Transnational Film Circulation in the Iranian Context: from Conjunctural Crisis to Discursive Heterotopia

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Transnational Film Circulation in the Iranian Context: From Conjunctural Crisis to Discursive Heterotopia

Mahsa Salamati

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of the Arts and Media Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

June 2019 Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname/Family Name : SALAMATI Given Name/s : Mahsa Abbreviation for degree as give in the University calendar : Ph.D. Film Studies Faculty : Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences School : School of the Arts and Media Transnational Film Circulation in the Iranian Context: From Conjunctural Crisis Thesis Title : to Discursive Heterotopia

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

This thesis investigates the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context. It considers the complexity of forces that facilitate the movement of films and also contribute to the dissemination and production of meaning; from the Iranian state’s strict censorship strategies and regulatory frameworks to the festival circuit and informal networks of film circulation that emerged with the advancement digital technologies. By focusing on this relatively unexplored field of enquiry, significant light is shed onto the role played by alternative networks in the flow of foreign and banned films in the Iranian context where circulation is heavily regulated by the state. It argues that the dynamics and politics of film circulation must be perceived in relation to the Iranian state’s attempt to maintain domination over culture and cinema. It takes a conjunctural approach to examine how the struggles between the state, the filmmakers and international film festivals has contributed to the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture over four decades since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Importantly, this thesis considers whether the advancement of informal networks of film circulation that lie beyond the direct reach of the state signals the end of its sovereignty over the film industry. The thesis also argues that circulation also plays an important role in the politics of signification. Soon after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, cinema was conscripted to play a central role in various socio-political struggles because of its presumed ability to interpellate viewers and make them subjects of preferred ideologies and values. Cinema also played an important role in the Iranian state’s attempts at cultural diplomacy on the international stage. But meanings are not so easily contained. By focussing on the case of Jafar Panahi and the films he has made since he was banned from filmmaking in the wake of the 2009 post-election protests, the thesis considers how transnational circulation by illicit means can not only inflame conflicts between filmmakers, festivals and the Iranian state, but also produce discursive heteroptias that help to reveal new layers of meaning at the site of reception.

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i Contents

Contents i

Abstract iii

Acknowledgements iv

A Note on Transliterations v

Introduction 1 Research questions, aims and argument 4 Literature review 7 The international recognition of Iranian cinema and the film festival circuit 18 Theoretical frameworks 29 Conceptualising film circulation 30 Articulation and conjunctural analysis 35 Organization of the thesis 37 Research methods 43

Chapter 1: The Iranian State and Transnational Film Circulation:

A Conjunctural Approach 45 International acclaim for Iranian filmmakers: an unfolding crisis for the Iranian state 47 Transnational film circulation during the Pahlavi era 61 The Iranian Revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic 68 The Islamic Republic’s intention to establish its own cinema 76 The Farabi Cinema Foundation and transnational circulation of Iranian cinema 85 Transnational film circulation in the post-Iran-Iraq War era 94 Socio-economic conditions 97 Cultural policies 99 Public diplomacy 107 The emergence of a crisis? 111

Chapter 2: Film Piracy: Technology, Transnational Copyright Regimes, and the Iranian State 116

Film piracy: an emergent cultural process, or a threat for the Iranian film industry? 120 Intellectual property in Iran during the Pahlavi era 133 Chopped films: screening destroyed film prints in Tehran 135 The post-revolution era: intellectual property from the Islamic law perspective 138 The Islamic Revolution, videocassettes, and the purification policies 140 Film piracy: re-introducing intellectual property in the post-Iran-Iraq War era 149 New policies, advancement of technologies and globalization 153 Conclusion 159

Chapter 3: The Signification of Circulation: An Alternative

Perspective on Transnational Film Circulation 163 The Cow: an uncanny beginning for Iranian New Wave cinema 169 No One Knows About Persian Cats: a representation of pirate modernity 176 Of other spaces: the case of Jafar Panahi 184 This Is Not a Film: A discursive heterotopia 187 Conclusion 201

Chapter 4: A Transnational Encounter with Iranian Cinema:

Towards Theorizing the Critic’s Cinematic Experience 204 The film festival circuit: the site of encounter with a different culture and cinema? 209 Watching Tehran Taxi at the Berlinale: an image without a proper locus 222 When the pirate meets the viewer: a familiar encounter 232 Conclusion 241

Conclusion 244

Filmography 257

References 260

Abstract

This thesis investigates the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context. It considers the complexity of forces that facilitate the movement of films and also contribute to the dissemination and production of meaning; from the Iranian state’s strict censorship strategies and regulatory frameworks to the festival circuit and informal networks of film circulation that emerged with the advancement digital technologies. By focusing on this relatively unexplored field of enquiry, significant light is shed onto the role played by alternative networks in the flow of foreign and banned films in the Iranian context where circulation is heavily regulated by the state. It argues that the dynamics and politics of film circulation must be perceived in relation to the Iranian state’s attempt to maintain domination over culture and cinema. It takes a conjunctural approach to examine how the struggles between the state, the filmmakers and international film festivals has contributed to the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture over four decades since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Importantly, this thesis considers whether the advancement of informal networks of film circulation that lie beyond the direct reach of the state signals the end of its sovereignty over the film industry. The thesis also argues that circulation also plays an important role in the politics of signification. Soon after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, cinema was conscripted to play a central role in various socio- political struggles because of its presumed ability to interpellate viewers and make them subjects of preferred ideologies and values. Cinema also played an important role in the Iranian state’s attempts at cultural diplomacy on the international stage. But meanings are not so easily contained. By focussing on the case of Jafar Panahi and the films he has made since he was banned from filmmaking in the wake of the 2009 post-election protests, the thesis considers how transnational circulation by illicit means can not only inflame conflicts between filmmakers, festivals and the Iranian state, but also produce discursive heteroptias that help to reveal new layers of meaning at the site of reception.

iii

Acknowledgements

I would like to offer my sincere gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Michelle Langford and

Professor Ramaswami Harindranath, who have worked tirelessly to support me throughout the duration of my candidature. Michelle’s generous approach to supervision and patience made the process of writing this thesis so much more enjoyable. Her encouragement and belief in my work truly revived this thesis when I was ready to let it go. Hari’s incredibly supportive advice encouraged me to follow my ambitions. Our encounters in the corridors and lovely chats inspired this thesis. I feel fortunate to have been mentored by such committed, passionate and supportive supervisors.

I would also like to thank Associate Professor Andrew Murphie for his encouraging comments on my work as a reader for several Annual Progress Reviews. I am grateful to Dr. Collin Chua, Dr. Gregory Dolgopolov and Associate Professor Jane

Mills for their incisive criticism through various review processes. For kindly reading some of the chapters and providing helpful feedback I should thank Dr. Laetitia

Nanquette and Dr. Melanie Robson. I must thank Dr. Amin Palangi, the director of the

Persian Film Festival, for his insights on the international distribution of Iranian films.

Warm thanks to Dr. Helen Rydstrand for the time and energy she spent copyediting my thesis.

This thesis has been in the making for seven years and it has come to a completion alongside so much in my life. I owe a huge thank you to my dear friend Dr.

Sanaz Fotouhi not only for reading and commenting on several drafts of this thesis, but also for all her emotional support during this long journey.

A Note on Transliterations

The system of transliteration adopted in this thesis is much like the approach utilized in the journal Iranian Studies, in that with the exception of ayn (‘) and hamzeh (’), diacritical marks have been omitted. The only exception is in the words Shi’a and

Shari’a as these are the commonly used spellings. While the absence of diacritic marks is arguably problematic, in particular with the transliteration of such a Persian vowel as

‘a’, which may stand for both alef and fatha, I have tried to adopt a simple method of transliteration, employing the most commonly used and recognisable anglicized forms of Persian words and names. So the letter ghaf has been represented as ‘gh’, as in

‘Ghobadi’, not ‘Qobadi’. All Persian words are italicized, and when referencing an

Iranian cinematic title, the English translation is provided first, with the Persian title in parenthesis and then adopted in all subsequent references.

Introduction

On the occasion of the 7th Annual Iranian Film Festival held in Paris in 1992, a journalist asked the prominent Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami for his opinion about the increasing recognition of Iranian films in the international film festival circuit.

Evidently proud of the recent acclaim for Iranian cinema, Kiarostami answered, ‘I think of it as one of Iran’s major exports: in addition to pistachio nuts, carpets, and oil, now there is cinema’ (Rosen and Kiarostami 1992:40). Kiarostami perhaps provides the most distinguished case of the rising attention given by the international film festival circuit to Iranian cinema during the late 1980s and 1990s. By the time this interview was conducted, he had already won the Bronze Leopard for Where is the Friend’s House

(Khaneh-ye Dust Kojast, 1987), and word about his ‘discovery’ as a new talent by

David Streiff, then director of the Locarno Film Festival, had spread among cinematic circles around the world (Atebai 2003/1382:22).1 Throughout his career as a filmmaker,

Kiarostami received critical acclaim for many of his films, including Taste of Cherry

(Tam-e Gilas), which won the Palm D’or at the 50th Cannes Film Festival in 1997. In addition, a Sight and Sound poll conducted in 2012 ranked his film Close-up (Nama-ye

Nazdik, 1990) as one of the 50 greatest movies of all time (Christie 2012).

The celebration of Kiarostami’s cinema may be considered a continuation of the international acclaim for Iranian filmmakers that began with the rise of Iranian New

Wave in the 1960s. Many new-wave filmmakers, including Dariush Mehrjui, Sohrab

Shahid-Saless and Parviz Kimiavi, received praise from the most notable cinematic events, including the Venice International Film Festival and the Berlinale.2 The international flow of Iranian films was, however, put on hold for a few years with the

1 Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Persian sources are my own. For such sources, I also provide the year of publication in the Persian calendar, following the Gregorian year. 2 The Cannes, Berlin and Venice film festivals are quintessential examples of the European film festival phenomenon. They are also referred to as the ‘big three’. (Loist 2016:51) Introduction

outbreak of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The intense struggles between the Pahlavi state and revolutionary forces, along with a crisis within the film industry, had a significant impact on film production, distribution and exhibition. For the Iranian film industry, the revolution also ushered in what this thesis describes as a conjunctural crisis. The first post-revolution film that marked the successful re-appearance of Iranian cinema on the international festival circuit was The Runner (Davandeh, Amir Naderi,

1985). The film was screened at Venice and London festivals and won the Grand Prix at the 3rd Nantes Three Continents Film Festival. Following the success of The Runner, the number of Iranian films that found their way to a wide range of cinematic events in different parts of the world grew steadily. While in 1980, only 37 Iranian films were screened outside of the country, by 1990 this number had increased to 390 films (Atebai

2003/1382:337). The active presence of Iranian films on the festival circuit was heralded as the rise of post-revolutionary Iranian art-house cinema, sometimes also referred to as the New Iranian Cinema. This is a cinema with distinct characteristics, the value of which, unlike pistachio nuts and oil, depended largely on the symbolic character of the material product and its exchange relation rather than merely its economic value.

Thanks perhaps to this international recognition, many volumes of research have now been published, not only on the work of individual filmmakers such as Abbas

Kiarostami, but more broadly on post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. As the literature review below will demonstrate, much of this work is focussed on a few broad areas such as the political economy of film production in Iran, cinema’s place in the debates over modernity and Westernization, the role of film censorship and the stylistic and aesthetic dimensions of particular films and filmmakers. Also acknowledged in the literature, and exemplified here by the case of Kiarostami, is the role played by

Introduction

international film festivals in ‘discovering’, recognising and perhaps also nurturing the emergence of new Iranian cinema in the post-revolutionary period. In fact, as several critics have suggested, festivals may even have shaped the course of Iranian film history by implicitly validating certain kinds of films over others (Moazzezi-Nia 2009/1388,

Farahmand 2002). These discourses suggest that while some kind of cultural supply and demand dynamic may be at work in the transnational circulation of Iranian films, it does not account for the complex articulation of forces and mechanisms that make this circulation possible. Kiarostami’s understanding of film as one of Iran’s most important exports alongside nuts, carpets and oil prompts us to ask a series of questions: What kinds of cultural, political and regulatory forces and frameworks are at work long before a film reaches an international film festival? How do filmmakers, distributors and viewers negotiate, and sometimes circumvent these forces? How do the means by which a film circulates help to shape or reshape its meaning? These are just a few of the key questions that have driven the research for this thesis.

Prompted by these questions, this thesis investigates the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context. More specifically, it looks at the various ways that Iranian films travel beyond the country’s geographical borders, and what happens to them along the way. In doing so, it draws attention to the role of a plethora of forces – including the Iranian state and its regulatory frameworks, international film festivals and, importantly, the many informal circuits which have arisen with the development of cheap proliferation and distribution technologies and pirate networks – in facilitating the movement of films through space and time, and the dissemination and production of meaning in the process. This thesis therefore aims to study the transnational flow of Iranian films and their circulation as both material and symbolic products.

Introduction

Research questions, aims and argument

Aside from the general lines of enquiry outlined above, this thesis seeks to answer a number of more specific questions. To begin with, I examine how the Iranian state intervenes in transnational film circulation, and ask to what extent this intervention has been informed by and transformed in relation to broader socio-political changes in the

Iranian context. This question entails a deep engagement with the policies and laws that impact upon film circulation in Iran. As we will see, these have been modified over time in response to shifts in the socio-political climate. Such changes in policy have become particularly pronounced at moments of conjuncture, a concept that I define briefly below and in more detail in Chapter 1. Aside from socio-political change, technological developments have also profoundly shaped the circulation of Iranian film. This is particularly significant in a context where the state uses censorship to maintain tight control over not only production but also the inward and outward flow of cultural products, including films. The thesis therefore explores how the spread of proliferation technologies and digital networks have intensified the struggles over film censorship in

Iran, making these struggles spill over into the domain of circulation. The thesis then goes on to ask whether the advancement of informal networks of film circulation that lie beyond the direct reach of the Iranian government marks the end of the era of the

Iranian state’s sovereignty over the film industry. The above questions are considered via a complementary study of formal and informal circulation in Chapters 1 and 2 respectively. In these chapters, films and their circulation are treated primarily as material products, but, in so far as films have long played a role in Iran’s strategies of public diplomacy, they and their circulation must also be understood as ideological products, and for this reason, circulation sometimes becomes involved in a contest over meaning. In Chapters 3 and 4, the thesis turns to look at the articulation between

Introduction

circulation and signification, particularly when circulation is facilitated via informal networks, beyond the tight control of the state. Underpinning this is the question of how a film’s circulation might contribute to the politics of signification. More specifically, how do the films’ multiple trajectories and the contexts of the viewer’s encounter with them contribute to the production of new layers of meaning? Finally, an overarching question that this thesis seeks to answer is: What can the politics of transnational film circulation and its articulation with production and reception tell us about the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture?

In response to these questions, this thesis argues that the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context must be understood as an integral part of the Iranian state’s attempt to maintain a monopoly over the cultural sphere and in particular the film industry. It will be shown that this intervention has been transformed and at times has even taken contradictory turns in response to factional struggles among the Iranian ruling elite over cultural policies during two historical conjunctures: the

1979 revolution and the end of the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq in 1988.

Furthermore, it is argued that the rise and advancement of proliferation technologies and digital platforms has provided networks that are central to the informal circulation of a wide range of foreign and Iranian films whose exhibition and distribution inside Iran are heavily regulated by the state. Due to a lack of legislative frameworks around copyright, the practices of informal circulation discussed in this thesis cannot be accounted for merely as instances of piracy, where economic and intellectual property rights are at stake. Rather, these practices are interrelated with the dynamics and politics of formal film circulation and are also impacted by and contribute to the socio-political and cultural shifts in different historical moments. As this thesis will show, in the Iranian context, the state’s efforts to regulate the informal circulation of films is, to a great

Introduction

extent, part of its censorship strategies for controlling the content that the Iranian population sees on the screen, whether it be in a movie theatre, on a television screen or on a computer monitor. In light of this, I argue that the alternative networks of cinematic circulation not only facilitate the national and transnational flow of films, but also impact upon how such films may be interpreted. But does this evasive mode of circulation necessarily undermine state control, particularly when international perception of what constitutes Iranian cinematic culture is concerned?

This thesis argues that the articulation of all these forces together has not resulted in the failure of the Iranian state in its control over cinema but has gradually led to another conjunctural crisis that has surfaced three decades after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, when the struggles between the state and the Iranian population intensified in the wake of the 2009 presidential election. It was at this time that a number of prominent Iranian filmmakers were arrested and banned from making films.

One of these filmmakers, Jafar Panahi, figures prominently in this thesis not only because of the way he has made use of informal modes of circulation, but also for the way his films articulate this crisis within themselves. This conjunctural crisis was also largely a result of the convergence of the old and new media that facilitated the flow of films and visual material through networks outside the domain of the control of the state. The alternative orders of film circulation emerged not outside of the domain of control of the state but explicitly and directly in relation to the restrictions placed on the film industry and culture in the Iranian context. The dynamism of the Iranian cinematic culture, therefore, is not a result of a complete subversion of the control of the regime but the outcome of filmmakers’ and viewers’ negotiation with the state regulations.

Before moving on to define what I mean by circulation, I first provide a literature review in order to help situate the contributions this thesis makes to the field of Iranian

Introduction

cinema studies more broadly.

Literature review

Iranian cinema has received significant attention from many critics and scholars from various disciplines. Many works have been published studying different aspects of this cinema, from style and aesthetics to its relationship with social, political and cultural contexts. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to examine the full breadth of scholarship on Iranian cinema. Instead, I focus primarily on aspects of the existing scholarship that have considered the international dimensions of Iranian cinema. This particularly includes consideration of cinema’s place in debates on Iranian modernity and Iran’s relations with the rest of the world.

As indicated above, it was not until Iranian films began circulating en masse in international festivals that English-language scholarship on Iranian cinema began to develop. Before the 1980s, only a few works on Iranian cinema had been published in non-Iranian journals and the popular press. This is mainly because compared to the post-revolutionary era, not many films were circulated to international film festivals at this time. Dariush Mehrjui’s success at the Venice Film Festival with The Cow (Gav,

1969), followed by the successful screening of Still Life (Tabiat-e Bijan, Sohrab Shahid

Saless, 1974) and The Stone Garden (Bagh-e Sangi, Parviz Kimiavi, 1976) at the Berlin

International Film Festival, were among relatively few feature and documentary films that were acclaimed by international audiences prior to the revolution. However, it is important to remember that these filmmakers and a few others made a great contribution to the formation of the Iranian New Wave Cinema, which strongly influenced the younger generation of art-house filmmakers after the revolution. In this section, I shall provide a review of the scholarship that has discussed the socio-political, ideological,

Introduction

national and transnational dimensions of Iranian cinema in order to situate my research within the existing body of literature.

Hamid Reza Sadr’s Iranian Cinema: A Political History (2006) and Shahla

Mirbakhtyar’s Iranian Cinema and the Islamic Revolution (2006) are important examples of the scholarly works that study the Iranian film industry in relation to its socio-political context. Sadr’s work provides an analysis of the transformation of the

Iranian film industry in relation to the broader political changes in the country (Sadr

2006: 3). Mirbakhtyar also traces the development of the new Iranian cinema in connection with the social and political forces, particularly the revolution. She examines the films which are part of this development in terms of their production against the commercial cinema and the impact of politics on the Iranian film industry. This thesis similarly underscores the impact of socio-political changes in the Iranian context, but focuses on the dynamics of film circulation. In Chapters 1 and 2, it utilizes the methodological and conceptual framework known as conjunctural analysis in order to unpick the key domestic socio-political, economic and cultural forces that contribute to the dynamism of film circulation in the Iranian context. In addition, this thesis also takes into account the ways in which Iran’s relations with the rest of the world have impacted Iranian cinema in general and film circulation in particular. It is imperative that the study of Iranian cinema should move beyond the inward-looking or binary opposition of Iran and the West to understand the complex impact of these relations on the Iranian cinematic culture.

The binary opposition of self/other between Iran and the West is particularly noticeable in the work of some film critics inside Iran. This approach is specifically evident in a collection of interviews with producers, distributors and filmmakers conducted by one of Iran’s most controversial film critics, Masoud Farasati. In a

Introduction

collection, published under the title of Cinema-Festival: Iranian Cinema, Worldwide

Festivals (Moazzezi-Nia 2009), Farasati often stresses that Iranian art-house filmmakers have aimed to meet the expectations of Western film festivals. For him, too much focus on the expectations of the international film festival circuit gradually led to the emergence of what many Iranian critics have called a ‘festival cinema’ (sinema-ye jashnvareh-i) that relies only on the Western audience and, therefore, loses sight of the local market and a commitment to post-revolutionary ideals (Moazzezi-Nia

2009/1388:54). Farasati’s over-generalization of the rest of the world under umbrella terms such as ‘the Western audience’ or ‘Western film festivals’ is, as we will see in

Chapter 1, in line with the Iranian state’s anti-Western public diplomacy approach, which has gradually resulted in extreme tensions between the state and some of the nation’s most prominent art-house filmmakers, who have been celebrated at international film festivals.

Saeed Zeidabadi-Nejad also studies the socio-political dimensions of Iranian cinema. In his book, The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Film and Society in the Islamic

Republic (2010), he explores the ‘negotiations of power and meaning at the level of filmmaking’ in order to ‘demystify the relationship between filmmakers and state control which has been treated as a binary opposition’ (Zeidabadi-Nejad 2010: 2). He examines the reception of globally acclaimed Iranian films within Iran, using Azadeh

Farahmand’s article, ‘Perspectives on Recent International Acclaim for Iranian Cinema’ as a point of departure to develop his argument (2002). Farahmand claims that Iranian films circulated in international film festivals are ‘apolitical’ since the filmmakers ‘must compromise’ with the Iranian state in order to avoid ‘the bankruptcy of those involved in production’ (2002:91). According to her, ‘the growing attention to Iranian cinema in the West must also be linked to attempts in recent years to develop diplomatic ties and

Introduction

cultural exchanges between Iran and the West’ (Farahmand 2002: 44). Yet, contrary to

Farahmand, Zeidabadi-Nejad argues that ‘the prominence of Iranian cinema in the West has continued regardless of the ups and downs in diplomatic relations’ (Zeidabadi-

Nejad 2010: 139). Both Farahmand’s and Zeidabadi-Nejad’s work has analysed these exchange relations for some of the earliest post-revolutionary Iranian films to be exhibited in international film festivals, under the general category of the ‘Festival

Film’. This thesis looks at some more recent cases, and in particular focusses on films that have made their way to international festivals via routes that are outside of the control of the Iranian state. In this way it adds to the discussion of the contradiction highlighted by Zeidabadi-Nejad in terms of the apparent lack of effect of diplomatic relations on the appearance of films at international festivals.

Another scholarly work that has explored Iranian cinema beyond its local context is Hamid Dabashi’s Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and Future

(2001a). Dabashi employs interviews with directors, comments on individual films and provides an extensive filmography to create a journey through the development of

Iranian cinema. According to him, the history of the Iranian cinema is ‘concomitant with the project of modernity’, which can provide a ‘record of its failure’ as much as ‘a wish list for its success’ (Dabashi 2001: 12-13). Dabashi then focuses on different generations of Iranian filmmakers who have received international acclaim. As he observes, the older generation of filmmakers were unable to achieve global success, while the younger generation managed to become a part of the globalized world. This generation, whom he calls ‘children of a revolution, a war and a democratic uprising’, moved beyond metaphysics and ideology in their film. They are ‘globally celebrated as

Indies of a new post-metaphysical phase of Iranian cinema’ (Dabashi 2001: 260).

Dabashi aptly highlights the importance of global circulation in the trajectory of Iranian

Introduction

cinema; however, the complexity of power relations, especially those which emerged from the encounter of the local and global, needs more detailed analysis, which is one of the aims of this project. In Chapter 3, I discuss the case of No One Knows about Persian

Cats (2009) by Bahman Ghobadi, who is among the younger generation of post- revolution Iranian filmmakers. My analysis draws attention to the ways in which the film and its illicit circulation highlights the significance of alternative networks, as features of what Ravi Sundaram conceptualizes as ‘pirate modernity’, in the Iranian context (2007). As we will see, informal networks of film circulation emerged as a feature of globalization since the transnational flow of proliferation and digital technologies has enabled a radicalized access to media goods in the country.

Hamid Naficy’s scholarship has been central to debates on Iranian cinema in recent years. His four-volume book, A Social History of Iranian Cinema (2011), is the most comprehensive work published in this field. This work, as he highlights himself,

‘is not just a close reading of specific film texts or a study of great masters’ (Naficy

2011:2). Instead of considering Iran and the West as two sides of a binary opposition, he situates Iranian cinema within ‘ad hoc networks of power and knowledge relations whose dynamic intermingling at microphysical levels give it its distinct characteristics’

(Naficy 2011a:2). In the first volume, The Artisanal Era, 1897-1941, he studies the relationship between modernity, Iranian national identity and the way these influenced film production and the reception of Iranian cinema. He argues that Iranian modernity, and Iranian cinema as one of its features, cannot be considered as pre-planned Western projects injected from the outside or from above. Rather, modernity in Iran was overdetermined in complicated ways. Iranians ‘resisted, rejected, accommodated and selectively adopted and celebrated modernity and its features’ (Naficy 2011: 7). Naficy also offers ‘a schematic presentation of the combined salient features of both cinema

Introduction

and modernity, as they cross-fertilized one another in the Iranian context’ (Naficy 2011:

9). In addition, he highlights the role of modern individuals as significant agents in the formation of their own identities, and ‘the particularity of each national cinema’ (Naficy

2011: 23). However, he believes that ‘even until the years after the revolution, Iranians were still in transition from pre-modern collective identity and had not yet fully achieved individualized modern subjectivity’ (Naficy 2011: 25). In cinema, for example, as Naficy argued, public expectations,

forced auteur directors to make films in which the stories of private individuals

were almost always read as the stories of the public, for each film served as a

‘national allegory’ (Jameson 1986). Despite Jameson’s gross generalization

[…] it remains true that the relation between the libidinal and the political, at

least in Iranian intellectual literature and cinema, was such that the libidinal

investment was encoded by filmmakers and decoded by spectators, primarily in

political and social terms (Naficy 2011: 24).

The nation became the primary problematic of many Iranian intellectuals at the time of the revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. However, simplistic assumptions about encoding and decoding national allegories can lead us to other forms of generalization. Even if

Iranian filmmakers erased what Jameson called ‘the border between the poetic and the political’, it does not guarantee, in a simple sense, a similar decoding by the spectators

(Jameson 1986:69). In fact, as Stuart Hall argues in his four-stage model of communication, the moments of encoding and decoding have complex structures of relation; they are ‘sustained through the articulation of practices, each of which has its own specific modality’(Hall 1973:109). This thesis draws on Hall’s model of communication in order to explore the ways in which film circulation and its complex

Introduction

relationship with moments of production and consumption can contribute to the production of new layers of meaning.

The scholarship around globally recognized Iranian filmmakers such as Abbas

Kiarostami or the Makhmalbaf family also provides us with a better understanding of the celebration of Iranian cinema beyond the geographic borders of the country. Even though these filmmakers have significant differences in style, they have all been celebrated by international audiences under the name of Iranian cinema. Hossein

Khosrowjah, for example, has studied Kiarostami’s contribution to the deconstruction of the myth of a coherent, homogeneous national identity (2010). He criticizes the ways in which the viewers of Iranian films at international film festivals read them as the

‘single reality’ of Iranian society and culture (Khosrowjah 2010: 28). However, he asserts that ‘the films construct different versions of Iran that are constantly contested, negotiated or contradicted in reception’ (Khosrowjah 2010: 75). Furthermore, he studies the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema, focusing on Kiarostami’s oeuvre. He indicates that ‘the multiplicity of reception locations makes it necessary to investigate reception as a multi-sited event’ (Khosrowjah 2010: 80). Khosrowjah’s thesis is an important model for the study of the circulation of Iranian film for two reasons. First, instead of generalizing his argument to the Iranian cinema as a whole unity, he constantly moves between specific filmic texts and the real experiences of reception.

Second, he highlights the complexity of reception and the necessity of considering various locations. His work draws attention to a major gap within the scholarship on

Iranian cinema, which is the study of the reception of particular films. While it is beyond the scope of this thesis to undertake a comprehensive study of the reception of

Iranian films, in Chapter 4, I touch upon my own experience of a transnational encounter with Jafar Panahi’s Tehran Taxi (2015) at the Berlin International Film

Introduction

Festival also known as the Berlinale. My approach in conceptualizing what I call the critic’s cinematic experience, similar to Khosrowjah, underscores the diversity of cinematic experiences. Moreover, this thesis will demonstrate how cinematic experiences are shaped not only in relation to the cinematic text but also the material platform and the space in which the encounter with the film takes place.

The approach this thesis takes in Chapter 4 is inspired by Naficy’s ‘Theorizing

“Third World” Film Spectatorship: The Case of Iran and Iranian Cinema’ (2003). In this book chapter, Naficy chooses self-narrativization in order to avoid the effacement of the researcher and the production of a static image of the viewer as a result of a ‘neutral invisible writing’ (Naficy 2003: 183). For him, an autobiographical account can work as a ‘searchlight to illuminate the essential interiority and multiple subjectivities of film spectatorship’ as well as ‘its undeniable but under-theorized social and collective dimensions’ (Naficy 2003: 183). Developing from an Althusserian approach to cinema as an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), Naficy argues that the process of interpellation or hailing, and counter-interpellation or haggling are both the results of the textual address and the conditions in which the cinematic spectatorship takes place. He indicates that ‘there are cracks, ruptures, inconsistencies and contradictions not only among various ISAs but also within individual ISAs, which make resistance and subversion of the interpellation possible’ (Naficy 2003:187). This thesis explores the ways that informal networks of film circulation can provide a challenge to the function of cinema as an ISA and create different forms of cinematic spectatorship. In the first part of his article, Naficy narrates his experience of watching Western films in Iran, while the second part is dedicated to the experience of watching Iranian films in Europe and the United States. He focuses on the transnational spectatorship of films produced by third-world populations and screened at international film festivals. Focusing on

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Iranian film festivals outside Iran, he highlights that the ‘[f]ilm festivals are prime sites of intensified national and transnational translations and mistranslations, as well as hailing and haggling over acts of representation’ (Naficy 2003:197). In other words, these ‘forms of spectatorship and exhibition resulted in complex and highly slippery subjectivities that are open to all sorts of intercultural and transnational haggling’

(Naficy 2003:196). The account I provide of my own cinematic experiences in Chapter

4 takes into account the viewer’s subject position within different systems of representation and ideological discourses that emerge at the moments of production, circulation and reception, which over-determine the conditions of cinematic encounter and the meaning inscribed to it.

Among the existing accounts of specific filmmakers, Dabashi’s Makhmalbaf at

Large (2008) covers some of the aspects of Iranian cinema and its global circulation. In it, Dabashi addresses the particularities and paradoxes of Iranian cinema by focusing on

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, situating the international circulation of his work in terms of discourses of colonialism (2008). Makhmalbaf is among the first generation of globally celebrated Iranian filmmakers after the revolution. He was also one of only a few internationally acclaimed filmmakers who, during the first decade after the revolution, had a solid commitment to the Islamic Republic (Dabashi 2008:15). Dabashi discusses

‘Makhmalbaf’s cinema in terms of his varied attempts at an aesthetic articulation of moral and normative agency, beyond the inherited limitation of a “colonial subject”’

(2008: 226). The notion of ‘colonial subject’ is central to Dabashi’s discussion when he highlights that for the non-Western world, modernity was a part of the project of colonization that denied the agency of the colonized: ‘for those who are at the edges of the imperial world, modernity is always a colonial modernity’ (Benlisoy 2009). This means, ‘the principles of enlightenment were introduced to the non-Western world via

Introduction

the process of colonization which denied agency for the colonized people” (Benlisoy

2009). As Dabashi highlights elsewhere, ‘a typical type of opposition to that “colonial modernity” has taken the form of “tradition” or an essentialist understanding of the cultural/religious tradition against modernity or East against West’ (Benlisoy 2009).

This approach, as he points out, has resulted in a paradox in Iran, Turkey and the Arab countries. However, Dabashi argues that ‘in the works of Makhmalbaf, one can see a kind of creative agency in which the worldly presence of post/colonial people’ has remained out of the reach of people living ‘on the colonial edges of European modernity’ (2008: xxiv). The account this thesis provides of the efforts of Iranian filmmakers to use alternative networks of film circulation also captures some intricate aspects of their agency against the essentialist understanding of East against West.

Another major question Dabashi seeks to answer in his study of the cinema of

Makhmalbaf is how a cinema of such significance could emerge in an Islamic Republic.

For him, the emergence of the new Iranian cinema must be located within the ‘global configuration of various national cinemas that have emerged over the twentieth century’

(Dabashi 2008:6). The appearance of a ‘rebel filmmaker’ such as Makhmalbaf in the

Iranian context under the ruling of the Islamic Republic, which is full of contradictions,

‘points to a more immediate issue of how to understand the appearance of any national cinema’ (Dabashi 2008: 6). Dabashi argues that ‘national cinemas’ have risen as a result of ‘national traumas’ (Dabashi 2008: 6). According to him, collective traumas such as revolution and war ‘manifest themselves in cultural and aesthetic forms’, and in his view this is true of Iranian cinema (Dabashi 2008:6). The Iranian Revolution and the

Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) are central to the analysis of transnational film circulation in this Introduction. However, instead of considering them as collective traumas that can manifest aesthetic forms, I consider them as moments of conjunctural crisis in which, as

Introduction

we will see in the first chapter, various factions vie for control over the Iranian film industry.

Dabashi’s understanding of national cinema is problematic for two reasons: first, it looks inward, and reflects only on the nation’s past, present and future. Second, this approach assumes a fixed, fully-formed national identity for the Iranian population.

These points are among the reasons that scholars such as Andrew Higson have questioned the usefulness of the concept of national cinema overall (2000). In “Limiting

Imagination of National Cinema”, Higson highlights that ‘the concept of “transnational” may be a subtler means of cultural and economic formations that are rarely contained by national boundaries’ (Higson 2000: 57). Higson argues that Benedict Anderson’s concept of the nation as an ‘imagined community’ (1983) can help with an intricate conceptualization of national cinemas. According to Higson, mass communication, as

Anderson also points out, can serve as a means to sustain an imaginary coherence of the nation. However, it is important to note that contemporary media practices take place through various forms of border crossing. In fact, it is in the migration and border crossing, in co-productions, distribution and reception of the films, that the transnational emerges (Higson 2000: 61). According to Higson, it is important to understand that cinema has been operating ‘on a regional, national and transnational basis’ (2000:61). In that sense, it is important to provide a study of the cinema of a nation that takes into account not only the impact of state policies but also the transnational aspects of cinema and its circulation. By way of reference, this thesis considers the category of national in the Iranian cinema as a way of situating it within the geographic borders of the nation- state, and the context of its culture and politics. In the second half of this thesis, where I provide a textual analysis of Panahi’s This is not a Film (2011) and Tehran Taxi (2015), my focus on the national, following Negar Mottahedeh, ‘remains on the statements the

Introduction

films make regarding the nation in their enunciation, that is, in the site of their production, and the sites designated for the reception of their address’ (2008a:12). This thesis focuses on the transnational dimensions of Iranian cinematic culture in terms of the flow of films in and out of the national borders and the arrival of digital technologies into the country. The latter, as I explain in chapter 2, led to the emergence of a vast range of alternative networks of film circulation, the re-introduction of intellectual property discourse to the Iranian legal system, and the transformation of the state’s approach towards informal circulatory practices. It studies the socio-political and ideological dimensions of transnational circulation of Iranian cinema, particularly focusing on the acclaim the Iranian films receive in the international film festivals.

The international recognition of Iranian cinema and the film festival circuit

As the citation of the interview with Abbas Kiarostami at the opening of this introduction suggests, the film festival circuit plays a major role in adding economic and symbolic value to films produced in different national contexts. In the second half of this thesis, I will explore case studies of specific films that have made their way to festivals via networks that lie outside the control of the Iranian state. I shall now provide a broad overview of what is at stake in the role of film festivals in helping to form a conception of what we know as ‘Iranian cinema’ and then I situate my research in relation to broader conversations about the film festival circuit. The term ‘circuit’, used in many scholarly debates to denote a diverse range of events in different parts of the world, suggests that they are not only sites of film exhibition but also distribution (Loist

2009:51). The festival events, in that sense, are the sites that facilitate the flow of films and the circulation of financial capital, ‘in the form of distribution revenue or film production funds flowing through the increasing number of production workshops on

Introduction

the festival circuit’ (Loist 2009:51). Festival events are also crucial for the creation of films’ symbolic value (de Valck 2007:37). As Marijke de Valck highlights,

the survival of the phenomenon of film festivals and its development into a

global and widespread festival circuit has been dependent on the creation of

film festivals as a zone, a liminal state, where the cinematic products can bask

in the attention they receive for their aesthetic achievements, cultural

specificity, or social relevance. (2007: 37)

Bill Nichols also draws attention to the role of the festival circuit in the creation of symbolic value for films from various nations and cultures that seem foreign to him

(1994). According to Nichols, the festival event ‘inflects and constructs the meaning’ the viewer ascribes to the films, and ‘constitutes the very audience needed to recognize and appreciate such cinema as distinct and valued entities’ (Nichols 1994:16). The festival experience, for Nichols, is an encounter with an unfamiliar culture that evokes a travel or dreamlike state for viewers but at the same time encourages them to ‘recover the strange as familiar’ through the ‘acknowledgement of an international film style’, and to retrieve ‘insights or lessons about a different culture’ (1994: 18). Reflecting on his own encounter with Iranian cinema in the early 1990s, Nichols suggests that Iranian post-revolutionary films ‘usher [the festival viewer] into a world of wind, sand, and dust, of veiled women and stoic men, of unusual tempos and foreign rhythms’

(1994:17). Nichols’ meditation on his own experience places emphasis on the dreamlike reception of the films – as imaginary signifiers – to the extent that he finds the cinematic encounter similar to a ‘real’ encounter of a tourist or an ethnographer with

Iranian culture. His perception of this specific function of cinema, as I explain in

Chapter 4, is in line with Jean Louis Baudry’s account, which perceives films as a form of ‘objective reality’ (1974).

Introduction

A rich body of scholarly works on Iranian cinema has focused on the economic, socio-political and national and international forces that together create the conditions for the dissemination of the ‘real’ image of the Iranian society and culture on the international screen. Azadeh Farahmand, for example, argues that the critical acclaim for Iranian art-house filmmakers has to be ‘realized in a web of relations between international and Iranian national politics’ (2002:87). The international recognition of

Iranian cinema is largely a result of the efforts of the post-revolution Iranian state, officially known as the Islamic Republic, to use cinema as a means to ‘renegotiate the imagery of the nation’ and to gain ‘a place for the country within the global economy in the name of art’ (Farahmand 2002:87). As mentioned above, according to Farahmand, it was the Iranian state’s complex censorship strategies and its control over different sectors of the film industry which led to the production and international distribution of apolitical art-house films, by filmmakers such as Kiarostami, that received praise in the international film festival circuit. In a similar vein, Agnes Devictor highlights that the international success of Iranian cinema and the increase in film exports is evidence of the economic support that the domestic film industry receives from the state (Devictor

2002:66). However, she also argues that the Islamic Republic has aimed to achieve ‘an ideological project’ in its multi-layered intervention with the Iranian film industry

(Devictor 2002:66).

Hamid Naficy provides a detailed account of the complex processes through which cinema has been adapted by the Islamic Republic since the revolution in order to serve as an effective ISA. According to Naficy, the senior leaders of the Iranian state – including Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder and first leader of the Islamic Republic – have perceived cinema in terms of a ‘“hypodermic theory” of ideology and cinematic effect’ (Naficy 2012a:5). The hypodermic needle model, which has roots in audience

Introduction

research, understands communication as a mechanical process in which transmission directly leads to reception (O’Sullivan et al. in Grey 2010:79). The term ‘injection’ highlights the simplicity of the assumption that audiences simply imbibe the ideological content of television and filmic texts. Since the early twentieth century when cinema arrived in Iran, many religious leaders have considered it as a vehicle of Westernization

(Naficy 2011: 28). The Iranian clerical elite, as Naficy explains, have often subscribed to a model of cinematic effect that was similar to Louis Althusser’s model of ISA.

Based on this formulation, ‘the exposure to dominant ideology and cinema would facilitate interpellation, transforming autonomous and ethical “individuals” into dependent, corrupt “subjects” of that ideology and cinema’ (Naficy 2012a:5). The significance of this approach lies in the ways in which the ideological effect of cinema has been perceived in relation to and constitutive of the Westernization of Iran. For many influential clerics, Western films and media products have been considered dangerous because they would expose the Iranian population to ‘a homogenous and hegemonic’ Western and modern culture (Naficy 2012a:6). The injection of this monolithic culture of idolatry (farhang-e taghut), as post-revolution authorities called it, into the autonomous and pious individuals through the medium of cinema would, it was feared, transform them into dependent subjects of it (Naficy 2012a: 5). The capacity of cinema to be an effective ideological apparatus became the key component of the

Islamic Republic’s approach towards the film industry and its cinematic exchange relations with the world. This thesis considers how and why the control of the circulation of films in and out of the country is a central part of the Iranian state’s approach to cinema as an ideological apparatus. Control of the flow of films into the country has been justified as a way to protect the population from Western and other

‘undesirable’ influences; control of the flow of films out of the country can help with

Introduction

the creation of the positive image of the Iranian society and culture under the Islamic

Republic. Thus, control of transnational film circulation played a crucial role in the post-revolutionary state’s goal of ‘purifying’ the nation.

Soon after the revolution, the Iranian state initiated the process of transitioning from Pahlavi’s syncretically Westernized culture and its ‘cinema of idolatry’ to syncretically Islamist culture and its ‘Islamicate cinema’ (Naficy 2012a:14). The term

‘Islamicate cinema’ refers to the fact that this cinema and Iranian culture in general are not strictly Islamic. Rather, ‘this cinema and culture is based on the specific traditions of Persia, associated not only with Islam but also with other ethnoreligious peoples on the Iranian plateau’ (Naficy 2012a:8). The majority of the state’s efforts to create an

Islamicate cinema and culture revolved around the purification (paksazi) of all ISAs, including the education system, broadcast media and cinema, of Pahlavi’s syncretically

Westernized ideology. Purification referred to the complex and long-term process of

‘cleansing the society and culture politically and morally from the vestiges of unwanted

Pahlavi and western cultures, ideologies, and corruptions, and replacing them with appropriate, “pure” and “true” Islamic ideologies’(Naficy 2012a:118). In Chapter 1, I will elaborate on how the post-revolution state’s purification policies led to a massive transformation of the Iranian film industry. The rules and regulations that were established over the course of several years targeted not only the films’ style and aesthetics and production, but also their modes of circulation and exhibition. As a part of this process, the Iranian state launched heavy-handed restrictions over the import of foreign films. One of the main aims of these regulations was to hinder the exposure of the Iranian population to the presumably monolithic and corrupt Western ideology injected to the Iranian population by foreign films and media. Meanwhile, the state’s support of film production and domestic and international distribution and exhibition

Introduction

could foster the introduction of the Islamic Republic’s values to the Iranian population, and could also serve as a counter-offensive strategy in the state’s ongoing cultural battle with the West in the years to come.

Naficy argues that the Iranian state’s efforts to use cinema as a means to ‘inject’ its Islamicate values into the Iranian citizens to create a monolithic cinema and culture, and to establish its legitimacy in the world, failed on both fronts. This was largely because the Iranian population ‘resisted, rejected, negotiated, and, in short, haggled with the tendencies and practices of the regime’ (Naficy 2012a:11). Contrary to Farahmand, he argues that the international celebration of Iranian cinema ‘did not translate into the legitimacy for the government’ (Naficy 2012b:256). Instead, the international film festival, as Naficy elaborates, ‘raised the prestige of Iran as a nation and countered widespread negative mediawork about it, but they did not whitewash the Islamist regime; in fact, they provided venues in which its practices could be discussed and critiqued’ (Naficy 2012b:256). Naficy’s account is important for this thesis because it sheds light on the ways in which cinema became a site of ideological struggle and how

Iranian cinematic culture has been transformed in relation to and as a part of other socio-political forces and contradictions in the Iranian society and culture. This research builds on Naficy’s body of work at different levels. In Chapter 1, in particular, this thesis draws on the historical and analytical account he provides on the complicated relationship of the Iranian state with cinema in order to explore its impact on the dynamics of film circulation in during two historical conjunctures.

In her book, Displaced Allegories (2008), Negar Mottahedeh draws attention to the ideological structuration of cinematic language and the ways that this contributes to the complex web of relations that determine the success of Iranian cinema in the festival circuit. As she points out, the international recognition of Iranian cinema is ‘radically

Introduction

informed by the conflictual histories and struggles of the cinema on other political turfs that have as much to do with standardized codes as with the resistant practices of a national industry in its encounters with dominant cinema around the globe’ (Mottahedeh

2008a:148). As she highlights, one aspect of the purification policies that led to major changes in the content of the films and their textual formation was the rules of modesty.

Under the modesty system ‘women’s bodies became the veiled and thus the purified sites of the renewed national honor and heterosexual potency’ (Mottahedeh 2008a:148).

In cinema, the rules of modesty constrained the representation of women and sexual relations on the screen.3 The main aim of the rules of modesty was to protect the viewers from ‘the meta-desire of cinema’ that is structured by the dominant voyeuristic codes of conventional narrative cinema (Mottahedeh 2008a:2). The state’s demands put the audience of Iranian cinema in a contradictory situation. They would have to be introduced to a new filmic language and form that could essentially internalize the new culture and values through what is represented on the screen but at the same time, they

‘had to do so as “distracted” viewers through their unhindered sensorial identification with a purified apparatus’(Mottahedeh 2008a:3). Mottahedeh argues that in response to the restrictions over the film industry and visual censorship, an innovative cinematic language emerged that on the one hand disrupted the rules and conventions of dominant cinema and on the other became a ‘displaced allegory’ of the national context in which the films were produced. This displaced allegory ‘was distinct from the direct content of the narrative in the films, a second-level message that could certainly accompany the narrative but that would necessarily arise on the level of form rather than the ideological ground of the film narrative’s content’ (Mottahedeh 2008a:3). Mottahedeh, similar to

Naficy, argues that the Islamic Republic has failed in its attempts to purify of the

3 In the 1980s, women on screen were strictly veiled, and men and women were not allowed to exchange glances in close-up shots. (Mottahedeh 2008b:190) 24

Introduction

Iranian film industry and to use cinema to establish its own legitimacy. For her, this failure occurred as a result of both the transnational history of cinema, and the displaced allegories that ‘have emerged around the post-revolutionary film industry’s figure of the veiled woman fixing her modest body as the index of Iranian cinema’s address’

(Mottahedeh 2008a:4). In that sense, Mottahedeh highlights that the innovations of

Iranian filmmakers have not been shaped in negation of the state’s complex censorship strategies, but as a result of the restrictions imposed on film production in the country.

In Chapters 3 and 4, this thesis draws on Mottahedeh’s account in its analysis of

Panahi’s This is not a Film and Tehran Taxi. It demonstrates how the films’ radical self- reflexive techniques become a displaced allegory not only of the conditions of their own making but also of their illicit circulation, and above all, of the way in which such an illicit trajectory contributes to the politics of signification. Moreover, her account enables me to read these films in terms of what Michel Foucault calls a ‘discursive heterotopia’ (2002). The films’ constant self-reflexivity, as we will see, destroys the syntax of the cinematic language, the very ground on which it exists, desiccates the utterance and ‘contest[s] the very possibility of grammar at its sources’ (Foucault

2002:xix). I will demonstrate how through the creation of discursive heterotopias, the films locate themselves within the order of Iranian cinema and the ‘fundamental codes’ that are ‘governing its language, its schemas of perception, its exchanges, its techniques, its values, the hierarchy of its practices’ (Foucault 2002:xxii). At the same time, they challenge the viewers’ received knowledge about the codes that govern its production and circulation.

Mottahedeh makes the important point that Iranian films do not, and perhaps cannot, capture the ‘reality’ of the Iranian society and culture, since what is represented on the screen was sustained and produced through the complex and regulated process

Introduction

that began at the level of cinematic language. Her account is significant for this thesis because it can help with understanding how in the post-revolution period, a different cinematic language was implemented in order to represent and reproduce a new version of reality. The point here is that cinema does not represent the reality of Iranian culture in terms of transmitting the existing meaning, but engages in the more active labour of meaning-making. The Iranian state has been constantly intervening in different aspects of the film industry in order to warrant its legitimacy and to maintain the production of preferred meanings based on its own values and ideological preferences. Mottahedeh draws attention to the ways such ideological processes worked on the level of cinematic language and how it could be perceived in relation to other changes within the Iranian context (Mottahedeh 2008a:2). And this signifying process has led not only to a struggle over meaning but also over the means of meaning production and the circulation of that meaning. So, the specificity of cinema as a social practice lies in its ability to produce a symbolic product. What differentiates it from many other practices is the articulation together of the social and symbolic elements. Cinema as a social practice functions as a real-signifying agent – not capturing a pre-given reality, but affecting the real outcomes of the struggle over meaning. The ideological and linguistic characteristics of cinema underline how it became a site of struggle over production and re-production of certain meaning. In other words, the meaning derived from certain practices always depends of

‘the politics of signification’ in a given historical moment (Hall 1982:66). In Chapter 3, this thesis will further explore the ways in which some Iranian filmmakers have contributed to the struggles over cinema and its production and dissemination of meaning, not only through the content of their films, but also by circumventing the regulations Iranian state has imposed on film circulation.

The majority of the scholarship available on Iranian cinema has covered

Introduction

governmental control over production through censorship of form and content, but

Naficy and Mottahedeh in particular discuss how the censorship strategies did not result in the creation of a monolithic post-revolution cinema, and how Iranian filmmakers negotiate with the state’s control in order to embed different meanings to the film

(2008a; 2011a). However, it is important to highlight that the production of different layers of meaning does not end once the cinematic product becomes ready for distribution. Mottahedeh’s critique of Nichols’ article on his festival encounter with post-revolutionary Iranian cinema can help with elaborating this point. For her, Nichols’ account is problematic because he ‘presupposes a difference of worlds so radical that the spectator and the screened “exotic” represent a civilizational difference’

(Mottahedeh 2008a:147). But Nichols himself highlights that this (mis-)reading of the films is largely a result of the festival context in which the Iranian films reach their international audience. In that sense, the festival circuit does not only serve as a delivery mechanism but creates a viewing context that can ‘alter [the films’] local meanings and confer new, global ones’ (Nichols 1994:18). The festival context can add new layers of meaning and complexity to the films at the moment of their reception. In the case of

Nichols’ encounter with Iranian cinema, the new meanings that are ascribed to the film through the publicity of the events and popular media invite viewers such as Nichols to acknowledge an international film style and to retrieve insights about Iranian culture

(Nichols 1994:18). In Chapter 4, I compare my own festival experience with Nichols’. I will demonstrate how the discourses that emerged around the screening of Tehran Taxi at the Berlinale in 2015 and during its subsequent circulation added new layers of complexity to the experience. Nichols’ account is indeed problematic, since he guarantees a level of authenticity for it by rendering other festival experiences, as an encounter with the ‘exotic’, similar to his own (1994). The analysis I provide of my

Introduction

own experience radically departs from Nichols to avoid this type of over-generalization.

Instead, I seek to foreground the multiplicity of cinematic experiences by employing a methodological framework inspired by Elspeth Probyn’s approach in conceptualising the critic’s self as a way of thinking about a cultural process (1993). My analysis in

Chapter 4 attends to the uniqueness of each experience, in terms of the context, the specificity of each film and the viewer.

In recent years, a new generation of scholarship on Iranian cinema has emerged that moves beyond the study of films that have been celebrated in the film festival circuit and instead focuses on the role of informality in the Iranian cinematic culture.

For example, in “Eastern Boys and Failed Heroes: Iranian cinema in the world’s orbit”,

Kaveh Askari draws attention to informal practices of films circulation, such as

‘reediting, second-run circuits, and rapid motorcycle deliverymen who serviced multiple cinemas with reels from a single print’, that emerged in Iran during the 1960s (2018:

31). He focuses on Eastern Boy (Pesar-e Sharghi, 1975), a neglected film by the prominent new-wave filmmaker Masoud Kimiai, that follows a group of teenagers who collect junk celluloids. Focusing on this informal practice which reflects on an understudied aspect of Iranian cinematic culture, Askari underscores the necessity of a circulation-based historiography of cinema that moves beyond ‘familiar archives, national industries, and their groundbreaking films’ (2018: 31). In chapter 2, this thesis also provides an alternative historiography of cinema in Iran by focusing on the informal networks of film circulation that emerged in the pre-revolution period. The second chapter also explores how informal film circulation practices transformed in relation to the advancement of proliferation technologies and state-regulated modes of film circulation in the post-revolution and post-Iran-Iraq war era.

In “The Little Devil Comes Home: Video, The State, and Amateur Cinema in

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Iran”, Blake Atwood explores the role of video technology in the expansion of informal cinema practices in the post-revolution Iranian context (2018). As he highlights, the arrival of video technology to the country not only facilitated the circulation of foreign films outside of the Iranian state’s control but also led to a large-scale production and circulation of amateur moving images in the private sphere (2018: 142-143). Atwood’s approach brings together the study of amateur filmmaking and informal cinema economies and provides an explanation of ‘how production and distribution function together, both technically and discursively’ (2018: 143). This research also pays particular attention to the articulation of circulation with production and consumption.

Moreover, in chapters 3 and 4, it explores how circulation can also contribute to the process of meaning making. Focusing on the role of circulation and informality in the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture, this thesis thus situates itself within the new genealogy of films studies.

The primary goal of this research is to explore the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context, the production and dissemination of meaning during the process and the ways in which it can contribute to the dynamism of

Iranian cinematic culture. In order to achieve this goal, I draw on a range of conceptual and methodological frameworks, primarily derived from cultural studies. Before moving into the chapter outlines, I shall provide an overview of these theoretical frameworks that are used in the thesis.

Theoretical frameworks

I first outline my understanding of circulation, which is derived from the work of Stuart

Hall before moving on to introduce the notion of articulation and finally the method of conjunctural analysis that forms the basis for the first two chapters of this thesis.

Introduction

Conceptualising film circulation

Circulation, in this thesis, refers to the distribution of films through various networks, the dissemination of the meaning within them, and the reproduction or emergence of different cinematic cultures during this process. The conceptualization of film circulation deployed in this thesis has its roots in the work of Stuart Hall, but also draws on further work in this area by Bodker who has modified and extended Hall’s concept to take new technological platforms and digital landscapes into account.

In film industry discourse, the movement of films is referred to as distribution, which is a segment in the film industry that links production, exhibition and consumption. Generally speaking, the distribution segment is involved in the sale, reproduction, delivery, translation, marketing and promotion of motion pictures in various territories and across all formats (Lobato 2012:11). Many scholars, however, argue that the understanding of distribution as merely a link between other segments of the film industry is insufficient. Dina Iordanova, for example, points out that ‘cinema is in the process of moving on-line’ (2012:1). According to her, traditional distribution has been undermined with the rise and advancement of digital technologies (2012). Today, the traditional distribution networks are only a fraction of the diverse range of practices that determine the flow of films around different parts of the world. The advancement of digital technologies, as Iordanova explains, contributes to the emergence of a new film circulation environment. As a result, circulation has become

a more intricate phenomenon that includes a plethora of circuits and, possibly,

revenue streams. Along with it come conditions conducive to the free flow of

previously rarely seen cinematic material, which due to the vitality of growing

alternative channels of dissemination can now be seen and appreciated by

anyone with a data connection. (Iordanova 2012:1)

Introduction

In a similar vein, in his study of the circulatory dynamics of cinema, Ramon Lobato defines film distribution as ‘the movement of media through time and space’ (2012:2).

This broad definition, as he highlights, ‘opens up the study of media industries to an array of informal channels that are rarely documented and which may or may not be categorized as distribution networks from the vantage point of industry research and policy’ (Lobato 2012:2). More importantly, this change in the definition, according to

Lobato, shifts ‘our understanding of distribution closer to the parallel idea of circulation that features in media and cultural studies research’ (2012:2). While Lobato retains the term ‘distribution’ in order to analytically engage with the informal networks at the same level with their formal counterparts, in this research I use the term ‘circulation’, which allows me to take into consideration the symbolic and material characteristics of cinematic products as they find their ways to their audience through various networks.

In his pioneering article, “Encoding, Decoding”, Hall provides a four-stage model of communication in order to conceptualize the process of production and dissemination of meaning, particularly referring to television discourse (Hall 1993:91).4

According to Hall, the process of meaning-making in a communicative process is

‘sustained through the articulation of linked but distinctive moments – production, circulation, distribution/ consumption, reproduction’ in a way that ‘no one moment can fully guarantee the next moment with which it is articulated’ (Hall 1993:91). Thus, in this model, circulation is not merely an equivalent of distribution, as it is in the broadest sense, which simply refers to an intermediary or delivery system. Rather, the moment of production/circulation in Hall’s model is when the ‘apparatus, relations and practices of production issue in the form of symbolic vehicles constituted within the rules of

“language”’ (Hall 1993:91). The term ‘language’ highlights that the object of

4 This article was first published in 1973 under the title “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse”. 31

Introduction

communication has been produced ‘through the operation of codes within syntagmatic chain of a discourse’, and ‘it is in the discursive form that circulation of the product takes place, as well as its distribution to the audience’ (Hall 1993:91). Circulation, in that sense, is the moment in the circuit that the meaning is encoded to the media texts

(or in the form of ‘sign-vehicles’) and the discursive forms emerge. On the other hand, distribution refers to the dispersal of the discursive forms to the audience, where the process of decoding the message takes place.

Despite their similarities, the distinction between circulation and distribution is central to Hall’s conceptualization of the whole circuit, because his emphasis in this article is on the degree of symmetry or asymmetry between the encoded and decoded meanings. As Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner point out, the distinction between production/circulation and distribution/consumption also highlights ‘the ability of audiences to produce their own readings and meanings to decode texts in aberrant or oppositional ways, as well as the preferred ways in tune with the dominant ideology’

(2001:95). Hall’s conceptualization of circulation and distribution is beneficial for this thesis because his circular model underscores how the interrelations between production, circulation, distribution, and consumption of the media product that contribute to the process of meaning-making is not fixed or predetermined but appears in a form of articulated unity.

The concept of articulation is central to Hall’s communication model. An articulation between different moments,

does not mean that they become identical or that the one is dissolved into other.

Each retains its distinct determinations and conditions of existence. However,

once an articulation is made, the two practices can function together not as an

‘immediate unity’ […] but as ‘distinction within a unity.’ (Hall 1985:113-114)

Introduction

The concept of articulation allows us to think about the structure of communication not only in terms of the symmetry or asymmetry of the encoded and decoded meaning but also in terms of the linkage between different moments that are constituted within what forms an articulated unity.

Hall’s model, which was first developed to conceptualize the mass communication and meaning-making process with a focus on television discourse, has been adapted by some media scholars to account for an entirely new model of communication in new media (2015, 2016, 2017). New media, also referred to as emergent or digital media, according to Adrian Shaw, is ‘a constellation of technologies that are networked, computerized, mobile and interactive. It covers a wide array of channels, platforms, technologies, and media’ (Shaw 2017:593). The new media and digital technologies have become adjunct to and sometimes replace the more centralized processes that Hall was concerned with. Therefore, while the core ideas in his article remained productive, the heterogeneity and diversity of new media platforms challenge his model in the sense that the distinction between circulation and distribution does not serve as useful a purpose as it did in analysing centrally determined models like television broadcasting.

In his article, “Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding Model and the Circulation of

Journalism in the Digital Landscape”, Henrik Bodker rethinks Hall’s model in light of new technological developments (2016). Bodker’s account particularly focuses on digital landscapes and their impact on the circulation of journalism, however, as I will explain shortly, his rethinking is also relevant for the analysis of film circulation via emergent media platforms. Focussing on journalism, Bodker underscores that the advancement of technologies and the new media provides a challenge for the creation of a discursive form, in the sense that they allow discursive forms to be diverted from their

Introduction

predestined trajectory. The changed consumption of discursive products such as films,

TV programs and news does not necessarily change their status as a commodity. This is particularly important when it comes to the study of new media, since the consumption of the product does not necessarily take them out of circulation (Bodker 2016:414). In such cases, the processes of circulation and consumption can take place simultaneously and continuously. Bodker therefore argues that ‘Hall’s distinction between circulation as being linked to the process of issuing discursive forms, and distribution, as merely making these forms available to some extent collapses in the sense that the ways of reading [or consumption in general] issue their own discursive forms simultaneously with circulating the forms issued by the [formal producers]’ (2016:415). Hall’s communicative circuit, in that sense, is ‘increasingly folded into a different but related circuit that functions through codes very unlike those of professional journalism’

(Bodker 2016:415). Conceptualising film circulation in terms of the articulation of circulation and distribution in Hall’s model of communication based on Bodker’s approach does not suggest the synonymy of circulation and distribution. It is a conceptual choice that enables me to take into account a diverse range of networks that facilitate the movement of the films: from the institutionalized modes of film circulation that are regulated by the state, to the film festival circuit, to the alternative networks that emerged outside of the domain of the control of the state as a result of advancing digital technologies. This research pays particular attention to the articulation of circulation with production and consumption, and the contribution of this articulated unity to the production and dissemination of meaning, in Chapters 3 and 4.

Introduction

Articulation and conjunctural analysis

The concept of articulation is one of the most generative concepts in cultural studies, and particularly in the works of Hall, having appeared in multiple forms in the analysis of discourse, ideology and culture (Slack 1996, Clarke 2015). The term, according to

Hall, has a double meaning; on the one hand, it carries the sense of expressing, as to articulate ‘means to utter, to speak forth’. On the other hand, it refers to a connection through ‘a specific linkage that can be broken and “rearticulated” in different ways because they have no necessary “belongingness”’ (Grossberg 1996:142). As Hall argues in his interview with Lawrence Grossberg,

a theory of articulation is both a way of understanding how ideological

elements come, under certain conditions, to cohere together within a discourse,

and a way of asking how they do or do not become articulated, at specific

conjunctures, to certain political subjects. (Grossberg 1996:143)

As explained above, the concept of articulation in Hall’s communication model can help us explore the ways in which different elements, in this case production, circulation and consumption, are articulated in a discursive or ideological formation such as cinema.

The emphasis in this approach is on the specific connections that are made in order to give a certain cultural process such as film circulation a ‘social, cultural or political force’ (Clarke 2015:278). But another aspect of Hall’s argument is to think of political articulation, that is, ‘the ways in which an articulated discourse and a combination of social forces can (conjuncturally) be connected’ (Clarke 2015:279). It is precisely this element in the concept of articulation that makes it an important framework for studying the ideological and socio-political forces that over-determine the dynamics of film circulation in the Iranian context in relation to different historical conjunctures. The

Introduction

conjunctural analysis that is undertaken in Chapters 1 and 2 of this thesis is organized around this important feature of the concept of articulation. As John Clarke points out,

The practice of articulation is not only the work of engaging, addressing,

connecting. In a complex and heteroglossic context, crowded by many common

senses, it also requires the work of listening: paying attention to what circulates,

to what matters, to what connections are already being forged, what threads are

being forgotten, and what apparently natural and normal alignments of things

are coming apart. (Clarke 2015:285)

This is the work of conjunctural analysis: the conceptual and methodological model developed by Stuart Hall and his collaborators in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural

Studies at the University of Birmingham.

A historical conjuncture, as understood under this model, is a moment in the life of any socio-political, economic or cultural process, when ‘“relatively autonomous” sites – which have different origins, and are driven by different contradictions, and develop according to their own temporalities – are nevertheless “convened” or condensed in the same moment’ (Massey and Hall 2010:59-60). The fusion of such

‘antagonisms and contradictions’, in an absolutely diverse range of forces, into a

‘ruptural unity’ is then referred to as a conjunctural crisis (Hall et al. 1978:xv). In conjunctural analysis, crises are the driving forces of history; they are moments of change that can ‘define the horizon of possibilities’ even though the nature of the resolution or the outcome of a conflict can never be fully determined (Hall 2016:160).

Conjunctural analysis, as it is used in Chapters 1 and 2 of this thesis, deploys a kind of historical periodization in order to identify how the articulation of intersecting trajectories of different forces contributes to the emergence or intensification of a given crisis. In so doing, we cannot trace the evolution of the forces from one period to

Introduction

another. Instead, we must attend to other historical conjunctures, or the moments of broader break, ‘where a whole set of patterns and relations is drastically reshaped or transformed’ (Hall 2006:361). This thesis investigates the convoluted intervention of the Iranian state in transnational film circulation by attending to two historical conjunctures: the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the end of the eight-year Iran–Iraq

War in 1988. Through this type of historical periodization, this thesis traces the contradictions and struggles that intensified in the Iranian context during the past decade back to their emergence during the Pahlavi era, in the midst of the revolution, the post-revolution era and after the end of war.

Organization of the thesis

The first two chapters of this thesis focus on the struggles between the Iranian state and the Iranian population over the material flow of cinematic products. Chapter 1 is structured around the contradictory approach of the Iranian state towards the international acclaim received by the nation’s art-house filmmakers. To capture some important aspects of the struggles between the state and these filmmakers, this chapter begins with a detailed study of the controversies around the screening of the films by two internationally acclaimed filmmakers, Asghar Farhadi and Jafar Panahi, at 70th

Cannes International Film Festival in 2018. This recent case helps to identify the cultural, socio-political and ideological dimensions of the intervention of the Iranian state in transnational film circulation. More importantly, this case study reveals how the state’s complex domination has been undermined not only on the level of film production but also through the use of the networks of film circulation, such as informal platforms and the festival circuit, that lie beyond the direct control of the Iranian state.

In light of the scholarly works available on the Iranian cinema, this chapter explores

Introduction

different aspects of the intervention of the state in the film industry over time. A brief literature review on the one hand helps with detecting the less explored lines of enquiry with the scholarly debates on the Iranian cinema. At the same time, the existing literature, as we will see in the chapter, draws attention to the earlier contradictions and struggles and assists in tracing the forces that eventually contribute to the emergence of the current controversies back to the two historical conjunctures mentioned above.

Attending to these historical conjunctures, this chapter studies the transformation of the

Iranian state’s approach towards transnational film circulation in relation to the articulation of forces, institutions and contradictions that came together and changed in these two turning points of Iran’s contemporary history. It argues that the contradictory approach of the state towards the acclaim for Iranian filmmakers has been shaped by both factional struggles within the Iranian ruling elite, and the tensions around the national and international requirements of confronting the cultural influence of the

West. Overall, the first chapter sets the stage for understanding and appreciating the contribution of the alternative networks of film circulation to the dynamism of the

Iranian cinematic culture.

Chapter 2 explores the complex relationships of these alternative networks with the Iranian state, film industry and state-regulated modes of film circulation. It seeks to understand how the state has adopted different strategies in order to regulate the flow of films through the networks outside its domain of control. In particular, this chapter aims to explore how the introduction of international intellectual property debates to the

Iranian context contributed to the transformation of the rules and regulations against the spread of banned Iranian films and foreign movies through alternative networks. To this end, the second chapter opens with a case study: the rapid spread of bootleg copies of

The Snowman (Adam Barfi, Davood Mirbagheri, 1995) in the street markets of Iran. In

Introduction

2007, research commissioned by the Iranian parliament called this case the first example of film piracy in the country (Gholampur 2007/1386:15). The Snowman’s case points to a historical conjuncture in which the articulation of domestic and international forces led to a shift in the state’s approach towards alternative modes of film circulation.

This sudden change allows me to conceptualize piracy in terms of the emergent – that is, the ongoing formation of new meanings, practices, relationships and values within a cultural process (Williams 1977:123). This chapter argues that during the post- revolutionary period, the concept of intellectual property raised controversies among religious figures and was eventually found invalid by key religious leaders, including the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomeini. Instead, the strategies of the

Iranian state to control the circulation of films through alternative networks has been shaped as part of censorship strategies. This approach was later transformed as a part of the broader shifts in the state’s cultural policies, film industry and the reintroduction of copyright laws to the Iranian legal system with the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The state’s strategies against informal film circulation became more centralized with the return of copyright debates. However, as the second chapter demonstrates, the laws could not be effective in regards to the transnational film circulation, since Iran has not yet become a signatory to any international intellectual property treaties. This chapter draws on a body of scholarly works that underline the necessity of attention to the specificity of piracy and informal film circulation in different contexts as complex processes that are constitutive of socio-political, cultural and legal forces, both at local and international levels. In return, it contributes to this literature by conceptualising this phenomenon in terms of Raymond Williams’ conceptualization of the emergent (1977). Such conceptualization moves beyond the illegality or immorality of certain practices, and draws attention to the way in which they are excluded or neglected through a complex

Introduction

set of relations between the national and international systems. Overall, this chapter demonstrates that alternative modes of film circulation are emergent cultural processes that constitute instances of political contestation and resistance.

The third chapter explores how a film’s circulation can contribute to the politics of signification. It aims to understand the extent to which the context and means through which a film circulates can add new layers of meaning and complexity to the film. To do so, it analyses the circulatory dynamics of three examples from different moments in the history of Iranian cinema, beginning with landmark pre-revolutionary film, The Cow

(Gav, Daruish Mehrjui, 1969), and followed by two examples from the post- revolutionary period: No One Knows About Persian Cats (Kasi az Gorbeh-ha-ye Irani

Khabar Nadareh, Bahman Ghobadi, 2009) and This Is Not a Film (In Film Nist, Jafar

Panahi, 2011). All of these films found their way to audiences inside and outside Iran through networks that remain outside of the control of the Iranian state. In each case, the filmmaker contributed to the struggles over cinematic culture and the production of meaning through their film’s content, but also by negating the state’s control over film circulation. Chapter 3 considers films in terms of their articulation of material and discursive elements; it traces the trajectory of these three films as material objects through space and time but at the same time accounts for the meanings that are derived from the contexts of their production and circulation. The chapter argues that the alternative networks that facilitate the flow of films are not inert delivery mechanisms, but in fact add new layers of meanings to the films as they circulate the globe. The examples that we will examine in the third chapter demonstrate that the different circulatory networks even have the potential to transform and redefine the films themselves. The story of The Cow’s transnational circulation to the festival circuit and back into Iran is significant because it paved the way for the transnational circulation of

Introduction

more Iranian films before the revolution. No One Knows About Persian Cats draws attention to film piracy’s relation to the broader context of urban informality. This film is self-reflexively about a shadow cultural economy that has grown in the Iranian context, and was also produced illegally and spread throughout Iran through informal networks. This allows us to take into account the degree to which the film’s production and circulation can mirror one another. This is not a Film is perhaps the strangest case among all three examples. It is the first of four films that Jafar Panahi has made since he received a sentence in 2009 that banned him from filmmaking for twenty years.

Panahi’s self-reflexive style make his films the most significant examples of what

Mottahedeh refers to as ‘displaced allegories’ of the conditions of its own production and circulation. In This is not a Film, Panahi draws attention to the conditions in which the film was made, its illicit circulation, and the way that such an illicit trajectory contributes to the politics of signification. This self-awareness prompts a reading of the film in terms of Michel Foucault’s conception of heterotopia (1986, 2002). The film’s constant self-reflexivity creates the conditions in which the viewer’s gaze constantly oscillates between different fragments seen on the screen. Each fragment reflects upon one aspect of the context of the film’s conditions of production and circulation: the constraints around the Iranian film industry, Panahi’s condition as a banned filmmaker, and the significance of international film festivals in the struggles between him and the

Iranian state. Through the use of potent techniques on the level of the filmic language and accumulation of the new layers of meaning in the site of reception, the film not only locates itself within the order of Iranian cinema but at the same time challenges the viewer’s received knowledge about the codes that govern its production and circulation.

Chapter 4 is concerned with the ways in which the articulation of various forces and the production of meanings that intersect, contest or negate one another during the

Introduction

moments in which production and circulation come together and contribute to one’s cinematic experience. As a point of departure, in this chapter I focus on my own cinematic experience at Berlinale 2015, which formed part of the field research I conducted for this thesis. This research trip coincided with the premiere screening of

Tehran Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015), the third film Panahi made since being banned from filmmaking in the midst of the upheavals after the presidential election in 2009. My observations of the screening of the film in an international film festival context and my own experience of watching it inspired me to provide a self-narrativization, which not only reflects on this specific festival experience but also highlights how the alternative modes of film circulation have constructed for me a particular kind of spectatorship that was different from the experience delivered by a film festival. The analysis I provide of my experience, on one level, locates my position as a subject within the articulation of distinct, and at some points contradictory, ideological discourses that come together in the festival event, where my first encounter with Tehran Taxi took place. The account I provide in Chapter 4 underscores the uniqueness of each viewing experience but at the same time highlights some of the collective dimensions of a cinematic encounter, especially in relation to the content of the film, its circulation and the context in which the encounter takes place. The final chapter, therefore, argues that the individual’s cinematic experiences are shaped by their position as the subject of different systems of representation and ideological discourses that over-determine the conditions of the viewer’s encounter with the film. A particular sequence of Tehran Taxi that follows a movie smuggler made my experience an instant of conjuncture between two distinct orders of film circulation: on the one hand, the alternative networks of film circulation that are enfolded into the film’s narrative, and on the other, the context of an international film festival in which I watch this particular sequence. My analysis of this

Introduction

cinematic experience, therefore, brings the alternative networks of film circulation – which, as this thesis will show, have been rejected or negated by systems such as the

Iranian state or intellectual property regimes – to the centre of attention. In Chapter 4, I argue that different modes of circulation construct different kinds of viewing experience and subject positions, which can in turn inflect the meaning of films.

Research methods

This thesis relies primarily on textual research, gathering together historical information and data from a range of different sources. It is also supported by some original qualitative research via interviews and participant observation. I obtained my general empirical knowledge of the dynamics of transnational film circulation in the

Iranian context through participant observation and interviews during two research trips to Iran in 2014 and 2015, and field research at the European Film Market and Berlin

International Film Festival in 2015. In Iran, visiting the Farabi Cinema Foundation,

Tehran Museum of Cinema and the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s Film and

Media Trade Centre provided insights into their official procedures and perspectives.

This research also draws on my interview with Mohammad Beheshti, the first head of the Farabi Cinema Foundation and one of the members of Ayat Film Studio, a pre- revolutionary production company whose members contributed vastly to the revival and transformation of the Iranian film industry after the revolution. In addition, this thesis engages with laws and regulation policies, public talks by Iranian cultural authorities and policy makers, and news coverage as primary sources for understanding the shifts in the approach of the Iranian state towards cinema. This research was carried out with approval from the UNSW Ethics Committee 14005 and in accordance with the appropriate research ethics guidelines. I am grateful to my interview subjects for

Introduction

agreeing to speak with me and for their views and opinions to be cited in this thesis.

It is hoped that this research will contribute to the growing body of work on

Iranian cinema by looking into the relatively unexplored domain of transnational film circulation in this context. This study aims to shed light on the central contribution of the alternative networks of film circulation to the dynamism of cinematic culture in

Iran. Aside from the role of these networks in facilitating access to a wide range of films, the circulation of which is heavily regulated by the state, their multiplicity contributes significantly to the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture as they became key sites of struggle of filmmakers and viewers on the one hand, and the Iranian state on the other, over the reproduction and circulation of meaning.

The examination of different case studies in this thesis deepens our understanding of the conflicts and tensions between some globally recognized Iranian filmmakers and the state not only through the study of the films’ trajectories but also via an analysis of the ways in which a film’s circulation, in its articulation with production and reception, can contribute to the politics of signification. In addition, this research hopes to contribute to the emerging body of literature about informal modes of film circulation and media piracy in different national contexts by providing a detailed account of this phenomenon in the Iranian context.

Chapter 1: The Iranian State and Transnational Film Circulation: A Conjunctural Approach

The appearance of Iranian films in the international film festivals has become more widespread since the late 1980s. Iranian filmmakers have swept up the most prominent international awards, including the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, the Palm D’or at

Cannes, and even won Academy Awards. These filmmakers and their films have been at the centre of many scholarly debates, not only for their potent stylistic elements, but also for their constant struggles and negotiations with the Iranian state and its omnipresent censorship strategies. This chapter, however, focuses on the complex and multifaceted role of the state in transnational film circulation in the Iranian context.

More importantly, it seeks to understand why the Iranian state reacts to the international acclaim of Iranian filmmakers in the extreme way that it does at this particular historical moment.

This chapter argues that the current approach of the Iranian state towards the celebration of Iranian films in international film festivals results from the historical conjuncture that emerged with the end of Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) and after the passing of Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder and first Supreme Leader of the Islamic

Republic (1989). During this period, re-establishing the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy and restoring Iran’s war-shattered economy became top priorities for the state.

However, the conflicts between the practical requirements for survival of the Islamic

Republic and its core religious ideas intensified the factional struggles among high- ranking members of the Iranian ruling elite, particularly over cultural policies. This chapter argues that the contradictory approach of the state towards the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema has been shaped by both these factional struggles within Chapter 1

the Iranian state, and conflicts between the domestic and international requirements of confronting the cultural influence of the West.

By way of illustration, this chapter opens with a recent case: the controversies and debates around the screening of films by two globally recognized Iranian filmmakers, Asghar Farhadi and Jafar Panahi, at the 71st Cannes Film Festival in May

2018. This concrete example highlights the cultural, socio-political, and ideological dimensions of the interference of the Iranian state with transnational film circulation, not as secondary factors but as forces that are constitutive in their effects. At the same time, it provides a glimpse of the ways the state’s control over the circulation of cinematic material has been undermined through the use of alternative modes, both by the filmmakers and the Iranian population. Drawing on the existing literature, this chapter then explores different dimensions of the state’s relationship with Iranian cinema that are significant in this example. The study of the relevant scholarly works helps with detecting the lines of enquiry that have been unaccounted for, but more importantly, this review underlines earlier tensions and contradictions, and eventually helps to trace the emerging point of the current controversies. The latter also justifies the conceptual framework of this chapter: the ‘conjunctural’ approach, which calls for attention to ‘breaks and discontinuities’ in the history, ‘where the whole patterns and relations are drastically reshaped or transformed’, in order to conceptualize a complex process in relation to different forces that contribute to its development (Hall 2006:361).

Attending to two historical conjunctures, the 1979 Iranian Revolution (popularly known as the Islamic Revolution) and the end of the Iran-Iraq War, this chapter studies the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context in relation to the articulation of forces, institutions, and contradictions that emerged and transformed in these turning points of Iran’s contemporary history. This strategic

Chapter 1

historical periodization not only sheds light on the contradictions and conflicts of the post-war era, but also traces them back to the Pahlavi era, the rise of the revolution and the post-revolution period. As a whole, this chapter provides a context for understanding the significance of the networks of film circulation that are outside the control of the state for the dynamism of the Iranian cinematic culture.

International acclaim for Iranian filmmakers: an unfolding crisis for the Iranian state

The 71st Cannes Film Festival (2018) is among recent examples that reveal some important aspects of the Iranian state’s intervention in the transnational circulation of

Iranian cinema. For the first time in the history of the festival, two Iranian filmmakers,

Jafar Panahi and Asghar Farhadi, had entries in the competition section of the festival in the same year. A brief look at the oeuvres of Panahi and Farhadi demonstrates their positions among the critically acclaimed Iranian filmmakers in the international scene.

Throughout their careers they have each won several cinematic awards, including: the

Golden Leopard for The Mirror (Ayeneh, Panahi, 1997) at Locarno International Film

Festival, the Golden Lion for The Circle (Dayereh, Panahi, 2000) at Venice

International Film Festival, two Golden Bears for A Separation (Jodaei-e Nader az

Simin, Farhadi, 2011) and Tehran Taxi (Panahi, 2015) at Berlinale, and two Academy

Awards for Best Foreign Film for A Separation and The Salesman (Forushandeh,

Farhadi, 2016), to name only a few. Furthermore, both filmmakers’ works had premiered in previous editions of the Cannes Film Festival: Panahi has won La Caméra d’Or for The White Balloon (Badkonak-e Sefid, 1995), Prix du Jury in Un Certain

Regard section for Crimson Gold (Talay-e Sorkh, 2003), and Carrosse D’Or for This is not a Film (In Film Nist, 2011). Farhadi’s The Past (le Passé, 2013) brought a Palm

Chapter 1

d’Or for the leading actress and The Salesman won Palms d’Or for the actor and screenplay.

Soon after the Cannes Film Festival announced its 2018 program, Asr-e Iran, one of the most popular news websites in the Persian language, published an article in which the author raised two questions about Farhadi’s film: ‘Can the most recent film by the two-time Academy Award winning Iranian filmmaker get approval for its theatrical release in Iran?’, and ‘which country will the film represent in the 2019

Academy Award, Iran or Spain?’ (Mousavi 2018)5 Following the screening of

Everybody Knows on the opening night of the festival, the Iranian film critic,

Mohammad Abdi, published an article in BBC Persian in which he drew attention to the exact same points (2018). Abdi begins his article by comparing Everybody Knows with

Farhadi’s previous co-production, The Past (France, Italy and Iran co-production), which was filmed and set in Paris. As he explains, in the first co-production experience,

Farhadi was still ‘reluctant about creating characters that are not related to Iran’, but in

Everybody Knows, he demonstrates his ability to ‘move beyond the national boundaries and become a global filmmaker’. This strength, for Abdi, does not only come from ‘the creation of narrative and characters that have nothing to do with Farhadi’s country of origin’, but it is also significant in the ways he undermines the Iranian state’s regulations and policies regarding the representation of women, and makes a film that probably cannot get a screening approval for its domestic release.6 In that sense, Abdi sees the screening of Everybody Knows at Cannes Film Festival as a fortunate event that renders the ‘emancipation’ of a filmmaker from the constraints of filmmaking in Iran.

The film, as predicted, did not get an approval for domestic theatrical release,

5 All translations are mine unless otherwise stated. 6 The authors of both articles refer to regulations regarding women’s appearance on the screen which Farhadi disregards in his film. 48

Chapter 1

but a few months later pirated copies had spread widely on the internet and in the street markets of Iran. On 3 December 2018, Shargh Daily, one of the most popular newspapers in Iran, published an interview with Farhadi in which he supported the spread of the pirated copy of Everybody Knows. Moreover, he explained about his prior agreement with the producers about uploading a Persian-subtitled copy of the film on the internet so that people inside Iran can watch it for free, since he knew a theatrical release of the film was impossible (2018/1397a). Farhadi, therefore, not only undermines the rules and regulations of film production, but also challenges the control of the Iranian state over film circulation.

The case of Panahi, whose 3 Faces was the second entry by an Iranian filmmaker in the competition section at Cannes 2018, is even more complex and interesting. In the midst of the upheavals in Iran in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential elections, Panahi was arrested and released a few times for attending the events held in memory of those who were killed during the protests, and was accused of making a film against the regime. In 2010, he appeared in court where he was charged with ‘assembly, collusion and propagation against the regime’ (Hokm-e Jafar Panahi

Elam Shod 2010). The appeals court finally banned him from filmmaking, interviewing with any local or international media and travelling overseas for twenty years (2010).

However, in the course of the eight years that he has been officially banned from filmmaking, Panahi has directed and co-directed four films, all of them produced inside the country without permission and premiered at different international film festivals.

The screening of Panahi’s films at these festivals has often received harsh responses from Iranian authorities who condemn the film festivals for their interference in domestic matters. In 2015, when Tehran Taxi won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale,

Hojatollah Ayoubi, the deputy head of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance,

Chapter 1

wrote a letter to the director of the Berlinale, accusing the festival’s programmers of

‘prioritizing politics over arts and culture’ (2015d). Ayoubi stressed that the Berlinale used Panahi’s ban from filmmaking against the Iranian government and people, while the fact that he is making a film demonstrates that he has the rights of a free Iranian citizen in his country (2015d).

In 2018, instead of condemning the Cannes Film Festival for screening Panahi’s film, Homayun Asadian, the head of the Iranian Alliance of Motion Picture Guilds, known as Khaneh-ye Sinema, wrote a letter to the head of the Iranian Judiciary System,

Sadeq Larijani. In this letter, Asadian wrote,

The Iranian cinema, as the flag-bearer of the Islamic Republic, has travelled

across continents and attained a compelling status in the world … it is a

common practice in the festivals that the directors attend the screening of their

films and the absence of a filmmaker for political or judicial reasons might

create an unpleasant image of their home country. Considering the above-

mentioned points, for the best interest of the nation, and in order to showcase a

real image of the conditions in our Islamic county, we ask you to rule for

facilitating the conditions for [Panahi’s] attendance at the festival.

(2018/1397b)

Larijani never responded to the letter, and Panahi, who won an award for Best

Screenplay at Cannes, was not permitted to attend the event. These controversies around the screening of the films by two of the most celebrated Iranian filmmakers at Cannes

2018 captures a glimpse of the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship between the filmmakers and the Iranian state. On the one hand, labelling Iranian cinema as the ‘flag-bearer of the Islamic Republic,’ in a letter to a high-ranking member of the ruling elite, underscores the political significance of the circulation of these films

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beyond national borders. On the other hand, even this one example is enough to draw attention to the vast range of ways that the Iranian state intervenes in the film industry, from strict guidelines regarding the representation of women on the screen, to controlling the access of the Iranian population to films produced outside the country, to charging filmmakers with ‘collusion against the country’. But more importantly, this example tells us a great deal about a crisis for the Iranian state that reveals itself in the present historical conjuncture more than ever before. The transnational circulation of

Iranian cinema that, as I demonstrate shortly, has always been supported but highly regulated by the Iranian state, created new ways for the Iranian filmmakers to challenge the state’s sovereignty over cinema.

This chapter seeks to explore a number of key questions that arise out of this contemporary situation. How did this crisis emerge? What are the forces that contributed to its emergence? What can the Cannes 2018 case tell us about the dynamics and politics of film circulation in this particular historical conjuncture? To what extent does it denote larger socio-political contradictions? Does it signify the end of the Iranian state’s sovereignty over cinema?

Before moving any further, I shall explain how the concepts of conjuncture and crisis are used in this research. Conjuncture is a concept that originates in the works of

Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser, which was further developed as a conceptual and methodological framework, known as conjunctural analysis, by Stuart Hall and his collaborators in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of

Birmingham. A historical conjuncture is a particular moment in the life of any socio- political, economic or cultural process, when ‘“relatively autonomous” sites – which have different origins, and are driven by different contradictions, and develop according to their own temporalities – are nevertheless “convened” or condensed in the same

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moment’ (Massey and Hall 2010:59-60). A conjunctural crisis, then, refers to the fusion of such ‘antagonisms and contradictions’, in an absolutely diverse range of forces, into a

‘ruptural unity’ (Hall et al. 1978:xv). The conjunctural approach foregrounds crises as the driving forces of history; it sees crises as ‘moments of change’ that can ‘define the horizon of possibilities’ even though the nature of the resolution or the outcome of a conflict can never be fully determined (Hall 2016:160).

Conjunctural analysis provides a strong methodological and conceptual framework with which to investigate a complex process for at least two main reasons: first, this approach seeks to provide an analysis of a process in its richest sense. That is, instead of reducing a complex historical moment or a crisis to ‘a single cause, force, or primary contradiction,’ the conjunctural approach calls for attention to a ‘multiplicity of forces, accumulated antagonisms, and possible lines of emergence’ (Clarke 2014:115).

This also highlights the methodological necessity of beginning the analysis with the concrete, since it is ‘a result of the articulated relations between forces and otherwise the historically specific situation would not have been realized in that way’ (Ogasawara

2017:179). The concrete, in that sense, gives us a starting point to unpick and unravel several contingencies of a process, while knowing from the beginning that the process

‘cannot be reduced to the interactions and practices’ through which it manifests itself

(Hall et al. 1978:xi). In this research, for example, examining the concentration of many forces and contingencies that determined the conditions of screening and circulation of two films by Iranian filmmakers at Cannes 2018 leads to more general questions regarding the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context and the role of the Iranian state in this process.

Second, the conjunctural approach asks for a deeper engagement with crises and various forces that contribute to their emergence by not reducing the interrelation of

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forces into their immediate outcomes. As Hall et al. explain,

Conjunctures have no fixed durations, but so long as the crisis (and its

underlying contradictions) remain unresolved, further crises are likely to

proliferate and echo around different domains of the social formation. So long

as a period is dominated by roughly the same struggles and contradictions and

the same efforts to resolve them, it can be said to constitute the same

conjuncture. (Hall et al. 1978:xv)

The conjunctural approach, therefore, deploys a type of historical periodization to identify the way in which intersecting trajectories of different forces contributes to the emergence or intensification of a given crisis. In so doing, however, it is necessary to understand that we cannot simply trace the evolution of the forces from one period to another. Rather, as Hall argues, we must attend to further historical conjunctures: the moments of broader breaks ‘where a whole set of patterns and relations is drastically reshaped or transformed’(Hall 2006:361).

We shall now once more return to the Cannes 2018 case as a departure point in light of this conceptual framework, in order to identify and unravel the key forces whose concentration in this example signify a shift in the dynamics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context in this particular historical conjuncture. While exploring different aspects of this example, this chapter engages with some of the relevant literature in order to provide a review of the existing explanations, see whether the current example is in contradiction with what is already known, and detect the lines of enquiry that remain relatively unexplored. Moreover, these scholarly works can draw attention to earlier crises and similar contradictions, and eventually help with tracing the emerging point of the current conjuncture.

The screening of Farhadi’s Everybody Knows at Cannes resonates with some of

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the earlier debates by scholars who argued that the global recognition of Iranian filmmakers allowed them to distance themselves from the Iranian state, and eventually bypass the strict rules and regulations of film production in the country. One of the earliest scholarly works that drew attention to this aspect of transnational circulation of

Iranian cinema is Hamid Dabashi’s Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present and

Future (2001a). Dabashi creates a journey through the development of Iranian cinema, employing interviews with directors and commentaries on individual films, and providing an extensive filmography. As a part of this journey, he draws attention to the

‘increasing globalization’ of the Iranian cinema (Dabashi 2001a:11). According to

Dabashi, much of this international acclaim for Iranian filmmakers has indeed been due to the influence of international film festivals and major distribution companies who have power over ‘what happens in the best of world cinema’; nevertheless, this globalization opened ‘emancipatory possibilities’ for Iranian filmmakers (Dabashi

2001a:10). For Dabashi, the emergence of new possibilities is particularly evident in the works of the younger generation of filmmakers, who managed to become a part of the global world. This generation, whom he calls ‘children of a revolution, a war and a democratic uprising’, is distanced from the ideologies of the Islamic Republic, and chose to become a part of a global world. In that sense, Dabashi argues that the active presence of these filmmakers in the international scene, and their artistic expression, can be seen to show the ‘ideological failure’ of the Islamic Republic (Dabashi 2001a:279).

Meanwhile, the controversies around Panahi’s attendance at the festival, when

Asadian labels the Iranian cinema as ‘the flag-bearer of the Islamic Republic,’ underline another aspect of the role of the Iranian state in transnational circulation of Iranian cinema, which is in line with the debates of the scholars who criticize Dabashi’s optimistic approach. Unlike Dabashi, Azadeh Farahmand (2002) is concerned with the

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consequences of this global recognition for the Iranian cinema. Instead of focusing on particular filmmakers, Farahmand highlights that the international acclaim for Iranian cinema should be perceived in terms of ‘a web of relations between international and

Iranian national politics’ (Farahmand 2002:87). She draws attention to different aspects of the state’s intervention in the Iranian film industry, from economic support, to heavy- handed censorship, to control over different stages of film production, and argues that such intervention contributed to the emergence of apolitical art-house films by filmmakers who ‘choose to avoid controversial themes entirely’ in order to ensure their entry to international film festivals (Farahmand 2002:99). Farahmand’s analysis situates the international acclaim for Iranian cinema within its broader socio-political context and provides a useful account of the politics of transnational film circulation in the

Iranian context. However, her broad perspective does not allow for a deeper engagement with the works of individual filmmakers and, therefore, results in overgeneralization. Dabashi, on the other hand, focuses on a handful of filmmakers, whose global recognition allowed them to bypass the state’s regulations and suggests the ‘ideological failure’ of the Islamic Republic (Dabashi 2001a:279).

But if the Iranian cinema has been the ‘flag-bearer’ of the Islamic Republic, why did Ayoubi, the deputy head of Cinematic Affairs of the Ministry of Culture and

Cinematic Guidance attack the Berlinale for screening Panahi’s film? Does the Iranian state support the active presence of Iranian filmmakers in international film festivals?

Or do these festivals provide a space to challenge or subvert the control of the Islamic

Republic over different sectors of the film industry?

The contradictory approach of the Iranian state towards the circulation of Iranian films in international film festivals has also been the centre of attention of many scholars. For example, In Politics of Iranian Cinema: Films and Society in the Islamic

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Republic, Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad explores the role of ‘the institution of cinema’ in the

Iranian context (2010:5). He provides a detailed account of the censorship policies and strategies implemented by the Iranian state in order to control the ‘political content of the Iranian films’ (Zeydabadi-Nejad 2010:30). He then shifts his focus to study a few examples from Iranian cinema to draw attention to the negotiations and tensions between the authorities and Iranian filmmakers. Finally, Zeydabadi-Nejad focuses on the perception of the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema within the country, pointing out that this process includes ‘multidimensional political realities that must be understood in their local context’ (2010:164). Contrary to Farahmand, Zeydabadi-Nejad argues that the ‘global spotlight’ and ‘international funding’ created a level of ‘local immunity’ for globally recognized Iranian filmmakers to the degree that they gradually became more engaged with sensitive socio-political issues in their works (2010:164).

Each of these scholars highlight some aspects of the complex relationship between the

Iranian state and filmmakers, while others take a step further and draw attention to not only the diversity within Iranian cinema but also the multiplicity of responses to the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema among the Iranian authorities.

Shahab Esfandyari criticizes scholars of Iranian cinema, arguing that their focus on the internationally acclaimed filmmakers eventually has narrowed the conception of

Iranian cinema (2012:10). To expand this argument, Esfandyari draws attention to the works of ‘Muslim filmmakers’ whose works represent different aspects of the Iran-Iraq

War, popularly known as the ‘Sacred Defence’ (defa-e moghaddas) genre (2012:9). As he argues, ‘even the Islamic cinema of post-revolutionary Iran is far more than a simple monolithic, unified body of Islamist propaganda and ideological instruction’ (2012:9).

Moreover, against the critics and scholars who see the transnational circulation of

Iranian cinema as a strategy of the Iranian state to portray a liberal socio-political and

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cultural image of the country, Esfandyari underlines the scepticism of ‘many powerful branches’ of the Iranian state about the political intentions that determine Western festivals’ selection and celebration of Iranian films (2012:73). However, he does not provide more details about the impact of the multiplicity of opinions among the Iranian elite on the dynamics of transnational film circulation.

Hamid Naficy’s A Social History of Iranian Cinema (2011a), helps with understanding some intricate aspects of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context during different historical periods. His work engages with filmic texts, cinema history, and theory, but at the same time focuses predominantly on different ‘networks of power and knowledge’ that have contributed to the trajectory of Iranian cinema since its arrival in the country in the late nineteenth century (Naficy 2011a:2). When it comes to the debates regarding the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema, his multi- layered approach and comprehensive analysis sheds light on different components of this process: the transformation of the Iranian state’s strategies to regulate and support

Iranian cinema, the diversity of art-house films and their artistic and stylistic qualities, the ways internationally acclaimed filmmakers resisted or rejected the Iranian state’s control over cinema, as well as the significance of Iranian cinema for the state as an effective public diplomacy tool. My study benefits from Naficy’s scholarly output at different levels, but what makes his research especially significant for this chapter is his analysis of the complex relationship of the Iranian state with cinema. For Naficy, the state has always been one of the major components in the formation of Iranian cinema: the site of constant conflict and struggle, whose intervention with cinema is far more complex than a set of cinematic policies and censorship strategies (2011a:2). In particular, Naficy argues that distinctive characteristics of post-revolution Iranian cinema are ‘a result of [the Islamic Republic’s] structural complexity and its interplay of

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forces, discourses, dispositions, formations, institutions, manoeuvres, tactics, and techniques’ (2012a:116). The structure of the Islamic Republic has two incompatible components: one is the quasi-democratic formal state, with a nationally elected president and parliament. The other component is the theocratic system of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurisprudence), according to which the Supreme Leader controls legislative and administrative assemblies, the judiciary system, the armed forces and broadcast media.7 As Naficy highlights, even though this structure bestows the greater power in the hands of ‘unelected religious officials’, the Islamic Republic is not ‘an entirely homogeneous, monolithic, or totalitarian state’ (2012b:116). Rather, the structural complexity of the Islamic Republic has contributed to the emergence of a society ‘whose competing power centres and evolving frameworks ensured a lively opposition within the malleable and increasingly militarized ruling apparatuses’

(2012b:116). Such a complex relationship between the Iranian state and cinema is evident in the post-war era, beginning in 1988. As Naficy explains, during this period

‘the mobilization of public sentiment over Western imperialism’, under the rhetoric of

‘cultural invasion’ (tahajom-e farhangi), had a great impact on the politics of transnational circulation of Iranian cinema (2012b:311). On the one hand, many Iranian authorities, including some of the high-rank members of the ruling elite, condemned foreign film festivals for their political intentions, and argued that their selection of

Iranian films ‘distorted Iranian realities and indigenous cinema’ (2012b:251). On the other hand, the hot ‘cultural invasion’ debate took its toll on many internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmakers over the next decades, many of whom were accused of conforming to the West (2012b:252). Panahi is among the filmmakers who have

7 The assemblies include the Expediency Discernment Council of the System (Majma-e Tashkhis-e Maslehat-e Nezam) and the Guardian Council of the Constitution (Majles-e Khobregan).

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constantly become embroiled in such tensions and struggles.

In Cultural Policies and the Islamic Republic: Cinema and Book Publication,

Sussan Siavoshi also demonstrates how the structural complexity of the Islamic

Republic contributed to the dynamics of its relationships with Iranian intellectuals, including filmmakers and writers, in the post-war era (1997). Siavoshi argues that the intricacy of this relationship is particularly a result of factionalism within the Islamic

Republic, since it created a space for Iranian filmmakers and writers ‘to engage the state in a process of negotiation and protest, cooperation and defiance, in pushing the boundaries of permitted self-expression’ (1997:509). While the majority of literature on

Iranian cinema focuses on the immediate outcomes of the intervention of the Iranian state and cinema, Naficy and Siavoshi take a step further to draw attention to the ways the socio-political forces and structural complexity of the Iranian state have contributed to the emergence and transformation of this complex relationship, particularly during the post-war era.

A review of the existing literature can also help with understanding some aspects of the current crisis for the Iranian state. These scholarly works mainly draw attention to the pre-history of the intervention of the Iranian state in the production sector of the film industry, as well as the ongoing tensions and conflicts between art- house filmmakers and the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, a closer look into the Cannes

2018 example draws attention to the ways the Iranian state’s control over transnational film circulation has been undermined through the use of alternative networks of film circulation: the digital platforms and proliferation technologies that not only allow many

Iranian filmmakers, such as Farhadi, to bypass the regulations and policies regarding distribution and exhibition of their films inside the country, but also provide access to a wide range of cinematic material, the flow of which has been hindered by the Iranian

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state. In that sense, understanding the dynamics and politics of film circulation in the

Iranian context requires a multi-layered approach that takes into account the complex role of the Iranian state in transnational film circulation, but at the same time explores the ways this relationship has been undermined through the vast use of alternative networks of film circulation.

The remainder of this chapter, therefore, investigates the convoluted intervention of the Iranian state in transnational film circulation. Instead of concentrating only on the cinematic policies that have been developed in order to support and regulate the import and export of films, at some points this chapter strategically shifts its focus to the

Iranian state. This deliberate turn creates a distance from other forces that contribute to the emergence and development of the current crisis and allows a deeper engagement with this particular line of enquiry. Furthermore, a detailed account of the politics of transnational film circulation and the intervention of the state in this process provides a context for understanding the contribution of alternative networks of film circulation to the dynamism of cinematic culture in the Iranian context.

To focus its account of these politics, this analysis attends to two historical conjunctures: the period around the Islamic Revolution, and the post-war era since

1989. During these periods, the Iranian state and society faced major crises, tensions and struggles that were contributed to or informed by radical shifts in socio-political, economic, and international forces. This historical periodization traces the contradictions and conflicts that intensified since the end of Iran-Iraq War back to their emergence during the Pahlavi era, in the midst of the revolution and in the post- revolution period.

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Transnational film circulation during the Pahlavi era

During the Pahlavi era, the articulation of domestic and international forces influenced the dynamics of transnational film circulation and the approach of the Iranian state towards this process. It is important to note that for the majority of this period the transnational cinematic exchange in the Iranian context was limited to the flow of foreign films into the country (Naficy 2011a:2-3). It was only from the late 1960s and with the emergence of Iranian New Wave cinema that some Iranian filmmakers drew the attention of international film festivals. This one-way flow of foreign films, which was informed by and contributed to broader socio-political and cultural shifts, had great impacts on the trajectory of the Iranian cinema for the following decades. This section does not intend to provide a detailed account of the complexity of the impact of this flow of foreign films on Iranian cinema, however. Rather, it aims to draw attention to the ways this process contributed not only to the emergence of major crises in the

Iranian film industry in the years leading to the revolution, but also to the intensification of the struggles between the revolutionary forces and the Pahlavi state over culture and cinema. This overview sets the stage for the analysis of massive transformations in the approach of the Iranian state towards transnational film circulation in the post- revolution era.

The official intervention of the Iranian state in the import of foreign films to Iran began during the rule of the first Pahlavi monarch, Reza Shah (1925-1941) and as a part of his institutional and industrial reforms. In February 1931, the Iranian parliament passed the Foreign Trade Monopoly Law, that allowed the government to be involved

‘in some key sectors of the economy’ (Nowshirvani 1992). According to this law, the

Ministry of Commerce controlled the import of goods to the country by providing import licenses and setting maximum limits on imports. The Trade Monopoly Law

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allowed the private sector to remain active in importing cinematic equipment, cameras and films, but stated that the overall amount imported each year could not exceed a certain limit. A series of correspondence between the United States Consulate in Iran and the US Ministry of Commerce between 1937 and 1941 highlights that the restrictions did not have any impact on the import of cinematic material, since the value of imported films and equipment in total never reached the limit set by the Ministry of

Commerce. For example, a consular report dated 16 November 1940 stated that the maximum amount set for the import of films and relevant equipment for the previous year was 4 million rials (around USD 89,000), while the value of the goods imported during that period barely reached half of this amount (Sadr 2002/1381:60). Meanwhile, these correspondences highlight another aspect of the intervention of the Pahlavi state in the circulation of foreign films in the country. The US report dated 16 November 1940 points out that according to unofficial sources, between March 1939 and March 1940,

253 foreign films were censored, 159 of which were productions from the United Sates and 32 were German (in Sadr 2002/1381:61).

The consolidation of the control of the state over the domestic circulation of cinematic material and censorship was another outcome of the institutional reforms.

Two laws in particular determined the state’s control over the production, distribution and exhibition of motion pictures in Iran: first, the Landmark Regulations for Cinema.

This included seventy-two provisions with the aim of safeguarding moviegoers’ ‘health, safety, comfort and morality, and to promote the state’s politics and the person of the

Shah’ (Naficy 2011a:245). The second law was the Regulation Governing Taking

Motion Picture Films and Photographs, Painting, and Drawing (1938) according to which, the police were the main authority in charge of controlling of production, import and exhibition of films (Naficy 2011a:247). These strict rules and regulations, as Naficy

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argues, contributed to the professionalization of the Iranian film industry, but at the same time restrained its possibilities (Naficy 2011a:247). Reza Shah’s institutional and industrial reforms, as the first steps towards establishing formal control over the flow of foreign motion pictures to the country, draw attention to a point that is central in understanding the approach of both the Pahlavi state and the Islamic Republic towards transnational film circulation. For both states, the regulation and control over the flow of films in and out of the country is another means of censorship. This point signifies the necessity of studying the dynamics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context beyond the scope of the film industry discourse.

Generally speaking, film distribution is described as a segment linking production, exhibition and consumption. It involves the sale, reproduction, delivery, translation, marketing and promotion of motion pictures in various territories and across all formats (Lobato 2012:11). However, as Sean Cubitt argues, such an account is problematic since it sees distribution as a passive process (2005:195). When considered as an active process, distribution is responsible for managing the relationships between the producers and audience: the acceleration and delay, promotion and restriction and spatiotemporal orchestration of flows (Cubitt 2005:195). Cubitt’s sophisticated understanding of film distribution highlights the importance of film distribution as an effective means of censorship that determines the control over the geographical flow of cinematic material. The complex and multifaceted intervention of the Iranian state in the flow of cinematic material in and out of the country underscores the significance of understanding of film distribution as active. As this chapter demonstrates, the rules and regulations that determine the flow of films, particularly into Iran, has always been deeply connected to the censorship strategies that targeted the content of the films.

The dynamics of the circulation of foreign films in Iran took a radical turn

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during the Second World War. In August 1941, Allied forces invaded Iran and the country remained under their occupation for the next six years, until 1947. Within a month after the Allied invasion, Reza Shah abdicated and went into to exile. Upon his forced abdication, his son Mohamad Reza Pahlavi was crowned as the second and last

Pahlavi monarch.

Iran’s strategic geographic location, as a route for Western Allied forces to supply the Soviet Union with artillery, entangled the country in the war despite official neutrality. As Naficy argues in his comprehensive study of the Iranian media sphere during the Second World War and its aftermath, the country’s location and the pro-

German attitudes of some Iranians made Iran the scene of ‘public diplomacy wars involving cinema’ (2011b:27). The conduct of the Allied forces and their intervention in

Iran’s domestic affairs were determined under several martial laws. In January 1942, a tripartite treaty between Iran, Britain and the Soviet Union was signed, which stated that the Allies’ presence in the country was not a military occupation. The treaty, however, gave the Allied troops the right to control and access to all the transportation and communication facilities in the country (Naficy 2011b:7). In the course of six years of

Allied occupation, the United States, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union intervened in Iran’s domestic affairs, while the Pahlavi state used the ‘strategy of equilibrium

(movazeneh)’ in order to balance the involvement of the Allies in domestic affairs

(Naficy 2011b:2). The Allied powers’ cultural arms pursued their countries’ interests

‘not only by publishing periodicals and broadcasting radio news but also by controlling what Iranians saw on the movie screen’ (Naficy 2011b:4). Each of the main Allied forces intervened in the import and exhibition of foreign fiction and documentary films

‘through their embassies, official cultural organizations, and commercial film companies’ (Naficy 2011b:1). As Golbarg Rekabtalei highlights, the vast circulation of

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the Allies propaganda products and commercial films, and the reception of these visual products by the Iranian population motivated the Pahlavi state to consolidate an Iranian national cinema and promote it globally at the end of the second world war (2019: 133).

From 1937 to 1947, no feature films were made in Iran, but the Allies and their cultural attachés contributed vastly to the modernization and industrialization of the

Iranian cinema that had been initiated by Reza Shah.

The struggle by foreign forces to increase their cultural influence in Iran continued during the Cold War era. This time, the United States and Britain sought to secure their national interests, which were under threat from the prospect of the spread of communism in the region. For the United States, ‘helping Iranians help themselves’ to confront the threat of communism was an important aspect of the official foreign policy program (Naficy 2011b:34). Their program in Iran followed two interrelated goals: first, to promote the United States’ national interest and influence the Iranian population using ‘films, film-strips, posters, photo displays and exhibits supplemented by radio, press, and educational books and pamphlets’ (Duttaa-Brergman 2006:111).

Second, to help the Pahlavi state to establish a ‘centralized, top-down communication structure’ in order to enhance the circulation of pro-Shah propaganda in the country

(Naficy 2011b:34). The latter contributed significantly to the expansion of Mohammad

Reza Shah’s patronage over cultural institutions and to the increase of Iran’s cultural exchange with the world as a part of the Pahlavi state’s public diplomacy.

From the 1950s onward, the expanding control of the Pahlavi state over cinema and the increase in Mohammad Reza Shah’s authoritarian tendencies had multifaceted impacts on the trajectory of Iranian cinema. The censorship strategies, in particular, became more complex and political. The government revised and updated the censorship rules that has been centralized during the rule of Reza Shah under the

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Regulations for Cinemas and Performing Arts (Naficy 2011b:184). Meanwhile, the genuine support of some of the top figures of the Pahlavi state, especially Empress

Farah, helped with the flourishing of the Iranian film industry. An ironic result of the

Pahlavi state’s supportive and regulative intervention in the Iranian film industry was the emergence of the New Wave: a heterogeneous counter-cinema movement, which resisted ‘both commercial cinema and the government that largely funded it’ (Naficy

2011b:328). The rise of new-wave cinema and the contradictory role of the Pahlavi state in its emergence is significant for this research for two particular reasons: first, their criticism of the Pahlavi state and contemporary social conditions influenced intellectuals and students to join the revolution. Second, the emergence of the New

Wave also marks the beginning of the international presence of the Iranian cinema.

During the 1970s, many Iranian new-wave filmmakers, including Daruish Mehrjui,

Sohrab Shahid-Saless and Parviz Kimiavi, received significant attention from international film festivals. The Iranian New Wave left the legacies of both international acclaim, and state control and censorship for its descendent: post-revolution art-house cinema.

The Pahlavi state’s public diplomacy demanded the increase of Iran’s cultural exchange with the world. To fulfil this goal, the state not only supported the circulation of Iranian films abroad but also sponsored and organized several art and film festivals.

These annual festivals screened domestic and foreign films and hosted filmmakers from different parts of the world (Naficy 2011b:328). The organization of the festivals, particularly the Shiraz Festival of Culture and Art (jashn-e honar-e Shiraz), intensified the struggles between the Pahlavi state and its wide range of secular and religious oppositions. The critics of the regime attacked the festival for showcasing films and plays that were against the ‘moral and religious values’ of Iranian society (Daryaei

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2013/1392:126). The ‘moral problem’ of the Pahlavi state and its manifestation in the foreign and domestic films circulated in society motivated religious groups to join

Khomeini and reinforce their opposition against the regime. It is important to note that throughout the twentieth century, some of the most influential clerics in Iran, including

Sheikh Fazlollah Nouri, Mojtaba Navab Safavi and Khomeini, had been skeptical about cinema. These religious figures, as Naficy highlights, condemned cinema for its capacity to turn self-sufficient and pious individuals into ‘dependent and corrupt

“subjects” of the Western ideology’ (2012a:5). In the midst of the revolution, movie theatres became the target of the revolutionary forces, who torched them along with banks, bars, and cabarets to express their fury against the Pahlavi regime.

The wide circulation of foreign films, which were imported and dubbed by international and domestic private sectors, and their contribution to the ‘moral decadence’ of the Iranian society, was also the concern of some cultural authorities within the Pahlavi state. In April 1962, the Iranian Prime Minister, Ali Amini (1961–

1962), met with a group of Iranian artists to discuss the problems in the Iranian film industry. In this meeting, Ismaeil Kushan, the head of the Film Producers’ Syndicate, pointed out that the uncontrolled dubbing and circulation of the foreign film could not only have a negative impact on Iranian culture and values, but is also the ‘biggest barrier’ in the way of the development of the Iranian film industry (Omid

1995/1374:342). Kushan then asked the Prime Minister and the state to protect the

Iranian film industry by controlling the import and dubbing of foreign movies and facilitating the export of domestic cinematic products (Omid 1995/1374:342). By the late 1970s, the barriers to the development of Iranian cinema, including the massive circulation of foreign films in the country, led to a major crisis for the film industry, to the extent that some officials were concerned about possible bankruptcy. The crisis

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drew attention from Iranian media and many film periodicals and newspapers published articles in which they pointed to a wide range of structural causes that gave rise to such chaotic conditions. In June 1978 for example, Keyhan newspaper published an article titled Iranian Cinema is Dying…, in which the author counted fifteen causes that resulted in the bankruptcy of the Iranian film industry. Among these issues were the increase in the cost of the import of raw cinematic material, a lack of sufficient support from the state and in particular the Ministry of Arts and Culture, a lack of clear guidelines regarding film circulation and the excessive import of foreign films to the country (Omid 1995/1374:342).

The intervention of the Iranian state and foreign forces in cultural industries during the Pahlavi era certainly had great impacts on Iranian cinematic culture. Their combined efforts contributed to the institutionalization and industrialization of the

Iranian cinema and the rise of the Iranian New Wave. Moreover, as Naficy argues, the vast circulation of foreign films in the country ‘proved to be instrumental to increasing the public’s exposure to the quality films and to raising the general level of film culture’

(Naficy 2011b:334). With the outbreak of the revolution in late 1978, however, intense struggles between the state and its opponents over cultural issues along with the crisis within the film industry left no place for the revival of cinema for several years to come.

The Iranian Revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic

On 16 January 1979, as the protests against the Pahlavi regime reached their height,

Mohammad Reza Shah left Iran. Less than two weeks later, on 1 February 1979,

Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran after fourteen years of living in exile. Upon his arrival, Khomeini went to Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery to pay his respects to those who were killed during the upheavals, and delivered a momentous speech: he

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declared the government of the Pahlavi Prime Minister, Shapour Bakhtiyar, to be illegitimate, and stated that ‘by virtue of the acceptance the people have granted’ him, he announced the monarchy terminated and would establish ‘the first permanent government of the Islamic Republic’ (Algar 1981:259). Khomeini attacked the Pahlavi regime for their allegiance with the West, development policies and immorality, and asserted that the movement would continue until ‘all elements of the Shah’s regime’ are eliminated from the country (Algar 1981:259). The turmoil reached its height for the next ten days, during which Bakhtiar and Mehdi Bazargan, who was assigned by

Khomeini as head of the interim government, struggled over power. Finally, on 11

February 1979, after the head of the Iranian Armed Forces announced that the army would remain neutral in the conflict between the two prime ministers, the Pahlavi regime collapsed (Abrahamian 2009:30). The revolutionary forces that overthrew the

Pahlavi monarchy consisted of different groups and social classes with contrasting views. However, after a referendum in March 1979 which allowed the voters to vote yes or no to the creation of an Islamic Republic, the power consolidated in the hands of a religious group under the leadership of Khomeini and based on his conceptualization of an Islamic government.

What makes the period around the revolution and the emergence of the Islamic

Republic a historical conjuncture is not merely a regime change, but a wide range of crises and tensions that had a great impact on the balance of domestic social, economic and ideological forces as well as radical changes in Iran’s global status. Such domestic and global tensions resulted in the transformation and adoption of the Islamic Republic.

After its establishment, the Islamic Republic encountered several obstacles and resistances in the process of removing the traces of the Pahlavi monarchy from society and establishing its own legitimacy. The United States Embassy hostage crisis (4

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November 1979–20 January 1981), the massive bomb blast in the headquarters of the

Islamic Republican Party in June 1981 in which seventy two leading officials of the newly established Iranian State were killed, and eight years of war with Iraq (22

September 1980–20 August 1988) were among the most significant events the caused serious socio-political and economic crises and eventually isolated the country.

According to its constitution, the Islamic Republic is a specific theocratic and democratic system, under the ‘governance of the Just Jurisprudent (fghih) based on the sovereignty of the command [of God] and continuous religious leadership (Emamat)’.

Article Two of the constitution asserts that ‘the Islamic Republic is a system based on the faith in […] the wondrous and exalted status of human beings and their freedom’.

Such freedom, as further expanded, can only be achieved through ‘the negation of all kinds of oppression, authoritarianism, or the acceptance of domination, which secures justice, political and economic, social, and cultural independence and national unity’

(1989:7). As Maryam Panah highlights, independence (esteghlal) in post-revolutionary

Iranian discourse did not merely suggest a complete isolation from the world but referred to an ‘alternative social model to both the capitalist “West” and the communist

“East”’ (2007:48). This approach was condensed in the slogan ‘Neither East, nor West, but the Islamic Republic’, which was frequently pronounced during the period after the revolution.

Khomeini’s rhetoric, later revealed in the constitution of the Islamic Republic, is not necessarily a fundamentalist approach that rejects all the features of the modern world. Rather, as Ervand Abrahamian argues, Khomeini’s conceptualization of an

Islamic state can be described as a form of populism (1993:17). That is,

[a] movement of the propertied middle class that mobilizes the lower classes,

especially the urban poor, with radical rhetoric directed against imperialism,

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foreign capitalism, and the political establishment. In mobilizing the ‘common

people,’ populist movements use charismatic figures and symbols, imagery, and

language that have potent value in the mass culture. Populist movements

promise to drastically raise the standard of living and make the country fully

independent of outside powers […]. Populist movements, thus, inevitably

emphasize the importance, not of economic-social revolution, but of cultural,

national, and political reconstruction. (Abrahamian 1993:17)

To underline Khomeini’s populist tendencies in the formulation of an ideal mode of governance, as Abrahamian highlights, allows us to understand the Islamic Republic not as a system with rigid commitment to the core ideas of Islam but in terms of its

‘potential for change and acceptance of modernity – even eventually of political pluralism, gender equality, individual rights, and social democracy’ (Abrahamian

1993:4-5). This approach to modernity was evident in Khomeini’s first speech upon his arrival. In this speech, Khomeini attacked the Pahlavi regime’s cultural policies, stating that during their rule, Iranian radio, television and cinema were established as ‘centres of vice’ and ‘subservient to immoral purposes’ (Algar 1981:257). Then he stated,

What we oppose is vice and the use of media to keep our young people in the

state of backwardness […] cinema is a modern invention that ought to be used

for the sake of educating people, but, as you know, it was used instead to

corrupt our youth. It is the misuse of cinema that we are opposed to, a misuse

caused by the treacherous policies of our rulers. (Algar 1981:258)

This often-quoted speech is central to understanding the politics of the post- revolutionary Iranian cinema; while cinema had frequently been condemned ‘as a morally offensive and ethically corrupting western confluence’ by many clerics and

Islamic fundamentalists, Khomeini’s speech to some extent guaranteed the survival of

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cinema in post-revolutionary Iran (Naficy 2012a:8).8 At the same time, Khomeini pointed out that this survival was by no means unconditional and fundamental shifts in cultural policies were required in order to establish new cinema, television and radio that were in line with the ideologies of the newly established regime.

The new regime, therefore, initiated a long and complex ‘purification process’ in order to establish its legitimacy and to translate its ideologies into practice. As Naficy explains, purification referred to the multi-layered process of ‘cleansing the society and culture politically and morally from the vestiges of unwanted Pahlavi and Western cultures, ideologies, and corruptions, and replacing them with appropriate, “pure” and

“true” Islamic ideologies’(Naficy 2012a:118). These policies and strategies targeted all social, educational, mass media, industrial and bureaucratic institutions. The impact of purification policies on the film industry was significant and gradually resulted in major shifts at different levels, from film style and aesthetics to the rules and regulations that targeted the production, circulation, exhibition and even reception of films.

The first step for the post-revolutionary Iranian authorities was to remove traces of Pahlavi-era culture from Iranian cinema through an iconoclastic process, which took around four years and eventually caused more damage to the already insolvent film industry. During this period, the destruction of movie theatres continued for a while and those that remained open had to be renamed. The revolutionaries also targeted the film archives, meticulously searching their contents and burning or destroying anything that had a trace of Pahlavi culture in them (Naficy 2012a:82). Among the archives affected were the films and photos of the Shiraz Film Festival that were burnt by the Islamic

Centre of Art and Culture Organization of Fars Province in July 1980 (Kolie-ye Fimha

8 As Hamid Naficy points out: soon after Khomeini’s speech, in many cities, including Shiraz, exhibitors hung large banners outside their movie houses and below pictures of Khomeini, carrying some of these words like a fatwa reauthorising cinema and movie going. (Naficy 2012a:8) 72

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va Axha 1980/1359a). All pre-revolutionary films, local or imported, were reviewed.

Those that were considered against revolutionary ideals were censored or banned.

According to Naficy, between 1979 and 1982, of the 2208 movies submitted for review to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, only 252 received exhibition permission (Naficy 2012a:29). Many of the artists and employees of the film industry were accused of being associated with the Pahlavi regime. Some were imprisoned, their properties were confiscated and many of them were forced into exile (Naficy 2012a:32-

33).

The socio-political turmoil and uncertainties caused by the iconoclastic cleansing of the film industry discouraged the investment of the private sector in film production. The majority of the films produced during this period were funded by governmental and para-governmental organizations such as the Foundation of the

Dispossessed (Bonyad-e Mostazafan), the Islamic Art and Thought Centre (Howzeh-ye

Andisheh va Honar-e Eslami) and the Construction Crusade (Jahad-e Sazandegi). The decrease in the number of productions and the lack of guidelines and policies resulted in a decrease in the transnational circulation of Iranian films and their exhibition in international film festivals. According to Mohammad Atebai, in 1977, around 114 films attended international film festivals. This number decreased to only 57 films in 1979

(Atebai 2003/1382:13).

Another aspect of the film industry that required purification was the import of foreign movies. As early as July 1979, the necessity of implementing clear guidelines and regulations regarding the import of foreign movies was discussed in a meeting between the representatives of Film Producers Society, Society for Theatre Owners,

Society for Film Importers, the Joint Council of Actors and Workers of Cinema and the

Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Az Vorud va Kharid 1979/1358). The

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committee decided to prohibit the import of foreign movies to the country, in particular those with anti-revolutionary and imperialist themes, in order to support domestic production and in solidarity with the aims of Cultural Revolution (1979/1358). Soon after, ‘the importation of B-grade Turkish, Indian and Japanese films was curtailed, followed closely by a ban on all “imperialist” and “anti-revolutionary” films’ (Naficy

2002:32). The screening of any other imported foreign films was subject to meticulous reviews. Between 1980 and 1982, 756 films were imported to Iran, among which only

298 films could obtain a screening permission (Naficy 2002:25-26).

Although the purification of the society and film industry was among the main motivations for post-revolutionary policymakers to regulate the import of foreign films immediately after the revolution, it was not the only one. The Iranian authorities learned from past experience that the unregulated import of foreign films was a major barrier to the revival of a domestic film industry that already needed major transformations.

During the transition period, however, the extent to which the import should be controlled was subject to great uncertainties. This is evident in a letter Hassan Habibi, the Minister of Culture and Higher Education, wrote to the President of the interim government, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, about the condition of the Iranian film industry. In this letter, which was published in the Keyhan newspaper in July 1980, Habibi raised four questions to point out the areas of enquiry needing immediate attention: 1) How should the movie theatres be run? 2) As the domestic film industry has not yet reached the point to produce appropriate films, what are the rules and regulations regarding the screening of domestic and foreign productions during this transition period? 3) Should we import foreign movies at all? 4) During the transition period, how should movie theatres be managed and regulated? (Tabatabaei be Masale-ye Cinema 1980/1359c) In response, Bani-Sadr put Sadegh Tabatabaei, a committee member of the Foundation of

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Dispossessed, in charge of the film industry (Tabatabaei be Masale-ye

Sinema1980/1359c).

Immediately after his assignment, Ahmad Sadegh Ardestani, a prominent cleric and Khomeini’s representative and the Head of the Propaganda Organization in the religious city of Qom, wrote a letter to Tabatabaei and suggested the dissolution of the

Theatre Owners, Film Importers and Film Producers’ Societies and the establishment of an Islamic Republic Cinema Foundation with the following responsibilities:

1) Recognizing cinema as an industry by the Islamic Republic and

appropriating all its means and resources;

2) Dissolution of all film production and audio-visual centres in all ministries,

institutions and governmental organizations and centralize them in the

Islamic Republic Cinema Foundation;

3) Centralizing all cinematic and cinematography equipment that are owned by

the government in the Islamic Republic Cinema Foundation;

4) Confiscating and nationalizing all the movie theatres across the country;

5) The Islamic Republic Cinema Foundation is to be in charge of the import of

all foreign films (feature or documentary) and the production of domestic

films and their circulation. This does not include the import of technical or

special industrial films;

6) The Islamic Republic Cinema Organization is to be in charge of the import

and distribution of raw material, cinematography equipment and other

filmmaking equipment in accordance with the Islamic Republic foreign

commerce laws;

7) The Foundation is in charge of establishment of a committee of writers,

socially trustworthy individuals (afrade saleh ejtemai), clerics, revolutionary

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institutions and loyal (motahed) filmmakers who believe in the Islamic

Revolution, for the revision of the scripts and guidance of filmmakers and

revision and granting a screening permit;

8) A research centre should be established with the aim to focus on the local

production of chemicals and cinematic equipment;

9) All the cinematic rules and regulations that are merged into the Islamic

Republic Cinema Foundation and approved by the parliament are legally

binding in the country. (Namayande-ye Emam 1980/1359b)

In September 1980, a new committee for film revision began its work with representatives from the ideological and political division of the armed forces (sepah-e pasdaran), the Foundation of Dispossessed and the Society of Clerics. During 1980 and

1981 209 from 340 movies were found inappropriate and did not receive screening approval (Sadr 2002/1381:244).

The beginning of the Iran-Iraq War and the impeachment of Bani-Sadr postponed the emergence of a cinema foundation for a while, but the revival of cinema remained a priority for the post-revolutionary regime. In less than two years, the Farabi

Cinema Foundation (Bonyad-e Sinemai-ye Farabi) was established to be in charge of many of the responsibilities required in order to revive the Iranian film industry. The establishment of Farabi Cinema Foundation (hereafter Farabi) marked the beginning of one of the most prominent eras for Iranian cinema.

The Islamic Republic’s intention to establish its own cinema

Parallel to the efforts of the post-revolutionary state to confront the pre-existing socio- political and cultural environment and the purging of cinematic vestiges of the Pahlavi era, the authorities aimed to introduce a cinema that was in line with the rhetoric of the

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Islamic Republic. However, there was a challenge for the authorities not only because the Iranian film industry had suffered great damage during the transition period, but also because a lack of an agreement about the desired characteristics of cinema under the

Islamic Republic. Many authorities at that point highlighted the necessity of the establishment of an Islamic cinema but their understanding of such cinema varied.

For example, the Head of the Film Revision Centre of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Sadegh Ardestani, stressed the moral and pedagogic aspects of arts and cinema under the Islamic Republic (Sadr 2002/1381:243). Mohammad Ali

Rajaei, who then served as the Prime Minister and later became the second President of the Islamic Republic (August–September 1981), believed that the ‘people’s slogans must be reflected in film. Film should express people’s demands and aspirations and they must also create a sense of hope and a spirit of defiance. The pressing issues of the deprived people and the Islamic Revolution must be presented in films’ (Sadr

2006:170). While many of the policymakers were concerned with the socio-political, moral or pedagogic significance of cinema under the Islamic Republic, a few others discussed the necessity of the establishment of cinema with the capacity to be circulated beyond the borders of Iran.

On 1 November 1981, Jomhouri-e Eslami, the official newspaper of the Islamic

Republican Party, published an interview with Hodjatollah Seifi, the head of the Centre for Amateur Filmmakers. Seifi argued, ‘if we want to fulfil our Islamic responsibility in the world, that is the export of the revolution to the countries under oppression, then cinema is our strongest means’ (Cinema, Mehrab-e Filmsazan 1981/1360a). Seifi’s comment is significant for understanding the politics of transnational circulation of

Iranian cinema; on the one hand, it demonstrates that the idea of transnational circulation became the concern of the Iranian policymakers as early as they seriously

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considered the revival of Iranian cinema. On the other hand, it refers to the links between this circulation and the idea of exporting the revolution, which along with the non-alignment with the superpowers of both eastern and western blocs, was one of the major concepts that shaped the Islamic Republic’s public diplomacy since the early days after the revolution.

Khomeini and many other post-revolutionary leaders considered the Iranian

Revolution as the conquest of Islamic values over the moral decadence and corruption of the oppressive, pro- Pahlavi regime, and therefore, argued that the ideals of the

Islamic Revolution can inspire other Muslim communities and also all the oppressed people of the third-world countries (New Directions in Iranian Foreign Policy 1979).

According to a report created by the United States National Foreign Assessment Center in March 1979, the revolutionary leaders did not initially aim to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries. Rather, they considered the revolution as a process of ‘spiritual awakening’ that should initiate ‘in the hearts and minds of the oppressed’

(Iran Exporting the Revolution 1980). The idea of exporting the revolution, therefore, was initially a pedagogic process to introduce Khomeini’s core ideas and revolutionary strategies through broadcast radio programs and other available means.

The occupation of the US Embassy in November 1979 was a critical point, which had a great impact on the future of the Islamic Republic. On the domestic level, as Naficy points out, ‘the hostage taking bolstered the position of hard-liners, transforming the government from a moderate provisional Islamic government, headed by Mehdi Bazargan, into a militant Islamist regime’ (Naficy 2012b:274). On the international level, the hostage crisis intensified the tensions between the Islamic

Republic and the United States more than ever before and eventually resulted in the isolation of Iran. Under such circumstances, it was necessary for the Iranian state to

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become more pragmatic in regard to their foreign policy and, therefore, the export of the revolution was reinterpreted and became a practical necessity in order to find allies and gain more international support (Panah 2007:68). It was in this context that Seifi pointed out the necessity of the Iranian state supporting the revival of cinema for its capacity to become an effective medium for exporting the revolution.

The statements from Seifi is among many examples in which the post- revolutionary authorities stressed the significance of the transnational circulation of

Iranian cinema as an effective medium that can fulfil the Iranian state’s public diplomacy aims. Throughout the four decades following the establishment of the

Islamic Republic, post-revolutionary Iranian cinema has remained important for the state. However, such significance neither resulted in the emergence of an Islamic cinema that promotes the core rhetoric of the Islamic Republic nor gave rise to a straightforward and unidirectional approach to the transnational circulation of Iranian films.

In the process of transition from the cinema of idolatry, as the post-revolutionary authorities called it, to an Islamic cinema, two cultural institutions played a significant role: the Islamic Art and Thought Centre (Howzeh-ye Honar va Andishe-ye Eslami) and

Farabi. The core of both institutions was formed of young artists with religious orientations who were actively involved in the process of the revolutionary uprising.

The founders of the Islamic Art and Thought Centre were members of a literary circle who gathered in Javad-al A’emme Mosque located in the west of Tehran. Among the original members were Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Majid Majidi, whose names soon appeared among the most prominent post-revolutionary Iranian filmmakers in international film festivals. Initially, the Centre emerged as a grassroots institution without any legislative authorization, with the aim to ‘implement Islamic principles in

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arts and literature and to control the content of movies, books and artworks’ (Shams

2015:167). Following the referendum in February 1980 and the establishment of the

Islamic Republic, Khomeini ordered the grassroots institutions, committees and foundations that emerged immediately after the revolution to join major revolutionary organizations. In response to this order the Islamic Art and Thought Centre merged into the Islamic Propaganda Organization (Sazman-e Tablighat-e Eslami), ‘the main cultural body of the Islamic Republic responsible for the supervision of all cultural institutions’

(Shams 2015:163). The Islamic Art and Thought Centre soon became one of the most influential state-run organizations in post-revolutionary Iran. During the eight years of war, this Centre had a major role in the promotion of Islamic ideologies and was in charge of creating war visual art, literature and films (Shams 2015:175-176). More importantly, the centre became a parallel cultural institution to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and an opponent to Farabi, whose members belonged to the Ayat

Film Studio, and their understanding of Islamicate art and culture differed from the first group.

Ayat Film Studio played a pivotal role in the revival of Iranian cinema after the revolution. The base for this group was Hoseynieh-ye Ershad, a congregation hall in

Tehran where the prominent intellectual Ali Shariati held his lectures. During the early

1970s a group of young artists with religious tendencies, including Mohammad Ali

Najafi and Fakhreddin Anvar, began performing plays with religious and political themes. As Naficy points out, the group was encouraged by Shariati himself and their activities were in response to Shariati’s call for expressing ‘their socially conscious beliefs and anti-Pahlavi sentiments’ through the arts (Naficy 2012a:121). Eventually, their plays were shut down by Organization of National Intelligence and Security of the

Nation (also known as SAVAK) and the group turned to film production and

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established the Ayat Film Studio in 1977. According to Naficy, two groups of Shariati supporters contributed to the emergence of the Ayat Film Studio (2012a:122). One was an architecture and construction firm, Samarghand Company, whose members, including Mir Hossein Mousavi, attended Shariati’s lectures at Hossainie-ye Ershad.

Another group was the Society of Muslim Engineers; among its members were

Mohammad Beheshti, the nephew of the prominent cleric Ayatollah Beheshti, and

Abdolali Bazargan, the brother of Ali Bazargan, the Prime Minister of the interim government. The initial financing of the Ayat Film Studio was facilitated through the contacts these two organizations had with the clergy (Naficy 2012a:122).

Ayat Film Studio began its activities by making short documentaries and slide- tape presentations with political and religious topics, and ended up with the production of two full length films, Athar’s Syllabus (Jong-e Athar, 1978) and the Night of Power

(Lailat-al Qadr, 1980) both directed by Mohammad Ali Najafi. After the revolution, the company gave all its films and other footage to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic

Guidance and terminated its activities, since all its members were assigned to key positions in the post-revolutionary Iranian state. Mousavi became the Prime Minister

(1981–1989), Anvar became the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic

Guidance, and Najafi was appointed Director General of the Ministry of Culture and

Islamic Guidance.

In 1982, Mohammad Khatami, a midlevel cleric, was assigned as the Minister of

Culture and Islamic Guidance and remained in this position until 1992. Khatami’s support of Islamicate art and his interest in the revival of the film industry with the help of the members of Ayat Film Studio, made a significant contribution to the trajectory of the Iranian cinema in the following four decades. The Deputy of Cinematic Affairs’ aim was to provide support (hemayat) and guidance (hedayayt) in all aspects of the Iranian

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film industry and at the same time to supervise (nezarat) the process to make sure the outcome would be in line with the core ideas and cultural policies of the Islamic

Republic. In that sense, as Blake Atwood highlights, the relationship between the

Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and the film industry in this period ‘was multifaceted and included support but also contempt’ (Atwood 2016:15). On the one hand, the strict guidelines and meticulous regulations created major obstacles for filmmakers and on the other, such support gradually brought success and global recognition for Iranian cinema.

One of the major steps taken by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance that is particularly important for this research is the re-establishment of Farabi, because this had major impacts on the dynamics of transnational film circulation in the post- revolution period. Under orders from Anvar, the Farabi Cinema Club, which was established in 1977 with the aim to ‘promote the cinematic culture through its many film screening clubs’, was reopened. The club was later renamed the Farabi Cinema

Foundation and began its new mission in 1983, and Mohammad Beheshti, another member of the Ayat Film Studio, was appointed as its director.

Farabi is a para-governmental organization that works directly under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. As the executive arm of the Deputy of Cinematic Affairs, during the early years after its establishment Farabi was in charge of implementing economic and cultural policies in order to encourage the production of cinematic material suitable for post-revolutionary Iran. The foundation initially had three major goals: 1) to smooth the transition of the Iranian cinema from filmfarsi (popular pre-revolutionary films) to revolutionary cinema; 2) to support the cinema industry by providing services, equipment and raw material; and 3) to nurture a new generation of filmmakers while re-orienting the previous generation to a new type

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of cinema.

The intervention of Farabi in different aspects of the film industry has indeed contributed to the flourishing of post-revolution Iranian cinema. During the days when investment in film production became increasingly unprofitable, this foundation provided essential financial support to increase film production and nurture the Iranian film industry. In 1983, for example, the average cost of film production was around 30 million rials (around USD 423,000), while at best, a film could only earn around 25 million rials (around USD 352,000) at the box office in Tehran (Zarurat-e Tajdid-e

Nazar 1983/1362:5). Under such conditions, long term loans were offered to filmmakers and Farabi provided facilities and equipment at lower costs and even stepped forward as the producer of many films.

Meanwhile, one of the responsibilities of Farabi since the early days after its establishment was to import foreign films. In 1984, Farabi was authorized as the exclusive importer of films to the country. According to a report published in Film

Magazine, the monopoly of Farabi over film importation was a strategic step in order to raise sufficient funds to support local production (vorud-e film 1984/1363). It was four years after the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, and the economic crisis and sanctions put a lot of pressure on the Iranian state. Under such circumstances, the monopoly over the import of foreign films could indeed bring some extra income for Farabi and help with the revival of the Iranian film industry. However, as I demonstrate shortly, the monopoly of Farabi over film imports was a complex strategy.

Anvar’s speech in 1985 among a group of people working in the Iranian film industry helps me unfold more complex aspects of such a strategy. In this speech, Anvar highlights the significance of the existence of cinema under the Islamic Republic, mentioning that while achieving the short-term goals of the Iranian state is possible

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using political and military force, in the long term it is only a cultural and artistic movement that can institutionalize Islamic values (Heydari 2018/1397:68). He then points out that any policies regarding the Iranian film industry, whether it be decisions regarding the import of foreign films or the support of and involvement in local productions, has to be in line with the long-term goals and diplomacy of the Iranian state, as condensed under two key slogans: ‘Neither East nor West’, and ‘Independence,

Freedom, Islamic Republic’ (Heydari 2018/1397:68). Anvar draws attention to the film import and highlights that the first step for the policy makers in order to fulfil their mission is to regulate the flow of foreign films to the country. For Anvar, the unregulated and unmonitored import of films through the private sector could result in cultural and economic dominance of other countries over the Iranian market and gradually damage the local film industry (Heydari 2018/1397:70). In that sense, looking at the conditions of film import during the Pahlavi period and the early years after the establishment of the Islamic Republic, it is clear that the post-revolutionary state was well aware of the damage such a practice could cause to the local film industry and therefore, was determined to launch strict strategies in the realm of film imports by creating a monopoly.

The cultural dimension of regulating film importing is even clearer when we pay attention to the main goals of Farabi. According to its article of association, Farabi’s guiding policies target three core dimensions: 1) people: to improve their taste in the sense that they tend to watch higher quality films with more sophisticated themes; 2) filmmakers: to make films that make the audience think more; 3) subjects: to move beyond the limits of imposing and non-original (tahmili and taghlidi) subjects and put an end to the use of themes used in pre-revolutionary cinema. As Beheshti pointed out in his interview with me, Farabi’s strategy in order to fulfil these goals was to put

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Iranian cinema in a quarantine condition. That is, to meticulously decide what cinematic material was appropriate for the Iranian audience to watch and to block the flow of material that was found inappropriate (personal communication, January 27, 2015). The quarantine strategy as a top priority for Iranian policymakers during the first decade after the revolution draws attention to the significance of film distribution as an effective means of censorship.

The Farabi Cinema Foundation and transnational circulation of Iranian cinema

Apart from launching strategies to encourage local film production and to support the

Iranian film industry, Farabi played a significant role in introducing post-revolutionary

Iranian cinema to the world, mainly by supporting and facilitating the circulation of films in international film festivals. Only six months after the establishment of Farabi, its department of international affairs initiated its activities. In the same year, the screening of Tattoreh (Kiumar Pur-Ahmad, 1984) at the Algerian Film Festival marked the first presence of a Farabi production at an international event. The original goals of

Farabi, as stated in its earlier article of association, were to support and revive the

Iranian film industry (Darbareh-ye Bonyad 2015b). However, as Beheshti told me in an interview, the global recognition and success of Iranian cinema was also among the earlier goals since Iranian cultural policymakers found it a necessary step in the process of the introduction of a ‘new national cinema’. In order to highlight the significance of this goal, Beheshti shared with me a memory from the early days when he explained the long-term goals of the foundation to Alireza Shoja-Nuri, the first head of the

Department of International affairs of Farabi,

Shoja-Nuri, joined [the Farabi team] in November 1983 (Azar 1362). In

December the same year we travelled to Spain to buy films. It was only a few

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months after the establishment of Farabi and we did not even have a proper

office. In Spain, I explained to Shoja-Nuri that we want to see a day in the

future when we enter a subway station in a city, for example in Spain, and we

see the poster of an Iranian film screening in cinemas. In the news, we would

hear about an Iranian film winning an award in an international film festival.

All the festivals would be keen to have an Iranian film in their program or the

quality of that festival would be under question. We would like to hear about

the prominent filmmakers who are proud to be influenced by an Iranian

filmmaker; to see a day when Iranian cinema is taught in the universities and

there are film archives around the world dedicated to the Iranian cinema.

(Personal communication, January 27, 2015)

What Beheshti told me about the importance of the transnational circulation of post- revolution Iranian films as a part of the Islamic Republic’s cultural policies is not unique to this context. As Julian Stringer points out, one rarely acknowledged significance of film festivals is how they contribute to the process of writing cinema history (2001). By facilitating the circulation of certain movies in cultural events around the world, festivals can increase the chance of access to those films by critics and scholars. Giving some examples from earlier accounts about the celebration of new discoveries in film festivals, Stringer suggests that such works support the assumption that ‘non-western cinemas do not count historically until they have been recognized by the apex of international media power, the centre of which is located, by implication, at western film festivals’ (Stringer 2001:135). This assumption, as scholarly works from different contexts demonstrate, is among the reasons for many states to support the screening of their national cinematic productions in international film festivals. From the film industry perspective, therefore, facilitating the circulation of post-revolutionary films by the Islamic Republic is not particularly unique to this context. 86

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In her analysis of the intervention of the Iranian state in the film industry, Agnes

Devictor points out that the post-revolutionary regime ‘has managed to adopt to its specific needs certain classical tools of public cultural intervention’ (2002:67).

Comparing Iranian state policies regarding cinema with other examples such as those of

France, Devictor argues that although there are ‘similarities between the machinery of state intervention in Iran and that of other countries’, there are at the same time profound differences since ‘the underlying ideology is completely different’ (Devictor

2002:67). Devictor’s analysis focuses on the policies regarding film production but her argument is equally valid when it comes to the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema. As I demonstrate shortly, the Iranian state’s policies and the efforts of Farabi to facilitate the participation of Iranian films in international events during the first decade after the revolution was in line with an important element in Khomeini’s conceptualization of an Islamic government that contributed to exporting the revolution.

One of the key aspects of the Iranian revolutionary movement was indeed its nationalist sentiment. As Panah highlights, this element ‘related partly to a worldview shaped in conjunctural circumstances and influenced by a dominant international ideology coloured by “third worldism” and “anti-imperialism”’ (2007:47). At the same time, the nationalist sentiment had deep roots in the history of movements against the intervention of external powers, particularly during the Second World War and the coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq during the 1950s.

For Khomeini, however, it was crucial to stress the role of Islam in mobilizing the revolution, and a key element in his rhetoric was that an Islamic government was the best alternative social model to the imperialist and communist states. Incorporating nationalism into religious discourse, Khomeini replaced the secular idea of ‘the nation’

(mellat) with the idea of a ‘Muslim community’ (ummat) (Panah 2007). Such

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reconceptualization resulted in a complex Islamic nationalist discourse that, on the one hand, marginalized the religious minorities within the country, and on the other, had the capacity to go beyond national borders. This conceptualization, as Naficy underlines, fed into the emergence of ‘a new “Islamicate identity” for post revolution Iranians in whose constructions the media and cinema played important and constitutive roles’

(Naficy 2012a). Studying the public talks and interviews of Iranian cultural policymakers since the mid-1980s reveals that the recognition of Iranian cinema at international events was also seen as a strategy to showcase the works of filmmakers who belonged to the larger Muslim community.

Anvar’s speech to the members of the Iranian film industry in February 1989 is a significant example of such cases. Referring to the publication of Salman Rushdie’s

Satanic Verses (1988), he claimed that,

Our country and our revolution is very isolated in the world. The recent

controversy is a clear example […]. Nowadays everybody talks about freedom

of expression […] but we see examples that when someone insults a history, a

thought or an ummat with around one billion population in different parts of the

world, he is supported in the name of freedom of expression. Today’s condition

not only summarizes our status but also clarifies our mission in the world.

(Heydari 2018/1397:113)

According to Anvar, cultural dominance has always been the first step for superpowers to ‘spread their economic and political dominance and launch their colonization projects’, therefore, it is ‘the responsibility of all Muslim intellectuals to enter a cultural battle (setiz-e farhangi) with the aim to reveal the deceptions of the West’ (Heydari

2018/1397:113). From this perspective, the support for the flow of Iranian films into international festivals and cinematic events was not just the promotion and introduction

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of a new Iranian cinema; it was also considered as an effective strategy to circulate the works of Muslim filmmakers whose responsibility was to fight against the cultural dominance of superpowers.

This ‘cultural battle’ turned out to be a long and frustrating conflict in which all sides found media and cinema to be effective weapons. Ever since the revolution, there have been struggles between the Islamic Republic and the countries that the Iranian authorities consider to be imperial, colonial or communist superpowers. In particular, the ongoing conflicts between Iran and the United States has significantly contributed to the establishment of both sides’ foreign policies and public diplomacy. Naficy provides a comprehensive analysis of the ways cinema and media as components of public diplomacy have been utilized in Iran and the , particularly in the United States, to serve the political interest of four different parties: the Iranian post-revolutionary state,

Iranian people at home, Western governments, and Iranians in diaspora (Naficy

2012b:269). According to Naficy, Iranophobia has been the master narrative of the

Western media since the revolution (2012b:274). In the 1980s and early 1990s, the influence of this master narrative was not about manufacturing lies about the Muslim community and the Islamic Republic as the Iranian authorities stressed. Rather,

it stemmed from its multimedia construction and the global circulation and

commodification of only selected, atypical, and cathected partial truths and

(mis)representations of the Islamic Republic, which were made to stand for the

totality of Iran, mistakenly conflating the nation with its regime. (Naficy

2012b:274-275)

Such media treatment of post-revolutionary Iran created obstacles that impeded the transnational circulation of films produced under the Islamic Republic. Beheshti explained to me that this master narrative slowed down many of Farabi’s plans,

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Getting accepted to the festivals was a challenging process because our country

was at war. Most of the times, the festivals rejected the films we

submitted.Once [one of our films] won an award at Cannes Television Festival.

A representative of Venice festival who was a jury member in that event asked

us why we did not submit the film for Venice. Shoja-Nuri told him that we did

but our film was rejected. The representative eventually told us that they did not

even watch the film once they realized it was from Iran. They did not expect to

see a good film. Iranian cinema has created this international vibe all by itself.

At first, the films surprised their audience. Everyone thought of them as

creative sparks that would soon fade. (personal communication, January 27,

2015)

As I explained earlier, the desired qualities and characteristics of an Islamicate cinema raised some debates and disagreements among different groups within the Iranian state.

This has been most significant in the case of conflicts between the members of the

Islamic Arts and Thought Centre and Farabi as two influential cultural organizations.

During the years of war (1980-1988), The Islamic Art and Thought Centre’s strategy to promote Islamicate ideologies focused mainly on the production of written and audio- visual material about the war (Shams 2015:176). On the other hand, many authorities within the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and Farabi, including Beheshti and

Anvar, stressed that the Islamicate films should move beyond the direct reference to political affairs and instead focus on universal humanist themes in order to be influential as they transcend national borders (Heydari 2018/1397). The complex conflicts between these groups took a new direction from 1987, when the rights for the international distribution of films produced by some major cultural organizations, including the

Centre for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (Kanun-e

Parvaresh-e Fekri-ye Kudakan va Nowjavanan), Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting 90

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(Seda va Sima-ye Jomhuri-e Eslami) and the Islamic Propaganda Organization

(Sazman-e Tablighat-e Eslami), were given to Farabi (Atebai 2003/1382:21). Critics condemned Farabi for promoting a specific style of art-house movies, often referred to as festival films (filmha-ye jashnvareh-i), that seemed to meet the expectations of ern film festivals (Moazzezi-Nia 2009/1388). The majority of these films, as these critics argued, provide ‘either a gloomy and dark image of social conditions under the Islamic

Republic, or an exotic primitive image of Iranian rural settings’ (Esfandiary 2012:74).

Relying on the taste of ‘western audience’, the ‘festival cinema’ loses sight of both the local market and commitment to post-revolutionary ideals (Moazzezi-Nia

2009/1388:54). The scope of this thesis does not allow an examination of the validity of such an argument from the perspective of the style and aesthetics of such films, however, a look into Farabi’s strategies to promote post-revolutionary Iranian cinema internationally provides a new viewpoint on such controversies.

Beheshti agrees with Farabi’s critics that political intentions determine the policies of international film festivals. But he also notes that, overall, the vast circulation of Iranian films in a diverse range of cinematic events brought global recognition for post-revolutionary cinema despite the political intentions of film festivals,

We preferred our best films to be representatives of Iranian cinema but we had

to come to an agreement with the festivals. In fact, not all the festivals follow

similar intentions: each had a different one. But in total, when Iranian films

have thousands of international appearances, they [get recognition in the

world]. Until 1994 [when Beheshti left Farabi], we had entries in around two

thousand cinematic events. We have a complete collection of international

awards in the Museum of Cinema. (personal communication, January 27, 2015)

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In that sense, for this group of cultural authorities, Iranian cinema not only remained committed to post-revolutionary ideals in its vast international presence, but also became one of the most powerful and respected cultural ambassadors of post-revolution

Iran.

The monopoly of Farabi over the international distribution of Iranian films for a decade (1987-1997) determined the international flow of Iranian films with certain qualities. The stylistic elements and cinematic qualities of the films has indeed been a key aspect in the selection criteria and contributed vastly to the celebration of Iranian cinema at several cinematic events around the world. Apart from that, as Beheshti explained to me, Farabi controlled the circulation of films with direct references to contemporary socio-political affairs,

We even tried to keep our distance from the [Iran-Iraq] War. Where is the

Friend’s House, for example, has nothing to do with war. We insisted on this

approach. Cinema had to portray our culture. We thought even if we had

specific political interests, this is the best way for us to reach our goals. At that

time [during the war and the following years], the world thought people are

walking in the streets of the cities of Iran with Kalashnikov rifles in their hands.

Our films proved that assumption to be wrong. (personal communication)

In addition to avoiding sensitive political references in the films selected for screening outside the country, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance had another strategy to provide a more complex image of Islamicate Iranian culture, through the

Fajr International Film festival. Established in 1982, Fajr Film Festival began its work under the direct supervision of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in collaboration with Farabi and soon became the most important cinematic event in Iran.

Similar to Farabi, from the beginning the guidance, supervision, and support of Iranian

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cinema became the top priority of this festival (Eshghi 2002/1381:44). As Naficy points out, in order to be accepted in the festival, films had to demonstrate a ‘commitment to human beings, defence of the poor, support for the liberation of the weak, and conformity with the Islamic Republic’s values’ (Naficy 2012a:141). Each year, selection for the Fajr Film Festival guaranteed a film’s theatrical release and box office success. This provided the authorities with another powerful censorship tool to control the circulation of Iranian films. The control and censorship began immediately, and in the first year some films from prominent pre-revolutionary directors, including The Red

Line (Khat-e Ghermez, Masoud Kimiaei), Haji Washington (Ali Hatami), and Death of

Yazdgerd (Marg-e Yazdgerd, Bahram Beizaei) did not receive permission to be screened at the festival (Dorostkar 2002/1381:9).

Meanwhile, Fajr Film Festival became an international event to showcase not only a hand-picked collection of Iranian productions but also some more complex dimensions of culture and society in post-revolutionary Iran. Each year the festival hosts international guests, mainly filmmakers, directors of international film festivals, scholars and journalists. Beheshti, who was also the director of Fajr Festival (1983-

1994), explained to me that the news about the Iran-Iraq War and socio-political upheavals had an impact on the perceptions of the festival’s international guests about

Iran,

Many of them accepted our invitation but they were very sceptical. We did not

have war in Tehran but the first thing came to their mind about Iran was war.

Similar to other festivals we had private screenings for our guests but

occasionally they could watch films with the general audience. They could talk

to ordinary people or the filmmakers. From the third or fourth year, more

journalists and festival directors attended the festival […]. They arrived curious

and left surprised. (personal communication, January 27, 2015) 93

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Ever since the late 1980s, Iranian cinema has had a steady presence in cinematic events all around the globe and Iranian filmmakers have won several awards in some of the most prominent film festivals. By 1998, ‘Iranian cinema ranked tenth in the world in terms of output, surpassing Germany, Brazil, South Korea, Canada and Australia, far exceeding the Middle Eastern producers such as Egypt and Turkey’ (Mottahedeh

2006:176). Moreover, ‘the Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film

Festival called the Iranian cinema of the 1990s, one of the “pre-eminent national cinemas” and one of the “most exciting cinemas in the world”’ (Naficy 2001:161). This international recognition was in large part due to the resourcefulness of filmmakers, many of whom had started their career before the revolution. Nevertheless, the role of different groups and individuals within the Iranian state and in particular the Ministry of

Culture and Islamic Guidance and Farabi is undeniable.

However, this constant presence does not suggest that Iranian policymakers managed to launch successful strategies that guaranteed acclaim for Iranian cinema.

Rather, as I demonstrate below, there were several obstacles in the way of this complex process and the state’s intervention in the cinema industry has changed over time in relation to domestic socio-political forces, the advancement of production and proliferation technologies and changes in Iran’s global status.

Transnational film circulation in the post-Iran-Iraq War era

Towards the end of 1980s, the conjuncture of domestic and international forces created major crises for the Iranian state to the extent that the survival of the Islamic Republic was under threat. Outside the country, radical foreign policies and concerns about the revolution being exported created persistent tensions between Iran, other countries in the region and Western states (Siavoshi 1992:35). Other parties have also contributed

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vastly to the intensification of conflicts. The United States in particular played a significant role not only through diplomatic and economic sanctions against the Iranian people and state but also by its inclination towards Iraq during the war (Fayazmanesh

2008:16). These ongoing international tensions put Iran in economic isolation, to the extent that it was difficult for the Islamic Republic’s agents to sell the country’s oil and secure a steady supply of arms for the war with Iraq (Fayazmanesh 2008:14). On a domestic level, the socio-political and economic crises put extra pressure on the Iranian state. As Panah highlights,

the economic failures of the Islamic Republic and the experience of war had

made clear that without a productive base and strong national economy,

combined with internal and external pressures on the state would remain as

obstacles to the achievement of the ultimate goals of the revolution. (2007:120)

Such chaos convinced the post-revolutionary political elite that the Islamic

Republic could no longer withstand the pressure of war and therefore, a revision of immediate policies seemed to be necessary. In July 1988, Khomeini finally agreed to the United Nations’ declaration of a cease fire (Resolution 598) and put an end to the eight years of hostilities with Iraq. One year later, in August 1989, Khomeini passed away and the Guardian Council selected the former President, Ali Khamenei (1981-

1989) to become the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic.

With the end of the Iran-Iraq War and death of Khomeini, the Islamic Republic entered a new era, during which the reestablishment of the regime’s legitimacy and rehabilitation of the war-shattered economy became top priorities for the state.

Meanwhile, Iranian authorities unanimously agreed on ‘never explicitly renouncing the ultimately revolutionary objectives of the Islamic Republic or attempting to change its fundamental structures’ (Panah 2007:131). However, the conflicts between the practical

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requirements for the Islamic Republic’s survival and some of its core revolutionary ideals intensified factional struggles among different groups of the ruling elite, dividing them into pragmatists, conservatives and radicals (Takeyh 2009:112). During the early

1990s, the pragmatists, led by President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997), sought to strengthen the state through reconstruction of the country’s infrastructure and economic development. For pragmatists, a vital step to achieve this goal was to put an end to the country’s isolation in order to establish international economic relations, particularly with ern European countries, and to encourage foreign investments in Iran

(Panah 2007:134). Generally speaking, this group of authorities agreed upon the relaxation of cultural and social issues. Such a view initially advocated a ‘less strict code of censorship for films and a more or less progressive attitude towards proliferation of different art forms’ (Siavoshi 1992:39). The conservatives, under the leadership of Khamenei, were on the same page as the pragmatists when it came to ‘the need to revitalize the economy, but also called for strict implementation of Islamic cultural standards and remained deeply suspicious of the west’ (Takeyh 2009:119).

Finally, the radicals, ‘who held many seats in the parliament saw any level of pragmatism as abandoning the revolutionary ideals dismissed concentration on economic reconstruction and normalising relations with the west’ (Takeyh 2009:120).

The post-Khomeini era, therefore, is characterized by massive transformations in the country’s politics, economy and culture. Overall, each of these aspects took peculiar trajectories in relation to the alliances or disagreements between different factions within the Islamic Republic for the following three decades. The impact of the immense changes in Iranian politics, society and culture on Iranian cinema has been complex and multilayered. In the next sections, I illustrate how the state’s intervention in the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema has transformed in response to the

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development of new policies and strategies in three interrelated areas: socio-economic conditions, cultural policies, and public diplomacy.

Socio-economic conditions

The new priorities of the Islamic Republic during the post-war era demanded some amendments in the policies and strategies regarding ‘economic structure and international political and economic relation’ (Panah 2007:133). Rafsanjani and his pragmatist allies, in particular, aimed to build a powerful state implementing efficient bureaucracy and a strong economy that would be capable of generating exports. Their program, on a domestic level, concentrated on ‘reductions in state ownership, privatisation and deregulation of large sectors of the economy, encouragement of capital investments, reform of the exchange rate system, and reduction of subsidies on basic consumer goods’ (Panah 2007:133). The state’s economic reforms and in particular the process of privatization had both short- and long-term impacts on the Iranian film industry. The privatization program required a gradual retreat of Farabi from economic activities in areas of film production and distribution. Instead, the foundation focused on providing support for the private sector.

The ‘re-evaluation and partial removal of subsidies’ gave the recently revived

Iranian film industry another shock, and initially resulted in a serious decline in the number of productions (Naficy 2002:52). To recompense the producers, Farabi facilitated long-term loans that could cover some of the production costs. However, the loan was only granted to producers after a careful review of the project, despite the fact that screenplay approval from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance had not been mandatory since 1988. The distribution sector also underwent the same transformation. In his annual meeting with members of the Iranian film industry in

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March 1990, Anvar announced the transfer of film distribution to the private sector

(Heydari 2018/1397). According to Anvar, Farabi remained responsible for providing support to some of distributors after assessing their activities based on different criteria including the quality of their films; the distributors of foreign films, however, were excluded from this support plan (Heydari 2018/1397:126). The intervention of Farabi in the activities of the private sector, therefore, could now have at least two significant benefits for the Iranian state: on the one hand, its supportive strategies could to some extent smooth the transition through another anxious period; on the other hand, Farabi’s assessment of the activities of the private sector could provide another powerful strategy to maintain its control over cinema.

The case was more complex when it came to the transnational circulation of

Iranian cinema, since the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance planned to generate some income from film export to inject more money into the film industry. The cultural authorities encouraged filmmakers and producers to actively engage in searching for foreign markets for their films. In 1993, the Ministry announced that it would cover the travel and marketing expenses of filmmakers and producers who intended to sell their films in markets in Central Asia, the Middle East and Pakistan (Heydari

2018/1397:187). Apart from that, Farabi remained the only major organization for the promotion of Iranian cinema in international film festivals until 1997, when a few private distribution companies began their activities in the international market (Atebai

2003/1382:13). In the following years, the private sector became more active in international film festivals and international film markets, and Farabi took a partial retreat from transnational film circulation. The retreat of Farabi, however, was more the consequence of the struggles between different factions within the Islamic Republic regarding cultural policies than being part of an economic plan.

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Cultural policies

The economic crisis in post-war Iran did not allow conservatives and radicals to resist

Rafsanjani’s reconstruction program. While at some points particular strategies provoked a backlash against pragmatists, overall, even some of the radical members within the ruling elite were convinced that economic reforms would serve the ultimate goals of the revolution. Meanwhile, from the early 1990s up to the present day, there has been a consensus among the Iranian ruling elite that the Islamicate culture and values whose protection is a key principle of the Islamic Republic have been constantly under assault by an external enemy. Authorities from all factions remain on alert about the West’s and especially the United States’ use of what is often referred to as ‘global imperialism’ (estekbar-e jahani), targeting the country not by military means but through a systematic ‘cultural invasion’ (tahajom-e farhangi) (Naficy 2012b:307). The

Iranian state, therefore, struck back, launching different strategies inside the country, on the one hand, to hinder the Iranian population’s access to media technologies, including satellite TV and later the internet and social media, considering them as means that expose people to the enemy’s plot. Other strategies aim to eliminate the manifestations of this presumed cultural invasion by suppressing, impeachment and at some points murdering intellectuals and ordinary citizens who dared to question the performance of the state, accusing them of collaboration with the enemy (see Naficy 2012b:306-316).

However, when it comes to preferred strategies for confronting this cultural invasion, and tolerance for different opinions, the alliance between different groups of the Iranian authorities collapse and they employ a spectrum of approaches in dealing with cultural issues. On one side are those who support greater artistic diversity and ‘welcome conditional cultural exchanges with the West’ (Siavoshi 1992:39). On the other side are those authorities who employ restrictive interpretations of Islamic rules and call for

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strict censorship of artistic and literary expression (Siavoshi 1992:40). The articulation of domestic and international forces and the conflicts between different factions of the ruling elite have determined the peculiar attitude of the Iranian state towards different modes of artistic expression, including cinema. As I explain presently, the articulation of these forces and the multiplicity of opinions about censorship and the political tendencies of international film festivals gave rise to a range of ambiguous and often contradictory reactions to the critical acclaim received by Iranian films at these events, creating serious tensions between the authorities and some of the most prominent

Iranian filmmakers.

A close study of the conflicts among some of the high-ranking members of the

Islamic Republic regarding cinema during the early 1990s is central to understanding what seems to be the contradictory approach of the state towards the transnational circulation of Iranian films. One of the top figures among the Iranian political elite who has always called for a relative relaxation of restrictions over artistic expression and promoted conditional cultural exchange with the West is Mohammad Khatami, the former Minister of Culture (1982-1992), who later served as the fifth President of the

Islamic Republic (1997-2005). As I explained earlier, during Khatami’s time in the

Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the establishment of a complex set of policies to regulate and support the film industry contributed hugely to the revival of an

Islamicate Iranian cinema and its promotion beyond the borders of the country. The

Ministry’s policies, however, soon became the target of conservatives and radicals, who found Khatami’s approach to art too liberal (Siavoshi 1992:40).

The controversies heightened during the ninth Fajr Film Festival (1991), after the screening of The Nights of Zayandeh-Rud (Shab-ha-ye Zayandeh-rud, 1990) and A

Time for Love (Nowbate Asheghi, 1990) both by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. A Time for Love

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drew attention from the conservative newspapers for its focus on a love triangle. The critics accused Makhmalbaf of portraying an adulterous relationship and promoting moral corruption (Siavoshi 1997:518). The Nights of Zayandeh-Rud received even sharper criticism for providing a bleak image of post-war Iran and the condition of war veterans. In March 1991, for example, the conservative newspaper Resalat attacked

Makhmalbaf for implicitly suggesting the failure of the revolution (Sadr

2002/1381:270). As Sussan Siavoshi explains, soon after the screening of The Nights of

Zayandeh-Rud, a conservative member of the Guardian Council, Ahmad Jannati, warned against the rise of ‘a creeping movement’ in the name of art, that provides ‘a serious threat to the Islamic Republic, to the committed artists, and to the revolution’

(1997:518). In his speech, Jannati then questioned the approach of the Ministry of

Culture and Islamic Guidance regarding the transnational circulation of Iranian films,

[they] sometimes brag about the support and respect that our film[s] have

received abroad and conclude that art is reviving in Iran. […] Should we be

happy that those who are responsible for corruption in the world are

encouraging us and are showing their admiration? (quoted in Siavoshi

1997:519)

This was only the beginning of a series of censures by the authorities who targeted

Iranian films and their celebration in international film festivals. The conflicts between

Khatami and the conservatives regarding the transnational circulation of Iranian films raised serious concerns for the members of the Iranian film industry when Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, threw his weight against the Ministry of Culture and Islamic

Guidance’s cinematic policies.

For Khamenei, the key endeavour of the Islamic Republic has been the protection of its Islamicate values, and the prevention of ‘popular pressures from

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altering the system’ (Takeyh 2009:118). In addition, Khamenei has always been one of the most powerful voices within the Islamic Republic who warned against the ‘cultural invasion’ of the West and in particular, the United States, which he often refers to as

‘the Enemy’. According to Khamenei, ‘what the enemy is doing is not only a cultural invasion, but also a cultural surprise attack [shabikhun], a cultural plunder [gharat], a cultural massacre [ghatl-e am]’ (quoted in Naficy 2012b:308). Given Khamenei’s standpoint, his siding with the conservatives regarding the Ministry of Culture and

Islamic Guidance’s cultural policies was not a surprise.

In August 1991, in the midst of the controversies regarding the screening of

Makhmalbaf’s films, Khamenei expressed serious concerns about a ‘dangerous plot’ against the Iranian film and media industry in a speech to cultural policymakers

(1991/1370). According to Khamenei, a group of anti-revolution artists and intellectuals who had been marginalized after the revolution and during the war had now found their way into the Iranian film industry, press and broadcast media, targeting ‘the state, the whole system and its revolutionary past’ (1991/1370). Similar to other high-ranking conservatives, Khamenei found the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance responsible for the situation and maligned the ministry’s policies as ineffective, and questioning Farabi’s strategies in various events (1991/1370). In particular, Khamenei remained highly skeptical of Farabi’s strategies regarding the promotion of Iranian films in international film festivals. In another speech among Iranian cultural policymakers in

August 1992, Khamenei stressed that the political intentions of international cinematic events is evident in their lack of interest in the Iranian films that ‘promote the revolutionary spirit’ (1992/1371). He continued,

How can someone ignore this and claim that ‘they don’t have political

intentions’?! Why among all the artworks that received acclaim, not a single

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work with a revolutionary theme has won an award?! Don’t we have films with

revolutionary themes?! [...] I am sure one day they will give a Nobel prize to

one of these anti-Islam, anti-revolution individuals to raise their status in the

world, and to marginalize our faithful artists! Isn’t this called a cultural

invasion? (Khamenei 1992/1371)

The involvement of some of the leading members of the Islamic Republic in these heated debates about the international reception of Iranian cinema put the whole Iranian film industry in a difficult situation. On the one hand were the President and the

Minister of Culture, who found the festivals an important gateway to introduce Iranian

Islamicate culture to the world. On the other hand were the Supreme Leader and an influential member of the Guardian Council, who not only warned against the political intentions of the festivals, but also accused Iranian filmmakers for collaborating with

‘the Enemy’.

Surprisingly, the authorities in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and

Farabi had a justification for the contradictory attitudes of the ruling elite towards the acclaim for Iranian cinema in international film festivals. A few days after Khamenei’s speech, the contrasting views of high rank political figures regarding the presence of

Iranian films in festivals raised some debates in a private meeting between the members of the Iranian Screenwriters Society and representatives of the Ministry of Culture and

Islamic Guidance and Farabi.9

In this meeting, Beheshti expressed his disagreement with critics of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance about the effectiveness of regulative strategies for the

Iranian film industry, and stressed that the regulation of cultural industries is a complex

9 At the beginning of this meeting, Anvar stressed that this was not a press conference and the debates and discussions cannot be published under any circumstances. The transcripts of these discussions were published several years after the meeting. 103

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process that cannot be reduced to utilizing only the suppressive forces. Beheshti also highlighted that the Ministry always sought to implement optimal strategies, taking into account the requirements of that particular period (Heydari 2018/1397:300). Moreover, he pointed out that the two high-rank members of the Iranian ruling elite disagree only over responses. According to Beheshti,

The President highlighted that, overall, our active presence in international

events has benefits for us. The Supreme Leader, considering different measures,

argues that the international film festivals always, inevitably, have political

intentions. We have enough evidence to prove his argument, too. (Heydari

2018/1397:301)

For Beheshti, therefore, both points are equally valid; to support the first point, he explained that ‘the people in the film industry’ agree that the active presence of ‘our cinema’ in international events contributed vastly to the change of ‘their general assumptions’ about ‘us and our cinema’, which had been an ‘immense achievement’

(Heydari 2018/1397:303). Beheshti upheld the second argument by warning the Iranian filmmakers against falling into a ‘popular misperception’ about winning awards in international film festivals. He advised them that,

We should not follow this misperception that the only real achievement is to

win an award [in an international film festival], to consider it as a proof of

success and to assume [festivals’] assessment proves the high-quality of a film.

[…] the filmmakers should not be deceived by [these awards]. (Heydari

2018/1397:302)

Beheshti’s standpoint regarding the significance and value of international awards, in this particular session, draws attention to a slight detour from his earlier plans immediately after the establishment of Farabi; in 1982, as I explained earlier, he 104

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foresaw a successful post-revolutionary cinema whose competitiveness in the world would be evident in the awards and acclaims Iranian films received from international film festivals. A decade later, he argued that filmmakers should no longer rely on the evaluation of film festivals as a measure for their success.

Moreover, the agreement of the authorities over the political intentions of the film festivals did not mean that the state no longer supports the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema. On the contrary, as the debates around the cultural invasion of the country heightened, the significance of cinema as a means of the Iranian state’s public diplomacy became clearer for the authorities. In the same meeting, Mohammad-Mehdi

Heydarian, the head of the Regulation and Evaluation Centre of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance’s Department of Cinematic Affairs, explained this significance based on Khamenei’s speech:

What the Supreme Leader pronounced – considering his spiritual mission

(resalat), our current status in the world and our responsibility about this status

– was a reminder that we have now moved on from the stage of introducing the

quality and capacity of our cinema to the world, as we know based on the

opinions of experts in the field both inside the country and outside. We have

always considered this as our mission since the beginning. It was necessary to

showcase our artistic and technical capabilities and to demonstrate that we are

competitive. But, surely, we want to use this strength to send our message to the

world. We supported the screening of films that promote fine values in the

international film festivals as a part of our mission. We will continue on the

same route. […] We will focus our technical and artistic capabilities on

promoting our ideological values. This is what the Supreme Leader reminds us,

considering our current situation, we have to make most of our capacities.

(Heydari 2018/1397:305)

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The conservatives’ backlash did not put an end to the international flow of Iranian films, but led to the marginalization of those authorities who had contributed vastly to the revival of Iranian cinema and its promotion in the world. In May 1992, Khatami resigned from the Ministry of Culture and Ali Larijani, who had close connections with the conservatives, became the Minister of Culture. In February 2004, Khamenei used his constitutional rights to replace the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcast

Organization (IRIB), Mohammad Hashemi (the President’s brother), with Larijani. The

Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, meanwhile, was given to another conservative, Mostafa Mir-Salim. With these rapid shifts the conservatives, led by the

Supreme Leader, took over the main cultural organizations and put an end to the few months of relative freedom of expression under the influence of Khatami in the post- war era. Moreover, with Khatami’s resignation, the old members of the Ayat Film

Studio in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and Farabi lost their most powerful supporter. Soon after, Anvar also resigned and Beheshti was removed from his position as the head of Farabi.

The intense struggles among different factions of the Iranian ruling elite immediately after the end of the Iran-Iraq War and death of Khomeini were only the beginning of the period of anxiety and uncertainty in all aspects of Iranian society and culture, which continued for the next three decades. At some stages, particularly during the presidency of Khatami (1997-2005), a more cooperative relationship between the state and Iranian intellectuals developed a more open cultural environment. Yet, in certain periods strict rules and regulations, frequently enforced by ‘verbal attacks and physical assaults by vigilante groups’ curbed cultural activities (Siavoshi 1997:510).

Meanwhile, Farabi continued its strategy of promoting a hand-picked selection of

Iranian films in international film festivals, and the engagement of the private sector

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facilitated the movement of a more diverse range of films outside the country. The activities of the private sector remained under the control of the state since all films require a foreign screening permit from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

Nevertheless, at some points Farabi were also accused of colluding with the opponents of the Islamic Republic outside the country. In 2011, for example, Katayun Shahabi, a major distributor and director of Sheherzad Media International, was arrested on charges of supplying films to BBC Persian (Elam-e Khabar 2011/1390). Above all, the

Iranian art-house filmmakers whose films received acclaim at international film festivals remained the main target of a wide range of attacks, from assault in the press, to imprisonment and ban from filmmaking.

Public diplomacy

During the post-war era, the Iranian ruling elite found the establishment of reliable economic international relations to be one of the most effective strategies in order to come out of the economic crisis. This required reform in the area of public diplomacy in order to put an end to the country’s international isolation and soften the ‘external hostility’ towards Iran (Panah 2007:134). Meanwhile, the ‘cultural invasion’ of the

West and the United States was considered a serious threat that had to be confronted beyond the national borders. In that sense, as Panah highlights, the new foreign policy aimed to sanction ‘the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic […] by its alleged role in the confrontation with [global imperialism] (Estekbar-e Jahani) as well as the promotion of the Islamic Republic as the center of the international activities of the struggling masses and the encouragement of Islamic movements’ (Panah 2007:149). It was in this context that the Iranian authorities found in Iranian cinema an effective cultural diplomacy tool to send ‘their message’, to use Heydarian’s words, to the world.

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However, for Khamanei, cinema was far from a perfect medium to promote his perspective as the head of the Islamic Republic. The multiplicity of understandings of an Islamicate cinema and the ongoing intervention of the more pragmatic members of the ruling elite created obstacles for conservatives aiming to take full control of the

Iranian film industry. Moreover, despite the heavy-handed control over cinema, many

Iranian filmmakers managed to keep their distance from the state and maintain a

‘critical edge’ in their films (Naficy 2012b:178). Since the mid-1990s, therefore, two major public diplomacy organizations actively participated in the promotion and circulation of their preferred cinematic products, both under the direct supervision of the

Supreme Leader: the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization (ICRO) and IRIB.

In 1995, ICRO was established to cater for the cultural activities of the Iranian state in foreign countries. As stated on their website, the organization was established after ‘the officials of the Islamic Republic decided to integrate the cultural and propaganda organizations and institutions to follow a unified policy and plan’ (ICRO

Functions 2009). ICRO’s duties include,

Directing and supporting the cultural activities of the overseas non-

governmental sectors; planning for the cultural enlistment of Iranians living

abroad and non-resident Iranians as well as those who have a keen interest in

the Islamic-Iranian culture; ensuring the appropriate execution of cultural

agreements, cultural exchange programs with other countries of the world, and

finally, providing the necessary grounds for the purpose of the signing of

cultural agreements. (ICRO Functions 2009)

A study of the activities of the ICRO reveals that the majority of their projects are based on cultural exchange, agreements and Memorandums of Understanding (MOU). During the past few years, this organization, in conjunction with the Farabi and IRIB, has been

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responsible for organizing Iranian Film Weeks and has exchanged films with broadcast channels in countries such as Russia, China, Malaysia and Tajikistan.

Another major arm of the Islamic Republic’s public diplomacy is IRIB. The constitution of the Islamic Republic outlaws the establishment of private broadcasting networks in the country. According to Article 175 of the constitution,

The freedom of expression and dissemination of thoughts in the Radio and

Television of the Islamic Republic of Iran must be guaranteed in keeping with

the Islamic criteria and the best interests of the country. The appointment and

dismissal of the head of the Radio and Television of the Islamic Republic of

Iran rests with the Leader. A council consisting of two representatives each of

the President, the head of the judiciary branch and the Islamic Consultative

Assembly shall supervise the functioning of this organization. (1989:36)

The IRIB World Service serves as one of the major arms of the state’s media diplomacy, aimed to promote Iranian Islamicate culture to its international audience,

‘expounding the Islamic Republic’s worldview in light of perceived biases in the international news media in particular’ (Westingade 2015:372). In 1994, IRIB regained the right to the international distribution of its programs (Atebai 2003/1382:13). Ever since, Sima Film, which is an affiliated organization of IRIB, has been actively participating in international film festivals and trade fairs to promote its own productions.

Meanwhile, since 2009, the international sanctions against Iran have created some barriers to the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema. Following the United

Nations sanctions, the United States, with its record of sanctioning Iran since 1979, broadened its extraterritorial sanctions, mainly against financial institutions. Based on the new policies, any U.S. dollar-dominated transactions with Iran that involve non-U.S.

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parties ‘will be captured by the U.S. sanctions when presented for clearance through the

U.S financial system’ (Kashdan and Wise 2014). As Allen G. Kashdan and Scott Wise point out, ‘there are very few transactions regarding Iran that the U.S. sanctions regime does not have the potential to impact’ (2014). Even though the export of information and informational materials, including films, is exempted from prohibitions (Luhr 2009:

513), the intensity and breadth of the sanctions have had some impacts on the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema. Vahid Esfandyari, the head of the Iranian

Film Market, explained these impacts in an interview with me. According to Esfandyari,

The new sanctions [from 2009] caused serious problems compared to the

sanctions during the 1980s. We have problem selling and buying films. Even

we cannot book an exhibition space in the film markets. We have mediators in

Dubai, Turkey and Kuwait but once in a while there is a random check and our

money would be blocked. Many corporations are not aware that cultural

exchange is not included in sanctions. Even when they know, they prefer not to

take the risk and trade with an Iranian company. (personal communication)

The state-sponsored organizations have had more challenges, since many of them, including the head of IRIB, have been on the sanctions blacklist. However, Iranian authorities have managed to bypass many of these sanctions not only for the distribution of films but also for other trades. According to Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury’s

Office of Foreign Assets Control, which supervises American enforcement of the sanctions,

The Iranians were using private exchange houses and trading companies in

other countries, masking transactions with fake identities and relying on the

paperless practice, common in parts of the Middle East and Asia, in which

money is transferred informally and often illegally through trustworthy

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couriers. This practice is much more difficult to monitor and disrupt […] and

only works if you have absolute trust of the individuals involved. (Szubin in

Gladstone 2013)

Because they are not easy to trace, exchange, barter and informal money transfers have been alternative ways for the distribution of Iranian films by the government during the past decade.

The emergence of a crisis?

On 11 February 2019, which was the fortieth anniversary of the victory of the revolution, the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani sent a message to the 37th Fajr Film

Festival. In the message, which was read at the closing night ceremony of the event,

Rouhani described cinema as ‘the most complex and effective means for transferring concepts and for cultural development’ (2019/1397). He then referred to Iranian filmmakers and wrote,

The efforts of our wise, humble, humanist and influential filmmakers, has

transformed the old and traditional beliefs about cinema and replaced them with

a pragmatist and progressive approach. This approach [gave rise to a cinema]

that protects our religious and national values, showcases the taste of the

Iranian artists, and promotes the vibrant and creative Iranian culture; a cinema

with the highest standards that is among the most competitive examples in the

international scene. (2019/1397)

Rouhani’s message captures some aspects of the approach of the state towards the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema that emerged in the aftermath of the 1979

Revolution and transformed during the post-war era. As this chapter has demonstrated, despite the debates around the legitimacy of cinema under the Islamic Republic, the

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post-revolutionary authorities found it to be a powerful means by which to introduce the new Islamicate culture to the Iranian population and to the world. To achieve this aim, the post-revolutionary state established a plethora of strategies not only to revive Iranian cinema but to regulate and control the production, circulation, and exhibition of films.

The establishment of Farabi was a turning point in the history of Iranian cinema. Its strategies encouraged local film production and contributed vastly to the introduction of

Iranian cinema to international film festivals. Rouhani’s letter, however, does not capture the ongoing tensions and struggles between the state and Iranian filmmakers over the transnational circulation of their films during the past three decades.

This chapter explored the cultural, socio-political and ideological dimensions of the intervention of the Iranian State in the transnational circulation of films in the

Iranian context. It has argued that the current approach of the Islamic Republic towards the international acclaim received by some of the most prominent Iranian filmmakers constitutes a historical conjuncture that emerged in Iran during the post-war era. The conflicts between the pragmatist requirements for the re-establishment of the Islamic

Republic’s legitimacy and reconstruction of the country on one side, and the core post- revolutionary principles on the other, intensified existing factional struggles among the

Iranian ruling elite. The struggles have been most evident in their approaches to culture and cinema. The immediate outcome was the marginalization of the relatively liberal authorities and policymakers who had played significant roles in the process of the revival of the Iranian film industry in the post-revolution period.

Since the early 1990s, the consensus among different factions over the alleged cultural invasion of the West and in particular the United States added another layer of complexity to the ongoing struggles between. These debates have roots in the Allied intervention in Iran’s cultural sphere during the Second World War. In order to confront

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the Western cultural invasion of the country, the Islamic Republic has established different strategies to hinder the access of the Iranian population to media technologies including satellite TVs, internet and social media as mediums that expose the Iranian population to the plots of the West.

The cultural invasion discourse also intensified tensions between the Iranian filmmakers on one side and the religious figures and the state on the other; tensions that are as old as the history of film production in this context. Since the early 1990s, the

Islamic Republic has targeted Iranian intellectuals, including some of the country’s most prominent art-house filmmakers, for their critical perspective on Iranian society and the performance of the state. Furthermore, as a part of the cultural invasion debates, the Iranian authorities criticized the international film festivals for their political intentions in the selection and celebration of Iranian films.

The opening discussion in this chapter explored the controversies around the screening of films by Farhadi and Panahi at the 71st Cannes Film Festival. This concrete example enabled the identification of the forces that are constitutive of the complex intervention of the Iranian state in transnational film circulation. But more importantly, the example drew attention to the ways the intervention of the state has been undermined not only through the artistic expression of the Iranian filmmakers, but also with the use of technological platforms and alternative modes of film circulation that are outside state control or are in partial relation to it. Tracing different aspects of this complex relationship since the Pahlavi era also captured a glimpse of two lines of enquiry that, as I elaborate shortly, are central for understanding the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation and its contribution to the dynamism of the

Iranian cinematic culture.

During the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the intervention of foreign forces

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in Iranian cultural affairs and the vast circulation of foreign films in the country exposed the Iranian population to a diverse range of cinematic material. Since the revolution, the import of foreign films to the country has been highly regulated. As this chapter has demonstrated, this strategy was a necessary step in order to prevent further damage to the Iranian film industry. At the same time, the control of the flow of foreign films was found to be an effective way to regulate the access of the Iranian audience to what was found inappropriate by state authorities. The establishment of the Islamic Republic, however, has coincided with the vast spread of proliferation technologies and the creation of a wide range of alternative networks of film circulation. As these technologies entered the Iranian context they proved to become effective means to bypass the restrictive regulations that would hinder the access of the Iranian population to a massive range of films. Moreover, the alternative modes of film circulation create different viewing contexts and created different cinematic experiences. The impact of different technological platforms in the construction of viewing experiences in the

Iranian context will be explored in Chapter 4.

Meanwhile, art-house filmmakers continued in the path of the foregoing new- wave filmmakers in maintaining their critical engagement with Iranian politics and society. Their negotiation with the Iranian state, however, has expanded vastly with the increase in their recognition in the international film festivals and the advancement of media technologies. Chapter 3 studies the ways in which the efforts of Iranian filmmakers to facilitate the flow of their works through alternative networks of film circulation can add another layer of meaning and complexity to their films.

The rise of proliferation technologies and various media platforms, therefore, has provided a serious challenge for the Iranian state to regulate the flow of films in and out of the country. The complex and multifaceted efforts of the Iranian state to control

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the spread of these technologies and to regulate the circulation of films through these networks will be discussed in the following chapter.

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Chapter 2: Film Piracy: Technology, Transnational Copyright Regimes, and the Iranian State

The multifaceted intervention of the Iranian state in the film industry during the past four decades has had a significant impact on the dynamics and politics of film distribution and exhibition inside the country. The state’s policies and regulations have aimed to restrict the circulation of two groups of films in particular: first, the significant number of domestic productions that do not receive screening approval and remain banned for crossing the socio-political or moral lines of the Iranian state or certain factions within it. The second group is foreign films, because their circulation is considered to pose a threat both to the domestic film industry and to the cultural and religious values promoted by the Islamic Republic (Gholampur 2007/1386:17). The strict regulations over the import and exhibition of foreign films after the revolution in

1979 had, above all, a great impact on Iranian cinematic culture in the sense that these regulations suddenly restricted the Iranian population’s access to a diverse range of cinematic material that had flooded into the country since the Second World War.

The Iranian Revolution coincided with another phenomenon that emerged during the 1980s and was about to revolutionize the domain of media circulation: the massive transnational flow of cheap proliferation technologies such as video and audio cassettes. As these technologies transcend national borders, their rapid spread posed notable challenges to ‘large-scale, one-way, expensive, centralized’ modes of film and media circulation (Manuel 1993:3). But more importantly, the advancement of these proliferation technologies, followed by the rise of digital platforms, resulted in the emergence of a plethora of alternative networks of circulation, which eventually became central features of cinematic culture in different national contexts (Lobato 2012:19). Chapter 2

This chapter studies the central contribution of alternative networks of film circulation to the dynamism of cinematic culture in the Iranian context. In particular, it focuses on the complex relationship of these networks with the Iranian state, film industry and state-regulated modes of film circulation.

To do so, this chapter opens by focusing on the case of the wide circulation of bootleg copies of The Snowman (Adam Barfi, Davood Mirbagheri, 1995) in the street markets of various cities in Iran prior to its theatrical release. Research commissioned by the Iranian parliament later called this case the first example of ‘film piracy’ in the

Iranian context (Gholampur 2007/1386:15). The term piracy draws attention to a powerful system that shapes the dominant approach towards certain modes of film circulation in many parts of the world. The international intellectual property regimes are powerful systems, which provide mechanisms to regulate and eliminate any practice of film circulation that falls ‘outside the boundaries of copyright law’ (Karaganis

2011a:1). Studying this case in light of the relevant literature on piracy in different national contexts underlines the significance of alternative modes of film circulation, as complex processes that are constitutive of socio-political, cultural and legal forces both at local and international levels. The Snowman was a local production which prompted local debates about copyright. The controversies around its circulation outside of the state regulated networks in the mid-1990s marks a historical conjuncture during which the condensation of domestic and international forces contributed to massive shifts in the approaches of dominant systems – including the Iranian state, judicial system and film industry – towards the use of proliferation technologies as a means of film circulation on national and transnational levels. These massive changes in the Iranian authorities approach allows me to conceptualize piracy in terms of the emergent, which refers to the continuous formation of new meanings, practices, relationships and values

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within a cultural process (Williams 1977:123). This conceptualization draws attention to the context in which the practice of piracy takes place and shifts the focus from its illegality and immorality. Instead, it allows us to perceive a wide range of alternative networks of film circulation in terms of the dynamics of their relationship with the systems that are constantly seeking to adopt, neglect or exclude them.

This chapter explores some key aspects of this complex set of relationships in the Iranian context by answering these questions: How has the spread of proliferation technologies and digital networks posed a challenge to the Iranian state’s control of film circulation? How did the Iranian state adapt its strategies in order to control the flow of films through the networks that are outside its regulation? How did the introduction of international intellectual property debates to the Iranian context contribute to the transformation of the Iranian policymakers’ approach towards the spread of this phenomenon?

To answer these questions, this chapter analyses primary sources, including local laws and policies, Iranian parliament reports and discussions, and international policy guidelines provided mainly by the World Intellectual Property Organization and the World Trade Organization. In addition, it uses the archive of long published Iranian

Film Magazine (Mahname-ye Sinamaei-ye Film) published since 1981, as a secondary source regarding the guidelines and policies adopted during the post-revolution period.

General knowledge of the dynamics of informal film circulation in Iran was obtained via participant observation, particularly during two research trips to Iran in 2014 and

2015.

This chapter brings together two lines of inquiry that are particularly important in understanding the transformation of the Iranian state’s approach towards this phenomenon after the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88). At one level, the chapter provides a

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brief study of the transformation of intellectual property laws in Iran. This account begins with the introduction of intellectual property laws into Iranian legal discourse during the Pahlavi era, and explores the transformation of these laws in relation to massive socio-political and economic shifts after the 1979 revolution and during the post-war era. In addition, this study focuses on several examples of film circulation to explore the complex relationship of these networks with the Iranian film industry and to demonstrate the transformation of the state’s approach towards these practices during the turning points in the country’s contemporary history mentioned above.

This chapter argues that the rise and advancement of proliferation technologies and digital platforms has provided networks that are central to the circulation of a wide range of foreign and Iranian films whose exhibition and distribution inside Iran are heavily regulated by the state. The development of these regulations was initiated during the post-revolution period with the aim of eliminating traces of the ‘culture of idolatry’, a common term used by the Iranian authorities, which referred to the

‘mediawork and culture resulting from the introduction of Western media and modernity’ (Naficy 2012:6). This chapter argues that during the post-revolutionary period, the concept of intellectual property raised controversies among religious figures and was eventually found invalid from the perspective of Islamic law. Instead, the strategies used by the Iranian state to control the circulation of films through alternative networks has been shaped as part of censorship strategies. The state’s approach, however, was radically transformed in relation to the shifts in the Iranian legal system and film industry in the post-war era (from 1988). During that period, the necessity of joining global markets resulted in the re-introduction of intellectual property laws.

Meanwhile, the wide circulation of bootleg copies of domestic cinematic productions posed economic threats to the flourishing Iranian film industry. This chapter argues that

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Iran’s strategies for regulating the circulation of films through alternative networks inside the country have become more centralized with the re-introduction of the intellectual property laws into the Iranian legal system. However, these laws are not effective when it comes to the circulation of foreign films inside the country or the transnational circulation of Iranian films, since Iran has not yet become a signatory of any international intellectual property treaties. This study demonstrates that alternative modes of film circulation are constantly shifting cultural processes that constitute instances of political contestation and resistance.

Overall, this chapter sheds light on the role of informal networks of film circulation in providing access to foreign films in the Iranian context where their theatrical release and formal distribution is heavily regulated by the state. In addition, the discussion in this chapter provides a background for understanding the contribution of digital technologies to the transnational circulation of Iranian films, which will be explored in the following chapters.

Film piracy: an emergent cultural process, or a threat for the Iranian film industry?

In February 1995, Davood Mirbagheri’s The Snowman (Adam Barfi) was screened in a private session of the 13th Fajr Film Festival in Tehran before it was removed from the festival program. Set in Turkey, The Snowman narrates the story of Abbas (played by prominent comedian Akbar Abdi), an Iranian man who dreams about living in the

United States, and is prepared to take significant risks to obtain an American ‘green card’. After several visa rejections, Abbas meets a group of Iranians who connect him with a human trafficker, who agrees to smuggle Abbas into the United States. The

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process of trafficking Abbas to the United States, however, involves Abbas adopting the attire of a woman and entering into a sham marriage with an American citizen.

The Snowman was one of the first films to cross several socio-political lines of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema: it brought back several of the key elements of the tough-guy (jaheli) genre, the popular cinematic mode of the 1950s and 1960s (Naficy

2011b:314).10 Frequent scenes from the film are set in restaurants and bars where the main characters consume alcohol. The Snowman also includes singing and dancing, and above all, a cross-dressing protagonist who appears as an unveiled, coquettish woman.

All of these elements violated the heteronormative values of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema and society. The return of Abbas to Iran and his romance with Donya, the modest and veiled housekeeper of his residence, eventually restores the heteronormative and anti-American values of cinema under the Islamic Republic. However, the cross- dressing theme of the film was controversial enough for the conservative-led Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to ban the film. Three years later, after the election of the relatively liberal Mohammad Khatami as President, the Ministry reissued The

Snowman’s exhibition permit. The public screening of the film was a great success. The

Snowman made over 505 billion rials (around USD 3 million) at the box-office and became the bestselling film in the history of Iranian cinema up to that point (Adam Barfi

2006/1377:17).

Concurrent to The Snowman controversy was a series of incidents that raised serious concerns for the authorities regarding the future of the entire Iranian film industry. Before its theatrical release, low-quality bootleg VHS copies of The Snowman

10 The tough guy genre did not remain homogeneous during the years that it was popular, however, Hamid Naficy has identified some of the basic components of this genre that remained stable during its evolution. Some of these elements are: ‘formulaic plots involving male rivalry, jealousy and revenge, often over women and turf; […] pleasurable depiction of the tough guy lifestyle and exploits in their favourite hangouts, such as in tea-houses, night clubs, bars and the streets, involving their favourite dances, musical numbers, songs and brawls; adherence to specific codes of dress, language and behaviour […] that set the good guys apart from the bad guys’. (see Naficy 2001:148) 121

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found their way into the homes of many Iranians across the country. There had been previous incidents in which bootlegs of various banned Iranian films, including Mohsen

Makhmalbaf’s The Nights of Zayandeh-rood (Shabhaye Zayandeh-rood, 1990) and

Time for Love (Nowbat-e Asheghi, 1990), were circulated on videocassettes across the country. However, the scale of circulation and the demand for The Snowman was unprecedented. The rumours regarding the cross-dressing of one of the most prominent

Iranian comedians, Akbar Abdi, positively impacted the film’s popularity and contributed to its success.

Following The Snowman, bootleg copies of other Iranian films, such as Through the Olive Trees (Zir-e Derakhtan-e Zeitoon, Abbas Kiarostami, 1994), The Circle

(Dayereh, Jafar Panahi, 2000) and Shokaran (Hemlock, Behrouz Afkhami, 2000), rapidly circulated, sometimes even before their official theatrical release. By the late

1990s, street vendors who sold bootlegs of the most recent releases could be found in every corner of different cities across Iran. Sometimes the street vendors sold the video

CDs of the films right next to the movie theatres in which they were screened. The street markets also became sites for locating Iranian films that did not obtain screening approval.

This increase in demand, from the mid-1990s, for bootleg copies of new Iranian films gradually gained traction in the press. Reporting drew attention to this new phenomenon, underscoring the way that it represented a serious threat to the Iranian film industry. In 1998, the Film Monthly Magazine (Mahname-ye Sinamaei-ye Film) published a short article entitled ‘Copyright’, in which the author constructed a case for fighting the proliferation of illegitimate copying of Iranian films (1998/1377:18).

A section of this article discussed the circulation of Jafar Panahi’s film The Circle while it was waiting for screening approval. As mentioned in the article, that year, Panahi

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wrote a letter to the Deputy of Cinematic Affairs at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic

Guidance requesting a legal intervention. In his reply to Panahi, the Deputy stated that the laws addressing the intellectual property of Iranian filmmakers were not stringent enough, and that the Ministry was aiming to revise its policies (Copyright

1998/1377:18).

By the early 2000s, Iranian television and newspapers were filled with discussions about film piracy (ghachagh-e film11): the phenomenon that caused anxiety among the authorities and had now become a serious threat for the Iranian film industry.

The news covered the efforts of the police to battle this phenomenon. Iranian national television and home-video products included short clips in their programs with the aim of raising moral awareness about piracy. And newspapers published interviews with authorities discussing the alarming rate of piracy and the amendments in the laws and policies that could help with controlling its spread (Gholampur 2007/1386:7) . In 2007, research commissioned by the Iranian parliament highlighted that the circulation of The

Snowman was the first example of film piracy in Iran (Gholampur 2007/1386:15).

The controversy of The Snowman raises a number of important questions about film piracy in Iran. To what extent does the Parliamentary report identify a new phenomenon? Why was this perceived to be a new threat to the Iranian film industry?

Before turning to these key questions, it is important to provide an overview of the scholarly debates around piracy. In this research, piracy refers to any form of

‘ubiquitous increasingly digital practice of copying that falls outside the boundaries of copyright law’ (Karaganis 2011b:1). This definition of piracy blurs distinctions between a wide range of practices, from large-scale commercial bootlegging to personal copying

11 Piracy does not have a literal translation in Persian. The word-for-word translation of the term ghachagh-e film is film smuggling or film trafficking, which implies some sort of border crossing. A report published by the Iranian Parliament defines ghachagh-e film as, ‘the illegitimate copying, import, and export of audio-visual material despite the legitimacy of the content’. (Gholampur 2007/1386: 5) 123

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with the use of cheap proliferation technologies. At the same time, this definition underscores the interrelationship between two distinct domains: first, the formal modes of circulation and the policies and politics that determine that process; second, law enforcement and in particular copyright. According to the World Intellectual Property

Organization,12

creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright

range from books, music, painting, sculpture, and films, to computer programs,

databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawing. (2003)

The fixed and universal definition of copyright, as Joe Karaganis points out, has shaped the majority of literature on piracy sponsored by governments and industries particularly during the 1980s and 1990s (2011b:7). These accounts understood piracy as a serious threat for the formal industries, estimate the rate of financial loss in different contexts and provide recommendations for improving the deficiencies of global copyright law (Karaganis 2011b:7-8). The earlier industry-sponsored research, according to Karaganis, focused mainly on the United States and the scale of financial loss in US-based industries, rather than studying the impact of piracy in different contexts (2011b:11). In the same vein, Ramon Lobato highlights that the most common approach to film piracy is one that understands it as intellectual property theft (Lobato

2008:20). Intellectual property, according to World Intellectual Property Organization, refers to,

[t]he creations of mind: inventions; literary and artistic works; and symbols,

names and images used in commerce. Intellectual property is divided into two

categories: Industrial Property, which includes patents for inventions,

12 The World Intellectual Property Organization is a self-funding agency of the United Nations, with 191 member states. It is a global forum for intellectual property services, policy, information and cooperation. 124

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trademarks, industrial designs and geographical indications; Copyright that

covers literary works (such as novels, poems and plays), films, music, artistic

works (e.g., drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures) and architectural

design. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their

performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and broadcasters in

their radio and television programs. (2003)

The intellectual property regimes, as Lobato points out, see ‘creativity as a form of capital’ and consider copyright as ‘a regulatory mechanism that oversees this property system ensuring that the market remains healthy’ (Lobato 2008:20). According to this approach, copyright ‘not only should be defended but also legislatively boosted and pedagogically entrenched’ (Lobato 2008:20). In recent years, on the other hand, a growing body of literature has provided multidisciplinary accounts of a wide range of circulatory practices concentrating on the particularities of different countries (Larkin

2008, Karaganis 2011a, Sundaram 2009a, Wang et al. 2003).

Media Piracy in Emerging Economies (2011a), for example, is the outcome of a project in which thirty-five researchers from nine institutions explore film, music and software piracy in South Africa, Russia, Brazil, Bolivia, India and Mexico. The volume focuses on multinational and local policies and legislations against piracy, and provides a wider framework for exploring pirating practices ‘in relation to economic development and changing media economies’ (Karaganis 2011b:1). Concentrating on the particular characteristics of these practices in each context, this collective research argues that in addition to global copyright regimes, ‘the organization of piracy and the politics of enforcement are also strongly marked by local factors, from the power of domestic copyright industries, to the structure and role of the informal economy, to differing traditions of jurisprudence and policing’ (Karaganis 2011b:1-2). Media Piracy

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in Emerging Economies, therefore, draws attention to the articulation of domestic and international legal and economic forces that contribute to the emergence and transformation of pirate practices. A pirating practice in one context, and in relation to particular laws and policies, might not be considered illegitimate under different circumstances, whether it be a different context or at a different historical period in the same country.

Lawrence Liang takes a step further and draws attention to the limitations of any study that is based strictly on legal analysis of piracy in different contexts (Liang

2005a). In Porous Legalities and Avenues of Participation, he points out that the popular discourse tends to narrate stories about copyright infringement and piracy that are ‘designed to induce “shock and awe” response at the alarming rate of piracy and illegality that exists, especially in the non-western countries’ (Liang 2005a:6). However, the research in the field with a focus on this practice in more ‘unfamiliar’ cities, from

New Delhi to São Paulo, demonstrates that the idea of illegality does not raise a sense of anxiety, but of familiarity (Liang 2005a:6). In that sense, Liang sees media piracy as a part of the intricate illegal/informal urban experience and argues that,

the simplistic accounts of widespread illegality in terms of efficiency, morality,

disorder or corruption, etc. would only perform an epistemic violence which

does little to aid our understanding of urban experience and the ways in which

people create avenues of participation. (Liang 2005a:7)

Liang’s emphasis on the limitations of the legal approach to piracy does not suggest the insignificance of law in interpreting this phenomenon. On the contrary, as he highlights elsewhere, law plays ‘a large role in regulating the terms of cultural production and cultural practices, and determines the ways they circulate’ (Liang 2003:2). What he is concerned with is to move beyond recognizing law as an autonomous discipline and

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move towards ‘an interdisciplinary practice that draws from ethnography, cultural studies, as well as law and society scholarship’ to unravel the relationship between law and culture (Liang 2003:8). In that sense, Liang calls for attention to social, cultural, economic and legal forces, at both local and international levels, which contribute to the emergence and transformation of pirate practices in different contexts.

Meanwhile, Lobato draws attention to the significance of pirate networks as

‘informal systems of film circulation’ (Lobato 2012:1). Piracy, as Lobato points out, is central to everyday ‘practices of film viewing’, yet remains ‘marginal to film studies as a discipline’ (2012:1). The emphasis on the informality of pirate networks as a means of film circulation is a strategic ‘analytical distinction – between formal and informal distribution’ (Lobato 2012:4, emphasis in original). Formality, for Lobato, ‘refers to the degree to which industries are regulated, measured, and governed by state and corporate institutions’ (2012:4). Any film circulation practice that is ‘outside this sphere or in partial articulation with it’ belongs to realm of informal distribution (Lobato 2012:4).

This distinction, however, does not imply the marginality of the pirate networks compared to their formal counterparts. Rather, it takes into account a diverse range of informal film circulation practices as central components of cinematic cultures in different parts of the world (Lobato 2012:4). Moreover, Lobato’s approach to piracy as an informal film circulation practice stresses its complex relationship with the formal film industry. Borrowing from Lobato’s methodology, this chapter unfolds first by drawing a clear-cut distinction between formal and informal practices, and then seeks to demonstrate how these distinctions are blurred, particularly in the Iranian context

(2012:4). This brief review of literature on piracy underscores two key points: first, the centrality of digital platforms and proliferation technologies for piracy practices makes it an increasingly transnational phenomenon. As these technologies transcend national

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borders and reach different contexts, they facilitate and accelerate the transnational circulation of films. Following this, international copyright regimes also transcend the borders and transform in response to local legal discourses. Second, when considered as an informal film circulation practice, piracy is deeply interconnected with the dynamics of formal film circulation, which in its turn, is impacted by and contributes to the socio- political, cultural and economic forces.

When it comes to the Iranian context, informal film circulation is a relatively understudied field of enquiry. The legal dimension of piracy has been discussed in a body of scholarly works that focus on the Iranian legislator’s view of copyright and intellectual property. This chapter engages with the legal debates on piracy, but also seeks to move beyond them in order to provide an analysis that takes into account the socio-political, cultural and economic forces that contribute to the emergence and transformation of informal practices of film circulation in the Iranian context.

The report on piracy commissioned by the Iranian parliament mentioned that the following categories had the highest demand in the street markets of Iran:

1) Bootleg copies of the [Iranian] titles that spread during or prior to their

theatrical release;

2) Obscene or sexually explicit movies, pirated foreign films, legitimate or

illegitimate music and music videos, scandalous videos of public figures;

3) [Iranian] films that have been banned for various reasons;

4) Films that are partially censored in their theatrical release. (Gholampur

2007/1386:17)

This report draws attention to an important aspect of the relationship between informal and formal film circulation that is central for understanding this phenomenon in the

Iranian context. That is, the informal networks have become the only means to facilitate 128

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the flow of a wide range of cinematic material, including foreign movies and banned or censored domestic productions, the access to which has been highly restricted by the

Iranian state and through its interference with formal film circulation.

Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad provides a study of the circulation of officially banned

Iranian films in Watching the Forbidden: Reception of Banned Films in Iran (2016). He traces the flow of these films through various networks, from video cassettes, to satellite

TV channels, to DVDs and online platforms. Zeydabadi-Nejad suggests that watching banned Iranian films cannot necessarily be categorized as film piracy for two reasons: first, there is no alternative way to have access to the banned films since their circulation is prohibited according to the rules of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic

Guidance. Second, the Iranian state is not bound to international intellectual property law; therefore, ‘Iranians are not breaking the laws as far as copyright law is concerned’

(Zeydabadi-Nejad 2016:100). Instead, Zeydabadi-Nejad sees informal film circulation in Iran as a form of resistance against the strict cultural regulations and censorship posed by the Iranian state.

While Zeydabadi-Nejad’s account of the circulation of banned films draws attention to the significance of the state’s censorship strategies, it would be simplistic to completely ignore the impact of international intellectual property regimes on the dynamics of informal film circulation in Iran. Here, I seek to shed further light on some intricate aspects of informal film circulation not only by taking into account the way in which the transformation of intellectual property laws in Iran has contributed to changes in the state’s approach towards informal film circulation that is broader than providing access to banned films.

The conjunctural approach provides a strong methodological and conceptual framework to understand the dynamics of informal film circulation in Iran without

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reducing this complex phenomenon to a single cause or a primary contradiction. The historical periodization explained in the previous chapter helps with identifying the ways that the intersection of socio-political, economic and legal forces contributed to the spread and transformation of this phenomenon in the Iranian context. In addition, my analysis is underpinned by a conceptual framework that draws from Raymond

Williams’ analysis of residual and emergent practices. In Marxism and Literature,

Williams argues that any sophisticated analysis of a cultural process should not only attend to the dominant system, but also has to identify and explore its interrelations with the emergent and the residual (1977). The residual, as Williams explains, ‘has been effectively formed in the past, but it is still active in the cultural process, not only and not often at all as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present’

(1977:122). Even though the residual was formed in the past, it still manifests itself through certain experiences and practices in the present. But this manifestation is at some distance from the dominant process and therefore cannot be expressed or understood within its framework (Clarke 2017:82).

The emergent, on the other hand, refers to the

new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of

relationship [that] are continually being created. But it is exceptionally difficult

to distinguish between those which are really elements of some new phase of

the dominant culture […] and those which are substantially alternative or

oppositional to it. (Williams 1977:123)

The emergent, as John Clarke points out, ‘rarely looks like the cultural or political forms that we imagine or expect. It never quite takes the form of what we think we will see, but it is critical for any analysis of the conjuncture’ (Clarke 2017:82). The recognition and analysis of the emergent, unlike the residual, is a challenge since it is

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difficult to understand whether the emergent is going to be a part of the dominant order or an alternative or opposition to it. Nevertheless, a major step in an analysis of a cultural process is to identify the residual and the emergent: the practices that the dominant system ‘neglects, excludes and represses or simply fails to recognize’

(Williams 1977:125). According to Stuart Hall,

both residual and emergent cultural forms are important, not only in

constituting moments of contestation with and resistance to the dominant

cultural forms, but also in constituting the ongoing process by which the

dominant cultural forms are able to change and adapt to new circumstances

precisely by incorporating such residual and emergent forms. (emphasis added

Hall 2016:50)

In that sense, the emergent and the residual are not only important because they provide a more complex picture of the cultural process as a whole, but also because they reveal the hidden and less explored aspects of the dominant system. This focus on the residual and emergent in the Iranian context builds upon the conjunctural analysis conducted in the last chapter. Here, however, the emphasis shifts from understanding the state as the central power controlling, or attempting to control, film circulation and instead turns to consider alternate networks, in which we can see both the residual and emergent dynamics at work.

The Snowman’s case reveals the significance of this conceptual framework for studying Iran’s informal film circulation. This concrete example is particularly important for drawing attention to the historical period in which informal film circulation was labelled as piracy in Iran for the first time. As Hall et al. explain,

[l]abels are important, especially when applied to dramatic public events. They

not only place and identify those events; they assign events to a context.

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Thereafter the use if the label is likely to mobilise this whole referential

context, with all its associated meanings and connotations. (Hall et al. 1978:23)

As the opening example of this chapter demonstrates, when the term piracy entered the

Iranian media and public debates, it was not just a new way to describe the rapid spread of bootleg copies of films in the country; the term brought with it all the anxieties about the illegality and immorality of pirate practices which has been the product of international intellectual property law enforcement debates. Ever since, piracy has become a popular term in the Iranian media not only for its capacity to refer to an emerging phenomenon but also for its ability to connote a wide range of practices as

‘oppositional rather than alternative’ to the formal modes of film circulation (Williams

1977:124). By aligning informal film circulation with international legal discourse, the

Iranian media contributed hugely to the emergence of a whole set of new reactions to this phenomenon. What has been missing in the heated debates about piracy, however, is an account of the conditions that determined its development and rapid spread in the

Iranian context.

The case of The Snowman takes us to a point where we can think of piracy in terms of the emergent. That is, a process that appeared at the historical conjuncture during which the articulation of domestic and international forces contributed to radical shifts in the relationship between the dominant systems, including the Iranian state, judicial system, police and film industry on one side and informal practices of film circulation on the other. Understanding piracy in terms of the emergent shifts the focus from the illegality and immorality of certain practices, and draws attention to the complex and multifaceted relations within the whole process of film circulation that result in the exclusion or neglect of alternative networks by the dominant systems. This conceptualization allows a deeper engagement with piracy in relation to the wider

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historical conjuncture in which it appeared in the Iranian context and in terms of the interplay of socio-political, cultural and legal forces that determined its existence and transformation.

Another key point for understanding any emergent cultural process is that it ‘is never only a matter of immediate practice’ (Williams 1977:126). As Williams highlights,

it depends crucially on new forms and adaptation of forms. Again and again

what we have to observe is in effect a pre-emergence, active and pressing but

not yet fully articulated, rather than the evident emergence which could be more

confidently named. (1977:126)

This characteristic of the emergent highlights the importance of tracing the pre-history of piracy during earlier historical periods, in order to study its relationship with the state- or industry-sponsored modes of circulation, as a necessary step towards understanding the dynamics and politics of film circulation in the Iranian context.

Intellectual property in Iran during the Pahlavi era

The concept of intellectual property was first introduced to the Iranian judicial system during Reza Shah’s legal reforms (1926–36). Inspired by the French system, the reforms aimed to remove the traditional Shari’a discourse in order to establish a predominantly secular legal system (Mir-Hosseini 2010:327-328). The implementation of the reforms in the legal system, as Ziba Mir-Hosseini points out, excluded the clergy,

‘alienated them and put them on the defensive’ (Mir-Hosseini 2010:328). Articles 245 to 248 of the Iranian Public Law governed the intellectual property rights of artists and authors but they could not be made effective (Rokni Dezfouli 2006/1385:61). In

November 1930, the Iranian National Consultative Assembly (majles-e shora-ye melli)

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passed the proposal for the bilateral intellectual property agreement between Iran and

Germany (Nemati 2012/1391:127). The agreement enforced a requirement that both countries recognize the intellectual property rights held for industrial, literary and artistic works produced by the citizens of the other country (Nemati 2012/1391:127) .

Besides some minor adjustments, the Iranian legal system remained the same between 1941 and 1979 under the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah (Mir-Hosseini

2010:329). The Protection of Authors’, Composers’ and Artists’ Rights Law was passed in 1969 (Motalebi 2009/1387:34). According to this law, authors, composers and artists had financial rights over their artistic works for a period of 30 years. Article 22 of the law, however, stated that the economic rights would be protected only for artistic and literary works that had been ‘created, distributed and published for the first time in Iran’

(1970/1349). This meant that neither the Iranian works circulated outside the country nor the international artistic products circulated in Iran were protected under this law.

The Translation and Reproduction of Books, Periodicals and Audio Works Act was approved in 1973 as an amendment to Article 22 of the Protection of Authors’,

Composers’ and Artists’ Rights Law. According to Articles 2 and 3 of the Act, the permission of the copyright owner was needed for reproduction in the same language and format.

The process of revising the laws was put on hold in the late 1970s due to the upheavals of the revolution (1973/ 1352). The loopholes in the intellectual property laws and lack of international agreements could potentially have led to unauthorized circulation of Iranian and non-Iranian films. Until the 1980s, however, this had not yet become a major concern, mainly because the technological platforms that facilitate the cheap reproduction and copy of audio-visual materials were not available to the public.

This brief introduction to the development of intellectual property discourse in Iran

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during the Pahlavi period is central for understanding the transformations that occurred after the establishment of the Islamic Republic. But before moving into that period, it is important to focus on a small-scale form of informal film exhibition that can be considered a notable example of this emerging process before the arrival of videocassettes.

Chopped films: screening destroyed film prints in Tehran

The vast circulation of Iranian films through informal networks during the 1990s brought piracy to the centre of cultural and economic policy discussions as well as into the everyday lives of people in Iran. What often remains overshadowed by the intricacies of a present moment and the legal and policy debates is the pre-history of piracy practices: the earlier ways of bypassing rules and regulations of film circulation, the socio-cultural and economic conditions that determined their existence, and their role in shaping more recent practices. A study of literature available on piracy in different contexts reveals that informal film circulation is in fact as old as the commercial film itself (Segrave 2003, Lobato 2012). In Piracy in the Motion Picture

Industry, Kerry Segrave traces complaints about ‘film thievery’ from United States film production studios since 1933 (2003:55). As Segrave explains, early practices included stealing and reselling film prints, bootlegging old prints and a practice that is commonly known as ‘jackrabbit exhibition’ (2003:55). Jackrabbit exhibitors were those who ‘put on an unapproved screening of films in violation of distribution agreements’ (Lobato

2012:14). The screening of bootleg material in Iran also has a long history. In his study of the circulation of Hollywood film prints in the Middle East, Kaveh Askari brings into attention some informal practices in the Middle East that raised concerns for regional rights owners of Hollywood films (2017). It is not the aim of this research to trace all

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the examples of informal film circulation in the Iranian context that took place in different historical periods but to take a detour from the legal approach to piracy in order to explore the impacts of this phenomenon in shaping different cinematic cultures.

An interesting case of informal film circulation in Iran, which bears similarities to the jackrabbit exhibitions in the United States and Europe, took place during the 1960s and

1970s. The data collected for this section is primarily based on my interviews with Aran

Javidani (an Iranian-Dutch film collector and researcher) in February 2016, unless otherwise noted. The case is about the attempts of a film student who worked in a distribution company to revive and screen destroyed film prints in Tehran.

The easy flow of non-Iranian films into the country, hand-in-hand with the growth of the dubbing industry and opening of several movie theatres in different parts of Tehran, resulted in the dominance of foreign films during the second Pahlavi era

(1925–79). By the mid-1960s, large film studios that used to export their movies to Iran via Beirut opened their own offices in Tehran. Companies such as Paramount Pictures,

Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and 20th Century Fox opened their offices in

Tehran (see Naficy 2011b: 422) and special theatres were even assigned to screen the films of specific companies. For example, Shahre-Farang cinema screened only

Columbia and 20th Century Fox movies, and Paramount productions were screened in

Cine Monde theatre.

Royalties were the only effective means for the foreign film companies and their distributers to control the regional flow of the films. To prevent any form of illegitimate re-distribution and exhibition of the release prints, they had to be destroyed in front of a representative of the distribution company. According to Javidani, the representatives of foreign distribution companies were obliged to destroy the release prints of the films by cutting them into four pieces with an axe. However, instead of disposing of the chopped

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prints, the representatives illicitly sold them for the price of 50 Iranian rials (less than

USD 1) per film reel to a student named Ahmad Jourghanian (personal communication

2016). Jourghanian was a film student who had a junior job in one of the distribution companies where he also collected posters, stills and flyers of films. He bought the remains of the release prints and spent his evenings repairing them on a Moviola.13

He gradually created an exceptional collection of films, including 1500 titles or 10,000 reels. From 1969, he started renting the repaired release prints, which later came to be known as ‘chopped films’ (Film-haye Tabari), to university film centres in Tehran. He later registered a distribution company called Talash (literally meaning ‘effort’) Film and booked venues to screen low quality films for half price. These sessions, which usually ran on Friday mornings, became famous among students and young artists.

Although many of the screening events at universities were shut down as a part of the

Pahlavi state’s efforts to supress the pre-revolutionary student movement, the screening of chopped films continued in theatres and university film clubs until 1981, when the post-revolutionary state took over the monopoly of the import and screening of foreign films (Baharloo 2013/1392:11).

The exhibition and circulation of the chopped films underlines some aspects of the interrelations between the formal modes of film circulations and their informal counterparts. The changes in the cultural policies and the dominance of foreign films in the Iranian film market were an important prerequisite, without which chopped films could have never come into existence. Their popularity, however, does not necessarily represent a form of resistance or erosion of state control over film circulation. Rather, the chopped film phenomenon was an alternative practice that determined the circulation of films beyond the formal networks of film distribution. Meanwhile, the

13 Moviola is a corporate name but the term generally refers to the device that ‘allowed for the separate editing of picture and sound in parallel to each other’. (Crittenden 1995:13) 137

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chopped film phenomenon belonged to what Lobato calls the shadow or informal economy of cinema; it was a profitable endeavour but not for corporations or the state

(2012). As Jourghanian mentioned in an interview with Faranak Arta, the re-distribution of the chopped films was such a profitable business that in around two years he managed to buy a house in Tehran to accommodate his parents and siblings (Arta

2004/1382). Even though the screening of chopped films was among the earlier examples of informal film circulation, the role of technology in the emergence of this phenomenon is still significant. It was Jourghanian’s access to a Moviola, a technology that ‘saved enormous amount of time and money’ in the editing process, that brought the chopped films into existence.

Above all, the study of the chopped films phenomenon in relation to the later examples of informal film circulation and piracy in the Iranian context, underscores the necessity of paying attention to historical conjunctures in analysing informal film circulation in the Iranian context. The chopped films gradually ceased to exist in the early years after the Islamic Revolution due to the imposition of new regulations controlling the import and exhibition of foreign films. However, this would soon be replaced by other informal practices that were highly determined by socio-political, economic, cultural and economic shifts in the Iranian context and the rapid spread of cheap proliferation technologies.

The post-revolution era: intellectual property from the Islamic law perspective

The 1979 Revolution brought a wave of massive changes in different sectors within the

Iranian state, including the legal system. Soon after the revolution, the newly established Islamic Republic initiated the process of re-introducing Shari’a codes to the

Iranian legal system and society. Article 2 of the post-revolution Iranian Constitution

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states that ‘the Islamic Republic is a system based on faith’ in some core principles, including:

5) one God, the exclusive attribution of sovereignty and the legislation of law

to Him, and the necessity of surrender to His commands

6) divine inspiration and its foundational role in the articulation of the laws

7) resurrection and its constructive role in explanation of laws

8) the justice of God in creation and legislation.

The re-introduction of Shi’a norms, however, was not a return to the classical notions that were removed from the legal system during the rule of Reza-Shah. As Ziba Mir-

Hosseini points out, ‘the judiciary has retained not only many of the legal concepts and laws of the Pahlavi era, but also the notion of a centralized and unified legal system’

(Mir-Hosseini 2010:334). The blending of Shari’a and secular laws resulted in chaos and uncertainties in the Iranian juridical system, to the point that sometimes ‘courts were forced to choose among available legal forces in an eclectic manner’ (Zubaida in

Mir-Hosseini 2010:334). The claim of intellectual property as a legitimate and valid right in the Islamic jurisprudence perspective was among the issues that raised serious debates.

Many Islamic jurists agree that intellectual property is a modern concept and that none of the primary sources of Islamic law, namely the Quran and the tradition of the prophet (Sunnah), have discussed it before. Its legitimacy therefore needs to be decided by Islamic jurists, based on the ‘common interests and customs of their time’

(Orf-e Mamul) (Gorji 2001/1380:12). Khomeini in particular was among the high- ranking clerics who questioned the concept from the Islamic law perspective. According to Khomeini, intellectual property is about the ‘concealment of knowledge’, which is not acceptable in a society ruled under Islamic laws. Concealment, as he explains, 139

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prevents the circulation of knowledge and leads to backwardness in the Islamic society

(Rahimi and Soltani 2006/1385:138). From another perspective, however, intellectual property is justified under the Islamic law as much as the rights of ownership of other forms of property. Violating property rights, as the second group of religious experts argue, causes unrest and insecurity in society and therefore is prohibited (Salehi

2011/1390:70). Even though there was disagreement among clerics, the Iranian judiciary system enacted no specific rules regarding copyright and intellectual property during the first decade after the revolution and under the leadership of Khomeini.

The Islamic Revolution, videocassettes, and the purification policies

In Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India, Peter Manuel draws attention to notable shifts in the patterns of ‘control, production, content, and consumption’ that were results of the spread of accessible and cheap media during the

1980s (Manuel 1993:2). As he highlights, ‘inexpensive, grassroots-based micro media’ such as cassettes soon became significant alternatives to the ‘large-scale, one-way, expensive, centralized forms of mass media’ (Manuel 1993:3). Manuel’s account is important not only because he provides a meticulous description of the rise of cassette culture in North India, but also for his holistic approach: he moves beyond a simple description of musical developments and brings together various theoretical perspectives such as ethnomusicology, economics and media studies, to provide a rich analysis of the socio-cultural impacts of the spread of cassettes in the context of his study. For Manuel, the most significant characteristic of the socio-technological developments during the 1980s ‘is its dramatic contrast with the period before the advent of cassettes’ (Manuel 1993:37). The impact of the rapid dispersal of cassettes on the Indian commercial music market, regional music, and in mobilizing socio-political

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movements was so significant that Manuel calls this phenomenon the ‘cassette revolution’.

Audiocassettes entered Iran during the late 1960s, followed by the arrival of videocassettes less than a decade later. Similar to India and many other contexts, they changed the structure of the media market and shaped a wide range of new and sometimes unique experiences. At some points these technologies provided opportunities for the urban population to have access to otherwise inaccessible audio- visual material or to bypass the rules and regulations of the Iranian state. At other times, they created effective parallel modes of circulation that facilitated the rapid flow of materials around the country and beyond. The cassette culture indeed revolutionized the media experience for the Iranian citizens during a very special historical conjuncture.

The peculiarity of the media experience in Iran after the spread of cassette tapes lies in the coincidence of their arrival in the country with the Islamic Revolution. The most notable connection is perhaps the circulation of recorded sermons of the oppositional leaders, including Khomeini and Ali Shariati, one of the most influential ideologues of the Iranian Revolution, on audiocassettes. During the fourteen years

(November 1964 to February 1979) that Khomeini lived in exile, smuggled pamphlets and cassettes of his speeches were the only means of communication between him and his followers. According to Annabelle Sreberny-Mohammadi and Ali Mohammadi, during the mid-1970s, when the good relations between Iran and Iraq attracted more than 130,000 Iranian pilgrims to the religious cities in Iraq, a wave of Khomeini’s tapes were smuggled into Iran from Najaf and were widely circulated in mosques (1994:120).

By 1977, sales of music tapes declined as the circulation of ‘international revolutionary songs’ and ‘religious and politically oriented material’ increased (Sreberny and

Mohammadi 1994:121). The spread of these cassettes of during the late 1960s and

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1970s became an important and successful strategy for mobilizing the revolution, but did not impact the music market at the beginning. Instead, the spread of Khomeini’s sermons and speeches on cassettes prepared the society for an upcoming revolution. The revolution later led to an even more peculiar use of videocassettes, and shaped a new cinematic experience for the next generations.

Immediately after the revolution, the Iranian state initiated a series of rapid and radical changes in the economic, legal and socio-cultural spheres, to ensure that they were brought into line with the core ideologies of the Islamic Republic. One of the key aspects was a series of changes in the Iranian film industry. The aim of the post- revolutionary regime was not to call a halt to the existence of cinema but to make use of it for pedagogic purposes. Prior to establishing their new cultural policies, however, the post-revolutionary authorities had to purge cinema of what they believed to be the profanity and corruption of the Pahlavi regime. This included not only the depiction of sexual themes and unveiled women, but also the depiction of Western culture, values and influences.

In his analysis of the impact of the Islamic Revolution on the Iranian film industry, Naficy explains the intricate iconoclastic process through which the traces of the Pahlavi era were removed from Iranian cinema (2012a). This process, which took approximately four years, included a wide range of mechanisms that had strong effects on narratives, style and aesthetics, as well as the circulation of films. The first step towards removing the traces of the Pahlavi regime from Iranian culture and society began in the years leading up to the revolution, when demonstrators destroyed ‘un-

Islamic institutions’ including brothels, bars and movie houses (Naficy 2012a:15-22).

As Naficy notes, ‘by the time the Islamic government was established around 180 movie houses had been burned, demolished, or shut down leaving only 271 functioning

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cinemas’ (Naficy 2012a:22). The iconoclastic process took a turn after the revolution and this time, the newly established regime targeted the films themselves. All pre- revolutionary Iranian and imported films were meticulously reviewed. If they contravened revolutionary morals, they would be re-edited or banned. Even though film censorship was a common practice since the very first days that cinema was introduced in Iran, during the years after the revolution the rules and regulations reached a point where the number of titles that could gain screening approval did not exceed one hundred (Naficy 2002:38). As Abbas Baharlu explains, during the early 1980s, anyone who visited the Ministry of Islamic Guidance would see piles of film reel cans abandoned at the entrance to the Deputy of Cinematic Affairs’ building. These films were the property of the production and distribution companies that had been confiscated by the revolutionary guards for further inspection (2011, 10). This extreme situation, the complexity of issues surrounding the theatrical exhibition of films and the meticulous control over their content changed the face of urban space, and in turn significantly decreased public demand for theatrical screenings.

Amidst such turmoil, videocassette technology provided an effective alternative platform for the circulation of films and was widely embraced by the population.

During the time when the Iranian cinema and media went through these fundamental changes, many video rental stores emerged in different cities and in a short time, public film viewing in cinemas was largely replaced by viewing films on videocassettes in private homes. According to official reports, ‘between July 1979 and September 1980,

430,000 video players were imported to Iran. Some other sources report that the number of video players in Iran exceeded two million’ (Sadr 2002/1381:257). It soon became clear to the authorities that the new technology was also a potential threat to revolutionary values, and both the video stores and the content of the films circulated on

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videocassettes became targets of the purification process.

According to Mohammad Taghi Sajadi, the representative of the Islamic

Republic of Iran’s Prosecutor General in the Court of Crusade Against Immoral Acts

(Dadgah-e Mobareze ba Monkarat), from 1981, controlling the circulation of illegitimate material in audio and videocassettes became a top priority for the Court

(Zavabet-e Taksir 1981/1360b). Only videocassettes that had written permission from the Ministry of Arts were allowed to be circulated in the country. In addition, the

Ministry of Arts was obliged to assign a committee to provide a list of legitimate films.

All the video rental stores had permission to circulate only those films, or their recording equipment and movies were confiscated (Zavabet-e Taksir 1981/1360b).

In the following years, even more restrictions placed on videocassettes and the

Court of Crusade Against Immoral Acts directly supervised the Ministry of Islamic

Guidance (later renamed the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance). The Ministry also opened a recording department, in which they recorded what was considered legitimate over the original, presumably inappropriate, content before returning the cassettes to their owners. In addition, the Syndicate of Video Store Owners was established to regulate the proliferation and distribution of videocassettes in video stores. In October 1981, a booklet titled Cinema on Video: A Guide to the Legitimate

Film Available on Videocassettes (Cinema dar Video: Rahnama-ye Filmha-ye Mojaz-e

Video) was published, which provided a list of only one hundred Iranian and foreign films that obtained home video release approval from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance.

The booklet also included all the licensed video stores and video production and distribution companies. The Ministry of Islamic Guidance made an announcement in the same booklet stating that all the video stores had to apply for a license through their syndicate within thirty days. Licensed video stores could only rent or proliferate the

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films that had been approved by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance or they would lose their licence (Etelaeye Ravabet Omumi 1982/1361a).

For the first four years after the Islamic Revolution, until 1982, the newly established Iranian state aimed to take control over the vast informal flow of videocassettes. However, it was not the legal and economic claims of right holders that was the concern of the post-revolution policy makers. Rather, the first steps of the

Iranian state and cultural authorities towards regulating the circulation of videocassettes in Iran was closely in line with the purification policies. The lack of concern about copyright infringement is evident in an interview with Ismail Ahmadi, Head of the

Syndicate of Video Store Owners, published in the Cinema on Video booklet, where he noted,

there are advantages in the spread of videocassettes. This technology allows

film distributors to bypass film royalties. For example, imagine an ordinary

passenger who brings a $50 videocassette to Iran. This copy can be circulated

in video stores with no extra cost. On the other hand, we have to pay around

7,000,000 Rials (around US$12,000) for film royalty if we proceed through

formal channels. […]. We don’t have the right to show these films [those that

are available on videocassettes] on national television as they are subject to

the circulation of the films in videocassette format. (Goftegu ba Ismail Ahmadi

1982/1361c, 96:96).

Ahmadi refers to Article 3 of the Translation and Reproduction of Books, Periodicals and Phonograms law (1973) that prohibits duplicating or recording radio or TV programs or any other broadcast. Meanwhile, after the revolution, cultural independence became a top priority for the Iranian state. According to Article 2 of its Constitution,

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‘the Islamic Republic of Iran is a system based on belief in … social and cultural independence’. Article 3 asserts that ‘in order to achieve the objectives mentioned in

Article 2, the Islamic Republic government of Iran is obliged to use all of its resources’, including ‘the creation of an apt environment for the development of ethical values based on faith, piety, and the struggle against all manifestations of corruption and decadence’. This aim was highlighted in many of the discussions about the legitimacy of films circulated on videocassettes. For instance, Hojatol-eslam Hosseini, who headed the Court of Crusade Against Immoral Acts in 1981, stated,

most of the films available these days are either the production of corrupted

culture of the West or promote the ideas of the East. Islam on the contrary is a

divine system. At this stage, it is impossible to restrain all the films produced in

the West or the East. But we do our best to prevent access to obscene material.

(Goftegu ba Hojatoleslam Hosseini 1982/1361b, 93:93)

According to the Supervision and Exhibition Guidelines (Nezarat va Namayesh) of the

Ministry of Islamic Guidance, obscene material covered a wide range of material, from the image of unveiled women to representation of intimate relationship can appear in the films to works that encourage foreign cultural, economic and political influence contrary to the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic, as encompassed by the slogan

‘neither West nor East’.

In early 1983, the Iranian state banned importing video players to the country and even returned a significant number of players awaiting customs clearance to their manufacturing countries. Concurrently, all video stores were shut down and the Court of Crusade against Immoral Acts ran a huge campaign to remove all the illegitimate videocassettes from every city.

The cultural independence discourse which justified the control over the content

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that was circulated on video cassettes was subsequently used to sanction the banning of the personal use of video technology. However, as Blake Atwood argues, such discourse obscured more complex motivations of the post-revolution policymakers

(2018). Atwood provides a subtle account of video ban in Iran by drawing attention to the ways in which the arrival of video technologies facilitated the production and circulation of amateur films on a large scale (2018: 142). Ever since its establishment the Islamic Republic has sought to provide a coherent image of itself across the media.

During the 1980s, the Iranian national TV was primarily in charge of the coverage of

Iran-Iraq war with the aim to promote it as sacred defence and to glorify martyrdom.

According to Atwood, the production and circulation of amateur images outside of the control of the state was considered a threat by the newly established state particularly because they ‘decentred the narrative of martyrdom and victory that were essential to country’s wellbeing at that time’ (Atwood 2018:151). Furthermore, given the political history of the cassette technology and the role of audiocassettes in mobilizing the 1979 revolution, Atwood argues that video ‘never stood a chance in the Islamic Republic’s tightly controlled official media ecology’ (2018: 155).

The wide circulation of uncensored foreign films, pre-revolution movies and TV series during the next decade demonstrates the failure of the Iranian state in its attempts to regulate the private use of video technologies. The low-quality bootleg copies of some banned post-revolutionary films, including Death of Yazdgerd (Marg-e Yazdgerd,

Bahram Beizaei 1982) and A Time for Love (Nowbat-e Asheghi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf

1990) also became available on the informal videocassette market during this time. The ban on video players and videocassettes was only lifted in 1993, when the authorities redirected their attention to newer technologies, especially satellite TV dishes. While the circulation of videocassettes had been a major concern for the Iranian government

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for more than a decade after the revolution, many Iranian officials today consider the banning of videocassettes as a mistake. This includes the current Iranian President,

Hassan Rouhani, who has compared the recent debates around controlling access to satellite TVs and 3G wireless telecommunication for smartphones to the banning of video players during the 1980s. He stated, ‘Once we believed imported video players would corrupt our younger generation. Why did we not think that we should keep our faith and guard our identity?’ (2014) Rouhani does not question the core idea of purification and the threat of cultural invasion, but he believes the Iranian government should have taken a different approach in its bid to protect its citizens against them.

The wide spread of videocassettes only a few years after the rise and fall of chopped films demonstrates the important role played by the advancement of technology in the acceleration of the circulation of films though informal networks.

Meanwhile, it underscores the limitations of a legal approach, focused on intellectual property and copyright, in the analysis of informal film circulation in the Iranian context. The spread of foreign films on videocassettes was not a phenomenon that was limited to the Iranian context. In fact, the research in different contexts demonstrates that many countries witnessed a rapid flow of cassettes into their market during the

1980s and early 1990s (Karaganis 2011a). When it comes to the Iranian context, this global phenomenon does not fit into the general understanding of film piracy for two reasons: first, during this period, the Iranian judicial system did not recognize intellectual property as a legitimate legal framework. Second, the number of Iranian films produced in this period was not significant, since the nation’s film industry was undergoing major transformation. Therefore, informal film circulation was not considered a serious threat to local film production.

The study of the spread of videocassettes in Iran can lead to a more sophisticated

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understanding of informal film circulation in the sense that it reveals the significance of socio-political and cultural forces that uniquely shape the dynamics of each context. The synchronicity of the Islamic Revolution and associated radical socio-political shifts with the popularity of videocassettes led to the emergence of a distinctive cinematic culture in Iran. Cassette technology provided a way to bypass the strict rules and regulations, and offered an alternative mode of access to a wide range of audio-visual material that otherwise would never have been circulated.

Film piracy: re-introducing intellectual property in the post-Iran-Iraq War era

With the end of the Iran-Iraq War and the death of Khomeini, Iran went through another surge known as the Reconstruction Era under the presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani

(1989–97), who ‘reversed some of the earlier policies, notably in the areas of economy and foreign affairs’ (Mir-Hosseini 2010:337). During the presidencies of Rafsanjani and his successor Mohammad Khatami, the long process of negotiation to become a member of international treaties and organizations such as the World Intellectual

Property Organization (hereafter WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (hereafter

WTO) began.

Even during these negotiations, the validity of intellectual property from an

Islamic perspective still remained an issue for some of the members of the Iranian ruling elite, who insisted on following Khomeini’s understanding of this concept in an orthodox way. The need to revise the approach towards intellectual property from the

Islamic perspective was highlighted in Session 271 of the fifth parliament of the Islamic

Republic, where the bill to join WIPO was dismissed. Moosa Ghorbani, a conservative parliament member and the correspondent of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs

Committee, was one of the supporters of the bill. Ghorbani underlined that many of the

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members had been against the enactment of copyright laws, as they believed it to be against Khomeini’s ideology. Ghorbani then questioned this interpretation as follows,

For Ayatollah Khomeini, intellectual property was a form of monopoly and

therefore, he considered it illegitimate in Islam. But he also emphasised at other

times, when it comes to protecting and maintaining the Islamic Republic, all

rules and regulations are negotiable and can be considered as legitimate, even

monopolisation. For that reason, the members’ concern about religious aspects

of copyright is not valid. (Islamic Republic of Iran Parliamentary Debate, April

21/Ordibehesht 1, 272-5, 1999/1378)

This revision of the interpretation of religious aspects of copyright and intellectual property later led to some changes in policies, but the concerns about the legitimacy of intellectual property were not the only issues for Iranian policymakers regarding joining international treaties. In addition, there was debate over whether joining the international treaties would in itself be in conflict with the interests of Iran.

In the same session of the fifth parliament, Ali-Asghar Yusef-Nejad, a member of parliament, stated that joining WIPO was an important decision that should be made diligently, as any careless actions would result in serious consequences for the country

(Debate 1999/1378). Yusef Nejad, who was against joining WIPO, believed that the scope of intellectual property rights was not clear. He noted,

the aims of the bill are legitimate and it has the potential to prevent various

forms of copying and fraud. But joining an international organisation must also

have some benefits for us. […] We will be obliged to follow the rules and

conventions that are not necessarily beneficial for our country. The government

has to pay for the rights of inventions and the creation of literary and artistic

works and this requires significant investments. (Debate 1999/1378)

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The bill to join WIPO did not pass that year, since the majority of parliament members maintained that different member states of international organizations do not have equal rights. For Hassan Sobhani, another parliament member who was against the bill, ‘the socio-economic condition of the countries that developed the conventions put them in a higher status compared to another country’ (Debate 1999/1378).

One of the conditions of accession, as mentioned in the WIPO membership statement is that membership is open to states that are a signatory of either the Paris

Union for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883) or the Berne Union for the

Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886). According to WIPO website,

[t]he Berne Convention, adopted in 1886, deals with the protection of works

and the rights of their authors. It provides creators such as authors, musicians,

poets, painters etc. with the means to control how their works are used, by

whom, and on what terms. It is based on three basic principles and contains a

series of provisions determining the minimum protection to be granted, as well

as special provisions available to developing countries that want to make use of

them.

In September 2001, the bill to join the WIPO finally passed the sixth parliament only when the members who supported the bill assured those who were against the bill that

Iran would not sign the Berne Convention (Debate 2001/1380).

Since 1995, WTO has been the main international organization attending to trade between countries. Iran’s bid for accession to WTO, first submitted in 1996, was vetoed by the United States twenty-two times until 2005 when Iran was finally accepted as an observer member (Matulionyte and Adlamini 2013:1). As a non-member of WTO,

Iran is not a signatory of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

Agreement, also referred to as TRIPS Agreement (Annex 1C of the Marrakesh

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Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization signed in 1994). TRIPS is the most comprehensive multilateral trade agreement, and obliges the member countries to comply with the most recent versions of the Paris Convention on industrial property and the Berne Convention on intellectual property.

Up until this point, Iran is the largest economy among the twenty-two nations who are not full members of WTO (O’Brien 2016). This is particularly important for this thesis because it reveals some major inconsistencies in the legal approach to piracy that would have otherwise remained unnoticed. The above survey of the history of intellectual property and copyright laws in Iran demonstrates that the borders between legal and illegal modes of film circulation are permeable, and they are determined by the articulation of different socio-political factors at national and transnational levels.

Moreover, the historical approach exposes the ambiguities of copyright and intellectual property laws in particular periods. The Iranian judiciary system is one of the most powerful forces aiming to control and regulate informal film circulation inside the country. When studied from a transnational perspective, however, Iran is among the few nations that still remain outside of the global dominant frameworks. In this regard, any further investigation of informal film circulation in the Iranian context needs to distinguish between the transnational and national practices.

The legal approach fails to shed light on the more intricate aspects of piracy.

Film piracy constantly transforms throughout time, as dissemination technologies rapidly change and facilitate the movement of films across national borders. Therefore, it is important to move beyond debates around the legitimacy of such practices in order to study the more complex aspects of what becomes an everyday practice among many people in Iran.

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New policies, advancement of technologies and globalization

The end of the Iraq-Iran War in August 1988 and the death of Khomeini in June 1989 resulted in a series of radical shifts in both national and international arenas. This period marked another historical conjuncture in the Iranian context since different socio- political, economic and ideological contradictions were condensed in that particular historical moment and resulted in radical changes in different realms. Hashemi

Rafsanjani devoted his two terms of presidency (1989–1997) to the reconstruction of the country after eight years of war. One of Rafsanjani’s main strategies was to strengthen the state through increased economic activity and ‘to integrate deeper into the global economy’ (Panah 2007:133). This was made possible through the revision of the economic policies regarding Iran’s foreign relations, and the efforts to join several international and bilateral treaties. In terms of the issue of informal film circulation, the necessity of joining organizations such as WIPO and WTO required a series of ongoing discussions about joining treaties such as the Berne Convention and the TRIPS agreement, discussed above.

Meanwhile, the rapid advancement of cheap proliferation technologies, such as video CDs and DVDs, followed by the rise of the internet and peer-to-peer networks, put intellectual piracy at the centre of attention for consumers of audio-visual material and for policymakers all around the globe. The digital technologies, as Dina Iordanova points out, opened up ‘wider possibilities for the global circulation of the films’ and created a potential for ‘a new film circulation environment: a more intricate phenomenon that includes a plethora of circuits’, and offers a space for the ‘flow of previously rarely seen material’ (Iordanova 2012:1). In Iran, such space soon replaced videocassette technology and allowed the faster and more efficient circulation of non-

Iranian films.

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The rise of the internet and innovative online dissemination technologies has undermined the top-down models of film circulation more than ever before. Different platforms have provided instantaneous access to the uploaded material from all around the globe, and with the advancement of online technologies came an increasing anxiety about intellectual property infringement. New regulations and guidelines are modified by intellectual property firms on a daily basis.

The lack of multilateral agreements has made intellectual property rights ineffective when it comes to the international circulation of Iranian films. In the past few years, an increasing number of intermediary services including linking sites, video streaming services and cyber lockers have provided access to Iranian movies and television series to their audiences around the world. These services operate at the edge of legality, since any form of transnational distribution of films produced in Iran is not considered illegal unless they are copyrighted in a contracting state.

The popularity of some of the standalone legally established online streaming websites, namely GLWIZ and IranProud, has raised major concerns for the Iranian film industry, to the point that many internationally acclaimed Iranian filmmakers prefer to get copyright for their films in a country that is a signatory of international treaties, to prevent further circulation of their works online. Meanwhile, the Iranian Alliance of

Motion Picture Guilds considers the creation of a culture of respect for intellectual property rights as the most effective way of controlling online film piracy. In May 2014, an open letter with the signature of 200 members of the House of Cinema circulated online, in which the signatories asked online audiences of Iranian cinema both inside

Iran and in its diaspora to act more responsibly, and be more cautious about online piracy, considering the loss it was causing to Iranian cinema (Name-ye Cinemagaran

2014/1393).

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Cheap proliferation technologies and online networks have not only facilitated the transnational movement of non-Iranian films but also become a cheaper and faster alternative channel for the circulation of local productions. As discussed in the first chapter, during the 1980s the Iranian state launched a series of successful strategies that resulted in the revival of Iranian cinema in a way that was in line with the Islamic

Republic’s core values and ideologies. By the end of the war and the beginning of the

Reconstruction era, the number of Iranian films produced significantly increased and

Iranian films secured their places in some of the most prestigious international film festivals. In addition, many of the cinemas that were burnt or destroyed during the revolutionary period were reconstructed and once again the theatrical screening of

Iranian films seemed to be profitable for the flourishing film industry. This marks the historical moment in which the informal circulation of Iranian films gradually became a more serious threat for the local film industry.

In February 1994, the parliament passed a new law on the punishment of people involved in illegal audio-visual activities. According to this law, all the activities to commercially produce and distribute audio-visual material require permission from the

Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. All individuals who violate the intellectual property rights of the producers of audio-visual material by illegal copying are subject to fines. Article 3 of the law provides further information about the punishment for those who are involved in the production and distribution of illegitimate material of two kinds: pornographic (Mostahjan) and obscene (Mobtazal) material. As mentioned in

Article 3, any material whose content is against Shari’a law and the moral codes of

Islam is considered obscene (1994/1392).

Iranian authorities aimed to consolidate a new legal, cultural and economic order to battle film piracy. Alireza Tabesh, the head of the Farabi Cinema Foundation, who

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was the Deputy Minister of Culture from 1997 to 2005, believes that this period was a successful example of the battles against film piracy. In an interview with me, Tabesh stated,

the key to such a successful campaign against film piracy was that for the first

time the government and cinema associations recognized the crisis Iranian

cinema was facing. Then, they convinced the judicial system and the police.

Competing with the well-structured networks of film piracy was not possible

without such cooperation. (personal communication, 29 January, 2015)

Tabesh refers to a series of efforts that took place in addition to building legal institutions including the Law on the Punishment of People Involved in Illegal Audio- visual Activities. The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance initiated a series of successful strategies to battle piracy, such as narrowing the window between the theatrical and VCD and DVD releases of the films and using anti-piracy technologies in movie theatres to prevent bootleg recording. The Iranian police (known as NAJA) targeted commercial infringers, street vendors and high point distributors. At the same time, several anti-piracy campaigns were initiated and filmmakers and producers developed different methods of their own to create a culture of respect for intellectual property rights.

The study of the strategies to battle film piracy during the 1990s might suggest a shift in the Iranian authorities’ approach towards this phenomenon, in the sense that piracy is treated merely as a pricing issue. This approach to piracy has been central to some of the research that studies this phenomenon in different contexts. In Media

Piracy in Emerging Economies, the researchers conclude that ‘piracy is, above all, a pricing problem’ (2011a: ii). According to this collective research, ‘high prices for media goods, low incomes, and cheap media technologies are the main ingredients of

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global media piracy. If piracy is ubiquitous in most parts of the world, it is because these conditions are ubiquitous’ (Karaganis 2011a:i). This account is important mainly because they move away from the production side of piracy and debates about copyright infringement and draw attention to the consumption of media goods circulated through the pirate networks. As Lobato highlights, the problem with such an understanding of piracy is that it does not consider the examples in which ‘accessing media legally is not an option’ (Lobato 2012:82). Pricing has been partially important in shaping some of the pirate practices and policy discussions in the Iranian context. However, a comparison between the Iranian authorities’ approach towards informal film circulation during the first decade after the revolution and the post-war era reveals some of the intricacies of this phenomenon in the Iranian context.

The re-introduction of intellectual property rights to policy discussions in the early 1990s did not overshadow the debates around the legitimacy of the content circulated through the informal networks. Rather, it added another layer of control over the flow of audio-visual material. In order to understand such complexities, it is important to briefly examine the transformation of censorship strategies and their impact on informal film circulation. The literature available on film censorship in Iran demonstrates that the state has loosened control over the content of the films since the late 1980s (ASL19 2014, Naficy 2002). As Naficy points out, ‘[t]he morality codes which had become a straitjacket for cinema, limiting portrayal of women, and use of music, were eased considerably starting in December 1987 when Khomeini issued an edict relaxing the application of the codes’(Naficy 2002:49). This, however, should not imply that the Iranian cinema was liberated from state control but reveals an extra-legal

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and arbitrary approach to censorship. Research conducted by ASL19 14 summarizes

Iranian authorities’ approach towards film censorship as follows: ‘Minimum legal regulations; maximum enforcement of personal preferences; multiplicity of decision- making bodies; interference and imposition of governmental institutions; enforcement of bias in censoring films; and creating numerous obstacles in the production and screening of film’ (2014:241). The complexity and unpredictability of this arbitrary approach toward film censorship and the increase in local film production gradually resulted in a growth in the number of banned films whose theatrical release was held off either permanently or for a certain period.

A focus on the circulation of the banned films through informal networks demonstrates that pricing is not necessarily the main motivation for piracy in Iran. In the circulation of The Snowman, an important example of the circulation of the banned films that I explained at the beginning of this chapter, the pirate networks provided access to the film when no legitimate alternative was available. Another example, which sheds more light to the dynamics and politics of piracy in the Iranian context, is the circulation of Dariush Mehrjui’s Santouri (The Music Man, 2007). Santouri was premiered at the Fajr Film Festival in 2007. The film obtained screening approval after

Mehrjui removed 17 minutes of the film, yet, 48 hours before the theatrical release date, it was banned again. At the same time, a pirated copy of the film with English subtitles leaked into the street markets and onto the internet. Mehrjui stated in an open letter that the staff of the MCIG were responsible for the spread of the pirate copy, pointing to the fact that the master tape was kept in the Ministry. He later mentioned that the film leaked into the street market might have been a screener that was sent to an international

14 ASL19 (in English, Article 19), is a technology and research group founded in 2012 with the support of the University of Toronto. This group was established with the aim to help the Iranian citizens assert their fundamental rights to freedom of expression and access to information. 158

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film festival, since the pirate copy had English subtitles (BBC, Santouri Mehrjui

Ghachagh). He also asked people to transfer the ticket price into an account. Santouri,

The Snowman and many other films with similar fates draw attention to the definite interrelatedness of censorship and film piracy in Iranian cinema.

Conclusion

On 19 December 2016, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, launched the Charter on

Citizens’ Rights, which was one of his main campaign pledges when he ran for president three years before. The charter contains 120 articles and aims ‘to support righteousness and justice, and to protect freedom, human dignity and rights of the nation as enshrined in the Constitution [of the Islamic Republic of Iran]’ (Bayanie

2016/1395:a). Article 26 of the charter states that

[Iranian] citizens have the right to freely seek, receive and publish views and

information pertaining to various issues, using any means of communication.

The Government shall, according to the law, guarantee freedom of speech and

expression, especially in the mass media and cyber space, including in

newspapers, magazines, books, cinemas, radio and television, social networks

and the likes. (Bayanie 2016/1395:4)

The issue of the charter raised some concerns for Rouhani’s critics, who believed that the document is not ‘legally binding’ since ‘the rights are enshrined in the existing laws and are already disregarded and violated’ (Global Legal Monitor 2017). In response to these critics, Rouhani called on people to speak out and stated that the charter’s main objective is to allow the ‘Iranian nation’ to air their grievances against the government and the legislative and judicial systems (Sokhanrani 2016/1395). Following the re- election of Rouhani as the Iranian president in May 2017, less than six months after the

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launch of the Charter on the Citizens’ Rights, a wave of social movements emerged in social media. Iranian social media users shared their concerns regarding citizens’ rights issues, including women’s rights, the environmental crisis, and censorship in the Iranian media to name only a few, particularly addressing the Iranian president and the inefficiency of the Citizens’ Rights Charter.

Among the social media movements was an Instagram campaign with the slogan, ‘Artwork cannot be banned, this is not the status Iranian cinema deserves’, for which the users used #shane_sinema (meaning ‘cinema’s status’). As Abdolreza

Kahani, the Iranian filmmaker, posted in his Instagram account, #shane_sinema was an independent social media movement initiated by a group of people in the Iranian film industry who are against the ban of films and censorship. The movement asked the

Iranian president, who had encouraged his citizens to claim their rights, to carry out his election promises and minimize government control over cinema. The supporters of the campaign used a Telegram Bot that allowed them to design and upload an Instagram post that included their profile picture and the following words: ‘I [handle], don’t want any films to be banned. Artwork cannot be banned’.

Mohammad Shirvani, the Iranian filmmaker and video artist, chose an alternative and until-that-point unique way to support the campaign. Instead of uploading the pre-designed poster of the campaign, Shirvani posted a video to his

Instagram account in which he mentioned that he had decided to upload his last feature film, Fat Shaker (Larzanandeh-ye Charbi, 2013) that was unable to ever obtain a screening approval. He dedicated this film to all the filmmakers whose films are banned and/or are not allowed to make films, then asked his followers to watch the film and judge for themselves if it was in line with the guidelines of film production under the

Islamic Republic. It was not uncommon for Iranian filmmakers to upload their banned

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films on digital platforms. Even Shirvani himself uploaded all his eighteen films on his personal website, which was later blocked by the Iranian cyber police (Mohammad

Shirvani Dar Eghdami 2015/1394). What made his reaction to the ban of the films unique was the platform he chose to share his film since, at that point, Instagram did not allow videos more than one minute to be uploaded by users. Shirvani shared 32 posts on his account, each of which included a one minute clip from Fat Shaker. The clips, when put together, captured the complete narrative of the film in condensed form. However, what Shirvani’s audience saw on their mobile screens was more than just an ordinary film; they saw a performance in which the filmmaker showed his frustration and resentment through slaughtering his own film.

Shirvani’s response to this social media campaign provides a glimpse of the ways Iranian filmmakers and ordinary citizens use digital platforms to bypass the heavy-handed control of the Iranian state over film circulation. It also demonstrates how these practices are interrelated with the dynamics of formal film circulation, and is impacted by and contributes to the socio-political and cultural shifts in a particular historical moment.

This chapter relied on the body of scholarly works that underline the necessity of attention to the specifications of piracy and informal film circulation in different contexts. It contributes to this body of literature by conceptualizing this phenomenon in terms of the emergent. Such a conceptual framework allows us to study the ways in which these practices are adopted, neglected or rejected by dominant systems such as nations and film industries.

The Iranian state’s approach towards the circulation of films through alternative platforms has been part of massive shifts in the Iranian film industry during the post- revolution era. In this period, the state launched a series of strategies to control the flow

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of banned films through the use of proliferation technologies, first by targeting video stores and censoring the content of films circulated on videocassettes, and eventually by banning the ownership of cassette players. This chapter argued that strategies of the state to control the flow of films through informal networks became more centralized in relation to the shifts in two particular areas by the end of Iran-Iraq War. On the one hand, the need to join the global market contributed to the re-introduction of intellectual property law to the Iranian legal system. On the other hand, the circulation of Iranian films through pirate networks posed serious threats for the country’s film industry. This chapter demonstrated that the re-introduction of intellectual property law to the Iranian legal system contributed to the establishment of additional strategies to restrict the flow of Iranian films through informal networks.

The above case highlights the significance of informal networks not only for providing access to a wide range of films for viewers inside Iran, but also as means for

Iranian filmmakers to circulate their censored or banned films. Shirvani’s peculiar use of Instagram as a platform to showcase his films, however, reveals that these networks do much more than just disperse the cinematic material. As the films circulate through these networks they can acquire different layers of meaning and complexity. The next chapter studies this aspect of informal film circulation in the Iranian context.

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Chapter 3: The Signification of Circulation: An Alternative Perspective on Transnational Film Circulation

The first two chapters of this thesis were concerned with the emergence and transformation of policies, laws and regulations that determine different modes of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context. I studied a wide range of policies and regulations, particularly in relation to two historical conjunctures: first, the Islamic revolution in 1979 followed by the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq (1980–88), and second, the post-war period marked by the death of Ayatollah Khomeini (1989), the beginning of the reconstruction era and the change in the constitution of the Islamic

Republic. Each of these conjunctures led to a series of ideological and socio-political crises, ruptures and contradictions and gradually shaped the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation. I demonstrated how Iran’s global position and the Iranian state’s cultural diplomacy went through significant changes in the course of these historical conjunctures and how such changes resulted in the transformation of the state’s approach towards the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema. I also drew attention to a less explored dimension of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context: the wide range of circulatory practices that take place outside the realm of the formal film industry. My analysis of the rise and transformation of the discourse of film piracy and intellectual property laws in Iran provided insights into the constantly shifting alliances among the Iranian authorities, transnational legal regimes, piracy networks and even the audience.

I attempted to provide a multilayered analysis of the transnational flow of films within a relatively long historical period in order to shed light on at least two important aspects of film circulation: first, how the articulation of technological, economic and Chapter 3

socio-political forces can contribute to the emergence of new and innovative circulatory practices, suppress a few or guarantee the survival or transformation of others. Second, regardless of whether the practice is categorized as formal or informal within the context of this study, circulation is always an active process that is highly vulnerable to regulation. In that sense, circulation does not simply refer to the movement of the cinematic material through a selected channel. Rather, from the moment a film is produced it enters an intertwined network of circulation and begins multiple trajectories that, in turn, can facilitate, delay or block the movement of film through space and time.

This observation is a stepping stone for the second part of this thesis, in which I move beyond the material aspects of film circulation and draw attention to the ways in which it contributes to the process of meaning-making. As we will see, the impact of alternate modes of circulation on meaning became evident in the pre-revolutionary period. However, with the Islamic Republic’s efforts to regulate domestic film circulation beginning immediately after the revolution, over the subsequent decades, circulation has become a site for battles over the politics of signification. As we have seen in previous chapters of this thesis, in the early years of the Islamic Republic, strategies were developed to restrict the circulation of foreign and pre-revolution cinematic material. They did this not only by controlling film import and exhibition but also by restricting the spread of video cassette technologies that facilitated the flow of these films through informal networks. Although these strategies have undergone massive shifts in relation to various domestic and international forces over the last four decades, regulation of film circulation has remained a priority for the Islamic Republic in order to control what the Iranian population can see on their cinema, television and computer screens.

The centrality of filmic content in shaping the Iranian state’s approach towards

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film circulation can be understood in terms of what Hamid Naficy calls the

‘“hypodermic theory” of ideology and cinematic effect’ (Naficy 2012a:5). The hypodermic needle model has roots in audience research and understands communication as a mechanical process in which transmission directly leads to reception (O’Sullivan et al. in Grey 2010:79). The term injection underlines the simplicity inherent in the assumption that audiences simply imbibed the ideological content of television and filmic texts. Since the early twentieth century when cinema arrived in Iran, many religious leaders considered it as an element of Westernization

(Naficy 2011a:28). The Iranian clerical elite, as Naficy explains, subscribed to a model of cinematic effect, which is similar to Louise Althusser’s model of Ideological State

Apparatus (ISA). According to the Althusserian approach, ideologies always inscribe themselves in practices and rituals of specific apparatuses, including media, family and law that are not directly ruled by the state but seek to get citizens to comply with existing power structures (1971:143). The concept of interpellation suggests that ideological state apparatuses hail or summon individuals and recruit them as the subjects of the subsequent ideology (Hall 2016:134). The significance of this formulation in understanding the Iranian authorities’ approach lies in the ways in which the ideological effect of cinema has been perceived in relation to and constitutive of

Westernization in Iran. This theory, according to Naficy, aptly describes the opposition to cinema by Iran’s religious leaders since the early twentieth century. Based on the hypodermic approach, cinema is considered an apparatus that exposes Iranians to ‘a homogeneous and hegemonic’ Western and modern culture (Naficy 2012a:6).

The exposure of the Iranian population to the monolithic ‘culture of idolatry’ (farhang-e taqut), as Khomeini called it, through cinema would transform otherwise ‘autonomous and ethical “individuals” into dependent, corrupt “subjects”’ of that culture of idolatry

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(Naficy 2012a:5). Both supreme leaders of the Islamic Republic have been advocates of this hypodermic theory, using the term ‘injection’ (tazrigh) particularly to describe the effects of Westernization, imperialism and cultural invasion on the individuals for whom cinema has been considered a powerful medium (Naficy 2012a:5-6).

Rather than dismissing film entirely, in the wake of the revolution, cinema was conscripted to play a central role in the socio-political struggle precisely because of its power to ‘inject’ the viewer with the Islamicate values. Such an understanding of cinema not only explains the state’s efforts to support and regulate film production, it also highlights why the Islamic Republic was so keen to intervene in national and international film circulation. When utilized by the Iranian state, cinema could foster the introduction of the Islamic Republic’s values to the Iranian population, and it could also serve to promote these values around the world.

For the Iranian state, cinema could not serve to simply reinforce a set of pre- existing values. It had to mobilize a form of consensus around a particular form of society and culture: an ‘integration within and conformity to the rules of a very definite social, economic and political structure’ (Hall 1982:59). The notion of consent formation highlights how Iranian cinema entered the site of socio-political struggles, not to proliferate the existing meanings but as a powerful medium that could actively contribute to the outcomes of the struggle. This understanding opens another layer of complexity to the analysis of the dynamics of film circulation in the Iranian context: if there was a crisis for the Iranian state, it was a crisis over the politics of signification.

This chapter seeks to understand how film circulation contributes to the politics of signification. In particular, it aims to answer these questions: how does the film’s circulation affect its signification? To what extent does the means through which films circulate add new layers of meaning to the films?

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To answer these questions, this chapter focuses on the ways in which the filmmakers themselves have contributed to these struggles over cinema and the production of meaning, not merely through the content of their films, but also by circumventing the state’s control over film circulation. In particular, it provides an analysis of the circulatory dynamics of three films that exemplify different moments in the history of Iranian cinema. Each of these films found its way to audiences inside and outside Iran through informal networks. When considered from an institutional and legal perspective alone, all three examples may to some extent be considered illicit. But rather than approaching these examples from this common legal and institutional status, this chapter pays attention to the diversity and uniqueness that each has exhibited in its battle to be screened. The cases that I consider in this chapter are treated as both material and discursive objects. This shift of focus allows me not only to look at the trajectory of the films as they circulate, but also to account for the evolving meanings that derive from the contexts into which they have circulated at different moments in time, as well as from their form and content. I argue that the alternate channels that have enabled these films to circulate have the potential to transform and redefine the films themselves. In other words, the different modes of film circulation are not merely inert delivery mechanisms, but can add significant new layers of meanings to films as they circulate the globe.

I begin with a discussion of the circulation of a highly influential film from the pre-revolution period, Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow (Gav, 1969). This film was heralded as an innovative and ground-breaking work for the burgeoning Iranian New Wave, and the story of its circulation to international film festivals and back into the country is important for the way it created more opportunities for the transnational circulation of

Iranian films during the pre-revolution period. The chapter then turns to consider a more

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recent case: Bahman Ghobadi’s 2009 film No One Knows About Persian Cats (Kasi az

Gorbeh-ha-ye Irani Khabar Nadareh). This case allows me to explore questions of film piracy in relation to the broader concept of urban informality and pirate modernity

(Sundaram 2009a). This film is also self-reflexively about informal networks and a kind of shadow cultural economy that has grown out of Iran’s vast underground cultural scene, allowing us to consider the degree to which the film and its circulation appear to mirror one another. And finally, the chapter turns to consider the case of Jafar Panahi with a focus on the first film he made since he was banned from making films in 2009:

This Is Not a Film (In Film Nist, 2011). Even more than Ghobadi’s, Panahi’s film is highly self-reflexive, calling attention not only to its conditions of production, but anticipating its illicit circulation, and overtly signalling its contribution to the politics of signification. Panahi calls upon us to examine how the circulatory dynamics of his film coincide with and help to shape our understandings not only of the style and content of the film, but of Panahi’s own precarious position as a filmmaker, banned from making films but doing so anyway. This self-awareness prompts me to read This Is Not a Film via Michel Foucault’s conception of heterotopia. Through an extended analysis, I demonstrate that the film’s constant self-reflexivity creates a shattered mirror in which everything loses its transparency. Each fragment of this mirror reflects on one aspect of the outside reality: the conditions of making This Is Not a Film, Panahi’s ban from filmmaking, the contingencies that determine its existence and circulation, the significance of international film festivals in the process and the constraints around the

Iranian film industry.

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The Cow: an uncanny beginning for Iranian New Wave cinema

It is a common tendency in the formal and institutional context to consider informal circulation as banal or an ‘ahistorical evil’ (Liang 2014). In his review of George

Scaria’s edited volume, Piracy in the Indian Film Industry: Copyright and Cultural

Consonance, Lawrence Liang makes the point that historically, piracy contributed to the early development of the world’s film industries, and arguably remains an integral part of them (Liang 2014:29). Informality therefore deserves to be studied rather than being relegated to a minor or inconsequential fact of film history. This was made clear in the previous chapter, where I explained the Iranian government’s approach towards informal media circulation. As I demonstrated, informality cannot be so easily separated from the realm of so-called legitimate circulation, for often these trajectories intersect, particularly at moments of historical conjuncture such as those explored in Chapter 1.

A study of how specific films find their ways to viewers through different modes of circulation enables us explore different aspects of informal film circulation.

This allows us to understand how films’ complex journey through space and time contributes to the politics of signification. This section traces one of the first examples of informal film circulation in Iran, attention to which has been eclipsed by the film’s contribution to a major cinematic historical moment – the emergence of the Iranian New

Wave.

In 1969, in the midst of Mohammad Reza Shah’s modernization campaign also known as the White Revolution, Dariush Mehrjui completed his second feature film,

The Cow. Set in a remote rural area in central Iran, the film narrates the story of a man, his cow and the profound effect the cow’s death has on the man and the impoverished village in which he lives. This film was developed from a collection of short stories entitled The Mourners of Bayal published by the Iranian dissident writer

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Gholamhossein Saedi in 1964. It is considered to be one of the most significant films of the era and played a major role in kick-starting the New Wave and bringing international attention to Iranian cinema.

Mehrjui was among a number of Iranian filmmakers who had been trained in the

United States or Europe. He had recently returned from his studies at the University of

California, Los Angeles with a degree in Philosophy and had completed his first feature film, Diamond 33 (Almaas 33) in 1967, a thriller about the murder of a professor who had developed a formula to turn oil into diamonds. Dissatisfied with the state of the commercial Iranian film industry and influenced by the many examples of international post-war and new-wave cinemas from places like France, Germany, India and Japan, a group of young, internationally-trained filmmakers including Bahman Farman-Ara

(trained in the USA), Kamran Shirdel (trained in Italy) and Sohrab Shahid-Saless

(trained in Austria and France) formed a loose collective that came to be known as the

Iranian New Wave. Armed with knowledge of world-class standards of filmmaking, and often in collaboration with secular modernist Iranian writers, they sought to bring an artistic approach to Iranian filmmaking. They also used their films to critique contemporary Iranian society. However, this critical approach often set them in conflict with the state, as they received financial and material support from the Iranian Ministry of Arts and Culture to make their films (Naficy 2011b:328-336). This conflict would often manifest only after a film had been produced, since the filmmakers also relied on the state to ensure the distribution of their films, which were not suited to the usual channels of commercial distribution. Throughout the 1970s, many of the new-wave films were either banned, or battled the government for screening approval, mainly due to objections about the critical content of the films. The Cow was among the first of the new-wave films to suffer such a fate. A brief synopsis of the film will help to set the

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scene as to why the film’s circulation was curtailed, and why it was so well received when it finally reached an international audience.

As the film opens we are introduced to the central character, Mash Hassan

(Ezatollah Entezami). He lovingly bathes and feeds his own cow in a pond on the outskirts of the village. Through a direct, bleak image of the village and its residents we soon understand the value of the cow as the only milk provider in the whole village. The next day, when Mash Hassan leaves the village to do some labour elsewhere, the cow mysteriously dies. The villagers stealthily bury the cow and hide the news from Mash

Hassan and pretend that his cow has escaped. When he eventually finds out the truth, he experiences a psychological breakdown to the extent that he identifies with the cow.

As Mehrjui points out in an interview with Mani Haghighi, the metamorphosis of Mash

Hassan into his cow is in fact a moment that the lover becomes obsessed with his beloved to the level that we cannot tell them from one another (2013/1392:29).

This form of identification, as Hamid Naficy highlights, is an important element of

Iranian new-wave films and ‘a key feature of Iranian mystic and Sufi philosophy and poetry’ (Naficy 2011b:337). Mash Hassan, who now identifies himself as the cow, takes refuge in the cowshed and feeds on hay, begging to be rescued from those responsible for her death. The film ends when the villagers forcefully take him to the city for medical attention, treating him more like an animal than a human being.

All the characters of The Cow are caught up in an ambience in which it seems like they are waiting for a disaster that has not yet happened. They are afraid of another group, of whom we only see distant shadows throughout the film. These mysterious people, called Boluriha (literally meaning the Crystallines), are accused of being responsible for all the disasters, including the cow’s death. Meanwhile, the villagers lack any form of agency; they are incapable of finding rational solutions for their

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problems and rely on superstitious beliefs that are framed as outmoded and unhelpful.

The Cow depicts the fears, challenges and pains of a society in transition from tradition to modernity. However, Mehrjui was careful to reference these only obliquely in the film, couching them in a mix of neo-realism and Kafkaesque absurdity. Mehrjui himself insists that even though The Cow provides a direct and dark image of the conditions of people living on the margins of contemporary Iranian society, he did not intend to produce a manifesto in favour of certain ideologies (Haghighi 2013/1392:28).

Even so, during that specific period in Iranian history there was a tendency towards ascribing political meaning to most artistic works.

The film’s content, and its potentially political reading is a crucial aspect to consider when analysing its circulation. The Ministry of Arts and Culture considered this bleak portrayal of the desperation and miseries of people in this imaginary village a strong critique of the Pahlavi regime and therefore did not approve its screening. This is not surprising, given the fact that the production of The Cow coincided with the height of the Shah’s modernization campaign, when the regime was particularly sensitive to any portrayal of poverty that contradicted the government’s own propaganda about progress and development. Even before production commenced, Mehrjui was aware that he may face difficulties in getting approval. He recalls that after he read Saedi’s story, he knew that local producers would be reluctant to invest in such a project and that he would need to apply for funds through the Centre for Documentary Films of the

Ministry of Arts and Culture (Haghighi 2013/1392:25). Naficy also highlights that

‘Mehrjui concocted a lie by presenting the screenplay to the Ministry of Culture and

Arts as if it was a documentary’ (Naficy 2011b:346). The Cow’s inception in the guise of a documentary was the first step that guaranteed the existence and survival of the film.

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For almost two years The Cow was permitted only two private screenings in

Iran. The first one came after Mehrjui wrote to Mehrdad Pahlbod, the Minister of

Culture and Arts and asked for a screening session for prominent writers and intellectuals. He was perhaps hoping that an endorsement by this group could convince the Ministry to give approval for a public release. The second time was when Reza

Ghotbi, head of National Radio and TV, chose the film for screening at the Shiraz Art

Festival. Even though The Cow was well received at both events, further attempts to secure a public release remained unsuccessful and it appeared that the film might end its days languishing in a cupboard. The constraints placed on the exhibition of the film also threatened to curtail the film’s international circulation.

It was after all these unsuccessful attempts at seeking wider distribution that one of Mehrjui’s friends, a French filmmaker, suggested that he could smuggle a print of the film out of Iran in his suitcase and enter it into international film festivals. This print of

The Cow was submitted to the 32nd Venice International Film Festival in 1971, where it was initially screened without subtitles. According to a contemporary report in Variety, the film was so highly praised that a subtitled print was rushed from Paris and a second screening arranged (Pictures: Gleanings From A Gondola 1971:7). The film went on to win the International Film Critics award. Ironically, this was an important moment not just for Mehrjui and his film, but for Iranian cinema more broadly, as this illicitly circulated film was the first Iranian feature to ever receive a major international award.

Following its success in Venice, the film started its journey and was screened at numerous international film festivals, including Chicago, London and Melbourne. The film was also acquired by the Soviet Union (Werba 1972:68). Highly praised by film critics, The Cow is still considered a landmark film in the history of Iranian cinema.

Indeed, Hamid Dabashi has said that The Cow not only transformed ‘the very definition

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of Iranian cinema’, but that the film ‘became the touchstone of every major cinematic event since’ (Dabashi 2001b:27-28).

The international success of The Cow drew the attention of the Iranian authorities and they finally agreed to release it domestically. However, this was only allowed after a disclaimer was added to the film stating that the events depicted took place fifty years earlier, long before the advent of the Shah’s modernization campaign

(Akrami 1999:129). The addition of the disclaimer highlights the role of circulation in the politics of signification. The international acclaim for The Cow, in the end, led to its local circulation, but the Pahlavi state forced upon the film a meaning that the director did not intend.

A focus on the strange trajectory of The Cow brings into view some important factors that have been overlooked among the major events in the history of Iranian cinema. This film not only marked the rise of the New Wave and brought home the first international award for an Iranian feature film, but was also one of the first successful attempts to bypass the rules and regulations of informal networks of film circulation.

It is, however, very reasonable to argue that smuggling a print of The Cow out of Iran to a festival was a small-scale instance of informal practice, compared to some of the later examples of utilizing alternative modes of media circulation. Yet, it was an important one, as it opened up a new set of possibilities for films to survive and to re-circulate more widely across the world and back into Iran.

The Cow demonstrates the complexities and paradoxes of a society in transition from tradition to modernity, not only through its narrative but also through its circulation and survival. The authorities of the day were keen to foster the portrayal of a modern Iran in films and preferred an image that was synchronized with their emphasis on modernization. Authorities thus attempted to curtail any representation of poverty

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and backwardness. The Cow addressed modernity in a way that diverged significantly from the understanding promoted by the Pahlavi regime; it reinforced a sense of fear and anxiety about the future. The international circulation of The Cow is an important detail, which has been overlooked in most accounts of Iranian New Wave cinema.

Mehrjui himself highlighted this in an interview with Shargh Newspaper,

After Venice [festival] the international circulation of the film began and it was

shown in many other festivals. Soon after, the overseas publications began

writing about the film. It became well-known all around the world to a degree

that the Minister of Foreign Affairs went to the Shah after one of his visits and

mentioned that this film did such a huge publicity for our country in such a

short time that our huge diplomatic campaigns … could not do in the past few

years. It is not to our benefit if the film is not shown inside the country.

(Mehrjui 2013/1391:8)

Although it is not possible to confirm that the Minister of Foreign Affairs actually discussed the local release of The Cow with Mohammad-Reza Shah, nevertheless, in this story Mehrjui underscores the ways its international circulation added another layer of signification to the film. Beyond any political interpretation of the film’s content, the fact that the film was being praised so widely across the world alongside the films of other prominent European and Asian filmmakers allowed the film to return to Iran invested with a level of prestige gained from its illicit circulation. The focus shifted from the film’s apparently critical content to its place on the world stage, ostensibly as a modernist work of art, allowing it to be re-aligned with the project of modernization and

Westernization. Unlike previous understandings of the film, this reading was strongly dependent on its international circulation and at the same time increased the possibilities for its survival in the local market. Beyond this, the illicit circulation of The Cow paved

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the way for more Iranian filmmakers to have their films screened internationally. This was demonstrated just a few years later when two films by Sohrab Shahid Saless were screened at the Berlinale with the blessing of the Iranian authorities (Langford 2016).

The Cow’s journey, however, was not over after its return to Iran: for almost half a century, it has continued to screen in cinemas and film festivals and at the same time it remains widely available in the street markets of Tehran and on the internet. It retains the honour of kick-starting the Iranian New Wave, raising international awareness of

Iranian filmmaking, and was even praised by Ayatollah Khomeini upon his return to

Iran during the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah (Tamjid-e Imam Khomeini az

Film-e Gav 2018/1397c). It remains an important reference point for post-revolutionary

Iranian filmmakers. In more recent times, new technologies have helped to facilitate the circulation of films that would not be permitted to circulate via the legitimate channels controlled by the state. It is to two such cases that the chapter will now turn.

No One Knows About Persian Cats: a representation of pirate modernity

In 2009, a low-quality version of Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows About Persian

Cats (Kasi az Gorbeh-ha-ye Irani Khabar Nadareh) was uploaded to YouTube and a few file-sharing services, and at the same time was widely circulated on video CDs in the street markets of Iran. Based on real events, the film follows two underground musicians who, after being released from prison, decide to form a band to perform in

Europe. Together, they search the underworld of Tehran to find other underground musicians as well as people who can provide them with forged passports. Later that year, the film premiered at Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section.

It was not the first time that an Iranian film found its way to the street markets or

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file-sharing platforms without having official release permission. But in this case, the bootleg copy of No One Knows About Persian Cats had two differences from the version that was screened internationally. The earlier version circulated online or on video CDs was not subtitled, and in this version, before the film commences, Ghobadi appears on the screen and addresses his audience in Persian. He says:

Hello and with due respect to my dear fellow Iranians. I am Bahman Ghobadi,

the director of No One Knows About Persian Cats. It is an honour for me that

you can watch my film for free. It is halal for you. Circulate it as many times as

possible. In the condition that I and other similar directors cannot get screening

approval for our films, this [way of watching my film] is halal. The only thing I

want from you is to watch it on a big monitor and with high quality sound. We

have put a lot of effort to this film. Also if you have a neighbour or happen to

know someone who is an underground musician, like the main characters of my

film, support them. They are innocent kids who work under difficult conditions

in Iran. Without approval or support from the government or any other

organisations, they can only get support from us. The future of this country is in

the hands of these kids and other artists especially in the field of music.

Ghobadi is among the first Iranian filmmakers who publically announced his support of the circulation of his films through pirate networks. As I explained in previous chapters, other filmmakers including Asghar Farhadi and Mohammad Shirvani later continued this trend by encouraging Iranian viewers to watch their films on pirate platforms.

No One Knows About Persian Cats opens in a music recording studio. Ghobadi is in the isolation booth, singing a Kurdish song. Through the conversations between two characters outside the booth, we know that the character is Ghobadi, the filmmaker, who gave up on chasing permission from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to produce his films. Instead, he has decided to work on an underground film about two 177

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indie rock musicians: Negar (Negar Shaghaghi) and Ashkan (Ashkan Koshanejad).

Ghobadi’s camera follows Negar and Ashkan into their world. Everywhere they turn they see barriers in front of them. They have difficulties getting approval to release their albums, they cannot get an event licence, and Ashkan cannot get a passport because he did not complete mandatory military service. They are stuck in this world and the conditions seem to be the same for everyone who crosses their path. Desperate about their life, they meet Nader, a fixer who seems to have a solution for each one of their problems. He takes Negar and Ashkan to his home in a crowded neighbourhood in

Tehran where he introduces his place as ‘the best distribution company in the world, to hell with Paramount, Fox Studios, Warner Brothers and the rest’. He offers help with running an underground event and promises to sell 100,000 copies of the unlicensed album in the street markets of Tehran. He even takes them to a place where they can get forged passports and visas for the whole band.

The urban space that is captured through the lens of Ghobadi’s camera can be perceived in terms of Ravi Sundaram’s concept of ‘pirate modernity’ (Sundaram 2007).

According to Sundaram, media piracy is a part of ‘a new domain of nonlegal networks’ that entered postcolonial cities during the 1980s as a feature of globalization and were

‘spread by the confluence of cheap digital technologies’ (2007:50). As a result of the technological change, older urban infrastructures in postcolonial cities have been replaced by ‘a world of fast-moving commodities, transnational networks and elite service workers’ (Sundaram 2007:50). At the same time, and with the help of inexpensive proliferation technologies, a network of non-legal practices emerged that posed major issues for the older, legitimate practices. In that sense, Sundaram argues that media piracy and all other informal/non-legal practices are features of what he calls

‘pirate or recycled modernity’ (Sundaram 2007:56). As he explains,

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Pirate modernity, is a phenomenon that is neither oppositional nor critical in the

classical sense, with no charters against the electronic elites or hypermodern

spaces. Pirate modernity is part of a culture of insubordination and disorder that

marks our time, and is a source of major concern to global and local elites.

(Sundaram 2007:56)

Pirate or recycled modernity is marked by a number of features that I shall briefly point out. As Sundaram explains, pirate modernity ‘is a part of an immanent technological space’ in which the technological objects and people are entangled and the borders between technology and culture are blurred (2007:56, emphasis in original). Pirate networks can contribute to the creation of a ‘bleeding culture’ or a ‘culture of dispersal’ in the cities ‘where information bleeding is part of the contemporary’ urban spaces

(Sundaram 2007:57). In so doing, pirate culture impacts ‘the main media industry’ and creates a ‘pirate video aesthetic’. Pirate cultures are also ‘just-in-time’; they work simultaneously with the formal film and music industries (Sundaram 2007:57). Finally,

‘pirate culture is a culture of the copy’ in which the products ‘are multiuse, recombined/recycled, and in constant circulation, moving in and out of new spaces and networks’ (Sundaram 2007:57). Sundaram’s conceptualization of media urbanism and pirate modernity are particularly useful for understanding the circulatory routes taken by

No One Knows About Persian Cats in its journey to both Iranian and international audiences.

Nader epitomizes a vibrant pirate modernity that is a crucial way of life for many young urban Iranians. He facilitates access to products, spaces and networks that would be unreachable without his assistance. In turn, Ghobadi facilitates access to and awareness of such space for international festival goers, the ‘other’ audience for his film. Using the real underground musicians and telling their real-life, Ghobadi aims to

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blur the boundaries between fiction and reality. These borders become even more porous when Ghobadi prefers not to remain an invisible director behind the camera, but decides to appear onscreen himself. He identifies with the protagonists right from the beginning of the film when he is introduced as a frustrated filmmaker. Yet another layer of self-reflexivity is added when he addresses his Iranian audience in the low-quality version released online. He explicitly highlights that he has chosen the same informal path that his protagonists are forced to follow for the circulation of his own film. In doing so, he also announces his own belonging to Iran’s pirate modernity.

With this dovetailing of informal networks depicted in the film with the informal circulation of the film itself, No One Knows About Persian Cats invites us to think more deeply about the particular characteristics of piracy in the Iranian context. The film depicts the importance of cities as sites that can harbour underground activity and draws attention to the continuing role of the local networks of exchange in the pirate economy.

At the same time, the film’s own pathway to audiences relied also on technological developments that take some of the face-to-face – or, we might say hand-to-hand – encounters typical of older technologies such as DVD out of the picture. The expansion of media piracy to its current scale across the world has been made possible by the development of affordable, user-friendly technological platforms for recording, reproducing and distributing content. As discussed in the previous chapter, this has raised concerns for businesses and governments as piracy both presents an economic threat and violates a range of laws.

Piracy in Iran, similar to many other places in the world, relies on globalization for access to technological platforms that enable radicalized access to the world’s media goods and foster a sense of belonging to the global world. In Iran, it is often only through these transnational networks and platforms, which are themselves forbidden

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within the country, that Iranians can access and interact with the global media sphere.

Ghobadi, however, is not that optimistic about this space and chooses a dark, satirical approach to depict it. The people who belong to this world, no matter how hard they try, are trapped in an in-between space. This confusion is reinforced via Nader’s character.

He constantly uses English words in his sentences although it is clear that he has no knowledge of the language.

But how can we understand piracy in terms of its relations with the local state?

The majority of literature on piracy has focussed on the informal flow of media goods from the Western world into the postcolonial world. That is perhaps the reason why debates focus primarily on copyright infringement and financial loss for corporate institutions. However, piracy’s role as a phenomenon that radically shifts the ways people have access to different goods is much more complex than discerning the lines that demarcate what is legal from what is non-legal. By creating a new infrastructure, piracy transforms the old model of state sovereignty over media circulation. In his detailed study of media urbanism in New Delhi, Sundaram highlights that ‘piracy destabilises contemporary media property and, working through world market and local bazaars, both disrupts and enables creativity, and evades issues of the classic commons while simultaneously radicalising access to subaltern groups in the third world’

(Sundaram 2009b:338).

In the Iranian context, piracy extends well beyond the provision of access to subaltern groups. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, piracy has been almost the only means of circulation in the country for non-Iranian films as well as for most pre- revolutionary or banned Iranian films. As I explained in the previous chapters, one of the main missions of Farabi Cinema Foundation was to maintain a monopoly over the import of non-Iranian film, which was in line with both censorship policies and

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designed to encourage local film production. During the past 36 years, there have always been heavy restrictions over the theatrical release of foreign films in Iran. As

Alireza Tabesh, current head of Farabi Cinema Foundation and former head of public relations in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, highlighted in his interview with me, during Khatami’s presidency there were efforts to screen more non-Iranian films. Among other reasons, controlling piracy was an important factor. It was not very efficient, however, because, to put it in Tabesh’s words, ‘for a country with 80 million population, screening a non-Iranian film in only a few cinemas is not a sufficient solution. By the time the Ministry gets the screening licence for a film and the dubbing or subtitling process is finished, the film has already been circulated in the black market’ (personal communication 2015). Despite the strict controls imposed by the ministry, with piracy, people are able to gain ready access to a much wider range of media products.

By appearing on the screen to directly address his viewers, Ghobadi negates any other possible assumptions about the distribution of his film by confirming that he himself is responsible for its pirate circulation. In this sense, for Ghobadi and others like him piracy as a global phenomenon becomes a useful tool to challenge the sovereignty of the state over the production and circulation of various cultural products. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the Iranian government chose two parallel approaches to battle piracy, one legal and the other cultural. Ghobadi’s act is considered both informal and illicit in accordance with the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran, since its distribution might be considered illegal based on two factors: the content of the work itself, and the distribution of any works without permission from both the owner and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (Gholampur 2007/1386:5). However, by emphasising twice that it is halal (permissible in Islam) for his audience to watch the

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pirated version of the film, Ghobadi uses the same language as the Iranian authorities to subvert their control over media circulation.

The circulation of No One Knows About Persian Cats is a key example that highlights the necessity of paying attention to different layers of complexity in the study of informal film circulation. We might compare Ghobadi’s strategic use of the term halal as a way of asserting the legitimacy of his film practice and circulation with

Mehrjui’s use of modernist film strategies to depict a bleak image of under development. Both The Cow and No One Knows About Persian Cats sought to contradict the explicit agendas of the regimes under which they were made. In

Mehrjui’s case, it was to critique the project of modernization and Westernization instigated by the Pahlavi regime. In Ghobadi’s case, it was to reveal the existence of vast networks of informality in the cultural sphere and highlight the authorities’ inability to fully contain or control these. In Mehrjui’s case, the international praise of his film allowed it to attain a degree of legitimacy as a modernist text, which allowed it to be re-inserted into the national narrative and therefore re-circulate back into Iran as a different kind of text that could be seen as a celebration of modern film over and above its critique of underdevelopment. In Ghobadi’s case, in the spirit of pirate modernity, he appropriated the very language of the regime in order to grant legitimacy to his own film and to help to facilitate its local circulation. When it embarked on its international journey, it would do so as a notoriously illicit product that had received no screening approval, but was widely viewed anyway. With these parallels and differences between the first two case studies in mind, I now turn to the third and most complex case study, which further reveals the tensions that lie at the heart of informal circulation and the politics of signification.

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Of other spaces: the case of Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi is one of the most internationally recognized Iranian filmmakers of the post-revolutionary period. During his filmmaking career to date, Panahi has made nine feature films, all of which have received high acclaim at international film festivals.

What has made Panahi the centre of attention at international film festivals and in the media is not merely his cinematic style, but his constant struggles with the Iranian state.

Three of his films – The Circle (2000), Crimson Gold (2003), and Offside (2006) – were denied screening approval in Iran despite having production permission. Without official screening approval, Panahi still managed to submit all three films to various international film festivals, where all of them won awards. For the following five years,

Panahi failed to obtain production permits from the Iranian Ministry of Culture and

Islamic Guidance. His clashes with the authorities have become even more pronounced since 2009.

In July of that year, in the midst of the Iranian post-presidential election protests,

Panahi was arrested for questioning when he attended an event held at Tehran’s

Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery in memory of those who had been killed during the upheavals, including Neda Agha-Soltan, a young woman whose death was captured on a mobile phone camera and quickly became a symbol for the fallen protestors. Panahi was later released, only to be arrested once more on 1 March 2010, along with seventeen of his family and friends. This time he was accused of making a film against the regime and remained in custody for eighty days. While in custody, he went on a ten- day hunger strike in response to a threat he received from an interrogator about mistreatment of family members who had also been imprisoned (Jafar Panahi ba

Khanevade va vakilash Molaghat Kard 2010/1389). A few months later, Panahi, who was now released on bail, attended a court hearing and was charged with ‘assembly,

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collusion and spreading propaganda against the regime’ (Hokm-e Jafar Panahi Elam

Shod 2010). he appeals court upheld a six-year prison sentence and banned him from filmmaking, giving interviews to any local or international media and leaving the country for twenty years. This was by far one of the heaviest charges ever laid against an Iranian filmmaker up to this point.

In May 2011, the Cannes Film Festival announced a special screening of a film entitled This Is Not a Film (In Film Nist), co-directed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba

Mirtahmasb. Rumours spread that the film, which was illegally made in Iran, was smuggled out of the country on a USB drive hidden in a birthday cake. This Is Not a

Film was later announced as one of the fifteen films shortlisted for best documentary feature at the 65th Academy Awards. But this was just the beginning of the complex case of Panahi. On January 11 2013, the Berlinale announced another film, Closed

Curtain (Pardeh), co-directed by Jafar Panahi and Kambuzia Partovi, among the entries for the competition section. The festival director, Dieter Kosslick, asked the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance to allow Panahi to attend the premiere of his film at the Berlinale (Meza 2013). The

Iranian authorities did not respond at first but reacted harshly after Panahi won the

Silver Bear for Best Script. The Deputy Head of Cinematic Affairs, Javad Shamaghdari, accused the Berlinale of awarding the Silver Bear to the film for political reasons and screening the film despite knowing that making films and submitting them to international film festivals requires permission from the Iranian Ministry of Culture and

Islamic Guidance (Gozarname-ye Kambozia Partovi and Marym Moghadam, Avamel-e

Film-e Parde Toghif Shod 2013/1391). In addition, the passports of Partovi and the film’s actress, Maryam Moghadam, were confiscated to prevent them from leaving the country to attend the festival (Gozarname-ye Kambozia Partovi and Marym

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Moghadam, Avamel-e Film-e Parde Toghif Shod 2013/1391).

In February 2015, Panahi’s third illegally produced film, Tehran Taxi, entered the Berlinale and won the Golden Bear for Best Film. The Berlinale received similar accusations from the Iranian authorities for prioritizing ‘politics over arts and culture’

(Vakonesh-e Panahi Be Etteham-e Siasi Kari Dar Berlinale 2015d).The Deputy Head of

Cinematic Affairs, Hojattolah Ayoubi, accused the festival of using Panahi’s sentence against the Iranian state and people (2015). He also underlined the fact that Panahi is still making films demonstrates that he is living in his country as a free citizen

(Vakonesh-e Panahi Be Etteham-e Siasi Kari Dar Berlinale 2015d). An article published in Jam-e Jam newspaper, owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, stresses the same point (Alimohammadi 2015/1393). In this article, the author claims that the content of Tehran Taxi is clearly against the principles and ideals of the Islamic

Republic that ‘are agreed upon in Iranian society’ (Alimohammadi 2015/1393), but that

Iranians should thank Panahi for his actions since the international circulation of his films contradict all the assumptions of those who warn against the violation of human rights in Iran (Alimohammadi 2015/1393). Panahi’s fourth film after his ban, 3 Faces

(2018) was premiered at the 71st Cannes Film Festival in May 2018 and won the award for Best Screenplay. This time the French government got involved, requesting that the

Iranian authorities allow Panahi to attend the festival, but the Iranian government never responded to this request. The reactions of the Iranian state to the screening of Panahi’s films at international film festivals are among the most peculiar examples that underline the ways circulation contributes to the process of meaning-making. The Iranian authorities and some of the media inside the country turned their attention to Panahi, using his case to wage a cultural battle with the West on the human rights front. In doing so, they completely detached the process of circulation from the films’ content

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and the context in which they are made and circulated.

The style and narratives of Panahi’s films, however, do not allow much room to convincingly detach content from circulation. The self-reflexive style of his films constantly call our attention to the conditions of their production, tell us to anticipate their illicit circulation and signal their contribution to the politics of signification. We are asked to examine the ways in which the circulatory dynamics of the films as well as

Panahi’s defiance of his ban from filmmaking can contribute to our understanding of the films’ content and style.

These characteristics of Panahi’s films prompt me to read them in terms of

Michel Foucault’s conception of heterotopia. According to Foucault, heterotopias are discursive or material spaces ‘that are in relation with other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror or reflect’ (Foucault 1986:3). Heterotopias juxtapose different spaces in one site and reflect on their own position within an order: ‘the fundamental codes of a culture – those governing its language, its schemes of perception, its exchanges, its techniques, its values, the hierarchy of its practices’ (Foucault 2002:xxii). By accumulating different spaces in one site, and deviating from the empirical order ascribed to them, heterotopias make the order legible. I shall now turn to This Is Not a Film, in order to examine how the concept of heterotopia can help with understanding the complex ways in which the film not only locates itself within the order of Iranian cinema but also challenges our received knowledge about the codes that govern its production and circulation.

This Is Not a Film: A discursive heterotopia

Long before the Cannes Film Festival announced the screening of Panahi’s film, the news about his sentence had spread around the world, through social networks and

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international media. Several videos, including Panahi’s latest short film The Accordion

(2010), had been circulated on YouTube and other file-sharing platforms and a few tribute screening events had been arranged to raise awareness about his situation

(Langford 2015). Even the international film festivals had been participating in protests against Panahi’s sentence. In 2010, Cannes Festival invited Panahi to join the jury and placed an empty chair to draw attention to his absence. The Berlinale did the same in

2011, and this time the actress and filmmaker Isabella Rosellini read Panahi’s message to the audience. Rosellini read,

[t]he world of a filmmaker is marked by the interplay between reality and

dreams. The filmmaker uses reality as his inspiration and paints it with the

colour of his imagination, and creates a film that is a projection of his hopes

and dreams. The reality is that I have been kept from making films for the past

five years and now officially sentenced to be deprived of this right for another

twenty years. But I know I will keep on turning my dreams into films in my

imagination. I admit as a socially conscious filmmaker that I would not be able

to portray the daily problems and concerns of my people but I wouldn’t myself

deny dreaming. […]. The reality is that they have deprived me of thinking and

writing for twenty years, but they cannot keep me from dreaming.

It was three months after this message was read at the Berlinale and in the midst of all these events that This Is Not a Film was screened for its first international audience at the Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2011.

This Is Not a Film opens in a kitchen. The camera is positioned at one end of a kitchen table. In the middle of the frame, there is an empty chair, and on the left, there is a window that shows a view across the high-rise buildings of a large city. A man, dressed in black, enters the frame and as he sits in the chair his face is revealed to the

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viewer; it is Panahi. Opening the shot with the empty chair not only anticipates Panahi’s arrival, it also seems that he fills in for his real absence from the festivals and cinematic events by ‘projecting’ his presence within the film itself.

Panahi calls someone on his mobile phone and asks if he could come to their place. The person on the phone sounds worried and asks if there is something wrong.

Panahi explains that he has a few ideas but telling them on the phone does not feel safe to him. The conversation is short and enigmatic. It raises more questions than answers, just like the very film that the viewers were watching at Cannes. The ‘reality’ of

Panahi’s life and his sentence, the story of which had been spreading months before the film was shown at the festival, is displayed within the film itself. The empty chair, the phone and that strange conversation also link the filmmaker on the screen to his real conditions outside the film. Is the conversation about making this film despite Panahi’s ban? Then, as if to provide a disclaimer about what we are seeing unfold on screen, the scene cuts to black and the title appears: This Is Not a Film, a title that is reminiscent of the inscription ‘This is not a pipe’ that appears on René Magritte’s 1929 surrealist painting entitled ‘The Treachery of Images’.

The next scene shows a bedroom. The door on the right side of the frame is closed. No one is in the room. The phone on the bedside table keeps ringing and finally diverts to an answering machine. Panahi’s wife, on the other end of the line, leaves a message telling him that she and their son are going to visit his mother to give her a

New Year’s present. Again the ‘reality’ of Panahi’s life comes back to haunt the viewer.

Is he really under house arrest, as numerous media outlets had reported? But this is another story. He has never been under house arrest, but the setting of This Is Not a

Film entirely within Panahi’s apartment makes it seem so. What the Cannes Festival audience sees on the screen resonates with the version of the story that was developed

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and proliferated by the media outside of Iran. A widely-reported mistruth appears to become ‘fact’ in This Is Not a Film. Their son then comes on the line and tells Panahi that he has turned the camera on and left it on the chair, thus helping to establish the premise that Panahi is not actually ‘making’ a film. As he explains that the battery might die soon, Panahi’s head appears from the bathroom door, which is not visible in the frame. He looks at the phone and then at the camera to indicate that this is the camera that was left turned on. Once again, the phone conversation gives a hint about what is happening outside of the frame. This is not a film, but a continuum of Panahi’s life story, captured by a camera that has simply been left there by someone other than the filmmakers. Panahi enters the frame, gets dressed, takes his mobile phone and opens the bedroom door to leave. He then returns and takes the camera with him and with this move he reflects on what the title suggests. The film reflects on the process of its own being as a film by revealing its modes of enunciation. In doing so, it ruptures the narrative from the first moments of viewers’ encounter. At the same time, this self- reflexivity brings to attention the ‘sites and locations of the films’ own address

(Mottahedeh 2008b:200).

Negar Mottahedeh has discussed the role of such ruptures and self-reflexivity in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. In doing so, she draws on the theories of film theorist Christian Metz to discuss the necessarily reflexive nature of filmic enunciation in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. In linguistics, enunciation or discourse refers to

‘an instance of communication between a sending and a receiving subject or a speech act, the meaning of which depends on the circumstances configuring an utterance’

(Mottahedeh 2008b:200). The deictic marker, such as a pronoun, is the moment in a statement that reflects on the time, place and identity of the subjects involved in the process of communication. Enunciation in film is not necessarily personal (Metz

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1991:753). It does not typically foreground the director or film’s auteur as the subject.

As Metz argues, ‘[c]inematic enunciation is always enunciation on the film. Reflexive, rather than deictic, it does not give us any information about the outside of the text, but about a text that carries in itself its source and its destination’ (Metz 1991:762). Filmic enunciation is indicated by what Metz calls ‘reflexive constructions’ (Metz 1991:753, emphasis in original ). The moments in which the film manifests ‘the production instance that carries it only by talking to us about the camera, the spectator, or by pointing at its own filmitude, that is, in any case, by pointing at itself’ (Metz 1991:753).

In conventional narrative cinema, the coherence of a film’s ‘story’ generally relies on the discourse’s ability to wipe out the traces of filmic enunciation, for their exposure results in ‘metafilmic splitting within the narrative’ (Mottahedeh 2008b:201). When included in a film, typically through depiction of ‘door frames, windows, mirrors, cameras, sound equipment, fictional audience, and so forth’, moments of enunciation can alert the spectator, from within the narrative, ‘about his or her positioning within, or in relation to the media producing and projecting the film narrative on the screen’

(Mottahedeh 2008b:202). This Is Not a Film constantly ruptures the narrative in precisely this way. On the surface it depicts a day in the life of Panahi while awaiting the verdict of the Court of Appeal. However, it also frequently reflects on its own filmitude not only through the depiction of windows, picture frames and doors that are present in almost every single shot of the film, but also through constant references to cameras and to Pahahi’s mobile phone, which functions both as a bridge to the outside world and at the same time is used as a filming device. In addition, Panahi also frequently seems to break the fourth wall, almost addressing the viewer directly, but the audience’s awareness of Mirtamasb’s directorial presence behind the camera ironically calls the status of this self-reflexive convention into question. In this way, the film

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continuously points to what is outside of the frame, and raises a series of questions:

Who made the film? For whom was it made? Under what conditions it was made? How might all of these conditions determine the trajectory and ultimate reception of the film?

How is this trajectory presupposed by the film itself?

The constant self-reflexivity in This Is Not a Film destroys the syntax of cinematic language, desiccates the utterance and ‘contest[s] the very possibility of grammar at its sources’ (Foucault 2002:xix). In doing so, the film creates what Michel

Foucault calls a heterotopia: a site of disorder,

in which fragments of a large number of possible orders glitter separately in the

dimension, without law or geometry, of the heteroclite [abnormal thing]; and

that word should be taken in its most literal, etymological sense: in such a state,

things are ‘laid’, ‘placed’, ‘arranged’ in sites so very different from one another

that it is impossible to find a place of residence for them, to define a common

locus beneath them all. (Foucault 2002:xix, emphasis in original)

In the bedroom scene, when Panahi takes the camera with him outside the room, the film literally detaches the viewer from the order of the ‘reality’ outside and invites her into the location in which this ‘heteroclite’ is made.

In his 1967 lecture, Of Other Space: Utopias and Heterotopias, Foucault draws attention to heterotopias as certain real spaces that, similar to discursive ones ‘have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror or reflect’ (Foucault 1986:3). He uses the mirror as a metaphor to distinguish between utopias and heterotopias. The mirror, for Foucault, is a utopia: ‘an unreal, virtual space’ or a shadow that allows me to ‘see myself where I am absent’ (Foucault 1986:4).

Heterotopia, on the other hand, is a mirror that ‘does exist in reality, where it exerts a

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sort of counteraction on the position that I occupy’ (Foucault 1986:4). The mirror, as

Foucault expands, functions as a heterotopia in the sense that

it makes this place as I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass

at once absolutely real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and

absolutely unreal, since in order to be perceived it has to pass through this

virtual point which is over there. (Foucault 1986:4)

A heterotopia, in that sense, is a mirror that locates the position of itself and what is reflected in it within the reality and in relation to all the sites and locations of its address.

A film, according to Metz, resembles a ‘present instance stuck between two absent ones, the author who disappeared after the fabrication, and the spectator, who is present but does not manifest his presence in any respect’ (Metz 1974:150-151). But in

This Is Not a Film, the syntax, the very ground on which the film exists, is destroyed.

The film regularly reflects upon the filmmaker (I) and the spectator (you) that are absent, but their existence is manifested in the ‘unreal, virtual space’ that opens up on the screen (Foucault 1986:4). This shattered cinematic syntax functions as the cement for the creation of ‘other spaces’, or spatial heterotopias, which appear in all of Panahi’s films since his ban from filmmaking.

This Is Not a Film, Closed Curtain, Tehran Taxi, and to some extent 3 Faces challenge our knowledge of the Iranian cinema and make the its order legible on various levels. As I elaborate below through discussion of different examples from each of them, we can trace the emergence of different heterotopias as we study the films’ narrative, filmic language and their circulation. These locations do not have the characteristics of a heterotopia in real life but they become one through the process of shooting and editing and the films’ self-reflexivity. According to Foucault, heterotopias

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‘presuppose a system of opening and closing that both isolates them and makes them penetrable’ (Foucault 1986:7). This is a key feature of the locations of Panahi’s films.

They are shot in confined spaces: Panahi’s home in This Is Not a Film, a remote villa in

Closed Curtain and a taxi in Tehran Taxi. Even in 3 Faces, the location of the film is a rural mountain village in the northwest of Iran with only a narrow road linking it to the outside world. Once we enter these spaces we are bound to stay, as the camera never leaves. As is the case for many heterotopias, it seems to be a simple entrance but it is all an illusion. We are there, in those spaces, but at the same time we are excluded. We can only see what the camera wants us to see. In these spaces, no matter how illusory they are, many other spaces are exposed. In This Is Not a Film, for example, from within the secluded space of Panahi’s house, the film reflects on its discursive situatedness within

Iranian cinema and envisions its future reception. Panahi shows excerpts from his previous films, reads parts of a screenplay that did not receive approval, and explains his court order and how it affects his life. He does not leave the place, but brings in the shadows of other spaces and elements that surround it.

This Is Not a Film reflects on its future transnational encounter with the audience in a scene where Panahi speaks on the phone with his lawyer, Mrs Gheirat.

She tells Panahi that, based on what she has observed in other cases, it will probably take a long time for the appeals court to issue a verdict. She also asserts that the court will not acquit Panahi unless they face some pressure from outside. ‘You mean the international pressure?’ Panahi asks, ‘for the Iranian cinema community cannot be of much help; if they make the slightest move, they might also be banned from filmmaking’. In this, Panahi on the screen refers to his conditions as a filmmaker who is officially prevented from making films. He also sends a clear message to international viewers who might be wondering how they can help his situation. But this is just the

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beginning. After the lawyer explains the she cannot do much because the rulings are political rather than legal, Panahi hangs up, stares into the camera and says, ‘I think it is time for me to remove the cast and throw it away’. As Mottahedeh would say, the film

‘stutters’ (2008a); it reflects on its filmitude, the viewer, the filmmaker, using a scene from Panahi’s second feature, The Mirror (1997), where the seven-year-old actress of the film suddenly refuses to act. The image cuts to this scene while Panahi’s voice, who is giving a synopsis of the earlier film, prepares the viewer for another meta-filmic splitting: a mise en abyme, a parallel mirror, which creates an endless repetition of what is reflected in the subsequent mirror of This Is Not a Film.

The Mirror is about Mina, who decides to find her way back home on her own after her mother does not pick her up from school. Mina gets on a bus but soon realises that she is going the wrong way. Eventually, the actress, Mina Mohammad-Khani, feels humiliated because of the naivety of the character she is playing and decides she cannot take it anymore. Mina takes a plaster cast off her arm and throws it away, divesting herself of a piece of costume worn by her ‘fictional’ character. She decides that she wants to be herself, since what Panahi wants from her is a lie. Panahi’s voiceover in

This Is Not a Film stops, but the scene from The Mirror remains at the centre of the viewer’s field of vision. While previously the image was in a pixelated and low resolution form, after the narration ends it shifts into the actual high resolution film.

Mina is standing on a bus, staring into the lens of the camera; ‘why are you looking at the camera?’, Panahi, in The Mirror but from outside the frame, asks. ‘I am not acting anymore’, Mina screams. ‘Cut’, Panahi says. The image then cuts to video footage that exposes the equipment, the director and his crew, and Mina, the actress who is removing her costume including the cast on her arm and her headscarf. Panahi tells his crew not to stop filming and decides to follow the ‘real’ Mina to find her way home.

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The footage that we see in This Is Not a Film is not aligned in the frame. It is a film recorded from a screen, the television screen in Panahi’s living room. The film pauses and the camera in This Is Not a Film pans right to bring present-day Panahi into view, standing next to the screen. He explains, ‘I think right now I am in a similar position to

Mina’.

The Mirror itself can also be perceived in terms of a heterotopia. In her analysis of spaces of femininity in Iranian films, Anna M. Dempsey also draws attention to this point. Dempsey argues that in the works of filmmakers such as Jafar Panahi and

Bahman Ghobadi, children are used as cinematic narrators that ‘have offered more explicit accounts of contemporary Iranian life’ (Dempsey 2012:375). The girls and young women in these films, according to her, ‘inhabit the edge of the sidewalks, night time transient-filled parks, roadside gutters and other liminal spaces that underscore their marginalized but tangible presence – a presence that is nonetheless invisible to those who reside in the “centre”’(Dempsey 2012:375). For Dempsey, the spaces that these cinematic girls occupy have the characteristics of a heterotopia, which allows them to ‘subvert or challenge dominant patriarchal cultural convention’ (Dempsey

2012:376). In The Mirror, for example, ‘by stepping outside of the cinematic narrative

Mina creates an intermediate space – one that is neither within the film nor outside it – but calls our attention to the artifice of the story’ (Dempsey 2012:378). But the significance of this sequence in The Mirror is more than just a spatial heterotopia within the narrative that allows Mina to protest her conditions.

Mina’s rejection of cinematic and adult rules in The Mirror, whether it is real or deliberately created, gives her enough independence to navigate her way home but at the same time exposes her to the risks of walking the crowded and unsafe streets of

Tehran. The sequence from The Mirror shown in This Is Not a Film functions as a

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heterotopic mirror for both Panahi and the viewer. In the later film, Panahi says that he reviewed all the shots he had filmed earlier and realized that everything is turning out to be a lie. That was the reason that he contacted Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, a documentary filmmaker who had been planning a project looking behind the scenes of the lives of

Iranian filmmakers who are not allowed to make films, and invited Mirtahmasb to film

Panahi reading his latest screenplay.

The adoption of self-reflexive techniques in The Mirror also creates a metafilmic splitting to a degree that ‘the film truly splits in two’ (Langford 2019:87). This meta-filmic splitting, as Michelle Langford highlights, creates a mise en abyme, a film within a film in which one is ‘a distorted “mirror” of the other’ (Langford 2019:84). In that sense, The Mirror in itself already foregrounds reflexive enunciation and becomes an example of what Negar Mottahedeh calls a ‘displaced allegory’ of the determining conditions of the Iranian film industry (Mottahedeh 2008a:3). It is an allegory ‘distinct from the direct content of the narrative’ of the film, that emerges on the level of enunciation and ‘mediates the national situation and the constraints on the industry’

(Mottahedeh 2008a:3). By implication of this strategy, as Langford argues, Panahi

‘questions the very capacity for Iranian films, including his own, to adequately represent “Iranian reality”, either as it really is, or as it is wilfully imagined by any political formation’ (Langford 2019:84). The reflection of this displaced allegory can explain a great deal about how This Is Not a Film can be perceived in terms of heterotopias. It is a reminder of the cinematic rules as well as the legal regulations that ban him from filmmaking. Panahi’s identification with Mina is in fact an assertion that he is ready to reject both of them.

This Is Not a Film is not an ordinary mirror in the sense that what it reflects depends on the viewing position. The subject or the centre of the film seems to be

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displaced in the sequence described above. Panahi is clearly at the centre of the narrative, but the subject is now also Mina in The Mirror, who is the centre of his attention. Then again, the subject is also a younger Panahi, as the director of

The Mirror, towards whom Mina stares. How about the viewer in the festival, who has become the subject of the gaze of both Panahi and Mina as they stare back at them through the camera lens? This is a shattered mirror in which everything loses its transparency. The multiplicity of viewing positions suspends the process of meaning making. Each fragment reflects on one aspect of the order in the outside reality: the conditions of making This Is Not a Film while banned from filmmaking, the contingencies that determine its existence and circulation, the significance of international film festivals in the process, and the conditions of the Iranian film industry

– not as a stable and coherent order with an established meaning, but as a process that emerges and is transformed in relation to a wide range of forces.

The latter meaning is particularly reinforced when the camera pans from the frozen image of The Mirror on the television screen to show Panahi as he explains his plan to Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, his co-director who was on the phone in the first scene and is now behind the camera. While awaiting the verdict about his appeal, Panahi has reviewed the shots he filmed earlier only to realize that they all seemed like pretending.

He feels that all the shots are somehow impacted by the Iranian state’s rules and regulations over cinema. In doing so, the film and the filmmaker locate their position as subjects within the order of Iranian cinema and the ‘fundamental codes’ that are

‘governing its language, its schemas of perception, its exchanges, its techniques, its values, the hierarchy of its practices’ (Foucault 2002:xxii). Even now, when making a film ostensibly outside of official regulations, he is unable to escape from those restraints.

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The intensification of viewers’ knowledge of Panahi’s case and the conditions under which he made and circulated his films is not limited to the filmic texts and narratives. In her book chapter, ‘Iranian Cinema and Social Media’, Langford draws attention to ‘a very particular form of media convergence’ in Iran since the 2009 post- election upheavals (Langford 2015:149). An important site for this convergence is the international film festival network, ‘where cinema and social media collide’ and create a space to highlight ‘the struggles of Iran’s persecuted and incarcerated filmmakers’

(Langford 2015:155). As Langford points out,

In recent years [festivals] have become loci of intensified intermediality;

concentrated sites where ‘films’ are processed into a myriad of other mediatized

‘products’, including stars, images, reviews, interviews, news items, awards,

[and] tweets, […]. Festivals are sites were a range of interconnected media

industries, producers, and users converge. (Langford 2015:155)

Langford’s analysis of this media convergence to some extent resonates with the promise of the heterotopia as a physical space that mirrors various material realities in one site. I am not suggesting that film festivals or media convergences essentially create heterotopias, but wish to draw attention here to an additional level of knowledge intensification that takes place beyond the style and narrative of the films through the convergence of films and other media.

The rumour about how the film was smuggled out of Iran in order to submit it to the Cannes Festival adds a new layer of meaning and complexity to the whole story.

None of the people I interviewed during my research, including Hengameh Panahi, the

European distributor of Panahi’s Tehran Taxi, could confirm the rumour about the USB drive hidden in a birthday cake to be true. But this story does appear on the cover of the

DVD release of the film. In any case, it is undeniable that digital technologies facilitated

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the initial movement of the film and enabled Panahi to bypass some rules and regulations in its production and circulation. Similar to the other examples that I have analysed in this chapter, the trajectory of Panahi’s film is a significant case of the intricate ways various modes of circulation co-operate in order to guarantee the survival of films. In particular, this example further demonstrates how a film festival can create a non-linear form of memory and knowledge through media convergence. We remember

Panahi’s previous works many of which have been circulated and acclaimed previously at numerous festivals. It also provides a chance to remember Panahi from different times: not just the one that is banned from filmmaking, but the one who used to make films.

One of the key features of heterotopias, according to Foucault, is the manipulation of time. As he explains, ‘heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time’ (Foucault

1986:6). Some heterotopias, like libraries and museums in the modern world, accumulate time, while others intensify or disturb the sense of time (Foucault 1986:6).

Panahi’s message, read by Rosselini at the Berlinale in 2011, underscores the significance of time to the filmic style he chose for This Is Not a Film in the sense that it puts emphasis on the capacity of a non-linear, dream-like narrative to create a sufficient distance from the dominant order. In that sense, while This Is Not a Film manipulates the linear understanding of time by bringing various elements of Panahi’s previous films into the narrative, his message signifies the potential of these ‘temporal discontinuities’ in creating a space from which he can make legible his own position within the order of Iranian cinema and society. In the 2011 Berlinale, for example, the festival dedicated one session from each of its sections to the screening of one of

Panahi’s works: Offside (2006) in the Competition section, Crimson Gold (Talaay-e

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Sorkh, 2003) in the Forum, The White Balloon (Badkonak-e Sefid, 1995) in the

Generation section, and Untying the Knot (2003) in Berlinale Shorts. The international film festival circuit, in this particular case, contributed to the accumulation of time by organizing retrospective sessions of Panahi’s films.

Conclusion

The story of Mina, the girl who rebelled against Panahi in The Mirror, returns once more to the narrative of Panahi’s later films in Tehran Taxi. In a sequence half way through the film, Panahi picks up his niece Hanna, who is around the same age as Mina, from the school. Hanna constantly nags about her uncle’s delay and says if Panahi is too busy, she can perhaps get out of the car and find her own way home, just like Mina in

The Mirror. But in this case, she immediately takes her words back and says she would not leave, but instead asks Panahi to help her make a short film for a school assignment.

She takes a camera out from her backpack, turns it on and begins shooting Panahi’s face. Showing the camera creates a meta-filmic split and the film reflects on the whole story that has been accumulated in the circulation and recirculation of The Mirror. At the same time, Hanna’s camera, sharply directed at Panahi, brings both of them to our attention; this time it is Hanna who reflects on Panahi’s filmmaking conditions.

Hanna has a story for her film that is based on real events but she struggles making one that can get screening permission. We soon find out that her filmmaking teacher has given them a list of rules to keep in mind while making the film so it can later be screened in the Public Education Festival. Hanna then reads the rules out loud:

9) The film must follow the rules of Islamic modesty. Women should wear the

scarf and no physical contact is allowed between men and women.

10) Avoid sordid realism (siah namai) and violence.

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11) Avoid using ties (as in the garment) for the good guys in the movie.

12) Avoid using Iranian names for the good guys. Instead, use the sacred names

of Islamic saints.

13) Avoid discussing political and economic issues.

The list Hanna’s teacher gave them is in fact part of the much longer actual guidelines for filmmakers, created by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance after the revolution, and is the primary tool used to censor film production in Iran. By revealing the camera, Tehran Taxi reflects on its own making as film. Hanna’s detailed rehearsal of a long list of regulations over film production reminds us about the context in which it has been made. Above all, this self-reflexive hint signifies Panahi’s position as a filmmaker, within the order of Iranian cinema and the rules that determine film production in that context.

Like This Is Not a Film, Tehran Taxi’s style references the existence of different modes of film circulation, such as film festivals and informal networks, that allow films and filmmakers to anticipate a sufficient distance from the order of Iranian cinema.

These networks have contributed widely to the struggles of filmmakers over cinema and meaning. No One Knows About Persian Cats is also self-reflexive about its circulation.

The film invites us to think about the informal networks that shape Iran’s underground cultural scene and the degree to which the film’s trajectory and the narrative mirror one another. Ghobadi also adds a new layer of meaning to the film by facilitating the spread of its bootleg copies and speaking directly to the audience who used pirate platforms to watch his film. He clearly states that he has chosen the pirate networks for circulation of his films and in doing so, expresses his belonging to the Iranian pirate modernity.

The Cow’s peculiar trajectory also tells us a great deal about the contradictions of the Iranian film industry in the pre-revolution era. The film was smuggled out of Iran 202

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in a suitcase, brought in the first international award for an Iranian feature, and then returned to the screen in Iran, marking the rise of the Iranian New Wave. Meanwhile, its illicit circulation opened up new opportunities for Iranian filmmakers to showcase their works at international film festivals.

The account I provided in this chapter captures some aspects of the contribution of alternative networks of film circulation to the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture.

Apart from facilitating access to a wide range of films, these networks create new meanings. Yet the final meaning is always deferred to the moment of the viewer’s encounter with the cinematic text. In the next chapter, I will return to look at Tehran

Taxi from yet another perspective, as I explore how different modes of film circulation and viewing context, as sites of encounter with the film, can contribute to the individual’s cinematic experience and the meaning inscribed to it.

As I have demonstrated, the meaning in films like these derives not only from their content, but also evolves and transforms in relation to the contexts in which they circulate at different moments in time. In other words, I have shown that the networks that facilitated the circulation these films added new layers of meaning to, and even at some points redefined the meaning of, the film itself.

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Chapter 4: A Transnational Encounter with Iranian Cinema: Towards Theorizing the Critic’s Cinematic Experience

The Iranian state’s concerns regarding cinema and ideology are the main reasons for its ongoing interventions into national and transnational film circulation. For high-ranking members of the Iranian ruling elite, cinema is perceived as an effective medium with the power to interpellate viewers as passive subjects of an ideological discourse (Naficy

2012a:5). The Islamic Republic’s strict regulation of film circulation seeks to hinder the exposure of the Iranian population not only to a presumably homogenous Western ideology promoted in foreign films and media but also to the domestic cinematic products that provide criticism of the socio-political conditions of Iranian society and the performance of the state. At the same time, the state’s support of the domestic and international circulation of Iranian films is a strategy to expose viewers, both within the country and outside its national boarders, to the cultural and ideological values of the

Islamic Republic.

The strategies used by the Islamic Republic to regulate film circulation have undergone massive shifts in relation to various socio-political, legal and economic forces over the last four decades. The changes occurred partly because the interventions of the state in film circulation has been undermined by Iranian filmmakers and viewers alike. This was achieved via the emergence of different networks of film circulation that could evade some or all the controls over circulation exerted by the Islamic Republic.

Each network, as I demonstrated in the previous chapter, provides a unique delivery mechanism that allows Iranian viewers and filmmakers to bypass heavy-handed state regulations. At the same time, these networks add new layers of complexity to the films as they take different trajectories. As we saw in The Cow (Gav, Dariush Mehrjui, 1969), Chapter 4

No One Knows about Persian Cats (Kasi az Gorbeh-ha-ye Irani Khabar Nadarad,

Bahman Ghobadi, 2009) and This is not a Film (In film Nist, Jafar Panahi, 2011) the new layers of meaning even have the potential to transform and redefine the films themselves.

One example is the international film festival circuit that, on many occasions, proved to be a system supportive of Iranian filmmakers, including Dariush Mehrjui,

Bahman Ghobadi and Jafar Panahi, in their efforts to bypass the regulations of the state over film production and/or circulation. Another challenge for the post-revolutionary state was the rise of alternative networks of film circulation that emerged with the spread of videocassettes and later, digital platforms. These have remained a huge challenge for the state and its omnipresent control over what Iranian viewers could watch in theatres or on home screens. Overall, these are among the examples that demonstrate some of the ways in which the complex domination of the Iranian state over cinema as a means to ‘inject’ certain values to the viewers has been challenged at the moment of circulation. Aside from the role different networks of film circulation play in facilitating access, their diversity has contributed considerably to the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture in the sense that they became key sites of struggle for filmmakers and viewers on the one hand, and the Iranian state on the other, over reproduction and circulation of meaning.

While my account of the dynamics of film circulation and its relationship with production sheds light on the ways in which particular meanings and values can be added to the films, it has not yet explored the ways these cinematic products may come to make meaning for the viewers at the moment of reception. That is, how the articulation of various forces and the production of meanings that intersect or negate each other during the moments of production and circulation can contribute to one’s

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cinematic experience.

It is important to highlight that based on the circuit of culture model, the process of meaning-making does not end at the moment of consumption just before the film reaches its audience (du Gay et al. 1997:5). The individual’s cinematic experiences are shaped not only as a result of their position as the subject of the cinematic apparatus but also in relation to the material platform and the space in which the cinematic encounter takes place. Each mode of film circulation positions the viewer in a certain viewing context and, therefore, creates a different spectatorial experience. At the same time, the individual’s viewing experience, like any other form of experience in everyday life,

‘does not take place outside the categories of representation and ideology’ (Hall

2016:138). That means the process of meaning-making at the moment of consumption depends on the intervention of different systems of representation that come together in the particular moment in which the cinematic experience takes place.

Like other cultural formations, cinematic experience is always a conjunctural process, which means it is ‘located in the backwardness and forwardness of the historical present’ and determined by the articulation of discursive and structural forces that come together in a particular moment (Probyn 1993:18). These characteristics of experience make them important contexts for exploring the connections that construct the material reality of a cinematic encounter. When used critically, reflection on one’s own cinematic experience can open up new lines of enquiry that can help with understanding the dynamics and politics of film circulation in different national and international contexts.

In this chapter, I take as my point of departure one cinematic experience: my attendance of the 2015 Berlinale, which formed part of my field research for this thesis.

I had arranged the visit primarily to meet with Iranian distributors at the European Film

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Market to learn more about the practices and politics of circulation that have been discussed in previous chapters of this thesis. My visit, however, happened to coincide with the controversial premiere screening of Tehran Taxi (Jafar Panahi, 2015), his third film made since he was banned from filmmaking. My first-hand observation of the film’s screening in the context of the festival, and my own experience of the film itself, helped to inform my understanding of the relationship between film circulation and the production of meaning, which I addressed in the previous chapter. This experience has inspired me to insert something of myself into this final chapter, which will reflect not only on this recent experience, but also on how earlier, informal modes of circulation constructed for me a particular kind of spectatorship that differed greatly from the kind of experience delivered by an international film festival.

My method is in part inspired by Hamid Naficy’s account of ‘transnational spectatorship of films by Third World population in film festivals’ (Naficy 2003:183).

Similar to Naficy, I use self-narrativization in order to avoid both the effacement of the researcher and the production of a static and homogenous image of the viewer.

However, I take a slightly different approach, informed in part by Elspeth Probyn’s conceptualization of the critic’s self as a way of thinking about cultural processes

(1993). Although Probyn is particularly concerned with the ways in which her method can contribute to the creation of gendered positions within feminist cultural studies, her formulation, as we will see, can help with the analysis of other cultural processes including cinematic experiences. According to Probyn, experience can be made to work in two registers:

at an ontological level, the concept of experience posits a separate realm of

existence – it testifies to the gendered, sexual and racial facticity of being in the

social; it can be called an immediate experiential self. At an epistemological

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level, the self is revealed in its conditions of possibility; here experience is

recognized as more obviously discursive and can be used overtly to politicize

the ontological. (Probyn 1993:16)

Bringing the experiential and discursive registers of the self to the center of attention,

Probyn argues against the reduction of the critic’s experience ‘to the expression of a guarantee of authenticity, wherein the ontological is seen simply as an articulation of the “will to authority”’ (1993:16). Rather, this formulation of the self foregrounds how the experiential and its politicization can provide conditions for creating alternative speaking positions for analysis.

Probyn’s conceptualization, following Raymond Williams, foregrounds the value of the experience of the self, reflection on it and speaking as a self as inputs for understanding a cultural process, but at the same time warns against the assumption that the self is a static unity. Instead, she highlights that the self is constructed via a complex process whose contingencies of existence are determined by her position in relation to sets of forces within and outside of a social formation or a cultural practice. The challenge here is to find ‘ways in which these sometimes real implications of the self can be checked by using experience epistemologically to locate and problematize the conditions that articulate individuated experiences’ (1993:16). As we will see, the self- reflexive voice that I create based on Probyn’s formulation articulates a point-of-view or speaking position that in turn foregrounds the historical conditions in which I as a viewer/researcher come to speak.

The analysis I provide of my experience, on one level, reveals my position as a subject within the articulation of distinct and sometimes contradictory ideological discourses that come together in the location of the festival where my first encounter with Tehran Taxi took place. In every cinematic experience, the viewer is positioned

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within different systems of representation and ideological discourses that over- determine the condition of the encounter. In particular, the constitution of the viewer in relation to the viewing context and cinematic text contribute to the meaning ascribed to an experience. The account I provide in this chapter underscores the diversity of individual viewing experiences, but at the same time draws attention to some of the collective dimensions of a cinematic encounter, especially in relation to the content of the film, its trajectory and the context in which the encounter occurs.

The discourses that emerged around the screening of Tehran Taxi at the

Berlinale add layers of complexity to the viewing experience and to my analysis.

The very material existence of the film, its screening at the festival and the controversies that ensued reveal some key aspects of the contradictions and complexities of transnational circulation of Iranian cinema, as I have already explored in previous chapters. However, a particular sequence of the film that follows a movie smuggler brings my experience of the moment into unlikely conjuncture between two different orders of film circulation, which invites analysis: first, the way that alternative networks of film circulation are enfolded into the film’s narrative. Second, the festival circuit as the context in which I watched this sequence.

Reflecting on my experience of watching Tehran Taxi brings alternative networks of film circulation, which are rejected and neglected by various systems including the Iranian state and international copyright regimes, to the centre of my analysis. I argue that different modes of circulation effectively construct different kinds of viewing experience or positions and that these positions inflect the meaning of films.

The film festival circuit: the site of encounter with a different culture and cinema?

In November 2014, I planned a research trip first to Iran and then Germany to

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attend two festival events: the 33rd Fajr Film Festival (1–11 February) and the 65th

Berlinale (5–15 February 2015). My aim at that point was to gain insight into the dynamics of international distribution of Iranian cinema. I planned to interview several international distributors of Iranian films based in both Iran and Europe, and to conduct participatory observation of their practices at the Berlinale trade fair, known as the

European Film Market. I hoped to learn about the challenges faced by the international distributors of Iranian cinema. In Iran, I also wanted to conduct interviews with some of the cultural authorities to explore the transformation of the state’s approach towards transnational film circulation in relation to some major historical events in the Iranian context.

By the time I started this research, I already knew that both festivals had played very distinct roles in the international recognition and celebration of Iranian cinema over the course of their histories. The Fajr Film Festival is one of the major cinematic events in Iran that has taken place on the same dates in February each year since its establishment in 1982. As I explained in the first chapter, the Fajr Film Festival has served various aims for the Iranian state: as not only another level of control over the circulation of films inside the country but also an effective means of public diplomacy in their cultural battle with the West. Each year, the festival invites a group of international guests, including directors and programmers of international film festivals and prominent film critics. This strategy, as I demonstrated in the first chapter, gradually contributed to the increase in the number of screenings of Iranian films in some of the most important global cinematic events including the Berlinale.

As one of the big three major festivals, along with Cannes and Venice, the

Berlinale attracts the largest audience numbers and is also the longest running film festival (being founded in 1951) (Hoyne 2012:29). Its trade centre, the European Film

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Market, is ‘one of the most important events on the international film business calendar, attracting around 130 stands and over 400 exhibitors from all over the world’ (Hoyne

2012:31). The Berlinale has a long history of screening the works of Iranian filmmakers, which dates back to the years before the establishment of the Islamic

Republic. In fact, the screening of A Party in Hell (Shab Neshini dar Jahannam,

Mushegh Sarvarian and Samuel Khachikian, 1956) at the 1958 Berlinale marked the first presence of an Iranian film in an international event (Atebai 2003/1382:19). The

Berlinale is also known for its involvement in political controversies both on national and global fronts. It has awarded prizes to many films with politically sensitive subjects, including Far from Home (In der Fremde, Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1975) and Head-On

(Gegen die Wand, Fatih Akin, 2004), which address issues of migration and integration in Germany. On many occasions, the Berlinale has also shown solidarity with filmmakers who are under constraint in their own countries for addressing socio- political issues. An example is the 2010 Berlinale, when an empty chair was left for

Jafar Panahi as a gesture of solidarity after he received a twenty-year ban in Iran from filmmaking.

On 14 January 2015, only a week before my flight from Sydney to Tehran, a press release from the Berlinale announced that a new film by Jafar Panahi would screen in competition ('Jafar Panahi's new film in Competition' 2015c). The coincidence of my research trip with the premiere of Tehran Taxi at the Berlinale brought the complex relationship between the Iranian state and international film festivals to the centre of my attention. At that time, none of the Iranian cultural authorities had officially reacted to the Berlinale’s announcement. In 2013, the Iranian cultural authorities had reacted harshly to the Berlinale awarding the Silver Bear to Closed

Curtain (Pardeh, Jafar Panahi and Kambozia Partovi, 2013). The passports of Partovi

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and the film’s actress, Maryam Moghadam, were confiscated to prevent them from leaving the country to attend the festival (Gozarname-ye Kambozia Partovi and Marym

Moghadam, Avamel-e Film-e Parde Toghif Shod2013/1391). Moreover, Javad

Shamaghdari, who was the deputy head of Cinematic Affairs of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, accused the Berlinale of having political intentions behind awarding the film, since the festival organizers were ‘aware that in Iran a film’s production and submission to an international film festival needs official permission from the ministry’ (Gozarname-ye Kambozia Partovi and Marym Moghadam, Avamel-e

Film-e Parde Toghif Shod2013/1391). Considering these previous reactions from the

Iranian authorities, I was surprised to hear that the state-sponsored organizations, including Farabi Cinema Foundation and the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcast Media

Trade, previously known as Sima Film, were going to participate in the European Film

Market in 2015. I had expected to see even harsher reactions to a recurring situation.

The Berlinale’s announcement could radically heighten the tensions between the Iranian state and the festivals, which had remained an ongoing issue since the early 1990s. How could the Iranian state, with its long history of struggle with filmmakers and the festival circuit, ignore the continuous negation of its rules on many levels and justify the participation of its key organizations in the event?

Since the high-ranking Iranian officials has not yet officially reacted to the situation, I did not expect to receive a clear answer to this question, but nevertheless raised it in my interviews in Iran. Many of the people I interviewed refused to answer this question. The director of one of the state-sponsored distribution companies briefly mentioned to me that their organization was reluctant about participating in the

European Film Market but had decided to attend because the trade centre is a different event and follows different policies. From what I can tell, the official representatives

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used the invented idea that the film market is a separate event as a way of justifying their participation in the film market while an unauthorized film was being screened in competition in contravention of the Iranian regulations. The fact that Iran had three other official entries in different sections of the festival, one of which was a co- production with France, is evidence that the official response was just a ruse. The

Iranian authorities also chose not to withdraw those films from the program.

The screening of Tehran Taxi at Berlinale allowed me to glimpse of some of the contradictions and tensions that contribute to the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture: the role of the Iranian state in the promotion of the nation’s cinema, the complexity of the conflicts between the state and Iranian filmmakers, and the contribution of the film festival circuit to these struggles.

One aspect of my experience at the Berlinale that I find particularly striking is how the festival became the site of my encounter, as an Iranian viewer, with the Iranian cinema. Bill Nichols’ reflection on his own experience of watching post-revolutionary

Iranian cinema in order to study the reception of new cinemas in the festival circuit triggered this self-awareness and eventually inspired me to formulate my experience in relation to his. As discussed in the introduction to this thesis, Nichols considers the international film festival circuit as one of the main sites of encounter of the audience with cinemas emerging from other nations and cultures (1994). For him, the festival experience has similarities with a tourist or an anthropologist’s encounter with an unfamiliar culture, in the sense that it evokes a travel or dreamlike state for the viewers

(Nichols 1994:18). At the same time, the climate of the festival encourages viewers to

‘recover the strange as familiar’ through the ‘acknowledgement of an international film style’, and to retrieve ‘insights or lessons about a different culture’ (1994:18). Nichols insists on the dreamlike state of the reception of the films as imaginary signifiers, to the

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extent that he finds the cinematic encounter similar to a ‘real’ encounter of a tourist or an ethnographer with an unfamiliar culture.

Thinking about my own experience at the Berlinale, I found Nichols article both intriguing and problematic. Nichols’ account is particularly important where he highlights that the festival circuit does not serve just as an inert delivery mechanism that makes the encounter with other cinemas and cultures possible. As he argues, film festivals, as viewing contexts, can ‘inscribe and inflect the meaning’ that the viewer ascribes to other cinemas, and at the same time ‘constitute the very audience needed to recognize and appreciate such cinemas as distinct and valued entities’ (Nichols 1994:

16). In that sense, an important feature of the festival circuit is that they impose some sort of ‘imaginary coherence’ on the films produced by particular nations and invite the viewer to retrieve ‘insights or lessons about a different culture’ (Nichols 1994:18).

The publicity around the screening of the film indeed captures some aspects of the ways in which the festival event and media tend to steer the viewers’ readings of the film in selected directions.

At first, it was the synopsis for Tehran Taxi presented in the Berlinale’s catalogue that captured my attention:

A yellow cab is driving through the vibrant and colourful streets of Tehran.

Very diverse passengers enter the taxi, each candidly expressing their views

while being interviewed by the driver who is no one else but the director Jafar

Panahi himself [sic]. His camera placed on the dashboard of his mobile film

studio captures the spirit of Iranian society through this comedic and dramatic

drive. ('Competition: Taxi' 2015a)

Nichols wrote about his encounter with the Iranian cinema during the 1990s. As I explained in the first chapter, during this period the efforts of the Farabi Cinema

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Foundation came to fruition and a significant number of post-revolution films began to

‘receive praise for their ability to transcend local issues and provisional tastes while simultaneously providing a window onto a different culture’ (Nichols 1994:16). The synopsis of Tehran Taxi, which promises to introduce viewers to ‘the spirit of Iranian society’ by providing a tour around the ‘the vibrant and colourful streets of Tehran’ perfectly reproduces the effect that Nichols describes. This shows that even with a film that is likely to be as controversial as Tehran Taxi, the marketing material emphasizes the ‘touristic’ experience, rather than its illicit production and circulation.

Juxtaposing my own experience with Nichols’ draws attention to the significance of film festivals as ideological systems, in the sense that these events continuously produce and re-produce certain meanings. As Stuart Hall points out,

‘ideologies do not operate through single ideas; they operate in discursive chains, in clusters, in semantic fields, in discursive formations’ (Hall 2016:137). In the case of the screening of Tehran Taxi at the Berlinale, it was not only the film’s content that became the centre of attention of the media but also the living and working conditions experienced by Panahi, who continues to make films despite being banned from filmmaking.

Ever since Panahi received his sentence from the Iranian judicial system, international film festivals have been participating in protests against his ban. In 2011, the Berlinale kept the empty chair to draw attention to his absence from the jury, and

Isabella Rossellini read Panahi’s passionate letter to the festival audience. Many of the reviews that have been published in the media after the screening of Panahi’s films at festivals emphasized the ways in which Panahi’s political situation is embedded in the content of the films. In 2013, for example, after the screening of The Closed Curtain at the Berlinale, a review published in the Hollywood Reporter wrote that Panahi

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‘metaphorically recounts his artistic depression’ (Young 2013). This time was not an exception. A few examples from the reviews of Tehran Taxi published as a part of the media coverage of the Berlinale can help me elaborate this point.

Many reviews of the film pointed out that the significance of this film also lies in Panahi’s efforts to negate the state’s ban. Richard Brody of the New Yorker, for example, believed that the pressure of the circumstances had transformed Panahi’s art, in that ‘he has turned from a classicist into a modernist, while at the same time transforming the very codes and tones of his frame-breaking aesthetic’ (2015).The report published in Reuters after the premiere screening of Tehran Taxi introduced it as another film by ‘the banned Iranian filmmaker who has defied the authorities before by smuggling films out of Iran’ (Roddy 2015). Unlike the case of This is not a Film, when rumours about its smuggling out of Iran on a USB drive hidden in a birthday cake spread around the time of its screening at Venice, this time the Berlinale remained silent about how they got the film. As Dieter Kosslick, the director of Berlinale said to reporters at the premiere screening of the film, Panahi ‘never accepted his 20-year ban and tried to make his work because he cannot live without making films, and by accident we got this film here, maybe with a taxi’ (Roddy 2015)?Variety’s review of the film also highlighted that Tehran Taxi was made outside of the official purview of filmmaking in Iran and called it a ‘defiant gesture’ from a banned director (Foundas

2015). In this review, Scott Foundas mentions that while there is nothing particularly new about Panahi’s style and what he tries to say in the film, his ‘defiant gesture’ is an achievement which also ‘ensures that the “Taxi” makes many more stops around the world before returning to the garage’ (Foundas 2015).15 In the Guardian, Peter

Bradshaw gave the film four stars out of five and called it a ‘career selfie from [a]

15 The film’s first title at the time of its screening at the Berlinale was Taxi, which was later changed to Tehran Taxi. 216

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banned director’, describing Panahi as an ‘Iranian auteur and democracy campaigner’ who ‘once again found a way around the state ban on him as a filmmaker with a new movie at a European festival’(Bradshaw 2015). Film festivals have been known for political controversy before. The festival circuit, as Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong highlights,

‘do not create social issues but in selection, screening and reception they galvanize debates’ (Hing-Yuk Wong 2016:87). The early reviews of Tehran Taxi as a part of the publicity of the Berlinale event are among the examples that demonstrate how the festival circuit plays its own part in the ongoing struggles and tensions between Iranian filmmakers and the state.

One particular point in Bradshaw’s review captured my attention. For Bradshaw, although the film has no credits it is clear that Panahi directed it despite the official restrictions. He concludes that perhaps the Iranian state realized that ‘enforcing the ban would make them look absurd, especially in the light of Iran’s new détente with the west’(Bradshaw 2015).16The fact that Iran did not react to the making of the film after their responses to his two previous works raised the same question that I refrained from directly asking the Iranian authorities and distributors, but which continued to haunt me long after my field research had been completed; why didn’t the Iranian authorities react to the screening of Tehran Taxi? As an important means of public diplomacy, cinema has always had a significance for the Islamic Republic. But in order to be useful for the

Iranian state in light of the larger political discourse, the circulation of the film had to be inscribed with a particular meaning that avoids political matters. Even before watching the film, I was quite sure that the content of Tehran Taxi would not help to provide the

Islamic Republic with a positive image on the international front. At least Panahi’s last

16 He is referring to the nuclear deal framework negotiations between Iran, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (5+1) and the European Union, which reached a temporary agreement in 2015. 217

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two films had proved otherwise. In This is not a Film, as we saw in the previous chapter, the film’s self-reflexivity not only calls our attention to the context of its production and the conditions of its illicit circulation, but also signals its contribution to the politics of signification. Whatever meaning the Iranian state was going to inscribe to the event, it would need to directly point outside of the content of the film. It was only after the Berlinale awarded the Golden Bear to Tehran Taxi that I found an answer to this question.

Soon after the closing ceremony of the festival, when the Berlinale announced the winners, Hojatollah Ayoubi, the deputy head of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic

Guidance, wrote a letter to Dieter Kosslick, the director of the Berlinale, and accused the festival’s programmers of ‘prioritizing politics over arts and culture’ (2015d). In this letter, Ayoubi stressed that the very fact that Panahi had made a film demonstrated that he had the rights of a free Iranian citizen in his country (2015d). The same point was stressed in an article published by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting newspaper,

Jam-e Jam (Alimohammadi 2015/1393). In this article, the author claims that ‘Iranians should thank Panahi’ for his actions, since the international circulation of his films contradict all the assumptions of ‘those who warn against the violation of human rights in Iran’ (Alimohammadi 2015/1393). The same event created two chains of meanings that contradicted one another. On one side, the Iranian media took advantage of

Panahi’s case as a way to argue that freedom of expression is upheld in Iran. Through this, we can see how the Iranian state attempted to inscribe the film into their continuing use of the international acclaim for Iranian films to promote the legitimacy of the

Islamic Republic. And on the other side, it was the festival and its media coverage that not only celebrated Panahi’s negation of the ban but also directed attention to the significance of a European festival as the site of his battle with the Iranian state through

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the media coverage of the event.

My observations at the Berlinale resonate with Nichols’ account of his own festival experience. The context in which Tehran Taxi was screened added new layers of meaning to the film that, as Nichols argues, ‘did not exist prior to the circuit of exchange that the festivals themselves constitute’ (1994:19). The opening and closing events and popular press serve as the discursive forms that build certain frameworks of

‘assumptions and expectations’ around the films and the event, and at the same time

‘obscure alternative readings or discourage their active pursuits’ (Nichols 1994:20).

And above all, in this event the festival publicity also invited the festival viewer to be submerged in the ‘experience of difference’ (Nichols 1994: 17). As I shall detail below, this is the precise point that my festival experience radically departs from Nichols’.

Unlike him, I could not identify myself with the kind of ideal festival viewer that he evokes in his article. On the contrary, the emphasis on the experience of difference as well as the contradictions that surfaced in front of me as a result of my exposure to other representations of the same empirical event made me think about the difference of my experience to his.

The problem of Nichols’ analysis reveals itself when he tries to guarantee a level of authenticity for his account. First, he renders other festival experiences similar to his own and second, by reducing the engagement of the viewers, who he invokes as ‘us’, in the process of meaning-making to search for patterns in Iranian films, and to test the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of a particular film in relation to other productions of that particular cinema and culture (Nichols 1994:20). He later clarifies that the ‘we’ invoked in his article is the one that includes himself: ‘white, western, middle-class festival-goers and commentators for whom these issues of cross cultural reading are freighted with specific historical (colonial and postcolonial) hazards’ (Nichols 1994:20).

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It never becomes clear in the article which hazards in particular can impact the viewer’s reading, but almost immediately, Nichols problematizes this discursive positioning of the viewer. As he explains,

[t]o the extent that film festivals occur globally, from Hong Kong to Havana,

this ‘we’ has the potential to include many other social groupings for which

additional modifications would need to be made. The types of experience and

acts of making sense described here are not unique to white, western audiences,

but neither are they identical among all festival goers. (Nichols 1994: 20)

Nichols’s use of himself as a reference point to bind festival viewers together, through various inclusions and exclusions to certain groups and systems, does not allow a space for the possibility of engagement with any different form of festival experiences, including mine. He cannot move from the experience of a fixed, stable subject defined in terms of categories of race and class to an approach that captures the multiplicity of experiences. At the same time, he acknowledges that more work needs to be done to account for such other social groupings that are excluded from his analysis. Nichols wrote about his experience to move beyond an understanding of a culture as a ‘text, or semiotic system’ (1994:19). Doing so, he pays very little attention to the content of films and the ways in which each film can contribute to the creation of a unique cinematic experience. The analysis I provide of my own experience seeks to respond to the above challenges by employing a methodological framework inspired by Probyn’s approach, which calls for attention to the uniqueness of an experience, in terms of the context, the specificity of each film and of the viewer.

The challenge is to find a speaking position – to use experience epistemologically in order to locate and problematize the conditions in which the articulated experience of the individual comes into existence. The discovery of places to

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speak from, as Probyn argues, ‘is always tied to the practices and politics bound up with daily life which is filled with a plethora of details and ruses that allow us to get by’

(1993:86). Here, Probyn draws on Michel De Certeau’s discussion of tactic, and its difference from strategy, as a way of exploring specific articulations of the self.

A strategy, according to De Certeau, is,

the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that becomes possible

as soon as a subject with will and power […] can be isolated. It postulates a

place that can be delimited as its own and serves as a base from which relations

with an exteriority composed of targets and threats […] can be managed […] a

tactic is a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. The

space of the tactic is the space of the other […] in short, a tactic is an art of the

weak. (De Certeau in Probyn 1993:86-87, emphasis in original)

The use of a tactic in conceptualization of an experience is central to Probyn’s argument. According to her, the self whose experience is condensed into a ‘proper locus’ or, in other words, ‘is seen as an entity that binds [a group] together in the face of racial, sexual, national, and other differences’ cannot be analytically useful (Probyn

1993: 106). It is this kind of subject position that Nichols relies on in his article. By contrast, an image without a ‘proper locus’ conceptualizes the self in relation to the forces that are at work in a particular system, and ‘what that image or concept tries to do outside of the system in which it is enunciated’ (Probyn 1993:89). The creation of an image of the self that is without a proper locus requires ‘the identification and insertion’ of the self in different contexts which bring to attention ‘different orders of effect’

(Probyn 1993:88). In this study, the tactical conceptualization of my festival experience requires not only that I draw attention to my relation to the set of discourses within the

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festival, as we saw, but also to stretch the experiential self in order to see what it can tell us about the alternative orders of film circulation.

In the next section, I demonstrate how my attendance at the Berlinale and its coincidence with the premiere screening of Tehran Taxi allow me to formulate my experience in terms of an image without a proper locus. I use this image in order to explore the role of multiple viewing contexts in the process of meaning-making, by foregrounding the significance of alternative networks of film circulation in shaping an individuals’ cinematic experiences.

Watching Tehran Taxi at the Berlinale: an image without a proper locus

As I reflect on my first encounter with Tehran Taxi in a movie theatre at the Berlinale, I realize that my interpretation of this particular experience is largely informed by my position as a researcher. Based on my observations, I presume that for Panahi, the festival event is the location of the film’s initial encounter with the viewer. As I demonstrated through several examples in this research, for many years the film festival circuit played a central role not only in promoting Panahi’s films in the international market but also in raising public awareness about the conditions under which the films are made. My interpretation of this experience also largely depends on my reading of the film in terms of a Foucauldian heterotopia. According to Michel Foucault, heterotopia refers to a discursive and/or material space that juxtaposes different spaces on one site and reflects on its own positions within an order, which are ‘the fundamental codes of a culture – those governing its language, its schemes of perception, its exchanges, its techniques, its values, the hierarchy of its practices’ (2002:xxii). In

Tehran Taxi, two characters, in particular, play significant roles in the emergence of this heterotopia from within the narrative: a passenger who has been in the taxi from the

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beginning and stays through the first 30 minutes of the film, and Hanna, Panahi’s niece, who arrives in the second part of the film and stays through to the end. These characters constantly interrupt the surface narrative that supposedly ‘captures the spirit of Iranian society’, as the synopsis provided by the Berlinale suggests, and instead contribute to the ways that the film, filmmaker, and the viewer might locate their position as subjects within the order of Iranian cinematic culture: the codes that govern its language and production, its exchange relations, and the disposition of viewing practices. Disposition communication theory refers to the way ‘the viewers form and maintain a string feeling towards media character’ (Raney, 2006). In the previous chapter, I explained how

Hanna, from within the narrative, contributes to the self-reflexivity of the film. This self-reflexive hint signifies Panahi’s position as a filmmaker within the order of Iranian cinema, and the rules that govern the cinematic language and film production in that context. The film’s disposition of viewing practices, which is particularly important for this chapter, is reinforced through the presence of the first passenger. The reading that I provide of the sequence of Tehran Taxi that follows this particular passenger aims to demonstrate how the film interacts with its viewers, who I refer to as ‘us’ and ‘we’.

Through this reading, I hope to create an image of myself that locates me within this heterotopia and the sites it reflects upon.

Tehran Taxi opens in a crowded junction in the centre of Tehran. The camera is positioned on the dashboard of a car waiting behind the red light. The yellow colour of the car, revealed lower in the frame, resonates with the title: it is a taxi. As the traffic light turns green, the taxi moves and soon picks up a passenger. A few seconds later, it stops again and a second passenger gets in. A voice from inside the car, outside of the frame, asks a question about the device mounted on the dashboard, ‘What is it? Is it a security system?’ As soon as we are reminded of the camera, it pans around to capture

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the passenger who asked the question and the second passenger who sits behind him on the back seat. The movement of the camera creates a ‘metafilmic split’ a few seconds after the beginning of Tehran Taxi. As I explained in the third chapter, filmic enunciation is indicated by what Metz calls ‘reflexive constructions’ (1991:753, emphasis in original). They are the moments in which the film manifests ‘the production instance that carries it only by talking to us about the camera, the spectator, or by pointing at its own filmitude, that is, in any case, by pointing at itself’ (Metz

1991:753). In conventional narrative cinema, the coherence of a film’s ‘story’ generally relies on the discourse’s ability to efface the traces of filmic enunciation, for their exposure results in ‘metafilmic splitting within the narrative’ (Mottahedeh 2008b:201).

By making us aware of the camera, Tehran Taxi reflects on the process of its own production. The synchronicity of the driver’s voice emanating from the off-screen space with the movement of camera reinforces this split. Though he is absent from the frame, his presence and role in the process of making of film is revealed. As the taxi driver, he is in charge of the very dynamic location but he is also the one who decides what part of the reality outside is to be captured. The camera screens the conversations between the two passengers while the background sounds continuously remind us about the presence of the driver/cameraman and a third passenger in the taxi. Such techniques bring the driver and second passenger to the centre of attention, in that it foregrounds their positions as subjects within the cinematic discourse.

Only after the two passengers alight does the image cut to a frame from the other side of the taxi, revealing Panahi behind the wheel. On his left, from our viewpoint, is the torso of the third passenger who moves in and out of the frame, as if for a few seconds, he is caught between visible and invisible. Then slowly, he emerges before the viewers’ eyes. ‘I have recognized you, Mr Panahi. Even with this beret hat that you put

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on’, he says as he moves forward to expose himself to the camera. The reference to the hat is a metaphor that points to the dual identity of the character behind the wheel of the taxi: although Panahi wears the driver’s hat, which refers to the ‘role’ he has temporarily taken on, his presence in the narrative also reflects on his position in the domain of the ‘real’ as a filmmaker. For me, as I watched the film at the Berlinale, this exposure also resonated with Panahi’s condition as a filmmaker who made the film despite his ban. Panahi’s statement, published in the festival program, also directed my attention to the ways in which the film reflects on Panahi’s persistence in bypassing the restrictions the Iranian state imposed upon him. Panahi wrote,

[n]othing can prevent me from making films. Because when I’m pushed into

the furthest corners I connect with my inner self. And in such private spaces,

despite all limitations, the necessity to create becomes even more of an urge.

(2015a)

Tehran Taxi is one of the most claustrophobic ‘private spaces’ Panahi has ever created.

This space radicalizes the effect of the self-reflexive techniques that are at work from the very beginning of the film. But the third passenger has more to do than merely signalling the self-reflexivity of the film and filmmaker from within the narrative. He insists on being brought to the centre of attention. He does this quite overtly, first by placing himself in full view of the camera and then even more literally by asking Panahi to stop the car for a second so he can sit in the front passenger seat.

Once the passenger’s position is established in the middle of a frame that captures the front passenger seat, he says that he has already realized that they are in the process of making a film, and that those who got out of the car were not real passengers but actors. ‘Do you know how I recognized this? What he said was a line from the coffee shop scene in Crimson Gold’, he explains. Lines like this seem to signal the

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viewer, asking us to watch out for references to his previous films. They call upon us to be attentive viewers, and they reward us for recognising moments from his other films within this film. Through this conversation, the third passenger also points to an outside of the frame, to the pro-filmic ‘reality’. After positioning himself in the middle of the frame, he also encourages us to identify with him as the viewer of Panahi’s film. The follow up dialogue does not allow this identification to take long. ‘Didn’t you recognize me, Mr Panahi?’ he asks. Panahi, behind the wheel, seems puzzled, much as I was when

I first watched the film. The passenger introduces himself as Omid the filmi who, as he explains, used to deliver movies to Panahi’s house.17

The significance of this sequence of Tehran Taxi for me lies in the ways in which the film reflects on its transnational encounter with the viewer at the Berlinale through irony. According to Paul De Man, irony is produced through a moment of rupture between sign and meaning, which involves ‘a more radical negation than one would have in an ordinary trope such as synecdoche or metaphor or metonymy’ (De

Man 1997:165). Omid reminds Panahi of the enquiries he made about Once Upon a

Time Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011) and Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011).

Both films were premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. It is precisely in this moment, when the interplay between characters who constantly acquire new identities to mirror one another suspends our attention, that the film reflects on the trajectory which made its own transnational encounter with the festival viewer possible. The means of circulation in an alternative order are enfolded into the narrative of the film itself and these processes are emblematized by Omid. What is captured on the screen becomes ironic, or a ‘reversed mirrored-image’ of the immediate experience of the viewer at the festival (De Man 2005:225). As De Man writes, irony ‘captures some of

17 In Iran the movie smugglers are generally referred to as filmis. 226

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the factitiousness of human existence’ (2005: 226). In its ironic reflection on the film’s own circulation and its encounter with the viewer, Tehran Taxi seems to challenge the perception of the festival experience as the only authentic form of transnational cinematic encounter.

The conversation between Omid and Panahi is interrupted first by a mobile phone ringing and then by the abrupt sound of someone knocking urgently on the car.

They are in the middle of a traffic accident scene. An injured man is pushed into the back seat. He asks for a mobile phone so he can record his will in case he dies. Panahi hands his phone to Omid to capture the man as he recites his will. Once Omid adjusts his position and turns on the camera, the image cuts to a scene of the rear seat of the car filmed by the mobile phone. This is a new perspective, a frame that could not be captured from the angle of the dashboard camera. While the conversation between

Panahi and Omid highlighted their position as filmmaker and viewer respectively, this move decentres the role of the director, if only for a while, to introduce a new point of view.

Omid returns the mobile phone to Panahi and says, ‘you positioned those actors in the car in front of the camera, you thought I would not realize’? Now it is Omid’s turn to put on a proverbial director’s hat to reflect on what Metz would call the filmitude of what he captured, but more importantly, to redirect our attention to

Panahi’s role as a filmmaker through this new arrangement (1991). In conventional narrative cinema, as Metz highlights, the film resembles a ‘present instance stuck between two absent ones, the author who disappeared after the fabrication, and the spectator, who is present but does not manifest his presence in any respect’ (Metz quoted in Mottahedeh 2008b:200). But Tehran Taxi does not resemble conventional narrative cinema. The self-reflexivity of the film, as Omid returns Panahi’s phone as a

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filming device, ruptures the narrative. As Negar Mottahedeh points out, such an arrangement notifies ‘the viewer to his or her positioning within or in relation to the media producing and projecting the film’s story on the screen’ (Mottahedeh

2008b:202). By destroying its own syntax, the ground on which the film exists, Tehran

Taxi reflects upon the process of its own making as film, the location of its address, as well as on the relationship between the filmmaker (I) and the viewer (you) who are absent, but their existence is manifested in the ‘unreal, virtual space’ that opens up on the screen (Foucault 1986:4). This virtual space, which effectively works as a shattered mirror without a clear reflection, displaces the subject or centre in the film. It is through this shattered mirror that the interplay of subject positions invites us to follow ‘the orchestration of looking – who is looking at what or whom’ (Hall, Evans, and Nixon

2013:43).

The interplay of subject positions reminds me of Foucault’s reading of Diego

Velázquez’s painting, Las Meninas (2002).18 His reading of the painting draws attention to the constructed nature of representation. As Stuart Hall et al. point out, in his reading of Las Meninas, Foucault argues that the discourse of representation in this particular painting works in a way that,

it must be looked at and made sense of from that one subject-position in front of

it from which we, the spectators, are looking. This is also a point-of-view from

which a camera would have to be positioned in order to film the scene. (Hall,

Evans, and Nixon 2013:44, emphasis in original)

Similar to Foucault’s reading of Las Meninas, I see Tehran Taxi as a discourse that invites us to follow the relationship between the characters represented in the film by

18 Las Meninas is a 1656 painting of a large room in which it represents several figures of the Spanish royal court and the painter himself in a particular arrangement. The painting shows the king and queen’s reflection in the mirror in the back of the room, the princess and her attendants as they are looking at the royal couple outside the frame, and the painter who steps back from his canvas to look at his work. 228

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orchestrating our gazes. We know that Panahi is important, because he occupies two subject positions at once; he is the director of the film and at the same time represents himself within it as a viewer/director, who looks back towards our point of view in front of the screen. Then Omid, the filmi who mirrors Panahi and just like him and us, looks at the whole setting from an outside position. But if the film was a ‘real’ mirror, it would have to reflect on us as viewers who can make sense of the events on the screen from an outside point of view. But the self-reflexive techniques used in the film constantly point to its own filmitude and shows, in our place Panahi, the director of the film. It is as if the film invites us not only to see it from the perspective of ‘real’ Panahi outside of the screen but also invites us to think about the significance of his relationship with the filmi.

In an article published in the opinion section of Al Jazeera, Hamid Dabashi wrote that even though Panahi ‘benefits from every potent technique for which he is known and praised – particularly his uncanny ability to thrive on that strange combination of fact and fantasy,’ his last film, Tehran Taxi, ‘collapse[s] into not just political counter-propaganda but much worse, into anthropology’ (2015). For Dabashi, the potent technique that brought Panahi to the attention of his audience at European film festivals ‘has been entirely exhausted and done to perfection by [his] own mentor

Abbas Kiarostami’ (2015). In that sense, he concludes that while new technologies had allowed Panahi to make films without permission and to circulate them around the world, one can also see in his films ‘the dying flames of a once glorious national cinema’ (Dabashi 2015). Dabashi takes into account both the contexts in which films are produced and circulated and the filmmaker’s style as important components that contribute to the peculiarity of Panahi’s struggle with the Iranian state. However, by placing emphasis on the films as ‘dying flames’ of the glorious Iranian cinema, Dabashi

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unwittingly fortifies the structure the both he and Panahi wish to dismantle. That is, a national cinema that has been meticulously crafted and promoted by the Islamic

Republic as a symbolic product, in order to introduce and reproduce its own values and ideologies not only to the Iranian citizens but to the world; and the context and the relation of forces that contribute to and are impacted by the making and circulation of these films.

Tehran Taxi, therefore, refuses to provide a ‘real’ image of the Iranian society.

Instead it is a self-portrait of the filmmaker himself, who acknowledges his position as a filmmaker and viewer, as constituted within the order of the Iranian cinematic culture.

In doing so, it also invites us to think about the deeper aspects of the role of alternative networks of film circulation, emblematized by Omid, in shaping the identity of Panahi as an Iranian filmmaker, and these networks’ subsequent impact on film production and content. Here, similar to Ghobadi, Panahi locates his position within this alternative order but moves further and asks us to see how his image as a filmmaker is linked with the image of the filmi. That is why Omid is with Panahi before the beginning of the film. Somehow, this aspect of Panahi’s identity as an Iranian viewer is linked to the film’s own trajectory and the meanings that are accumulated from the past.

Similar to Las Meninas, Tehran Taxi does not allow a fixed or final meaning to be ascribed to the film. All the subjects are displaced yet at the centre of our attention;

Panahi is a filmmaker and a viewer, Omid is the same. Such conditions keep us in a

‘state of suspended attention’ (Hall, Evans, and Nixon 2013:43). Here, meaning becomes an emerging process, ‘yet any final meaning is constantly deferred’ (Hall,

Evans, and Nixon 2013:43). This dynamic process of meaning-making connects the movie theatre, and me within it, to the heterotopia on the screen. If only there were a mirror to reflect on myself, it could capture me within a larger heterotopia that reflects

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on the fragments of my presence both within and outside the whole cultural process: the

Iranian cinema with its displaced allegories, the immediate context of the Berlinale in which I saw the film, and the contingencies of circumstances that determined this cinematic encounter. But above all, Omid reminds me of my absence/presence within the alternative order of film circulation.

The reason that I can see my own ‘image’ as a viewer reflected in the two characters in Tehran Taxi is because the events that played out on the screen mirrored my own experience of film viewing among many others as I grew up in Tehran. It is through this kind of informal circulation that I was constructed as a film viewer, not via the kind of viewing experience constructed by an international film festival. As I explain shortly, this is precisely the point that makes my point of view in this festival experience an image without a proper locus.

The next task is to use this image as a point of view in order to critically engage with ‘the articulation of [my] very local and concrete circumstances’ (Probyn 1993:99).

The image of the self and the point of view created through Probyn’s formulation then becomes ‘a conjunctural document of the self and of the time’ and puts forwards its quality as an emerging process (1993:98). Once the relationship between the image, a point of view and the real have problematized any static or stable idea of the self, ‘we can begin to open up the analytic possibilities of the self beyond the problematic of the autobiography as a unifying discourse’ (Probyn 1993:101). Such conceptualization of the self provides a challenge to accounts, such as Nichols’, that locate their own position as a critic/viewer in terms of belonging to fixed categories of class and race.

The evocation of the self is a tactic to foreground the specificity of one’s experience in terms of ‘the materiality of its reality’ rather than ‘a movement to create an “us”’ (Probyn 1993:97). The emphasis on the experiential self, although necessary,

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does not mean that the critical activity should be reduced merely to a self-reflexive account of an experience. As Probyn argues, ‘as an enunciative position within cultural theory the self can be used to produce a radical re-articulation of the relationship of the critic, experience, text, and the conjunctural moments that we construct as we speak of that within which we live’ (Probyn 1993:31). Beneath the tale of my field research and festival experience lies a reality that can only be brought forward through the remembrance of my past. It is through this image that I can point to many different festival experiences that are far more diverse than simply the encounter with a different culture that is promoted by the festivals. But more importantly, it is my ‘self’ that, beyond the binary opposition between formal and informal, brings into focus other forms of transnational cinematic encounter. In the next section, I aim to put this image in motion, to briefly look at the other cinematic experience in contrast to my own point of view within the festival.

When the pirate meets the viewer: a familiar encounter

In Tehran Taxi, we get a chance to become familiar with Omid’s line of work with the arrival a new character who is his customer. He gets into the taxi, which is parked in front of his apartment block in what appears to be a somewhat wealthy suburb of

Tehran. The customer flips quickly through the collection of DVDs, all wrapped in soft plastic covers, that Omid has taken from his duffel bag. The dialogue between the characters in this scene implies that almost anything can be found among the hawker’s goods, from arthouse films to blockbusters and American television series. Later, Omid claims that through his job he performs a kind of ‘cultural activity’ that is central in

Iranian cinematic culture. As he elaborates, since foreign movies can never get a chance

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to be screened in Iran, his line of work is the only outlet for Iranian viewers, including

Panahi and his family, to have access to such films.

The image I provided of myself watching a particular sequence of Tehran Taxi at the Berlinale captures the moment of the conjuncture of two different orders of transnational film circulation. First, my presence within an international film festival foregrounds my position as subject constituted in relation to its discursive formations.

The second is my absence/presence within the fragments of a different process of film circulation, an alternative but familiar order that somewhat mirrors the immediate experience. But we shall remember that this mirror is a heterotopia. A discursive space in which ‘things are “laid”, “placed”, “arranged” in sites so very different from one another that it is impossible to find a place of residence for them, to define a common locus beneath them all’ (Foucault 2002:xix, emphasis in original). Above all, it is a space that allows an ‘absolute break with their traditional time’ (Foucault 1986:6). As I bring this thesis to close, I use my experience of watching a bootleg copy of Tehran

Taxi to explore how pirate platforms can construct a different kind of viewer compared to the festival experience. I argue that the material quality of the films reproduced and circulated with the use of cheap proliferation technologies can disengage the spectator from the cinematic text and pose a challenge to the ideological function of the cinematic apparatus.

In his influential essay, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic

Apparatus”, Jean-Louis Baudry draws attention to the function of cinema as an ideological state apparatus (1974). In it, he argues that the spatial, technological and cinematographic specifications of a film screened in a movie theatre serve to chain, capture and captivate the spectators as subjects of the cinematic apparatus (Baudry

1974:40). Baudry’s conceptualization of film spectatorship has held the attention of

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many scholars who expanded or critiqued his analysis in order to take into account specific elements of the spectator’s cultural identity, like gender, sexuality, race, or cultural background, in their analysis (Naficy 2003, Diawara 1988, Mulvey 1989).

Naficy, for example, highlights that such conceptualization discourages any possibility of the spectator’s ‘escape or resistance’ from the ‘monolithic, universal, and linear’ process of interpellation (Naficy 2003). Through the self-narrativization of his own film viewing experience, Naficy draws attention to various cracks, ruptures, inconsistencies, and contradictions among cinema and other ideological state apparatuses, which make the subversion of interpellation possible.

Informal networks of film circulation seem to provide a serious challenge to earlier accounts of the function of cinema as an ideological state apparatus. The most evident challenge is perhaps to the spatial dimensions of the film experience. According to Baudry, ‘the darkened hall, projector and the large screen’ create optimal conditions for capturing the spectators’ attention (Baudry 1974:44). Many forms of home screening can disrupt the process of interpellation at least because the spectator’s mobility is not suspended in place and in darkness as it is in a traditional movie theatre and hence, the visual function is no longer necessarily dominant.

Pirate platforms can interrupt the process of interpellation of the viewer by the film by affecting the quality of the material that is circulated through them. Brian Larkin draws attention to the distinct characteristics of these platforms in his study of media infrastructures in Nigeria (Larkin 2008). According to Larkin, pirate platforms can

‘influence the media that travel under its regime of reproduction’ (Larkin 2004:290). As he explains,

[p]iracy imposes particular conditions on recording, transmitting, and retrieving

data. Constant copying erodes data storage, degrading image and sound,

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overwhelming the signal of media content with the noise produced by the

means of reproduction. Pirate videos are marked by blurred images and

distorted sound, creating a material screen that filters audiences’ engagement

with the media technologies and the new sense of time, speed, space, and

contemporaneity. (Larkin 2008:219)

While Larkin is discussing physical copying, his point is to some extent relevant in the era of online piracy. The quality of films that are transmitted through digital networks can be affected by file sizes, upload and download speeds, bandwidth availability or the screen size, not to mention the varying quality of audio equipment. The result of the inability of technologies to perform their function, as Larkin argues, is a distinct aesthetic that generates, ‘a particular sensorial experience of media marked by poor transmissions, interference and noise’ (Larkin 2008:219).

I explained earlier how Tehran Taxi rejects and reveals the techniques that are at work to interpellate the viewer as subject of the cinematic apparatus. But watching it on the screen of my laptop was a disturbing experience. The torrent file was a low-quality screener with a water mark stretched diagonally across the screen. These qualities created more cracks and ruptures in the narrative, as if this time it was the pirate platform that was reflecting on its own techniques of reproduction to remind me of my distorted cinematic experience. A monotone voiceover that dubbed all the dialogues in

French added a different layer of distraction. The French dubber’s voice and the diegetic sound overlapped one another to the degree that it was impossible to engage with the narrative even for a short span of time. Overall, it is difficult for me to call it a cinematic experience. It was something that perhaps does not seem worth even writing about: 90 minutes of watching a series of fragmented, blurry images with distorted sound that clearly did not allow a minimum engagement with the cinematic text.

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I can call watching a pirated copy of Tehran Taxi a radically disengaging experience, but for me it was far from an unfamiliar form of cinematic encounter.

The practices that Omid, the filmi, and his customer are engaged in, and through which I see myself constructed as a certain kind of viewer, have their roots in the video cassette revolution in Iran. That is, they reflect the shifts in the patterns of ‘control, production, content, and consumption’ that resulted from the spread of accessible and cheap media during the 1980s (Manuel 1993:2). As I explained in the second chapter, the coincidence of the spread of video cassette technologies in the Iranian context with the

1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic revolutionized the media experience for Iranian citizens during a very special historical conjuncture.

Videocassettes not only provided opportunities for the urban population to bypass some of the censorship strategies of the state, but also became effective parallel modes of circulation that facilitated the rapid flow of materials around the country and beyond.

It is important to highlight that informal networks of film circulation in the

Iranian context create a plethora of possibilities of encounter, that can each add different layers of meaning to the film and to an individual’s cinematic experience. For me, watching films never simply meant going to a movie theatre. In fact, it seems like most of the films I have watched have an extra story attached to them which is about the adventures that I had in search of those films. I found a bootleg copy of The Circle

(Dayereh, Jafar Panahi, 2000) in a small booth located in the basement of a shopping centre in central Tehran a few years after its release. The film never received screening permission in Iran. The person who sold it to me took it from a CD storage case full of unlabelled video CDs. As he flipped through them, I could see the titles of some of the masterpieces of Iranian cinema, written on the CDs with a black marker. This informal means of accessing films was marked by other indicators of informality. My experience

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of cinema was itself marked by strategies of deception and evasion, even when films were officially approved. I once sneaked out of school to watch Bernardo Bertolucci’s

Little Buddha (1993) for the third time. It was among a handful of foreign films that had a theatrical release in Iran during the mid-1990s. Later, I found a bootleg copy of the title to watch the scenes that had been removed from the film before it was granted screening permission. On another occasion, I ordered two collections of the works of

Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman from a filmi who later told me that he had ridden uphill on his bicycle for two hours in order to deliver the films to my home.

While many of these experiences, together with my more recent festival experience, might be used to draw attention to the dynamics of informal film circulation in the Iranian context, here I reflect on my experience of watching bootleg copies of films on videocassettes – a popular practice during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Failure and noise were almost always an inevitable characteristic of the bootleg copies of films that circulated on videocassettes at this time. Similar to many other countries, the most popular videotapes in Iran were Sony Betamax and JVC’s Video

Home System known as VHS. By the late 1980s, VHS had taken over and the majority of titles were more accessible in this format. Compared to the VCDs and DVDs that would later emerge, it was relatively difficult to duplicate a VHS tape. The older VHS players did not have a built-in recorder and to record a video using the more advanced models two devices were needed; a player and a recorder. Moreover, duplication of analogue format of audio-visual material, like that recorded on video cassettes, results in generation loss, which means that the quality of the copy is always unavoidably lower than the tape it was duplicated from.

For all these reasons, while with more recent technologies it is more accessible to duplicate or download a title, with videocassettes it was more common to rent the

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movies rather than duplicating them. The rise of videocassettes in Iran during the 1980s also coincides with the historical period in which movie smugglers like Omid began to emerge in different cities of Iran. Popularly known as filmis, these mobile videocassette rental suppliers became the major access point for the Iranian population to the foreign and pre-revolutionary films soon after their circulation had been restricted with the launch of post-revolutionary cinematic policies. For many families including mine, having a good filmi who could provide high-quality copies of a wide range of titles was a great advantage. However, the quality of individual films could never be guaranteed, and frequently the quality of a video would vary dramatically across the duration of each film. Each tape was marked by the scars of previous viewing caused by frequent stopping, rewinding, fast-forwarding and by the accumulation of dust from the playheads of poorly maintained machines. Filmis usually rented out three to five films for a week. If a specific film was in high demand, or it was a public holiday, filmis would reduce the rental period to two days or sometimes only overnight. On these occasions, which were reasonably frequent, many people preferred to stay awake overnight and watch as many films as possible in succession. In that sense, as much as this mode of circulation facilitated by filmis provided a way for the Iranian viewers to bypass the state’s control over the content that reaches the viewers, it could also create a new set of formalities, limitations and viewing practices.

No matter what genre the title was, whether an art-house film or a martial arts one, it was common that a short video was recorded after it. It is difficult to know the reason behind this common practice. It could be a way to make use of the whole tape during the time of economic crisis. Nevertheless, these short clips became an effective way of bypassing the Iranian state’s control over the circulation of music. The majority of what was recorded after the original titles were music videos of non-Iranian artists or

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Iranian pop singers who had fled into exile following the 1979 revolution. These videos, recorded carelessly by ordinary citizens, could interrupt the viewers’ engagement with the film in strange ways.

My memory of watching a bootleg copy of Msoud Kimiaei’s Qeysar (1969) captures the impact of the bootleg viewing context on the viewer’s engagement with the film. Qeysar is one of the most popular pre-revolution Iranian films that was banned after the establishment of new policies under the Islamic Republic. It narrates the story of a tough guy named Qeysar, who seeks revenge on three rival tough guys, the Ab-

Mangol brothers, following the rape and suicide of his sister and murder of his brother.

The first time I watched the film was around the early 1990s. I was in a relative’s house with my cousins. We were five teenagers sitting in a small room in a relative’s home, waiting for our parents to leave so that we could watch the film. Knowing about the rape theme, we were well aware that asking our parents to let us watch the film was not an option. We gathered in front of a 25-inch TV screen, staring at the low-quality copy that was played from an old VHS. We followed Qeysar’s story with great anticipation until the climactic scene near the end of the film. We watched as Qeysar chased the last

Ab-Mangol brother across the train tracks, between the discarded train carriages. We all screamed when he got stabbed. It was a few moments after this scene that the film abruptly stopped. Suddenly, on our tiny TV screen, we watched a huge crowd in an arena screaming for Michael Jackson during a live performance. For a few seconds, we stared blankly at the image of the audience, some of them fainting in front of the stage before they were carried away. Someone had recorded the Michael Jackson live concert over the last few minutes of Qeysar. We all missed out on what happened in the end. At the time, we didn’t learn whether Qeysar managed to kill the final Ab-Mangol brother, or even if he was arrested by the cops. We discussed possible endings for the film

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among ourselves, trying to fill in the unfinished narrative. The technological failure made us active viewers from a young age. Little did we know, the film itself would leave the ultimate fate of Qeysar in suspension by ending the film on a freeze frame.

While the film itself had an open ending, ours was somewhat different – a consequence of our viewing context, rather than a deliberate choice by the filmmaker.

My experiences of watching bootleg copies of films capture only a glimpse of the ways in which pirate platforms can impact the cinematic experience of the viewer.

As key features of cheap proliferation technologies, poor transmission and noise interrupt viewers’ engagement with the films themselves, creating an experience which is often radically different from watching the same film in a movie theatre. These attributes are integral parts of film spectatorship in the contexts like Iran, where alternative modes of film circulation are central part of cinematic culture.

Even though a plethora of alternative modes of film circulation is usually labelled as piracy, the focus on individuals’ viewing experiences draws attention to the differences among these platforms rather than their similarities. Moreover, the media transmitted through these networks is user-generated, which results in the inconsistency and instability of the material quality that is transferred through these networks. The technological failure creates cracks, ruptures and inconsistencies in the viewing experience and interrupts the process of interpellation of the spectator as a passive subject of the cinematic apparatus.

This is particularly important in contexts such as Iran where piracy becomes the main mode of access to a wide range of cinematic material. On the one hand, these networks facilitate the flow of films and other visual media into the country, in spite of the restrictions of the state. On the other hand, these networks impose conditions that can disrupt the full engagement of the viewer with the film. The latter was also

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capitalized on by the Islamic Republic in many forms such as slowing down the internet or satellite jamming, as a strategy for combatting such informal circulation practices.

Conclusion

My experience of watching Tehran Taxi at the Berlinale provides an image without proper locus of the transnational cinematic encounter. It captures me within a heterotopia, a shattered mirror where I could see myself as a subject constituted within the order of the film festival circuit. But at the same time it reminded me of my absence/presence within an alternative order of film circulation, as an Iranian viewer whose past experience has largely been shaped in relation to these networks. As we saw in the case of Panahi and the examples discussed in the previous chapter, these networks can be interdependent. I was present in the context of a festival event, which invites the viewer to be submerged into an experience of difference. Yet the event itself gathered the fragments of the multifaceted reality of the Iranian cinematic culture all together: the struggles between the Iranian state and filmmakers over film production and circulation, the role of festivals in that struggle and in the process of the transnational circulation of

Iranian cinema, and the co-operation and conflict between the festival circuit and the

Iranian state.

It does not stretch reality to say that my field research at the Berlinale contributed greatly to the writing of this research, perhaps as much as my own stealthy experiences of watching pirated films on VHS tape in Iran. My observations about

Tehran Taxi and the context in which it was premiered pushed my previous assumptions about the dynamics of the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema to its limits because of the contradictions that I saw in the relationship between the state, the filmmakers and the festival circuit. But above all, it was Omid’s character that captured

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my attention. For me, he was an emblem of a strange but to me, familiar, mode of film circulation that contributes widely to the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture.

Metaphorically speaking, the moment in the film when Panahi stopped the car to bring

Omid into the centre of attention I happened upon an important realization: the significant role played by filmis and informal networks of film circulation in shaping my own cinematic experiences.

Thinking and writing about this experience also opened up new lines of enquiry about the dynamics and politics of film circulation in the Iranian context. The very material circulation of Panahi’s films reveals some of the many contradictions that underpin the transnational circulation of Iranian cinema. It is for this reason that his story has been considered across several chapters of this thesis. The role of the Iranian state in the process has been extensively explored in previous chapters of this thesis. My own transnational encounter with Iranian cinema, on the other hand, provides a microcosm of the ways in which the film festival circuit can add new layers of meaning to the process, direct the attention of the audience to certain meaning and suppress others. At the same time, my experience revealed how the festival viewer can be exposed to different chains of meaning and ideological discourses that contradict or confirm one another. At the Berlinale, the media coverage of the screening of Tehran

Taxi drew attention to conflicts between the festival organizers and the Iranian state.

Meanwhile, the active presence of Iranian distributors, whether private or state- sponsored, encapsulated an ongoing complicity that contributes significantly to the presence of Iranian cinema in the international festival circuit.

Meanwhile, reflecting on my experience of watching Tehran Taxi brought informal modes of film circulation, which are rejected and neglected by various systems including the Iranian state and international copyright regimes, to the centre of my

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analysis. I have argued that the material quality of the circulation of bootleg material through pirate platforms creates a different aesthetics. That is, cheap proliferation technologies and pirate platforms can impose conditions on the material quality of the film by creating distorted image and sound. These platforms interrupt the engagement of the viewer with the film and create a cinematic experience that is radically different from its festival counterpart.

To write about my own experience is also a tactic for demonstrating that there is no necessary correspondence between the message encoded into a film or a particular practice, and the ways it can be represented. Cinematic experience is an instant of articulated unity, when different chains of meaning that emerge in relation to a wide range of forces come together in the moment of the viewer’s encounter with the cinematic material. But the conditions in which the encounter takes place is ‘not necessary, determined, absolute, and essential for all time’ (quote Hall-Probyn 28). The process of meaning making always takes place under unique circumstances, which position the viewer within the context where various socio-political, ideological and cultural forces traverse and impact one another.

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This thesis has sought to investigate the dynamics and politics of transnational film circulation in the Iranian context. It explored the ways that films travel in and out of the country’s geo-political borders and in doing so, studied a wide range of forces that facilitate the flow of films through space and time, and the dissemination and production of meaning in the process. These forces range from the Iranian state’s strict censorship strategies and regulatory frameworks, to the film festival circuit, to the informal networks of film circulation that have emerged with the advancement of proliferation technologies and digital platforms. Throughout, I have argued that the dynamics and politics of film circulation in Iran must be perceived in relation to the

Iranian state’s attempt to maintain its complex and multifaceted domination over the culture and cinema.

Soon after the revolution, the Iranian state established a plethora of strategies in order to confront the pre-existing socio-political and cultural environment, to cleanse the Iranian cinema and culture of the vestiges of the Pahlavi era and to introduce a new

Islamicate cinema that would align with the core values of the Islamic Republic. As this thesis has demonstrated, the intervention of the Iranian state in transnational film circulation went through massive shifts throughout the years, and at some points took contradictory turns in relation to the broader socio-political, cultural and economic changes that occurred. This was particularly evident during two historical conjunctures in the Iranian context: the 1979 revolution and the end of the eight-year war between

Iran and Iraq in 1988. In the wake of the revolution, cinema was conscripted to play a central role in the socio-political struggle precisely because of its supposed power to interpellate viewers in order to make them subjects of preferred ideologies and values.

Such an understanding of cinema not only explains the state’s efforts to support and Conclusion

regulate film production, it also highlights why the Islamic Republic was so keen to intervene in national and international film circulation. When utilized by the Iranian state, cinema could help to mobilize a consensus around a particular form of Islamicate society and culture. In addition, it could serve as a tool of public diplomacy to establish the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy in the world. For these reasons, this research examined the transnational flow of Iranian films and their circulation as both material and symbolic products.

However, as this thesis has demonstrated, neither the revival of the Iranian film industry nor the control over the national and transnational circulation of the cinematic material was a smooth process. Rather, the articulation of socio-political, economic and cultural forces that came together in the course of three decades after the establishment of the Islamic Republic gradually led to a conjunctural crisis that has surfaced three decades after its establishment, when the struggles between the state and the Iranian population intensified in the wake of the 2009 presidential election. It was during this period that a number of Iranian filmmakers, including Jafar Panahi, were arrested and in some cases banned from filmmaking.

The first chapter of this thesis opened with the study of the controversies around the premiere screening of 3 Faces (Se Rokh, Jafar Panahi) and Everybody Knows (Todos lo Saben, Asghar Farhadi) at Cannes 2018. Using conjunctural analysis derived from the work of Stuart Hall and his collaborators in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural

Studies at the University of Birmingham, this thesis identified the socio-political, cultural and economic forces whose articulation in this example signified a conjunctural crisis for the Iranian state in the control over transnational film circulation. This research then traced the pre-history of the contradictions and tensions between the

Iranian state and filmmakers back to study their transformation in relation to two

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previous historical conjunctures.

This thesis has argued that the contradictory approach of the Islamic Republic towards the acclaim that some of the country’s art-house filmmakers receive at the international film festivals may be seen as evidence of forces at play during a historical conjuncture that emerged in the Iranian context with the end of the eight years of war with Iraq in 1988. During this period, the contradictions between the pragmatist requirements of the revival of Iran’s war-shattered economy and improving its global status on the one hand, and the core principles of the Islamic Republic on the other, resulted in the intensification of factional struggles between different groups of the

Iranian ruling elite, particularly over the domains of culture, including cinema.

Since the early 1990s, a consensus has been established among different factions within the Iranian state over an alleged ‘cultural invasion’ of the West and in particular the United States through their media work (Naficy 2012b). In order to confront this perceived cultural invasion, the state established a variety of strategies to restrict the

Iranian population’s access to media technologies, including satellite TV, internet and social media. In this way, they have attempted to curtail the means that facilitate the flow of Western media into the country. The cultural invasion discourse also intensified conflicts between the state and Iranian intellectuals, including some of the country’s most prominent art-house filmmakers, whose critical perspective on Iranian society and the performance of the state was considered as a cooperation with the West.

Furthermore, as a part of these cultural invasion debates, Iranian authorities attacked international film festivals for their political intentions in the selection and celebration of Iranian films.

My analysis in the first chapter also drew attention to the ways in which the sovereignty of the state over cinema has been undermined, not only through the artistic

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expression of the Iranian filmmakers, but also with the use of proliferation technologies and digital networks that facilitated the circulation of foreign films and banned Iranian films within and outside of the country. As these technologies transcended Iran’s geographical borders, they provided alternative networks for the circulation of films and other media products, the access to which is restricted by the Iranian state. The rise of proliferation technologies and various media platforms, therefore, has provided a serious challenge for the Iranian state to regulate the flow of films in and out of the country.

This thesis then turned to explore how the spread of proliferation technologies and digital networks have intensified the struggles over film censorship in Iran, making these struggles spill over into the domain of circulation. Chapter 2 examined the complex and multifaceted efforts of the Iranian state to control the spread of these technologies and to regulate the circulation of films through these networks. As this thesis demonstrated, the coincidence of the Iranian Revolution with the spread of cheap proliferation technologies, also referred to as the cassette revolution, provided a serious challenge for the post-revolution state’s purification policies. The chapter argued that this occurred despite the state’s attempt to control these technologies.

The second chapter then looked at the peculiar status of intellectual property debates in the Iranian context. As this research showed, during the post-revolution era, the concept of intellectual property was not considered to be a valid right from the perspective of Islamic law, since many clerics including Ayatollah Khomeini considered it as a kind of ‘concealment of knowledge’ which eventually could result in the backwardness of the Muslim community. The point here is that the state’s approach to intellectual property has resulted in an ironic situation in which copyright law has been undermined by the state itself during this period. This approach to copyright,

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together with the spread of proliferation technologies, led to the expansion of alternate modes of film circulation that in many contexts could be understood as piracy.

However, Chapter 2 proposed that a focus on questions of intellectual property and the legal dimensions of copyright cannot provide an adequate account of the situation. As we saw in this chapter, during the post-revolutionary period, the Iranian state’s approach towards the circulation of films through informal networks was shaped in relation to the process of the purification of the Iranian cinema and culture. As a result, the state established a series of strategies to regulate the circulation of films on videocassettes, targeting video stores, censoring the content of films on videocassettes, and eventually banning the ownership of cassette players. Nevertheless, the cassette revolution in Iran offered an alternative but central mode of access to a diverse range of audio-visual material by the Iranian population that otherwise could have never been circulated in the country because of the state’s strict censorship strategies.

This thesis then examined how the Iranian state adopted new strategies to regulate the flow of films through alternative networks during the 1990s. The changes in the state’s approach were in part the result of a shift in its foreign policy and the necessity of joining the global market. This eventually led to the re-introduction of intellectual property law to the Iranian legal system. Meanwhile, the circulation of

Iranian films through informal networks, now labelled as piracy, posed serious threats to the country’s film industry. By labelling the informal modes of film circulation as piracy and assigning them to international legal discourse, the Iranian media contributed to the development of a new set of reactions to this phenomenon that had been missing in the post-revolution regulations. The re-introduction of the concept of intellectual property to the policy discussions, however, did not overshadow the debates around the legitimacy of the content of the films and censorship. Instead, it provided an additional

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means for the Iranian state to control the flow of audio-visual material. This thesis therefore argued that although the strategies of the state to control the flow of films through informal networks became more centralized in response to the copyright debates, they proved to be ineffective in regards to the transnational circulation of foreign films inside the country or the transnational circulation of Iranian films, since

Iran is not a member of World Trade Organization or multilateral copyright treaties including the Berne Convention.

This thesis engaged with the body of literature that highlights the necessity of paying attention to the specificities of the contribution of alternative networks to the cinematic cultures in different national and international context (Karaganis 2011a,

Liang 2005b, Sundaram 2009b, Larkin 2008). In return, it contributes to this body of scholarly works by conceptualising informal film circulation and piracy in terms of the emergent cultural process as theorized by Raymond Williams. Such a conceptual framework allows us to move beyond the immorality or illegality of the practices that are usually neglected or rejected by dominant systems such as governments and film industries, to bring them to the centre of analysis. Studying alternative modes of film circulation in terms of emergent cultural processes underscores the importance of tracing the pre-history of this phenomenon during earlier historical conjunctures, in order analyse their relationship with the dominant systems in understanding the dynamics and politics of film circulation in a particular historical moment. This thesis has demonstrated that in the Iranian context, the alternative modes of film circulation are emergent cultural processes that constitute instances of political contestation and resistance.

Films have long played a role in Iran’s strategies of public diplomacy and consensus formation. Chapters 3 and 4 studied films and their circulation as symbolic

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products in order to demonstrate how circulation sometimes becomes involved in a contest over meaning. In these chapters, this thesis turned to look into the articulation of circulation with the moments of production and reception, using Hall’s model of communication. This led to an investigation of the contribution of film circulation to the politics of signification, particularly when circulation is facilitated via networks beyond the tight control of the Iranian state.

In Chapter 3 presents three case studies that explore how films’ multiple trajectories contribute to the production of new layers of meaning in different historical moments. These three examples are among many cases in which the filmmakers used networks outside of the direct control of the state to circulate their films. The chapter began with the story of a landmark pre-revolutionary film, The Cow (Gav, Daruish

Mehrjui, 1969). As we saw in the third chapter, the film was initially condemned by the

Iranian authorities for depicting a backward image of Iranian society, which was considered against Mohammad-Reza Shah’s modernization campaign. However, the acclaim The Cow received following its illicit circulation in the international film festival circuit led to a change of the Pahlavi state’s attitude towards the film.

Eventually, after a forced periodization of the film by adding a disclaimer that the events take place prior to Shah’s modernizing campaign, The Cow was released domestically. Furthermore, in this instance, the international acclaim for the film as a work of modernist cinema enabled the Pahlavi state to incorporate the film into its narration of the nation as modern and Westernized. Above all, The Cow’s peculiar trajectory, as it illicitly transcended Iran’s borders and returned to the country, paved the way for the circulation of more Iranian films in the international festival circuit before the revolution.

The thesis then focused on a more recent case involving the circulation of

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Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows about Persian Cats. The production of the film and its circulation through pirate networks can be considered both informal and illicit, based on the rules and regulation of the Islamic Republic. However, Ghobadi’s own promotion of the film’s informal circulation using the term halal, which means permissible in Islam, to encourage the audience to re-circulate and watch No One

Knows about Persian Cats signifies how the filmmaker cleverly, and perhaps ironically, uses the same language as the state in order to bypass their control over film circulation.

Moreover, as this thesis has shown, the film’s self-reflexive style incorporates its own circulation into the narrative and invites us to think about the ways in which the depiction of Iran’s pirate modernity and its own illicit circulation through pirate networks mirror one another.

The third chapter then turned to consider the case of Jafar Panahi, by studying

This is not a Film, the first film he made after he received a sentence in 2009 that banned him from filmmaking for twenty years. Even more than No One Knows about

Persian Cats, This is not a Film’s self-reflexivity makes it an evident example of what

Negar Mottahedeh conceptualizes as a ‘displaced allegory’ of the conditions of filmmaking in the Iranian context (Mottahedeh 2008a). However, as this thesis demonstrated, the film’s radical self-reflexive techniques become a displaced allegory not only of the conditions of its own making but also its illicit circulation, and above all, of the way in which such an illicit trajectory contributes to the politics of signification.

As I explain in the third chapter, the self-reflexive techniques of the film contribute to the creation of a discursive and spatial heterotopia in which the viewer’s gaze constantly oscillates between different fragments of what is represented on the screen (Foucault

1986, 2001). In the case of This is not a Film, these fragments enable the film to reflect upon what Christian Metz would call its own filmitude (1981). Beyond this, the film

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also reflects upon Panahi’s real conditions as a banned filmmaker and the role played by the festival circuit in the struggles between him and the Iranian state. Through the use of potent techniques at the level of cinematic language and the accumulation of the new layers of meaning at the site of reception, This is not a Film not only locates itself within the order of Iranian cinema but at the same time challenges the viewers’ received knowledge about the codes that govern its production and circulation.

Through an analysis of the trajectory of these films as symbolic and material products, this thesis demonstrates that the networks that facilitate film circulation are not just inert delivery mechanisms. Rather, they can add new layers of meaning to the films that can transform or accumulate in relation to the context of their circulation. As the case studies in the third chapter have shown, these networks even have the potential to transform or redefine the meaning of the films.

In the final chapter of this thesis, I focused on my own experience of watching

Penahi’s Tehran Taxi at the Berlinale in order to explore how the articulation of different forces and productions of meanings that intersect or negate one another can contribute to the ways a viewer can make sense of her own cinematic experience. The account this thesis has provided, inspired by Hamid Naficy’s theorization of third-world cinematic spectatorship, underlined the uniqueness of each viewing experience but at the same time drew attention to some of the collective dimensions of this transnational cinematic encounter, especially in relation to the content of the film, its circulation and the context in which the encounter took place (2003a). The self-reflexive voice adopted in this chapter was inspired by Elspeth Probyn’s formulation of the critic’s self, articulated a point of view or a speaking position that underscores the historical conditions in which I, as a viewer/researcher, came to speak (1993).

Reflecting on my own cinematic experience in this way, I was able to locate my

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position as a subject within the articulation of the distinct and at some points contradictory ideological discourses that came together at the Berlinale around the screening of Tehran Taxi. This thesis has argued that the individual’s cinematic experiences are shaped in relation to their position as subjects of the different systems of representation and ideological discourses, which over-determine the conditions of the viewer’s encounter with the film.

Tehran Taxi’s self-reflexive techniques helped with the formulation of my experience as an ‘image without a proper locus’ of the transnational cinematic encounter (Probyn 1993). This conceptualization of the critic’s self provides a challenge to ethnographic accounts of the cinematic experience in which a researcher such as Bill

Nichols locates his position within the viewing context in terms of belonging to fixed categories such as class and race (1994). The sequence in Tehran Taxi that follows

Omid the filmi made my experience an instant of conjuncture between two distinct orders of film circulation. The image that the thesis provided of watching this particular sequence captured me within a heterotopia, which like a shattered mirror, reflected upon both myself and the film’s location within the order of the international festival circuit.

At the same time, I could see my own image as a viewer reflected in two characters of the film, Panahi and Omid, mainly because the events that played out on the screen to some extent mirrored my own experience of watching films growing up in Tehran.

Beneath the tale of my festival experience hides an alternative but real experience that contributed widely to the ways in which I, as a viewer/researcher, could make sense of this particular cinematic encounter. Through my analysis of this personal cinematic experience, this thesis underscored the possibility of festival experiences that are far more diverse than just the experience of encounter with a different culture that is commonly promoted by festivals in their marketing materials and repeated by critics in

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their reviews. But more importantly, it was my experiential self that could point to the other forms of transnational cinematic encounters beyond the binary opposition between formal and informal.

This thesis then provided a refracted image of the festival experience by focusing on my later encounter with a bootleg copy of Tehran Taxi on a computer screen, to examine the ways in which pirate platforms can construct a different kind of viewer. Drawing on Brian Larkin’s account on the impact of pirate infrastructures on the quality of the media product, this thesis has argued that the distorted quality of the films circulated through informal networks can disengage the viewer from the cinematic text, and hence pose a challenge to the ideological function of the cinematic apparatus

(2008).

This thesis has been limited to the study of the transnational circulation of films made in Iran and the relations and negotiations that take place between Iranian filmmakers and the state. It therefore leaves open questions about the place of films made by diasporic Iranian filmmakers in this story of circulation, questions that lie beyond the scope of this thesis. The analysis provided here offers a fertile ground for further research that could help with understanding the dynamics and politics of the transnational circulation of diasporic films in Iran and in the international film festival circuit.

My field research at the Berlinale contributed greatly to the writing of this thesis, perhaps as much as my experience of watching films on VHS tapes. This experience helped me to think through some important questions that lie at the heart of this research. Do the evasive modes of circulation identified and analyzed in this thesis necessarily undermine state control, particularly where international perceptions of what constitutes Iranian cinematic culture are concerned? Does the advancement of informal

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networks of film circulation that lie beyond the direct reach of the Iranian government mark the end of the era of the Iranian state’s sovereignty over the film industry? And finally, how have the struggles between the state, the viewers, the filmmakers and the international film festivals over the course of the four decades following the establishment of the Islamic Republic contributed to the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture?

After exploring these questions over the course of this thesis, a number of conclusions can be drawn. The articulation of various forces that came together in relation to the socio-political and ideological changes during different historical conjunctures – from the factionalism within the Iranian state and its contradictory regulatory frameworks, to the film festival circuit’s support of Iranian filmmakers, to the rise of many informal circuits with the development of cheap proliferation and distribution technologies – led to the failure of the injection theory of the Islamic

Republic, but has not marked the end of the sovereignty of the Iranian state over the nation’s cinema. The Islamic Republic, as we have seen, has a multifaceted structure of dominance over cinema and the moments of production, circulation and reception are all informed by complex power relations. The dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture, as this thesis has argued, is the outcome of filmmakers’ and viewers’ negotiations with the state’s regulations, not a result of a complete subversion of the control of the regime.

By focusing on the relatively less explored domain of film circulation, this study has also shed light on the significant role played by the alternative networks in the flow of foreign and banned films in the Iranian context. I have argued that the alternative orders of film circulation emerged not outside of the domain of control of the state but explicitly and directly in relation to the restrictions placed on the film industry and culture in the Iranian context. The diversity of alternative networks facilitates access to

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a wide range of films, the circulation of which is restricted by the Iranian state, and at the same time contributes to the dynamism of Iranian cinematic culture, as these networks became key sites of struggle over the reproduction and circulation of meaning, between filmmakers and viewers on the one hand and the Iranian state on the other.

For me, the dynamism of the Iranian cinematic culture to a great extent relates to the fragments of alternative orders that revealed themselves once I looked at cinema in

Iran from the point of view of circulation. I could see it metaphorically and in actuality, in the pieces of the ‘chopped films’, in the one minute clips of Mohammad Shirvani’s

Fat Shaker (Larzanandeh-ye Charbi, 2013) uploaded to his Instagram account, in the reflection of The Mirror in This is not a Film as it circulated and re-circulated in the international film festivals, and in the fractured memories of my own cinematic experiences that have constructed me as a viewer whose spectatorship has been shaped by the alternative networks of film circulation.

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Filmography

Afkhami, Behrouz, dir. Hemlock/Shokaran. 2000; Tehran: Soureh Cinema.

Akin, Fatih, dir. Head-On/Gegen die Wand. 2004; Germany: Timebandits Films.

Allen, Woody, dir. Midnight in Paris. 2011; New York: Sony Pictures Classics.

Beizaei, Bahram, dir. Death of Yazdgerd/Marg-e Yazdgerd. 1982; Tehran. VHS

Bertolucci, Bernardo, dir. Little Buddha. 1993; France: AMLF.

Ceylan, Nuri Bilge, dir. Once Upon a Time Anatolia. 2011; New York: The Cinema

Guild.

Farhadi, Asghar, dir. Everybody Knows/Todos lo saben. 2018; New York: Focus

Features.

———. The Past/Le Passé, 2013; France: Memento.

———. The Salesman/Forushandeh. 2016; Tehran: Filmiran.

———. A Separation/Jodaei-e Nader az Simin. 2011; Tehran: Filmiran.

Ghobadi, Bahman, dir. No One Knows about Persian Cats/Kasi az Gorbeh-ha-ye Irani

Khabar Nadareh. 2009; Mij Film.

Hatami, Ali, dir. Hajji Washington. 1982; Tehran: Firouzan Films, 1998.

Kiarostami, Abbas, dir. Close-up/Nama-ye Nazdik. 1990; Paris: Celluloid Dreams.

———. Taste of Cherry/Tam-e Gilas. 1997; New York: Zeitgeist Films.

———. Through the Olive Trees/Zir-e Derakhtan-e Zeitoon. 1994; Los Angeles:

Miramax Films.

———. Where is the Friend’s House/Khaneh-ye Dust Kojast. 1987; Paris: MK2.

Kimiaei, Masoud, dir. Qeysar. 1969; Tehran. VHS.

———. The Red Line/Khat-e Ghermez. 1982; Tehran. VHS.

———. Eastern Boy/Pesar-e Sharghi, 1975; Tehran. Centre for Intellectual

Development of Children and Young Adults. Filmography

Kimiavi, Parviz , dir. The Stone Garden/Baagh-e Sangi. 1976; Tehran: Ministry of

Culture.

Makhmalbaf, Mohsen, dir. The Nights of Zayandeh-rud/Shabha-ye Zayandeh-rud.

1990; Tehran: Makhmalbaf Film House.

———. A Time for Love/Nowbat-e Asheghi. 1990; Tehran: Makhmalbaf Film House.

Mehrjui, Dariush, dir. The Cow/Gav. 1969; Tehran: Ministry of Culture.

———. Santouri/The Music Man. 2007; Tehran: Hedayat Film.

Mirbagheri, Davood, dir. The Snowman/Adam Barfi. 1995; Tehran: Hedayat Film.

Najafi, Mohammad Ali, dir. Athar’s Syllabus/Jong-e Athar. 1978; Tehran: Farabi

Cinema Foundation

———. The Night of Power/Lailat-al Qadr. 1980 ; Tehran: Farabi Cinema Foundation

Naderi, Amir, dir. The Runner/Davandeh. 1985; Tehran: Farabi Cinema Foundation

Panahi, Jafar, dir. 3 Faces/Se Rokh. 2018; City: Memento Films Distribution (France).

———. The Circle/Dayereh. 2000; City: Mikado Film (Italy), Filmcoopi Zürich

(Switzerland).

———. Crimson Gold/Talaay-e Sorkh. 2003; Tehran: Jafar Panahi Film Productions

———. The Mirror/Ayeneh. 1997; Rooz Film.

———. Offside. 2006; Tehran: Jafar Panahi Film Productions.

———. Tehran Taxi. 2015; Tehran: Jafar Panahi Film Productions.

———. “Untying the Knot.” In Persian Carpet. 2003; Tehran: National Carpet Center

(Iran) and Farabi Cinema Foundation.

———. The White Balloon/Badkonak-e Sefid. 1995; : Farabi Cinema Foundation &

Ferdos Films.

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Filmography

Panahi, Jafar and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, dir. This Is Not a Film/In Film Nist.

2011; Tehran: Jafar Panahi Film Productions/ Kanibal Films Distribution

(France).

Panahi, Jafar and Kambuzia Partovi, dir. Closed Curtain/Pardeh. 2013; Tehran: Jafar

Panahi Film Productions.

Pourahmad, Kiumar, dir. Tatoureh. 1984; Tehran: Farabi Cinema Foundation.

Saless, Sohrab Shahid, dir. Far from Home/In der Fremde/Dar Ghorbat. 1975; Berlin:

Provobis Gesellschaft für Film und Fernsehen, New Film Group and Telefilm.

———. Still Life/Tabiat-e Bijan. 1974; Tehran: Ministry of Culture.

Sarvarian, Mushegh and Samuel Khachikian, dir. A Party in Hell/Shab Neshini dar

Jahannam. 1956; Tehran.

Shirvani, Mohammad, dir. Fat Shaker/Larzanandeh-ye Charbi. 2013; Tehran.

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