produc‑ tions, 46, 65, 68, 145; censorship of, 421; confessional, 407–14; culture of spectacle and, 329; dubbing for, 258; exilic, 316; female stars and, 209; French standards for, 66; government interest, 63, 137, 425; newsreels, 31–32, 38; popularity statistics on, 69; serials, 67–68, 140, 317–18; toughguy, 316–17. See also National Iranian Radio and Television Televizion Film Studio, 170 Telfilm: film production by, 67, 90, 333, 356, 368, 370, 377, 396; funding by, 334, 348, 354, 391; television serials, 67–68 Tempest of Life, The (Daryabaigi), 232, 248, 252 Temptation of Power, The (film), 480 n. 56 Ten Nights of Poetry, 419–21 Terpanchian, Vahan, 170 Third Force, 417 Thirsty Ones, The (Kushan), 233 Three Madmen (Moqaddam), 327 Three Naughty Men in Japan (Moto­ vasselani), 242

522

i nd e x

Tight Spot (Amir Naderi), 374 Top Dog (Siamak Yasami), 211 Torbat-e Jam Folkdances (Shahid Saless), 96–97 Tough-guy films, 199; acting style in, 284; actresses in, 305; authorless, 265; casting for, 283–84; censorship and, 262, 264, 307; character devel‑ opment in, 277–80; conventions of, 265–66, 276–94; conventions of jaheli movies, 301–5; decline of, 307–10; exile and, 316–20; female stars in, 211; as genre, 264, 294–95; homosexuality and homosociality in, 287–88; hybrid production mode and, 270; ideal of masculinity and, 269; Islamic, 310–16; language in, 286–87; lifestyle in, 280–82; lumpenist, 262–63; masculinity in, 276–77, 287–88, 289–91; modernity and, 310; narrative structure of, 269–70; as national cinema, 154; nostalgia and, 284–86; plot of, 276; popularity of, 305–7; roots of, 261–62; style of dress in, 283; subgenres of, 269; themes of, 240; violence in, 282; Westernization and, 310, 320; women’s representation in, 240, 262–63, 277, 283, 289–91, 293, 299, 304–5 Tough-guy music videos, 320–24 Tough guys: corruption and, 315; homo‑ sexuality and, 288; houses of power for, 267–68; inner purity and, 269; lifestyle of, 280–81; luti dolls, 315, 316; nicknames for, 459 n. 8, 461–62 n. 25; as social formation, 266–69 Tough Guys’ Company in Los Angeles, The (film), 317 Towqi (Hatami), 333 Traditional Bazaars (Taqvai), 103 Traditions, 2, 8; oral, 9, 213, 222–25, 257, 274–75, 291, 455–56 n. 22 Tranquility in the Presence of Others (Taqvai), 332, 344, 370–71

Transfer of Reza Shah’s Corpse from Cairo to Tehran (newsreel), 52–53 Translations, improvisation in, 257–58 Traveler (Kiarostami), 348, 399 Travel films: documentaries, 113–18; ff movies, 241–44; of Shah travels, 442 n. 13 Treaty of Alliance (1942), 6–7 Trench, The (Kimiavi), 390 Tricksters and Pickpockets (Naderi), 313–14 Troeller, Gordian, 480 n. 56 Tudeh Party: banned, 239; as com‑ munist, 18; demonstrations and, 164; intelligentsia and, 22; periodicals, 19, 77; political meetings and, 23; popularity of, 31; Savak and, 408 Turkman Folkdances (Shahid Saless), 97 Turkmen Dance (Shamlu), 96 Tus Arts Festival, 328 Twentieth Century–Fox, 422, 424 Twentieth-Century Gentleman (Siamak Yasami), 197 Twentieth-Century Tough, The (R. Safai), 203

Inc. and, 62; documentaries of, 47–48, 54; film certification and, 72; mission of, 34–35, 37, 54; newsreels of, 38; Office of Private Cooperation, 35; propaganda by, 34, 36, 48, 72; style and, 72, 74; Syracuse Team and, 40; usis and, 39, 43–49, 65 United States Information Service (usis): documentaries of, 39–48, 49, 52–53, 55, 56, 65; legacy of, 49; libraries of, 35; loan program of, 64; mobile film units of, 10, 27, 36, 156; newsreels of, 36–39, 47–48, 52, 55, 65; official style of, 63, 72–75; press and, 35, 37; propaganda by, 34, 36, 48, 72; technical training and, 63, 64, 95, 141; U.S. exhibition and, 48; usia and, 39, 43–49, 65 Universal Film Studios, 424, 425 Universal News (newsreels), 28, 32 Universum Film ag (ufa), 251 usia. See United States Information Agency usis. See United States Information Service Utopia (Shahid Saless), 397–98

ufa, 251

UFA Schmalfilm Magazine (newsreel), 28 UFA Sound Weekly (newsreel), 28 Under the Little Bazaar (television serial), 68 Under the Skin of the Night (Goleh), 244 Undying Fire, An (S. Golestan), 60 Union of Cinema Attendants, 22 Unions, professional, 168, 254 United Artists, 422, 424 United Jewish Appeal, 59 United Nations, 31, 33, 72 United News (newsreel), 28, 30 United Press International, 57 United States Embassy, 4; film program of, 10, 24, 26, 30, 40, 64 United States Information Agency (usia), 30; censorship by, 73; Culture

Vaezian, Joseph, 170 Vafadoust, Qodratzaman, 207, 208 Vagabond (television serial), 67 Vahabzadeh, Ahmad, 253 Vahdat, Nosratollah, 243, 255 Vahdat, Parirokh, 16 Vakili, Ali, 11, 180 Valenti, Jack, 423 Vazifeh (newspaper), 21 Veissi, Malek Sasan, 67, 348, 356 Velvet Hat Wearer (Kushan), 326 Venice International Film Festival, 346 Vertov, Dziga, 36 Victory House, 13, 14, 24 Victory of the Chinese People (film), 44 View, A (Farrokhzad and Golestan), 81 Village Bride (Malekmotii), 235 Village Song (Mohseni), 234

ind ex

523

Visit of Prime Minister and Envoys to the United States, The (Kushan), 33 Visnews, 57 voa (Voice of America) radio, 37, 48 Voice and Vision of the Islamic Republic (vvir), 98, 100, 108, 206, 406, 413 Voice of America (voa) radio, 37, 48 Voice of England (radio program), 3 Voice-of-God narration, 41, 74, 76, 88, 107 Voice of the Globe, The (travelogue series), 11 Voice-over narration, 29, 32, 42, 52, 55, 74–75, 76, 95–96, 112, 116, 457–58 n. 41 voks (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries), 16–24 Vossoughi, Behrouz, 256, 272, 298; in Broken Hearted, 425; censorship and, 386; as Dash Akol, 271–74; in Deer, 384; dubbing and, 254, 255, 256; Googoosh and, 212; on investigation list, 311; as luti, 268, 304; Revolution‑ ary Court and, 310–11; as star of Qaisar, 207, 295–99, 300–301; in Tangsir, 374; as wrestler, 268 Vossuq, Manuchehr, 311 vvir (Voice and Vision of the Islamic Republic), 98, 100, 108, 206, 406, 413 Waifu (Fekri), 238 Wallach, Eli, 58–59 Walters, Barbara, 144 Warne, William, 43 Warner Bros., 422, 424, 425 Warner Pathé News (newsreel), 28 War Pictorial News (newsreel), 14, 28 Water and Heat (Farrokhzad and Goles‑ tan), 81 Wave Coral and Rock (Pendry, Baxter, and Golestan), 88–91, 125 Wedding Dance (Shafti), 97 Weekly Events (newsreel), 72

524

i nd e x

Welles, Orson, 22, 139, 334 Wells, C. Edward, 43 We’re Your Servant, Master Karim (Kushan), 218 Western Electrical Research Products (erpi), 10 Westernization: concerns about, 97, 163, 244; desire for, 24, 33, 285; in filmfarsi movies, 150, 240–41, 310; modernity and, 240–41, 301, 310; montage culture and, 149; new-wave films on, 234–35, 358; occupying forces and, 2; syncretic, 18, 55, 73, 80, 114, 136, 264, 308, 328; urban vs. rural, 32 Western mediawork, 114, 145 What Is My Guilt (Ovadia), 173 What’s the Difference (Karimi), 209 Whirlpool (Kheradmand), 234 White Glove, The (Khatibi), 170, 248–49 White Revolution, 33, 87, 96, 118, 122, 137, 148, 237, 310, 326, 329, 408–9, 450 n. 56 Why Korea? (Fox), 44 Wilber, Donald N., 144–45 Wirth, Andrzej, 277 With Our Supplies into Iran (newsreel), 29 Wolf’s Footprints, The (Kimiai), 313 Woman and Animal (Farzaneh), 93 Woman and Her Dolls (Riahi), 172 Women: audiocassettes and, 415; censor‑ ship and, 186, 193, 314–15, 393; crime and, 119–20; favorite genres, 166, 167; female seduction theme, 233–34; film‑ farsi movie stars, 207–9; filming of, 73–74, 108, 115; as filmmakers, 431; Islamic Republic on performers, 211, 311; moviegoing by, 161–62, 167; in movie houses, 15, 41, 157; in new-wave cinema, 207; oral tradition and, 222; plays for, 16; prostitution and, 119–21; religious attire for, 2; representation in films of, 151, 201, 208, 231–32, 234,

240, 241, 244, 250, 262–63, 277, 283, 289–91, 293, 299, 304–5, 367; star system and, 207–9, 304; television programming and, 209; as voice-over artists, 251–52 Women are Angels (Pursaid), 221 Women’s Prison (Shirdel), 119 Wonders of Omidvar Brothers’ Travels, The (Omidvar brothers), 117 Work Camp (Mahini Hasanzadeh), 127 World Ethnology Museum of Omidvar Brothers, 116 World in Film (newsreel), 32 Writers’ Association of Iran, 403, 419, 430 Yaqub Lais Saffari (Kasmai), 154 Yarshater, Ehsan, 213, 266 Yasami, Shapur, 67, 153–54, 211 Yasami, Siamak, 154, 197–202, 208, 211, 247, 261, 305 Yashayai, Harun, 23 Yassin, Ismail, 159

Yazdani, Shahin, 220 Yellow Cruise, The (Poirier), 113 Yol (Güney), 362 Young, T. Cuyler, 10, 14 Young People’s Cinema Society, 72 YouTube, 18 Yushij, Nima, 22 Zahed, Ataollah, 252 Zahedi, Ardeshir, 59, 140, 144 Zahedi, Fazlollah, 171 Zahedian, Mehrdad, 98 Zarandi, Mohammad Ali, 236 Zarrinkelk, Nurreddin, 405 Zebulani, Natail, 170 Zhaleh, 304, 305 Zhaleh Square massacre, 108 Zhurak, Fereidun, 248, 249, 306 Zolriasatein, Shahrokh, 68 Zonis, Ella, 214 Zurlini, Valerio, 334 Zvuloni, Natail, 173 Zvuloni, Simcha, 173

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Hamid Naficy is a professor of radio-television-film and the Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in Communication at Northwestern University. He is the author of An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles (1993), and Film‑e Mostanad (Documentary Film, 2 volumes, 1979).

The Library of Congress has catalogued the first volume in this series as follows: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Naficy, Hamid. A social history of Iranian cinema / Hamid Naficy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8223-4754-5 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-4775-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures—Iran—History. 2. Motion pictures—Social aspects—Iran. I. Title. pn1993.5.i846n34 2011 791.430955—dc22  2011010869 Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 isbn 0-8223-978-0-8223-4755-2 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 0-8223-978-0-8223-4774-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)