FS30350 Cinema and Nation: Iran

Academic Year 2024/2025

This module will examine both Iran’s national cinema and the concept of the nation as a categorical tool for film analysis. To unpack the former, we will view and discuss a number of Iranian films and scholarship on the work of Iranian filmmakers. For the latter, we will consider theorisations of national cinemas more broadly to think critically about what Iran contributes to this area of scholarly thought. These twin lines of thinking will provide students with an understanding of Iran’s rich national film tradition and the strengths and weaknesses of the national cinema as a method for the critical organisation of bodies of films produced within geographic regions. We will explore this tradition through a chronological and thematic survey to examine a number of key trends and movements in Iranian film history, including the pre-Revolutionary New Wave art cinema and filmfarsi commercial industry, war films produced during and in response to the Iran-Iraq War, post-revolutionary films with child protagonists, and recent experimentations with genre. Study of these various aspects of Iran’s film history will help students to understand the broad diversity of Iranian cinema and consider how this understanding might be applied to other national cinemas globally.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

• Explain how Iranian cinema is influenced by its socio-political context
• Analyse the aesthetic traits of Iranian films, supported by the application of theoretical and cultural concepts studied in the module
• Write critically about how Iranian filmmakers use cinema to engage with cultural, social, and political phenomena
• Consider how positionality informs interpretation of films from diverse historical and cultural contexts
• Use the ideas about films and nations studied in the module to think critically about other national cinemas

Indicative Module Content:

Indicative readings:

Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

Michelle Langford, Allegory in Iranian Cinema: The Aesthetics of Poetry and Resistance (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).

Maryam Ghorbankarimi (ed.), ReFocus: The Films of Rakhshan Banietemad (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

Lucia Nagib, Realist Cinema as World Cinema: Non-Cinema, Intermedial Passages, Total Cinema, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020).

Hamid Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 4: The Globalizing Era, 1984–
2010 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012).

Blake Atwood, Reform Cinema in Iran: Film and Political Change in the Islamic Republic (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016).

Iranian Studies (journal)

Indicative screenings:

The Cow (Gav, Dariush Mehrjui, 1969)

The White Balloon (Badkonak-e Sefid, Jafar Panahi, 1996)

Taste of Cherry (Ta’m-e Gilas, Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

Two Women (Do Zan, Tahmineh Milani, 1999)

Gilaneh (Rakhshan Banietemad, 2005)

About Elly (Darbare-ye Elly, Asghar Farhadi, 2009)

Red Rose (Sepideh Farsi, 2014)

Tehran Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015)

Fish and Cat (Mahi va Gorbeh, 2013)

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2013)

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

24
Laboratories

24
Specified Learning Activities

60
Autonomous Student Learning

100
Total

208
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Lectuers, screenings, seminars 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade In Module Component Repeat Offered
Assignment(Including Essay): Annotated Bibliography (explicitly linked to proposed final research essay topic) (3 X 250 word entries). Week 7 Graded No

30

 No
Reflective Assignment: Learning journal to be completed weekly but due by end trimester. Week 14 Pass/Fail Grade Scale No

10

 No
Assignment(Including Essay): Final Essay (approx 3000 words) Week 14 Graded No

60

 No

Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Spring No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Not yet recorded.