Art and Politics of the Iranian New Wave Cinema, 1960-79 Farbod Honarpisheh
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Fragmented Allegories of National Authenticity: Art and Politics of the Iranian New Wave Cinema, 1960-79 by Farbod Honarpisheh Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Farbod Honarpisheh All rights reserved Abstract Fragmented Allegories of National Authenticity: Art and Politics of the Iranian New Wave Cinema, 1960-79 Farbod Honarpisheh The New Wave (Moj-e Now), as the rather large body of “quality films” made in Iran before the 1979 revolution came to be known, forms the main thematic concern of this study. From start to end, however, this primary track of investigation is opened up to other mediums of cultural production: modernist Persian fiction and poetry, the visual arts scene, the discourse on ethnography and “folklore studies,” and the critical texts produced by public intellectuals. The second main theme coming to the fore is the intersection of the emergent “discourse of authenticity,” the Iranian intellectuals’ growing demand for “cultural rootedness,” and the production of modernist aesthetics in literature, arts, and cinema. Introduced early in the text, the idea of “modernism of uneven development” provides the theoretical frame for this project; the recurrences of the hypothesis, particularly as it pertains to a temporal divide between the city and the countryside, are discerned and analysed. The Iranian New Wave Cinema, I contend, always showed an ethnographic register, as it too was after worlds and times deemed as vanishing. This “movement” in cinematic modernism first emerged from within the documentary mode, which began to flourish in Iran from the 1960s. Cutting right across this study, the perceived divide between the urban and the rural finds its reflection even in the way that some of its chapters are organized. Hence, the allegory of the city, and that of the country. But, where ends the national allegory, a matter still conditional on imagined continuity, other forms of allegory come to the surface. Critical reading in this sense becomes an act of reproduction, further opening up fissures and discontinuities of what is already deemed as petrified, whether of the national or of realism. Retaining a faith in the cinema’s ability to redeem physical reality though, certain manifestations of materiality come to the fore through my close readings of films from the New Wave. A number of these material formations come to focus as the “objects” of the study: the museum display, the ruin, the body, the mud brick wall, the moving car, and the old neighborhood passageway. Table of Contents n List of Illustrations...................................................................................................ii n Acknowledgments………………………………....................................................iii n Introduction………………………...........................................................................1 n Chapter One – The Immediate Past……………………..........……....................29 n Chapter Two – Ethnographic Documentaries…………….................................79 n Chapter Three – Allegory of the Country…………………..............................133 n Chapter Four – Allegory of the City……………………...........…....................175 n Conclusion………………………………………………….................................230 n Filmography………………………………………………….......................…...242 n Bibliographies (English, Persian, Turkish)…………………………........…....245 i List of Illustrations Figure 1 The Mongols (Parviz Kimiavi, 1973)......................................................................................24 Figure 2 Hedayat (middle) in Paris, 1928..............................................................................................42 Figure 3 The Hall of Mirrors (Kamal-ol-Molk, 1895-1896)................................................................. 51 Figure 4 Fighting Rooster logo..............................................................................................................65 Figure 5 The Hand (Hossein Zenderoudi, 1959)................................................................................... 67 Figure 6 Hedayat in a montage postcard, Paris, 1926........................................................................... 78 Figure 7 Persepolis (Fereyerdoun Rahnema, 1960).............................................................................. 89 Figure 8 The Silver Canvas (Kamran Shirdel, 1965)............................................................................ 99 Figure 9 The House is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, 1962)................................................................. 104 Figure 10 Bronze Prophet (Parviz Tanavoli, 1963).............................................................................119 Figure 11 The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969)...................................................................................... 137 Figure 12 The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969)...................................................................................... 139 Figure 13 The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969)...................................................................................... 139 Figure 14 The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969)...................................................................................... 141 Figure 15 Kharg Island, (Marcos Grigorian, 1963)............................................................................ 143 Figure 16 Untitled, (Marcos Grigorian, 1968).....................................................................................144 Figure 17 Still Life (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1974)............................................................................... 167 Figure 18 Still Life (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1974)............................................................................... 172 Figure 19 (Ebrahim Golestan, 1965)................................................................................................... 187 Figure 20 Constructing Ministry of Finance on debris of a Qajar Palace........................................... 197 Figure 21 The Brick and the Mirror (Ebrahim Golestan, 1965)......................................................... 203 Figure 22 Tranquility in the Presence of Others (Nasser Taghvai, 1969)...........................................215 Figure 23 The Mina Cycle (Dariush Mehrjui, 1974)........................................................................... 215 Figure 24 Reza Motori (Masoud Kimiai, 1970).................................................................................. 224 Figure 25 Reza Motori (Masoud Kimiai, 1970).................................................................................. 228 Figure 26 The Mongols (Parviz Kimiavi, 1973).................................................................................. 234 ii Acknowledgments In the beginning, the gratitude must go to the distinguished New Yorkers who formed my dissertation committee and allowed it to have its time under the sun. To Hamid Dabashi for his warm intellect and commitment. To Jane Gaines for always being there, even when you don’t know it. To Andreas Huyssen who is a solid and generous scholar. To Sudipta Kaviraj who is a proof of erudite ways. And, to Robert Stam, for all he is. But, before everything, I must thank my peerless teachers in Montreal. I am thankful to George Mitchell who believed in this immigrant kid and in his goal of studying films. I will always remain grateful to Peter Rist because his knowledge of cinema and passion for the world go hand in hand. Tom Waugh was the walking (or swimming) model, in academic rigor, in pedagogic responsibility, and for proving the power of playfulness in intellectual matters. Katie Russell might not know this but she taught me theories and texts that turned out the most enduring in my work. Somehow strangely, there were in my life these anthropologists, forward-looking and experimental, who were both best of friends and sources of inspiration. Michael Taussig, Setrag Manoukian, Jasmine Pisapia, and Seema Golestaneh. “Meet friends in the rain,” Sohrab Sepehri wrote sometime in the early 1960s. I too had some great friends along the way, in New York, Montreal, Istanbul, Tehran, and Shiraz. They were present before and during the writing this dissertation. Shahin Parhami, Afshin Bayat, Ali Amiri, Naira and Ariel Santana, Dariush Tasaodi, Michael Best, Amir Baradaran, Simon Latendresse, Prashant Keshavmurthy, Foad Torshizi, Burçe Çelik, Khatereh Khodai, Veli Yaşın, Saharnaz Samaeinejad, Lisa Ross, Cheryl Leung, and.... I am grateful to all those who through the years contributed to this project. Ladan Taheri and her colleagues at the National Film Archive of Iran were indispensable in helping me find the great but hardly seen films they hold in their collections. Words cannot describe my indebtedness to Ella Shohat, for her work, kindness, and strength. With my family, we went through a lot. I thank them for their unwavering support, and for keeping the memories of our parents alive. iii For Rhoda Abagis iv – Introduction – When it comes to deception, the heart and soul appreciate authenticity. -- Siegfried Kracauer in “Calico-World”, 1926 We have seen how from social and economic standpoints [our] society is afflicted with an incongruous and patchy organization, an amalgam of a pastoral economy and a rustic or newly urbanized society dominated by great economic powers from abroad, having the nature of trusts or cartels. We are a living