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)