Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CINEMA
Iran's love affair with cinema started at the dawn of the last century and in 1900 the coun-
try's first public cinema opened in Tabriz. Though Iranian films were made earlier, Esmail
Kushan's 1948
The Tempest of Life
was the first film to be made in Iran and, since then the
home-grown industry has not looked back.
It was not until the 1960s, however, that the
first signs of a distinctive Iranian cinematic lan-
guage emerged, with poet Forough Farrokhzad's
1962 film of life in a leper colony,
The House Is
Black,
setting the scene.
The first 'new wave' of Iranian cinema in the
1970s captured the attention of art-house movie fans around the world: Abbas Kiarostami,
Dariush Mehrjui, Bahram Beiza'i, Khosrow Haritash and Bahram Farmanara. The second
'new wave' was made up of post-revolutionary directors such as Mohsen Makhmalbaf,
Rakhshan Bani Etemad, Majid Majidi and Jafar Panahi. It helped develop a reputation for
Iranian cinema as art house, neorealist and poetic. The newest generation is known as the
'third wave' and its most notable exponents are Asghar Farhadi, Bahman Ghobadi and
Mani Haghighi. Whatever the number, Iranian new wave is consistent in looking at every-
day life through a poetic prism that is part fictional feature, part real-life documentary.
The strict censorship of the post-revolutionary state has encouraged the use of children,
nonprofessional actors and stories that are fixated on the nitty-gritty of life, and which have
proved popular overseas.
For news and history of Iranian cinema, see Wiki-
pedia or the Farabi Cinema Foundation's site at
THE MAKHMALBAF FAMILY - A CINEMA
DYNASTY
Born in 1957 in Tehran, Mohsen Makhmalbaf first gained infamy when he was imprisoned for five years after fight-
ing with a policeman. He was released during the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and started to write books before turn-
ing to film-making in 1982. Since then he has produced more than a dozen films, including
Boycott, Time for Love,
Kandahar, Gabbeh
and, more provocatively,
Salaam Cinema
. Many of his films are based on taboo subjects:
Time for
Love
was filmed in Turkey because it broached the topic of adultery; and
Marriage of the Blessed
was a brutal film
about the casualties of the Iran-Iraq War.
