Underground Labyrinths: Women and Expanded Cinema in Contemporary Iran

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of

the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Sara Kazemimanesh

December 2019

© 2019 Sara Kazemimanesh. All Rights Reserved. 2

This dissertation titled

Underground Labyrinths: Women and Expanded Cinema in Contemporary Iran

by

SARA KAZEMIMANESH

has been approved for

the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts

and the College of Arts and Sciences by

Erin S. Schlumpf

Assistant Professor of Film Studies

Florenz Plassmann

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3

ABSTRACT

KAZEMIMANESH, SARA, Ph.D., December 2019, Interdisciplinary Arts

Underground Labyrinths: Women and Expanded Cinema in Contemporary Iran

Director of Dissertation: Erin S. Schlumpf

This dissertation is a historiographic intervention in the prevailing canon of experimental cinema, and more specifically the history of Iranian cinema. I utilize expanded cinema as an inclusive term that reconciles critical discourses about avant- garde and expanded art practice with experimental and underground film. By investigating the emergence and evolution of expanded cinema in Iran, I posit it as a counter-force to the patriarchal traditions of hierarchy and exclusion that dominate cinema and other cultural spheres in the Islamic Republic. Additionally, I argue that the subjective agency of contemporary Iranian artists, particularly women like Newsha

Tavakolian (b. 1981) and Nastaran Safaei (b. 1984), has initiated a new feminist discourse that boldly tackles issues related to gender, identity, and body politics.

4

DEDICATION

To Shahriar

5

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my academic and creative advisers, Dr. Erin Shevaugn

Schlumpf and David Colagiovanni respectively, for their continuous support throughout my doctoral studies. Erin’s critical input has been instrumental in shaping my academic practice around contemporary discourses of women and body politics, gendered identity politics, and post-modernism. I am truly grateful to her for her patience in reading and reviewing my research, inspiring me to become a better writer. As my creative adviser,

David made every effort to provide me with constructive criticism of my work, while allowing me to explore various methods and mediums in my practice. I am indebted to

David for sharing his studio space with me during the production of my films, while also facilitating my access to required equipment. I would also like to thank my committee members, Dr. Louis-Georges Schwartz and Dr. William F. Condee, who patiently read drafts of my dissertation, providing feedback instrumental in improving both the content and structure of my manuscript.

I am forever indebted to Shahriar Shafiani, my partner and husband, who encouraged me to return to graduate school and pursue a doctoral degree. His boundless love and support has empowered me to strive for academic and creative excellence. He has graciously shared his knowledge and expertise as an independent filmmaker, helping me evolve in my creative practice as an experimental filmmaker. I am deeply thankful to my lovely family in Iran, who have always eagerly followed my career, cheering me on. I am indebted to my brother, Farhad Kazemimanesh for facilitating my field research in

Iran by searching for rare books and contacting publishers and scholars on my behalf. 6

I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Nastaran Safaei and Newsha

Tavakolian, whom I cherish as true friends and inspiring colleagues. My dissertation project would not have taken shape without their continued support, trust, and cooperation. I am especially thankful to my friend and colleague, Stephanie MacDonell, for reading my manuscript and offering input that has facilitated the editing process.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Abstract ...... 3 Dedication ...... 4 Acknowledgments...... 5 List of figures ...... 9 Introduction ...... 17 Social Media as a Launch Pad for a Progressive Feminist Discourse ...... 24 Overview of Chapters ...... 41 Chapter 1: Cultural Contact and Fractured Identity ...... 44 Historical Trauma and Collective Identity in Pre- and Post-Revolution Iran ...... 48 First Case, Second Case: A Case Study ...... 53 In This Dead End: Shamlou’s Foreshadowing of an Underground Culture ...... 62 Cultural organizations in Contemporary Iran: Supervision, Censorship, and Statism 67 Chapter 2: Women in Iranian Cinema: Tense Encounters and Pioneers ...... 73 Forough Farrokhzad: A Foremother ...... 79 Woman and Body Politics in Contemporary Iran: The Aesthetics of Concealment .. 83 Chapter 3: Underground as the Chrysalis: The Emergence of an Expanded Cinema .... 104 Revolution and War: Trauma and Post-memory ...... 108 Music in the Iranian Underground: Reverberations of Melancholia and Chronic Grief ...... 115 Winter Is Over: Embers of a Red Sun ...... 121 Mourning, Martyrdom, and Social Critique in the Age of Social Media ...... 125 Bella Ciao: A Meeting in the Mountains ...... 126 Poetic Realist Documentaries ...... 132 Fine Arts, Architectural, Archeological, and Performing Arts Documentaries .. 132 Documentaries about Film History ...... 133 Social Protest Documentaries ...... 134 Avant-garde Documentaries ...... 136 A Female Auteur: Social Critique and Poetic Expression in The House Is Black .... 142 Music Video, Home Video, and What Leaks in Between ...... 152 152 ...... (2013 ,آقای پست) Mr. Mean Zolf (2007) ...... 159 8

Artist’s Video and Video Art ...... 164 The Archive as Counter-History: A Revisionist Discourse ...... 170 Ain’t My Home (2015) ...... 176 178 ...... (2016 ,نیمی از ما) Half of Us 181 ...... (2013 ,پیش درآمد) Prelude 183 ...... (2016 ,ایستاده در غبار) Standing in the Dust Chapter 4: Video-Art in Contemporary Iran: A Female-Specific Tradition ...... 187 Newsha Tavakolian (b. 1981) ...... 197 Listen (2010-2011)...... 201 Look (2012-2013) ...... 204 The Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album (2015) ...... 205 Nastaran Safaei (b. 1984) ...... 209 Hamed Rashtian (b. 1985) ...... 230 Hooman Mortazavi (b. 1964) ...... 240 Chapter 5: Creative Project ...... 246 Introduction ...... 246 Heideh: A Return: Post-Memory in Contemporary Iran ...... 248 Production ...... 249 Statement...... 253 Hayedeh: A Return ...... 253 Conclusion ...... 255 References ...... 262 Appendix ...... 269 Filmography (production year) ...... 269 Interviews ...... 270

9

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1: Screengrab from Self-Constructer Heaven, dir. Nastaran Safaei, 2015...... 18

Figure 2: Screengrab from Self-Constructer Heaven, dir. Nastaran Safaei, 2015...... 18

Figure 3: Screengrab from Self-Constructer Heaven, dir. Nastaran Safaei, 2015...... 19

Figure 4: Screengrab from Self-Constructer Heaven, dir. Nastaran Safaei, 2015...... 20

Figure 5: Screenshot of the headline “Thank God I Wear the Chador,” quoted from

Namdari’s interview published in Vatan-e-Emrooz morning paper, on January 2015. ... 28

Figure 6: Screengrab from a video report on Namdari’s public controversy...... 29

Figure 7: Screengrab of Namdari’s Instagram video about her hijab controversy...... 29

Figure 8: Screenshot of Namdari’s post, revealing her struggle with domestic violence. 30

Figure 9: “Veil Is Security,” on a billboard in Tehran, Iran, 2019...... 31

Figure 11: a collage of Vida Movahed’s protest (left), and a poster inspired by it (right).

...... 32

Figure 12: Screengrab from Movahed’s video published after her exoneration...... 34

Figure 13: Screengrabs from Marzieh Ebrahimi’s wedding video, pulished on her

Instagram account...... 38

Figure 14: Marzieh Ebrahimi and other acid attack survivors campaigning at the Iranian parliament; photo by Amir Kholousi, ISNA, 2019...... 38 10

Figure 15: Najafi and his wife, Mitra Ostad, in 2019; photo published on Ostad’s

Instagram account...... 40

Figure 16: Screengrab from First Case, Second Case, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1980...... 55

Figure 17: Screengrab from First Case, Second Case, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1980...... 55

Figure 18: Screengrab from First Case, Second Case, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1980...... 61

Figure 19: The Day I Became A Woman, Newsha Tavakolian, 2013...... 85

Figure 20: The Day I Became A Woman, Newsha Tavakolian, 2013...... 85

Figure 21: The Day I Became A Woman, Newsha Tavakolian, 2013...... 86

Figure 22: Screengrab from The Lead, dir. Masoud Kimiai, 1988...... 89

Figure 23: Screengrab from Women’s Prison, dir. Manijeh Hekmat, 2000...... 90

Figure 24: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001...... 93

Figure 25: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001...... 95

Figure 26: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001...... 95

Figure 27: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001...... 96

Figure 28: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001...... 97

Figure 29: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001...... 97

Figure 30: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001...... 98

Figure 31: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996. . 99

Figure 32: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996. 100 11

Figure 33: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996. 100

Figure 34: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996. 101

Figure 35: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996. 103

Figure 36: Screengrab from the Instagram video of a young woman serenading a crowd in Abyaneh, Kashan Province, Iran, 2019...... 108

Figure 37: Screengrab of video duet by unidentified artists, covering Winter Is Over,

2009...... 123

Figure 38: Screengrab from Bella Ciao, YouTube video published by IranUltimatum,

2009...... 127

Figure 39: Screengrab from Bella Ciao, YouTube video published by IranUltimatum,

2009...... 128

Figure 40: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963...... 145

Figure 41: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963...... 146

Figure 42: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963...... 146

Figure 43: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963...... 147

Figure 44: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963...... 147

Figure 45: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963...... 148

Figure 46: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963...... 149

Figure 47: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963...... 150 12

Figure 48: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963...... 150

Figure 49: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013...... 153

Figure 50: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013...... 154

Figure 51: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013...... 154

Figure 52: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013...... 155

Figure 53: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013...... 156

Figure 54: Screengrab from Zolf, Hamed Safaei, 2015...... 160

Figure 55: Screengrab from Zolf, Hamed Safaei, 2015 ...... 161

Figure 56: Screengrab from Zolf, Hamed Safaei, 2015...... 161

Figure 57: Screengrab from Zolf, Hamed Safaei, 2015...... 162

Figure 58: Screengrab from the Instagram video parody of Adele’s “Someone Like You,”

Nik Yousefi, 2019...... 169

Figure 59: Screengrab from the Instagram video parody of Adele’s “Someone Like You,”

Nik Yousefi, 2019...... 169

Figure 60: Screengrab from Ain’t My Home, Siavash Naghshbandi, 2015...... 176

Figure 61: Screengrab from Ain’t My Home, Siavash Naghshbandi, 2015...... 177

Figure 62: Screengrab from Ain’t My Home, Siavash Naghshbandi, 2015...... 178

Figure 63: Screengrab from Ain’t My Home, Siavash Naghshbandi, 2015...... 178

Figure 64: Screengrab from Half of Us, dir. Farahnaz Sharifi, 2016...... 179 13

Figure 65: Screengrab from Half of Us, dir. Farahnaz Sharifi, 2016...... 180

Figure 66: Niki Karimi in a Screengrab from Prelude, Arash Ashtiani, 2013...... 182

Figure 67: Hedieh Tehrani in a Screengrab from Prelude, Arash Ashtiani, 2013...... 182

Figure 68: Screengrab from Prelude, Arash Ashtiani, 2013...... 183

Figure 69: Screengrab from Prelude, Arash Ashtiani, 2013...... 183

Figure 70: promotional poster for Standing in the Dust, dir. Mohammad H. Mahdavian,

2016...... 184

Figure 71: promotional poster for Standing in the Dust, dir. Mohammad H. Mahdavian,

2016...... 186

Figure 72: Newsha Tavakolian, 2019; photo courtesy of the artist...... 197

Figure 73: Öcalan’s Angels, Newsha Tavakolian, 2014...... 199

Figure 74: Öcalan’s Angels, Newsha Tavakolian, 2014...... 200

Figure 75: Free Falling in Samburu, Newsha Tavakolian, 2014...... 201

Figure 76: Listen, Newsha Tavakolian, 2010...... 202

Figure 77: Listen, Newsha Tavakolian, 2010...... 203

Figure 78: Listen, Newsha Tavakolian, 2010...... 203

Figure 79: Look, Newsha Tavakolian, 2012...... 204

Figure 80: Look, Newsha Tavakolian, 2012...... 205

Figure 81: Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album, Newsha Tavakolian, 2015...... 206 14

Figure 82: Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album, Newsha Tavakolian, 2015...... 206

Figure 83: Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album, Newsha Tavakolian, 2015...... 207

Figure 84: Nastaran Safaei, 2019; photo courtesy of the artist...... 209

Figure 85: Goddess, Nastaran Safaei, Bronze: 145*80*80 cm, 2014...... 210

Figure 86: Goddess, Nastaran Safaei, Bronze: 145*80*80 cm, 2014...... 210

Figure 87: What Do You Think About Me?, Nastaran Safaei, Mirror Steel: 117*50*76 cm, 2014...... 211

Figure 88: Body Prints, Nastaran Safaei, ink on paper: 90*140 cm, 2017...... 213

Figure 89: Body Impression 11, Nastaran Safaei, ink on 308 gr paper: 42*59 cm, 2016.

...... 214

Figure 90: Finger Food, Nastaran Safaei, Bronze and Aluminum, 12*8*8 cm, 2014.... 216

Figure 91: Flying (also known as Winged Breast), Nastaran Safaei, Bronze and

Fiberglass, 92*75*85 cm, 2012-2018...... 217

Figure 92: Screengrab from 30, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2013...... 219

Figure 93: Screengrab from High Heels, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2017...... 222

Figure 94: Screengrab from Enghelab-Azadi, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2017-2018...... 223

Figure 95: Screengrab from In Tehran, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2017-2018...... 224

Figure 96: Monuments, Nastaran Safaei; Fiberglass, Bronze, Cement, Hormoz island red soil and natural soil of Iran, 230*63*34 cm, 2017...... 226 15

Figure 97: Monuments, Nastaran Safaei; Fiberglass, Bronze, Cement, Hormoz island red soil and natural soil of Iran, 60*43*60 cm, 2017...... 226

Figure 98: Screengrab from Pre-Constructed Heaven,, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2018...... 228

Figure 99: Hamed Rashtian, 2019; photo courtesy of the artist...... 230

Figure 100: Lonely Towers, Hamed Rashtian, Bronze, 150*65*65 cm, 2017...... 231

Figure 101: Slot Machine, Hamed Rashtian, 85*58*45 cm, 2010...... 232

Figure 102: Viva Propaganda, Hamed Rashtian, 150*100*50 cm, 2010...... 233

Figure 103: Trace-Scratch series, Hamed Rashtian, bronze and fiberglass, 115*38*103 cm, 2014...... 234

Figure 104: Lion and the Sun, Hamed Rashtian, bronze and fiberglass, 100*60*25 cm,

2013...... 236

Figure 105: Lion and the Sun, Hamed Rashtian, bronze and fiberglass, 119*129*26 cm,

2013...... 237

Figure 106: Stories, video installation, Hamed Rashtian, 2019...... 239

Figure 107: Stories, video installation, Hamed Rashtian, 2019...... 239

Figure 108: Hooman Mortazavi, 2019; photo courtesy of the artist...... 240

Figure 109: Pashm, Hooman Mortazavi, 2010-present...... 242

Figure 110: Pashm, Hooman Mortazavi, 2010-present...... 243

Figure 111: Pashm, Hooman Mortazavi, 2010-present...... 244 16

Figure 112: Time Heals All Wounds, from the extended Pashm series, Hooman

Mortazavi, 2019...... 244

Figure 113: Screengrab from Hayedeh’s re-photographed clip...... 251

Figure 114: manually processed image from Heideh, 2019...... 252

Figure 115: manually processed image from Heideh, 2019...... 252

Figure 116: manually processed image from Heideh, 2019...... 253

Figure 117: manually processed image from Heideh, 2019...... 253

17

INTRODUCTION

Self-Constructed Heaven (2015), a video piece by Iranian sculptor and video artist

Nastaran Safaei (b. 1984), starts with a black screen.1 The camera, then, cuts to a sunroom with a thicket of flowers and green plants, touched by the soft glow of morning light. In the corner, a woman sits, writing in her notebook. The hand-held camera cuts again, this time to the cozy corner of a bedroom: a walk-in closet with rustic doors, soft cushions sitting on the bed, all white with a dark indigo accent. Then, a tight shot: a face, enveloped by the cushions, anonymous, genderless, and serene in its unity with the whiteness that surrounds it. This is a home. But whose home? And where is it?

I screened this video in my class of 20 plus undergraduate students at Ohio

University in 2016, following the election of Donald Trump as the president of the

United States, and the subsequent crisis caused by the executive order, commonly known as the travel ban. I only revealed the location to be Tehran, Iran, after screening the video, when I provided some context about the artist and her work. The dominant response that I received from my students was surprise. Against the backdrop of the escalating mutual aggression between the governments of Iran and the United States, and while the extreme pluralization of media platforms makes it difficult to find reliable sources of information,

Safaei’s short video piece provided a pleasant context for intercultural dialogue and contemplation.

1 Nastaran Safaei, Self-Constructed Heaven, video, 05:44, 2017, https://www.nastaransafaei.com/Self%20Constracted%20Heaven/923/ 18

Figure 1: Screengrab from Self-Constructer Heaven, dir. Nastaran Safaei, 2015.

Figure 2: Screengrab from Self-Constructer Heaven, dir. Nastaran Safaei, 2015.

The impression that my students had received from the video was marked by a sense of duality. They were seeing the bright and colorful interior of an apartment in

Tehran, but while in some scenes they could see Safaei without a headscarf, in more 19 intimate settings (e.g., the bath, or the bedroom), they were presented with a bust of her head and shoulders. They wondered why the intimate private space of the home, represented in the video, would deny them the image of its occupant, i.e., the woman. In my dissertation research, I investigate this duality, as the product of the break between the private and public spheres of life in Iran following the Islamic Revolution of Iran in

1979.

Figure 3: Screengrab from Self-Constructer Heaven, dir. Nastaran Safaei, 2015. 20

Figure 4: Screengrab from Self-Constructer Heaven, dir. Nastaran Safaei, 2015.

This dissertation is a cross-cultural historiographic intervention in the prevailing canon of experimental cinema. Considering the incident of the Islamic Revolution in

1979 as the trigger for the formation of an underground culture, I argue that an expanded cinema has been forming within said culture, pioneered particularly by young female artists based in Iran. My application of the concept of expanded cinema, resonates with

Gene Youngblood’s definition of the term as an art form distanced from narrativity, entertainment, and the hierarchical relationship in the creator-spectator dynamic.

I argue that following the revolution, the break between the private and public spheres of life prompted the formation of an intricate underground culture. However, I maintain that, following the controversial 2009 presidential election in Iran, the popularization of social media and alternative platforms allowed expanded cinema to become the connecting tissue between these two spheres of life in Iran. I investigate how the progressively feminist expanded cinema of Iran engages in a critical dialogue with the traditional patriarchy that has extensively marginalized feminist ideals during the past 21 four decades. To do this, with the contention that collective action in contemporary Iran has declined significantly, I focus on instances of individual agency—similar to Safaei’s work—that cross borders and reach out beyond their immediate conditions, as they engage with repressive hegemonic forces, such as traditional patriarchy in an authoritarian nation-state.

Based on this premise, I formulate my historical investigation as a postmodern feminist practice of de-assembling extant historical accounts with the purpose of re- ordering and re-assembling them.2 The objective of this revision is forming an inclusive history that recognizes the agency of women in expanded cinema, as well as the agency of expanded cinema—as a destabilizing force—in the cultural politics of a totalitarian regime. A combination of scholarly research, international field work, and creative endeavors shapes my dissertation project, which consists of a written component, and a creative component, namely a short video piece, entitled “Heideh: A Return.”3

The historical context of this dissertation is specifically informed by Hamid

Naficy’s four-volume book A Social History of Iranian Cinema, where he provides a thorough overview of the evolution of Iranian cinema, from its emergence until the controversial 2009 presidential election. As we are nearing the end of the 2010s decade,

2 Postmodern-feminist, in the sense that it considers a historical shift born out of the convergence of a multitude of social, political, and cultural currents that extend beyond the past and present moments in theory. In this case a moment of historical self-awareness and the subsequent quest for reclaiming agency, by the Iranian women, brought on by the constant failure of multiple patriarchal systems in engaging in a constructive dialogue that warrants change. Postmodern feminism takes specific interest in such historical shifts vis-à-vis their material repercussions in issues such as the social construction of identity, gender hierarchy, or the legal realm of equality, rights, and political identity. For an elaborate discussion of the relationship between postmodernism and feminism, see: Margaret W. Ferguson and Jennifer Wicke. Feminism and Postmodernism. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994). 3 See chapter 5 for a thorough discussion of my creative project. 22 which marks the 10-year anniversary of the post-election spectacle of citizen journalism in Iran, my research addresses more recent developments that have not been covered by existing literature (e.g., Naficy’s Social History ends with his brief discussion of the

2009-2010 events). Less extensive historiographies or historical accounts published in

Iran, often fall in the same chronological category, where despite their recent publication date, they fail to address the past decade of cultural transformation in Iranian cinema and arts.4 Therefore, the specific historical period I discuss starts with the year 2010, when the rapid popularization of smartphones and social media, along with widespread access to high speed data and home connections transformed the quality and direction of information flow in Iran. This resulted in tidal waves of cultural transformation that have been ongoing throughout the decade.

The social implications of Iran’s cinema culture and industry are better understood vis-à-vis the historical narratives of modernization, Westernization, nationalism, and Islamization of the country. In this context, I consider the Islamic

Revolution (1979), the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988), and the 2009-2010 social unrest as the main spectacles around which post-revolution expanded cinema of Iran is defined. While utilizing Naficy’s Social History to offer a survey of the above-mentioned transformative discourses, I seek to reveal intertextual associations between his historiography and a feminist history of women in Iranian cinema produced by Jinous Nazokkar (b. 1975).

4 For instance, see the following book, which was published in 2017, but only covers the history of post- revolution Iranian cinema until the year 1999: Ahmad Talebinejad, Cinema, If It’s There: The Critical Tehran: Rozaneh) .[سینما اگر باشد: تاریخ تحلیلی سینمای پس از ان الب :History of Post-revolution Iran [in Farsi Publishing, 2017). 23

Nazokkar’s monograph, entitled The Role of Women in the Cinematic Literature of Iran: from the Beginning until 2005, offers a comprehensive history of Iranian women’s engagement with cinema as a medium from which they were often excluded. 5

With regard to expanded cinema, I utilize A History of Video Art written by Chris

Meigh-Andrews. Meigh-Andrews discusses video art as the new art form that emerged in the middle decade of the 20th century in Europe and the United States, swiftly spreading its wings across many subjects, movements (political and otherwise), and technologies.6

As the victory of the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979 coincides with the early history of video art, I investigate the influence of video in the visual representations of post- revolution socio-cultural change in Iran. Furthermore, in identifying the associations between Iranian expanded cinema and the Western experimental cinema, my research is informed by Women and Experimental Filmmaking as a contemporary reformulation of experimental film history focused solely on the careers of women. 7

Historicizing the contemporary condition of expanded cinema of Iran, and the contributions of pioneering female artists that have emerged within it, requires an understanding of the current socio-cultural landscape of the country. Therefore, in the following section, I will provide an overview of said landscape, using specific examples from recent events and their cultural implications. These examples pertain to a range of issues from active criminal investigations, to social liberties, social media activism,

5 Jinous Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature: From the Beginning Until 2005 [in .(Tehran: Ghatreh Publishing, 2015) .[نقش زن در ادبیاتسینمای ایران: از آغاز تا Farsi: 1384 6 Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 2. 7 Jean Petrolle, and Virginia Wright Wexman. Women and Experimental Filmmaking, (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2005), 3. 24 among other things. The discussion of the next section may not be directly related to my investigation of Iran’s expanded cinema. However, its relevance lies in the fact that it offers an intimate view of the culture within which video has an undeniable function in critically engaging the public mind. This is particularly significant considering the solid foundation of religious patriarchy—supported by the legal and academic systems—that informs not only the structure of the state, but also the very fabric of the Iranian society.

Social Media as a Launch Pad for a Progressive Feminist Discourse8

The Islamic Republic’s mindset involves a general distrust of the public sphere as a threat to values such as modesty, purity, and innocence. The traditional identity that the

Islamic Republic tried to reproduce and preserve did not always agree with the process of modernization that was quickly altering the socio-cultural, economic, and technological spheres in Iran. As a result, after the revolution and the eight-year war, Iran turned into a country that embraced change and development in these spheres, while adamantly trying to preserve its grasp on tradition. Within this, the identity that has been defined by individual and collective male authorities for women outmaneuvers their chances of gaining an autonomous identity, because many of them are unaware of the specifities of their own objectification and fail to claim or reclaim their agency (in the underground or elsewhere).

A central component to all discussions surrounding the social status of women in the Islamic Republic of Iran is dress code, generally understood as mandatory hijab,

8 The images used in this section belong to the public domain, as they were originally posted on public social media accounts by their rightful owners. 25 regulated by state law. Existing historiographies, often pay specific attention sartorial reform as a significant current in the cultural modernization projects of Iran in the first half of the 20th century.9 The form of sartorial reform discussed by these sources, pertains particularly to the first Pahlavi period (1925-1941), during which, in an effort to modernize the cultural texture of Iran, Reza Shah (1878-1944), enforced new dress codes both for men and women. The main objective of the new dress code was to give a more

Westernized look to Iran’s society. Men were expected to discard their traditional garments and head gear, instead dressing in suits and dandy hats; women were expected to let go of the black chador and accompanying eye piece, replacing it with Western feminine styles (e.g., dresses, skirts, stockings, etc.).

Historical scholarship does acknowledge and discuss the mandatory hijab law rectified by the Islamic Republic of Iran. There is extensive visual evidence suggesting women’s style and extent of coverage in public spaces in the early 1980s Iran, is drastically different from its contemporary state. However, in my application, I identify sartorial reform as an instance of underground culture contributing to a new discourse in body politics. In my research, sartorial reform (e.g., the receding scarf) refers specifically to the gradual transformation of women’s hijab into fashion—in a subjective transition from being forced to having a choice—which took place during a two-decade period, starting with the end of the Iraq-Iran war (1988) and ending with the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami (b. 1943) in 2005.

9 For instance, see: Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 144-226. 26

The sartorial reforms that started during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, came after an era of “Islamic Revolution and Islamization (1979-1997), associated with massive socio-political mobilization of men and women, but soon followed with many retrogressive and discriminatory laws and policies against women and religious and ethnic minorities, forced hijab, sex segregation, war and violence, political repression, massive emigration and exile of intellectuals and ordinary people, and overall socio- economic decline.”10 However, the two consecutive terms of Mohammad Khatami in office (1997-2005), heralded “relative socio-political openness, civil society discourse, and neo-liberalism.”11 These progressive ideals were the beacons of hope for a generation of youth—the baby boomers of post-revolution and war years—who did not identify with the ideological philosophy of their parent generation. The unprecedented level of freedom of self-expression made it possible for this generation, particularly women, “to negotiate sexuality and gender within the social context.”12

On a tangible social level, the small reforms of the Khatami period functioned as the sparks of a larger spectacle of cultural transformation. In a culture where concealment is a deeply rooted value, where married pregnant women still hide their bodies with shame, any evident form of intimacy is taboo. During Khatami’s term in office, young unmarried couples were bolder in their public presence, daring to hold hands, despite the

10 Nayereh Tohidi, “Women’s Rights and Feminist Movements in Iran,” Sur: International Journal On Human Rights 13, no. 24 (December 2016): 81. 11 Ibid. 12 Najmeh Moradiyan Rizi, “Iranian Women, Iranian Cinema: Negotiating with Ideology and Tradition.” Journal of Religion and Film 19, no. 1 (January 2015): 9-10. 27 prying eyes of the moral police, evading the question “are the two of you related?”.13

Yet, couplehood and public displays of affection were not the only arena where the youth started to resist cultural oppression. As hairstyles changed and the use of hair products became common, women started experimenting with revealing more hair under their veils.

At first, this experimentation happened in the front of the scarf, by styling bangs or the part of the woman’s hair that would naturally stick out of the scarf. Soon, women were revealing more inches of their blow-dried or otherwise carefully styled hair in the backside, from underneath of the scarf. These experimentations with revealing hair via the receding scarf happened while women turned the veil itself into an accessory to their fashion choices. Despite the harsh reaction of the moral police, the transformation continued.14 In the recent decade, the activities of the moral police—and what could arguably be considered its reign of terror over the public sphere of life in Iran—has declined significantly. The interaction between the moral police and the public has become more conscious, as both parties are aware of the possibility of broadcast on social media, which can turn any incident into an international spectacle.

On July 24, 2017, photos and videos surfaced on social media of conservative

Iranian TV host Azadeh Namdari (b. 1984), on holiday with her family in Switzerland.

(”which literally translates to “Moral Security Police ,پلیس امنیت اخالقی) Moral Police, or Morality Police 13 has the authority to question the relationship between heterosexual couples in public. If suspects claim any form of legal relation (e.g., marriage, familial relations, etc.), they will be either “carded” or coerced to contact their respective families to validate their claims. 14 Instances of harsh, and at times violent, treatment of the public by the moral police include: forced partial buzzing of the hair (specifically young men with longer hair), as a form of public shaming; detaining, taking mugshots, and apprehending (specifically young women lacking proper hijab) either for family members to bail them out by bringing loose fitting clothing, or to be sent to court for arraignment. 28

The problem with the footage was that Namdari, who is often quoted for her fierce defense of chador, was not even wearing a scarf. With her long hair pulled back in a loose bun, she rocked her baby daughter in a stroller, holding a bottle of beer which she drank from. As both the consumption of alcoholic drinks and appearing in public without proper hijab are prohibited in Iran, the footage quickly received backlash as an instance of hypocrisy. Later that same day, Namdari published a video on her personal account, in which she appeared in full hijab, sitting in an armchair on a lawn. In the video, she accused social media users of misjudging her, maintaining that in fact she was wearing a scarf at the park, and it had merely slid over her hair.15

Figure 5: Screenshot of the headline “Thank God I Wear the Chador,” quoted from Namdari’s interview published in Vatan-e-Emrooz morning paper, on January 2015.

15 The video has since been removed from Namdari’s Instagram account (@azadenamdari.original). 29

Figure 6: Screengrab from a video report on Namdari’s public controversy.

Figure 7: Screengrab of Namdari’s Instagram video about her hijab controversy.

In addition to the narrative of hypocrisy by a statist public figure, Namdari’s hijab scandal was particularly controversial because it was understood against the context of an earlier controversy surrounding her private life. Namdari can be arguably considered the 30 first contemporary statist celebrity who publicized her marriage to another popular television host, Farzad Hasani (b. 1977). Their wedding photos, in which she appears in full hijab in white, were featured on magazine covers, with reports covering their marriage ceremony being performed at the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini’s home, by his grandson, Sayyid Hassan Khomeini (b.1972). The marriage fell apart shortly after, when Namdari published images of her severely bruised face on her

Instagram account, after she was subjected to domestic violence by her husband.

Figure 8: Screenshot of Namdari’s post, revealing her struggle with domestic violence.16

16 As of August 2019, this post is no longer available on Namdari’s Instagram account. 31

In the aftermath of the publication of the post, Namdari was celebrated as a brave woman, who rebelled against the traditional value of modesty and secrecy by going public about the stigma of domestic violence in Iran. However, the events of July 24,

2017 posited her approach to the public as populist and hypocritical, as she continued to stand for a value she had clearly failed to uphold. Namdari returned to Iran following her

European family vacation. She continues to be active on social media, while she works on her projects at the IRIB. However, her ordeal undermined the statist notion of hijab as

“immunity, not limitation.”17

Figure 9: “Veil Is Security,” on a billboard in Tehran, Iran, 2019.

On December 27, 2017, pictures and videos surfaced on social media, of a young woman waving her scarf tied to a stick, as she stood calmly on a utility box on Enghelab

17 The phrase Immunity, Not Limitation and its variants is used extensively in Iran in propaganda posters and billboards. 32

(Revolution) Street in downtown Tehran. With the hashtag “where_is_she?” and its Farsi

the images went viral, quickly turning into a tornado ”,دختر_خیابان_انقالب_کجاست؟“ version of posters opposing mandatory hijab. Soon it was revealed that the girl on Revolution

Street was 31-year-old mother of one, Vida Movahed, who had been arrested on the day of her protest to be released on bail later that same day. Movahed’s case was investigated by renowned feminist and human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh (b. 1963), who went on to represent several other women who continued the chain of protests triggered by

Movahed. While Movahed’s final one-year prison sentence was eventually pardoned through the efforts of her legal team, in June 2018 Sotoudeh was arrested and charged with espionage, dissemination of propaganda and disparaging the Supreme Leader of

Iran, Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei.

Figure 10: a collage of Vida Movahed’s protest (left), and a poster inspired by it (right).18

ویدا موحد اولین دختر خیابان ] ’Unknown Author, “Vida Movahed, the First Girl from Revolution Street ‘Freed 18 BBC Persian by BBC,. May 27, 2019, http://www.bbc.com/persian/iran-48427891 ”,[ان الب "آزاد" شد. 33

As stated above, following Movahed, more women—and later on, men—joined the chain of protests in multiple cities of Iran, with more prominent cases leading to individual media stories that followed their progress.19 Within this chaotic dynamic, some sources, especially diasporic news outlets such as the Iranian Voice of America (VOA) associated Movahed’s act with a social media campaign started by Masih Alinejad.

Masoumeh “Masih” Alinejad (b. 1976), is a journalist and media personality, currently residing in the United States, working as a presenter/producer at VOA. The main reason

آزادی های ) for this association was Alinejad’s campaign called My Stealthy Freedom

was used to (چهارشنبههای سفید) ”wherein the concept of “White Wednesdays ,(یواشکی encourage women to share videos of themselves without hijab in public spaces in Iran.

A discussion of the full scope of Alinejad’s campaign and its repercussions is outside the domain of this dissertation. However, the angle from which I address it is directly tied to the narrative of individual subjectivity and agency initiated by the contemporary women in Iran. I take issue with associating a singular yet impactful act of protest, with real consequences in real life, to a social media campaign launched by a diasporic subject, that both dramatizes and sensationalizes the problematic issue of hijab inside Iran. Movahed never personally identified her act with Alinejad’s campaign. After her exoneration, in a brief video message that featured her toddler daughter in a pink

,(شاپرک شجریزاده) Shaparak Shajarizadeh ,(اعظم جنگروی) Azam Jangravi ,(نرگس حسینی) Nargess Hoseini 19 are the names of other hijab ( همراز صادقی) and Hamraz Sadeghi ,(مریم شریعتمداری) Maryam Shariatmadari protesters whose actions garnered national and international reactions, particularly on social media. 34 dress, Movahed simply thanked her supporters and maintained that she and her daughter are doing fine.20

Figure 11: Screengrab from Movahed’s video published after her exoneration.

I am not questioning Alinejad’s intentions, as I cannot claim to be aware of them.

Nor am I suggesting that a diasporic subject should not be allowed to comment on the contemporary condition of their homeland. However, we should be mindful that severance from homeland—especially when it is permanent, as the case is with expatriates such as Alinejad—complicates how individuals make sense of what transpires in the homeland they have left. I contend that in the contemporary cultural sphere of

20 Hse, Video Message by Vida Movahed: The Girl on Revolution Street, YouTube video, 00:22, May 28, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRj3GfJ0PvU 35

Iran, particularly with the intervention of social media, problematic discussions such as the issue of mandatory hijab, are best handled by those immersed in them. The support of those external to the struggle, if at all needed, is not required in the form of strategic programing or decision making. Therefore, to say that individual instances of protest that started with Vida Movahed are entirely the result of Alinejad’s campaign is a form of dismissal of individual agency demonstrated by women.

Movahed was a new mother when she was first arrested, and throughout her detention and trial, the public was concerned for her wellbeing and that of her daughter.

Sotoudeh, who spent several years in prison following her human rights activism and legal service provided for families of protesters after the 2009-2010 events (while her two children were too young to comprehend her condition), is once again in prison, charged with similar offenses. She has been on hunger strike multiple times. Shaparak

Shajarizadeh (another one of the hijab protesters that followed in Movahed’s footsteps) was persecuted for over a year until she emigrated to Canada with her young son. And other women activists and protesters continue to be investigated or persecuted in Iran for similar offenses. Yet the awareness is there, and it is garnering change, albeit slowly. The issue of mandatory hijab has been problematic for Iranian women since the Islamic

Revolution. Until a few years ago, discussing the matter in a legal capacity or simply raising it as an issue to be addressed by the state was out of the question. However, the discussion has once again been opened, and the women of Iran owe this to themselves and the individual instances of resistance they have shown over the course of four decades. 36

Another ongoing legal discussion which pertains both to the conception of body politics and the public safety of Iranian women is the issue of restriction of the sale and purchase of acid. In 2014, a series of vicious acid attacks started in the city of Isfahan, through the course of which one victim lost her life, and several others were injured severely.21 Acid attacks, particularly against women, are not a new phenomenon in Iran.

Within the possessive culture of patriarchy of the country, acid attacks have long been a direct result of the Iranian male subject’s inability to handle rejection. The case that brought this issue to prominence was the attack on Ameneh Bahrami (b. 1978), who lost much of her skin (in her upper torso and face), along with her eyesight in 2004, during an attack by a former suitor she had rejected. Her case was highly publicized during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, who vowed to support her during her treatment. In

May 2011, just before Bahrami’s attacker was to be blinded per the retaliation verdict issued following his long trial, Bahrami decided to pardon him, dedicating her act of mercy to the people of Iran.

Despite the highly publicized attack on Bahrami and several other attacks that have been documented both by domestic and international media, the Iranian government did not take action to restrict the sale and purchase of acid. Additionally, in the case of the serial attacks in Isfahan, the randomness of the acts and the inability of the prosecutors to make successful arrests led to rumors claiming the attacks were organized

پلیس 4 مورد اسیدپاشی ] Unknown Author, “Four Cases of Acid Attacks in Isfahan Confirmed by the Police 21 ,BBC Persian in BBC. October 18, 2014 ”,[در اصف هان را تایید کرد http://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2014/10/141018_l45_isfahan_acid_victims 37 by statist fundamentalists, for whom it was easy to evade prosecution.22 At the time, I was a producer at the Tehran bureau of Hong Kong Phoenix TV, and we ran a story on the attacks. I interviewed people outside our office in Northern Tehran, listening to women who were concerned about their public safety, with one of them telling me that she would never roll down her window when she drove, even if the AC was broken.23

Months after the attacks and the dissipation of the media frenzy over them, images surfaced of Marziyeh Ebrahimi, the fourth victim in the Isfahan attacks, as she smiled radiantly on her wedding day. She published two short videos documenting the before and after of her bridal make-up, and soon she became a household name, albeit this time not as the victim of an acid attack, but as a survivor who was ready to share her story. Ebrahimi did not shy away from the camera, making a powerful comeback on social media, always smiling and making sure that the entirety of her face is visible. She decided to stay in Iran and become an activist for the rights of acid attack victims and women, and in doing so, she brought together a community of other acid attack survivors.

By individual activism, raising awareness, and connecting with other survivors, Ebrahimi turned into an agent of change, powering through the legal hurdles and disappointments, until the Iranian parliament passed a new bill that restricts the sale and purchase of acid in

Iran.

22 These attacks were carried in broad daylight. There was no specific pattern of victimology, although all victims were young women in their late 20’s or early 30’s. In the aftermath of the attacks, there were some comments made by religious authorities urging women to mind their hijab. As a result, the public mind was extremely agitated, demanding legal action from the state. 23 Marziyeh Ebrahimi was attacked as she rolled down her car window for some air, as a result losing half her face and one of her eyes to the acid burn. 38

Figure 12: Screengrabs from Marzieh Ebrahimi’s wedding video, pulished on her Instagram account.

Figure 13: Marzieh Ebrahimi and other acid attack survivors campaigning at the Iranian parliament; photo by Amir Kholousi, ISNA, 2019.

39

In addition to showing the increase in the awareness and agency of Iranian women in addressing problematic issues such as hijab, the above examples demonstrate a need for similar revisionist acts that can improve the legal discourses of the country.

Within the current legal landscape of Iran, changes in legislations—such as the recent bill according to which the blood money for women is equal to that of men—must be considered massive victories, as the context and framework of legislation within the

Islamic Republic legal and judiciary systems is still a far-fetched concept.

In May 2019, news broke on Iranian outlets of the murder of Mitra Ostad who was married to reformist politician and former mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Ali Najafi.

Soon, Najafi, who was believed to be on the run, turned himself in, confessing to killing his wife using a handgun he kept at home.24 The story seemed straightforward, yet there were several questions that remained unanswered, in addition to the fact that the televised report of the confession—broadcast on IRIB—raised certain legal concerns. In the video footage obtained and broadcast by the IRIB, Najafi is seen sitting on a sofa in the background, in a suit, smiling as he talks to the officer in charge, who sits across from him. As the reporter continues with the story, Najafi picks up his cup of tea and takes a sip, before placing it back in the saucer on the coffee table. In the next shot of the report, the IRIB reporter is seen touching and handling the gun, without gloves. While the haphazard manner of handling the evidence and the prime suspect turned into the hot

24 Unknown Author, “Iranians Shocked as Former Tehran Mayor Confesses to Killing Wife,” The Iran Project. May 30, 2019, https://theiranproject.com/blog/2019/05/30/iranians-shocked-as-former-tehran- mayor-confesses-to-killing-wife/. 40 topic of discussion in mainstream and on social media, newer stories started to circulate regarding Najafi’s motives for killing his wife.

Figure 14: Najafi and his wife, Mitra Ostad, in 2019; photo published on Ostad’s Instagram account.

The rumor that circulated by the media, and subsequently the general public, was that Ostad—who was Najafi’s second wife—was acting as a Confidential Informant or spy, pressuring Najafi by constantly shadowing him, and ingratiating herself into his life to gain more control over his actions. As these rumors seemed to justify Najafi’s act, the media and the public grew restless in their wait for answers about who Mitra Ostad was, and why she needed to die. During a press conference, when asked about the specific details of the murder, Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani (b. 1961), Chairman of the City

Council of Tehran, told the reporters that the discussion was “of a masculine [nature],” 41 implying that he was not going to discuss the details of the very publicized murder of a woman, while other women (i.e., journalists) were present.25

This brazenly patriarchal mentality that maintains its reign over the woman’s body, even after her death, will not be uprooted overnight. However, as the collective fails, hope is restored through individual efforts such as Ebrahimi’s activism, or

Movahed’s protest, through which new doors open, and the possibility of dragging the male patriarchal oppressor to the legal arena of negotiation increases.

Overview of Chapters

To specify the historical framework of this dissertation, the first chapter offers a brief survey of Iranian cinema in the second Pahlavi Period (1941-1979) with specific attention to the correspondence between the new medium and the tumultuous socio- political atmosphere of the country, leading up to the 1979 Islamic revolution. As stated above, I utilize the coincidence of early video art history and the Islamic revolution as the point of departure for my discussion of the formation of Iranian video art movement and expanded cinema.

Beginning with a short survey of the treatment of women in Iranian cinema, first as spectators, and then as actors and filmmakers, chapter two offers an elaborate discussion of women and body politics in post-revolution Iran. In this chapter, I additionally discuss Forough Farrokhzad as a foremother that initiated a female-specific tradition in creative production. This chapter additionally addresses the underlying

25 Unknown Author, “Mohsen Hashemi: The Murder of Mitra Ostad is Masculine,” Iran Sputnik. June 2, 2019, https://sptnkne.ws/m9vZ /. (Last accessed on July 19, 2019) 42 reasons that created a break between the public and private spheres of life in post- revolution Iran, specifically the shifting paradigms of body politics and post-trauma life in war-stricken Iran of the 1980s-1990s. I argue that the widening gap between private and public spheres of life to have propelled the formation of a fluid underground culture, and subsequently a thriving underground art movement with the potential to transform the socio-cultural landscape of contemporary Iran.

Chapter three offers a discussion of the Iranian underground art-culture as a form of expanded cinema, while investigating the nurturing role of the underground for artists of various mediums, who are all connected by their use of video either as a primary medium or as a secondary one. I explore the function of expanded cinema, as the arena that documents the ephemeral elements not represented in cultural products (e.g., film).

In this chapter, I additionally provide a discussion of specific categories of video within the Iranian expanded cinema, which often engage in socio-cultural critique. The final section of chapter three consists of a discussion of the archive as an influential instrument in historical revision.

In chapter four, I will present accounts of my conversations and interviews with expanded cinema artists based in Iran, whose work may contribute to the newly formed discourse of body politics in the country. Chapter 4 additionally offers surveys of work produced by four artists that contribute to the Iranian expanded cinema of the 2010s. The artists that have been featured in this chapter are listed below:

Newsha Tavakolian Nastaran Safaei Hamed Rashtian Hooman Mortazavi 43

In chapter five, I will discuss the creative project I undertook, as a practicing artist within the scholar-artist track. My short video piece—entitled Heideh: A Return—is a rotoscope animation, intercepted by realistic footage, and a simple voice-over narrative.26

This chapter includes a series of images from the film; an essay about the background of the piece and the conceptual foundation of the narrative; a production report addressing the technical aspects of the piece; and my artist’s statement.

26 Rotoscope is an animation technique in which excerpts of motion picture footage are treated on a frame by frame basis, to produce realistic action with the desired effect. 44

CHAPTER 1: CULTURAL CONTACT AND FRACTURED IDENTITY

As surveyed in the introduction, during the first three decades of the 20th century, filmmaking belonged exclusively on the royal turf. Following the production of the first

Iranian narrative film in 1930, the second period of filmmaking started in Iran, during which cinema was popularized outside of the court, evolving into a complex industry in the following decades.27 Due to its geographic location, during the second World War,

Iran provided a significant strategic vantage point for the allied forces. From 1941 until

1947 Iran was partially occupied by the allied forces and their associates in the provincial governments of the country. During this period, film was utilized by the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom, whereby each state tried to reinforce their own political agenda in occupied Iran.28

Foreign influence on early Iranian cinema was supported by the establishment of various representing organizations with executive power inside Iran.29 Among these organizations, two Soviet institutions, namely VOKS and Sovkino, were of particular importance in the consistent and careful calibration of Iranian taste in cinema.30 Soviet screenings were organized in multiple cities across Iran, at various clubs, often with free admittance to warrant spectatorship. It is noteworthy that the Soviets were aware of the problematic issue of female spectatorship, which they addressed by opening a female exclusive film club in the Northern city of Rasht (located in Guilan province). Foreign

27 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 147. 28 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 27. 29 Examples of such organizations include The National Education Film Circuit (NEFC), Empire Marketing Board (EMB), The British Council, among others. 30 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 16-19. 45 intervention in the evolution of Iranian cinema continued past World War II, when the

United States was in the process of executing its general policy to “help recovering nations help themselves.”31 In Iran, the policy was carried out in the context of a media campaign to redeem the Shah’s tarnished image that portrayed him as a misanthrope dictator.32

While the general public was still resistant to the onscreen presence of women, the narrative cinema of 1940s witnessed an increase in the number of professional female actors. One of the outcomes of the slow increase in the number of female actors was that—in addition to foreign actors—Iranian singers, whose performing career had been established and accepted by the public would be cast in films. Prominent diva singer and songwriter, Esmat Bagherpour Baboli (stage name: Delkash; 1925-2004) is one such example, who attracted audiences through her unique voice and confident performance style.33

Nazokkar names four general categories of women who entered cinema during this period: 1) singers, 2) stage and radio actors, 3) attractive non-actors (a category akin to contemporary glamor models), and 4) cabaret-style dancers.34 The centrality of these women in the early narrative cinema of Iran is reminiscent of the contributions made by female performers such as Emmy Hennings (1885-1948), Gabrielle Buffet (1885-1985),

Germaine Everling (1887-1975), and several others, to the European Avant-Garde. In the

31 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 32. 32 Ibid, 16-34. 33 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 148-156. 34 Ibid, 163-184. 46 first half of the 20th century, several influential female figures witnessed, documented, and participated in the evolution of explosive movements in the arts, such as Dadaism.35

While, as we shall see, early narrative cinema of Iran would often cast women in secondary sexually objectifying roles, these women’s commitment to performing turned them into pioneers who resisted the patriarchal culture of Iran, effectively normalizing the onscreen presence of women in cinema. By the 1950s, the increase in the onscreen presence of women had prompted Iran’s narrative cinema to address issues related to women, such as rape and sexual assault. The gradual diversification of female roles in

Iranian cinema continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s. These roles included established stereotypes of mothers, lovers, and seductresses, with occasionally rebellious characters who challenged their male counterparts. In general, for the narrative cinema of

Iran, the presence of female characters was a source of dramatic tension and a regular cause of conflict.36 However, this did not change the fact that women continued to be cast as secondary characters, mostly objectified for their looks, without much depth in characterization.37

Iranian cinema was not unique in its desire to control the female body. In the

West, the early art of late 19th to early 20th centuries has “often played itself out on the female body” as its testing ground of cultural limits. Feminist scholarship considers this to be symptomatic of a visual regime that considers women as “the very ground of

35 Paula K Kamenish, Mamas of Dada: Women of the European Avant-Garde. (Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press, 2015), 5-9. 36 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 48-50, and 153. 37 Ibid, 210. 47 representation, both object and support of a desire which, intimately bound up with power and creativity, is the moving force of culture and history.”38 This repressive approach may be juxtaposed with women’s effort to return the gaze during the second half of the 19th century.39 A cultural force so unexpected yet destabilizing that a counter- force had to be created to redirect or “avert” this gaze away from any position of agency.

Out of this tension, a new culture of consumerism emerged that was meant to contain women’s creative agency.40 Ironically, even the avant-garde debates over this period which harshly criticized the structure of the bourgeois society and its perception of gender, failed to challenge its overtly masculine/heteronormative approaches.41

is (1933 ;حاجی آقا آکتور سینما) Ohanian’s narrative film Haji Agha, the Cinema Actor an example of the problematic gendered dynamic discussed above, against the larger context of the clash of tradition and modernity. While the film was not a technical success, the narrative effectively demonstrates the dual intentions of Iran’s traditionalist patriarchy—symbolized through the character of Haji Agha—as invested in the attractions of modernity, while selectively preserving traditional values, particularly those restrictive to women. While sitting at a doctor’s waiting room, Haji covers his eyes to protect his gaze from the nude figure that sits near him in the room. Yet, he cannot help

38 Anna C. Chave, “New Encounters with Les Demoiselles D’Avignon: Gender, Race, and the Origins of Cubism,” in Reclaiming Female Agency, ed. Norma Broude & Mary D. Garrard (Berkley: University of California Press, 2005), 302. 39 Ruth E. Iskin, “Selling, Seduction, and Soliciting the Eye: Manet’s Bar at the Flies-Bergère,” in Reclaiming Female Agency, ed. Norma Broude & Mary D. Garrard (Berkley: University of California Press, 2005), 242. 40 Ibid, 243-245; see also: Anne Friedberg. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 41 Ruth E. Iskin, “Selling, Seduction, and Soliciting the Eye,” 291. 48 but part his fingers and steal glances at the sculpture.42 Haji Agha heralds the inevitability of an era of transformation prompted by cultural contact, facilitated specifically by film and cinema culture in Iran.

Historical Trauma and Collective Identity in Pre- and Post-Revolution Iran

During the partial occupation of Iran by allied forces (1941-1947), significant political and cultural decision making was a task shared among several governing bodies, each with their own agenda.43 Because of the amicable relationship between the allied forces and Iranian authorities, this period turned into one of the most prolific eras in

Iranian cultural history—which included a budding film culture—in terms of achieving socio-cultural liberties.44 An unforeseen—and often neglected—byproduct of the growing cultural liberties in the 1940s was the fact that due to the lack of consensus among policy-makers, factions in Iran had the option to seek support from the foreign powers that agreed with their agenda. Naficy lists these factions as the Shah, the communists, secular intellectuals, the Islamists, the students, the armed forces, bazaar merchants, and the press.45

These influences eventually transformed the artisanal mode of production into “a largely statist, hybrid, semi-industrial” cinema.46 What further complicated this hybrid cinema was that it was almost exclusively shaped and controlled by elite minorities—

42 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 60. 43 In addition to the allied forces and local governments of occupied Iran, cultural organizations and pioneering commercial film companies influenced cultural policy making in Iran during the second World War. 44 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 1. 45 Ibid, 2. 46 Ibid, 49. 49 particularly members of the bourgeoisie—who often had ties to governing and executive bodies, such as National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT), which Naficy discusses as instances of nepotism.47 The cultural reforms that occurred between the years 1941 and

1947 had two particularly significant outcomes: 1) the adoption of tolerance as a new approach to cultural difference. For instance, those who preferred traditional head gear for men or full hijab for women were allowed to make the choice without fearing state intervention;48 and 2) the mass migration of rural communities to urban centers that often lived in the ghettos of suburban Tehran.

As a result, the social texture of urban centers witnessed noticeable changes in the appearance and behavior of women. This new woman came to be recognized in cinema as neither perfectly innocent and chaste, nor absolutely evil and promiscuous: she sings and dances, smokes, goes clubbing, has relationships with men, but is not destructive in her pursuit. This finally places the modern Iranian woman in a realistic light, showing her as a blend of traditional and modern desires and behaviors. This of course did not mean that the established stereotypes were fading from the silver screen, as they persisted to inform the narrative cinema of Iran; however, it added depth to the portrayal of women in the Iranian cinema, which corresponded with the nuances of her evolved identity.49

47 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 70-72. which negates the contemporary notion of hijab as ,حجاب کامل Full hijab is the literal translation of 48 fashion. Widely advertised by the state in Iran, full hijab entails wearing a chador and covering all areas of skin, except the face and the hands. During the Pahlavi periods, particularly the first, traditional full hijab also included a white piece of fabric, with a transparent tightknit lace eye-piece, which was worn to cover the woman’s face as well. 49 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 217-240. 50

Nevertheless, in the pre-revolution era, Iran’s contact with the West, now facilitated via cinema, brought along a sense of doubt and self-consciousness. While the masses of working classes struggled for survival under economic duress, small minorities of educated elites, mostly members of the bourgeoisie, were the only ones capable of exploring the new horizons opened by cultural contact. In addition, the state and religious authorities were concerned about the alienating effects of exposure to Western thought. These three groups would devise ways to defend the integrity of the traditional

Iranian identity against stereotypical representations. During this transformative period

(the 1960s, specifically after the events of White Revolution in 1963), Iranian cinema was used as a front to re-establish and solidify a sense of pride in national identity. 50

Following the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the new theocratic government of Iran restricted the activities of certain factions (e.g., the communists) in an effort to minimize internal threats to its foundation. Nevertheless, factionalism continues to plague the country’s political and cultural spheres.51 What creates much of the political tension between the factions in contemporary Iran is that executive authority is divided unequally among them, while powerful factions such as the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary

Guard Corps are often unified in their statist cause. Furthermore, the government’s executive power is restricted by the Supreme Leader who controls the judiciary system,

50 Also known as The Revolution of Shah and People was a reformist campaign by the Pahlavi regime that was launched in 1963 and continued until its demise in 1979. 51 Less diverse in comparison to Naficy’s list, the factions in contemporary Iran are as follows: The the government ;(بیت رهبری ;Supreme Leader and his office (Office of the Supreme Leader of Iran the ;(سپاه) comprising of an elected president and his cabinet); the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) ;radical fundamentalists ;(مجلس) the unicameral parliament ;(ارتش) Islamic Republic of Iran Army reformists; the radical left; the students; and the press. 51 the armed forces, and all public broadcasting media. This leaves little to no room for smaller factions, such as student organizations, civil society activist groups, and the press to operate. Reportage of any material that is deemed controversial by the state often comes at a grave personal cost, which is why many activists and artists utilize the relatively safe spaces of the underground to continue their work.

With this background in mind, three significant shifts in collective identity can be identified, each associated with a series of collective traumatic experiences: 1) modernization (e.g., the unveiling of women); 2) nationalization (e.g., persecution and torture by the Shah’s regime); and 3) Islamization (e.g., mandating hijab for women in public).52 The collective identity heralded by the Pahlavis aimed to celebrate Iran’s political prowess and historical heritage. With the growing rate of television spectatorship, in addition to official broadcasts of events such as the Shah’s coronation ceremony in 1967 and the celebration of the 2500th anniversary of the establishment of the Persian Empire, there was “an unprecedented flurry of productions and exchanges.”53

Thus, the collective identity that the Shah’s administration promoted was intertwined with a growing need for creating and recording spectacles.

Since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran, has maintained this approach, albeit by forming statist narratives in televised social spectacles (e.g., parades, maneuvers, etc.)

52 In this context, collective trauma refers to the range of psychological reactions to a traumatic event experienced by an entire society. “It suggests that the tragedy is represented in the collective memory of the group, and like all forms of memory it comprises not only a reproduction of the events, but also an ongoing reconstruction of the trauma in an attempt to make sense of it.” See: Gilad Hirschberger, “Collective Trauma and the Social Construction of Meaning,” Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018): 1. Accessed July 10, 2019. 53 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 328. 52 that serve the myth of an invincible military power. Furthermore, the cultural sector of the Islamic Republic has made conscious efforts to revise the national identity of Iran.

This revision is twofold, in that it involves a process of Islamization, as well as the purging of an older historical identity (i.e., a pagan or Zoroastrian expansionist Empire).

The omission of chapters pertaining to pre-Islamic Iran from history textbooks in middle school curriculum is one of the manifestations of this purist Islamist mentality.

As the burgeoning narrative cinema of Iran struggled to attract audiences, documentary cinema turned into a popular filmmaking style. Additionally, because of the factionalism inherent to the unstable political atmosphere of Iran, the ability to seek sponsorship from external sources (e.g., the British Council, VOKS, etc.) allowed the documentary filmmaking style of Iranian cinema to quickly evolve beyond its rudimentary form. This was one of the first arenas in which individual filmmakers with unique visions were able to “play the system and engage in formal and generic innovations and counter-hegemonic productions.”54

The pre-revolutionary pioneers of Iranian cinema, who had decided against leaving the country, formed a collective to discuss their professional careers in post- revolution Iran. They did not call themselves a collective and did not have organized agenda, mainly so they could remain fluid without alarming the cultural authorities who would not tolerate deviations from Islamic ideology. However, I call them a collective, because their objectives were distinctly different from those preferred by the Islamist filmmakers who later joined the meetings. Soon an ideological war ensued between the

54 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 75-76. 53 two groups, with much of the tension arising from clashes between secular and Islamist ideas. Eventually, it was the Islamists who took over the administration and executive responsibilities at the Ministry of Culture.55

First Case, Second Case: A Case Study

As mentioned earlier, Kiarostami was an auteur filmmaker, and a member of the

Iranian New Wave, whose career took wing via his collaboration with the Institute for

Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA), better known as

قضیه شکل ّاول، ) Kanoon. In 1980, Kiarostami’s controversial film First Case, Second Case

was banned by the newly established fundamentalist government of the Islamic (شکل دوم

Republic of Iran. It is generally believed that the film’s banning was due to its radical intellectual overtones, as well as the fact that it featured female interviewees who lacked proper Islamic dress code. First Case, Second Case remained obscure for decades until in

2009 it re-emerged on the World Wide Web.56

The film is an experimental documentary, in that it uses a narrative element, i.e., a simple story line, to pose a question to an audience, who will in turn appear on camera as they share their responses with the viewers. In the opening sequence of the film, we see a packed classroom (with three teenage boys sitting at each desk) quietly waiting for the teacher to finish his drawing of an elaborate ear diagram on the blackboard. However, the

55 After the revolution, the offshoots of this evolving documentary style grew roots in the underground, later becoming a pinnacle of Iran’s contemporary video art movement. While Naficy’s categorization of these offshoots provides a thorough overview of their characteristics, I have focused my attention to those specific movements that inform the contemporary condition of expanded cinema and video art in Iran. 56 Kanoon, the producer and right owner of First Case, Second Case, was initially supportive of the film which premiered successfully in Tehran, before winning first prize at the Tehran International Festival of Films for Young Adults in 1980. 54 frequent sound of rhythmical tapping disrupts his concentration. Every time the teacher turns around, the class goes silent. Knowing that the culprit is sitting somewhere in the two back rows, but unable to identify him, the teacher states: “The two back rows! Either you will say who [the culprit] is, or you will be banned from the class until the end of the week.”57 A long pause entails and then the students in the two back rows get up and leave the class. As they are standing idly outside the classroom, a voice-over is heard, posing a question: “Your son is one of these students. What do you expect him to do? Should he tell the teacher who was disturbing the class and then go back inside? Or should he not say anything and continue to resist until the end of the week?”58 The film then cuts to close-ups of multiple individuals—artists, religious figures, politicians, and workers— who take turns responding to the question. Most of them praise the students for their solidarity. Some blame the system and its representative—the teacher—for putting the students in such an awkward position, forcing them to reconsider their social values. And of course some blame the students for acting irresponsibly.

57 Green Mind, Ghazieh Shekle Aval Shekle Dovvom,Vimeo Video, 47: 11, 2009. https://vimeo.com/6418143. 58 Ibid. 55

Figure 15: Screengrab from First Case, Second Case, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1980.

Figure 16: Screengrab from First Case, Second Case, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1980.

If the initial release of First Case, Second Case coincided with the final stages of the Islamic revolution of Iran in 1979, its re-release took place in the wake of the national protests against the allegedly rigged presidential election of June 2009. What was

Kiarostami’s approach to the socio-political condition of Iran? How did he react to such 56 issues in his works? Or in other words, can we consider his films to be an indication or representation of a larger socio-political context? The reason why these questions need to be asked in the first place is that Kiarostami is not known as a politically outspoken artist.

Contrary to his peers, most of whom were explicitly taking positions during the revolution – either siding with Ayatollah Khomaini or with leftist Marxist activists –

Kiarostami opted to more subtly express his opinions in his films. Therefore, First Case,

Second Case is a significant film not merely because of the content it presents, but because of the manner in which it presents it. Beyond this simple one-on-one interview setting, there are delicate details that help us shape a better understanding of both

Kiarostami’s cause and the issue of failed collective action at the time of the revolution.

Kiarostami cast a variety of non-actors, ranging from the young sound technician who plays the role of the teacher at the beginning of the film, to religious politicians as significant as Sadeq Khalkhali—whose violent impact on the foundation of the Iranian

Revolution is remembered to this day—to simple factory workers. 59 With this innovative casting, Kiarostami recreated the point of conflict that caused the failure of collective action in Iran: class difference and factionalism. Within the historical context of the 1979 revolution, factionalism implied that the cooperation between members of the clergy, modernist intellectuals, and the public masses was not an indication of the pursuit of a common cause. In this section, I argue that First Case, Second Case is a visualization of

59 Mohammad S. Sadeghi Givi, publicly known as Khalkhali (1926-2003), politician and Shiites cleric, notorious for his actions following the revolution, specifically in regard to the prosecution and speedy execution of hundreds of political prisoners and opposition forces. He was exiled by Shah’s regime until he joined Grand Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris, and was later appointed by him to act as the judge in revolutionary trials. 57 this extreme factionalism that severely complicates basic concerns and fundamental values in post-revolution Iran. Throughout the film, Kiarostami plays the role of the objective documentarian. His subjects, however, provide a range of responses to the basic question of “solidarity: Yes, or No?” without ever prompting the possibility of consensus.

This is quite similar to the events that followed the Islamic revolution of 1979, during which a general referendum was held to determine the fate of a nation by asking the basic question of “Islamic Republic: Yes, or No?” which effectively disregards the diversity of ideas and values that factionalism entails.

While at first glance it may appear that the majority of the interviewees are simply

Iranian intellectuals, a closer look at their backgrounds portrays them as a quite diverse crowd. In fact, Kiarostami carefully and selectively created a group that represents various divisions of the Iranian society, from official representatives of different religious groups, to political activists, television personalities, and even prominent theoreticians of the revolutionary movement. What they all have in common is some way of involvement in the education system of Iran. But what ulterior motive(s) could Kiarostami have had in creating this diverse group?

Before attempting to answer the questions posed above, let us consider how the initial production and later re-circulation of the film modify its message, shifting its function from an educational documentary (with some political undertones) to an intellectual manifesto (with specific political overtones). As discussed earlier, in the heat of the Iranian revolutionary movement, several of the political groups and fronts

(represented by those interviewed in the film) came together to create a united front to 58 resist the Shah regime and create the possibility of establishing a more democratic society. However, what is by far one of the most significant pitfalls of the collective revolutionary movement, is the rift between the general public and the Iranian intellectuals. This may not be detectable at first glance, especially in the emotional atmosphere of the final months of the revolution. Kiarostami’s film however, subtly points out that there is indeed a crack in this seemingly united front, when his interviews with blue-collar workers yield drastically different results in comparison with his interviews with the intellectuals.

Consider the simplicity of the answers given by a General Tire Factory worker,

Mafakheri, for instance, juxtaposed with the sophisticated ideologically-driven responses given by a neck-tie donning higher education degree holder such as Noureddin Kianouri.

Kianouri (1915-1999) was a celebrated architect, and a member of the central committee of the communist Tudeh Party of Iran. Following the revolution, he was prosecuted, tortured, forced to partake in coerced televised confessions, imprisoned for decades, and later placed under house arrest until his death. In his response, Kianouri, a man who lived and died for his ideology, suggests that students should understand the value of solidarity.

Mafakheri, however, who is arguably a representative of the working classes in the

Iranian society, is primarily concerned with sustenance. He also belongs to an older generation for whom education beyond literacy was an unaffordable luxury. Thus,

Mafakheri has already come a long way by acknowledging his son’s need for education in a modernized society, instead of having him enter the traditionally patrilineal job 59 market as soon as possible. But at the same time, he identifies any school activity beyond learning and studying to be redundant and wrong.

For the blue collar workers featured in the film, education is an opportunity they are giving their children by spending hard-earned money that should not go to waste by their children standing outside of the classroom doing nothing. I argue that the nothing that Ali Mafakheri talks about is everything that the other intellectuals are discussing in their responses. Even for those who are in agreement with the blue-collar fathers, stating that the students ought to give up the culprit’s name and go back to their classroom, the issue at hand is far more complicated than education as a luxurious opportunity. Based on the intellectual responses, standing outside of the classroom is in itself an exercise in resistance and unity and holds a valuable life lesson at its heart. This is far from the nothing that Mafakheri despises.

The Islamic Revolution was after all a populist triumph, with its building blocks imported from the demands of an impoverished majority with fundamental, yet basic, needs that could not include intellectual development. Under such circumstances,

Ayatollah Khomaini’s messianic promise of a post-exile return provided a beacon of hope for the dissatisfied masses. Additionally, the Grand Ayatollah knew the way to the people’s hearts was to address them directly and clearly with regard to their future life.

Khomaini did not talk about economic development or social improvement. He talked about giving the nation free housing; distributing oil benefits among them; and removing utility bills from their monthly expenses. 60

The Iranian intellectuals and the public may have marched the streets of Tehran shoulder by shoulder during the demonstrations and they may have shared prison cells as freedom fighters, but beyond the idea of overthrowing the Shah’s totalitarianism, the cause they were fighting for was not singular. Additionally, the lack of a unified vision among the various intellectual groups that supported and (re)enforced the revolutionary movement, further problematized the situation, leading to their subsequent crackdown by the very authority they helped rise to power. This, I argue, is the central message in the re-circulation of First Case, Second Case during the time when another revolutionary movement was underway and drastic reform seemed plausible.

I contend that as a film that had been archived for an extended period of time, with its timely re-surfacing, First Case, Second Case, functions as an instrument of interpellation, particularly via Kiarostami’s extensive use of mise-en-abyme. I argue that

Kiarostami’s critical reaction to the condition of revolutionary Iran is reflected in the film through the way he challenges a hypothetical instance of educational indoctrination. In the microcosm created by Kiarostami, a hypothetical situation with two possible outcomes is presented to a myriad of individuals (who represent different sections of

Iranian society) whom he directly addresses by seating them in front of the camera and posing a question. In turn, the interviewees respond by sharing their thoughts, while also at times returning the gaze of the camera by looking directly into the lens (or at us, the audience). Nouri Zarrinkelk, the first person to attempt a response, asks the interviewer

“Am I supposed to answer this?” and by doing so he underscores the interactive nature of 61 the film, reminding us that what we witness on the screen is an ongoing, yet unresolved, dialogue.60

Figure 17: Screengrab from First Case, Second Case, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1980.

The film critically engages the viewer’s mind by frequently returning to the question, rephrasing or repeating it, and offering the various responses that the interviewees provide. As a result, while watching the film, the viewer constantly finds herself responding to the question and agreeing/disagreeing with the responses given. The question that the film poses is in fact never resolved. It is merely presented and critically examined without yielding a definitive outcome. One could argue that the fate of

60 Green Mind, Ghazieh Shekle Aval Shekle Dovvom,Vimeo Video, 47: 11, 2009. https://vimeo.com/6418143. 62

Kiarostami’s diegetic universe resembles that of the revolutionary movement, which was rife with a variety of ideological interpretations, but in the end yielded a product undesirable for many, including those who were instrumental in its victory.

In This Dead End: Shamlou’s Foreshadowing of an Underground Culture

Following the victory of the revolution and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini from exile in France, special attention was dedicated to nurturing an Islamicized collective identity. This proved quite instrumental in providing the manpower required for the exhaustive war with Iraq. The state claimed exclusive control over press, media, and broadcasting, with the head of the notorious Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting

(IRIB) appointed directly by the supreme leader. Under such circumstances artists who did not identify with the propagated collective identity were forced to develop and maintain their individual identity away from the public sphere.

These artists became a part of the underground collective that had started to develop in the private sphere. During this time, individual identity that sought to position itself outside of Islamic Republic ideology was destined to live a double life in order to avoid the consequences of their act of non-conformity. What further supported the formation of individual identity in the Iranian underground was the fact that at times of political turmoil—e.g., the Islamic Revolution, or the 2009-2010 protests—attachment to any non-statist collective would not be tolerated. The televised recantations of the leaders of the leftist Tudeh Party during the second Pahlavi period, and the Green Movement 63 protesters of the 2009 presidential elections are both examples of the traditional aggression toward collectives.61

Iranian poet, writer, and journalist, Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000), was also a member of the communist Tudeh Party of Iran. He was persecuted both by the pre- and post-revolution authorities, spending months in self-exile in Iran. Shamlou’s poetry is an instance of the way art can act as a witness to history through subtle documentation. In the following section, I will examine his 1980 poem “In this Dead-end,” as the haunting account of the fear of an aggressively politicized society that keeps mutating into shapes that are difficult to comprehend for the individual subject.

In This Dead-End They sniff your breath Lest you have said “I love you” They sniff your heart…

These are strange times, beloved. And love Is being flogged Upon the roadblock

Love shall be hidden deep in the closet at home.

In this crooked dead-end and bitter cold They keep their fire ablaze Setting flames to piles of songs and poems. Do not risk the peril of a thought, These are strange times, beloved.

61 For a more detailed account of anti-collective aggression, including interviews with victims, see Nouriman Ghahary, “Sequelae of Political Torture: Narratives of Trauma and Resilience by Iranian Torture Survivors,” PhD diss., Seton Hall University, 2003. Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses ETDs (1423). 64

He who pounds on the door late in the evening, Has come to kill the lights. Light shall be hidden deep in the closet at home.

Now they are butchers Stationed at alleyways With their bloodied cleavers and stumps

These are strange times, beloved, And smiles are sewn onto lips As are songs onto throats. Joy shall be hidden deep in the closet at home.

Grilled canaries, On a flame set upon jasmines and lilacs These are strange times, beloved The devil, drunk on his victory Cheers to a feast in our mourning God shall be hidden deep in the closet at home.62

In this poem, Shamlou shares the experience of life under oppression, assuming the position of the individual—lover, intellectual, poet—stranded in a cruel world. His diction, paired with his descriptive tone relays an overwhelming sense of fear and paranoia, of “He who pounds on the door late in the evening,” of dead-ends in the bitter cold, and of butchers with their bloodied cleavers and stumps. In addition, the poem captures the break between private and public life in Iran by its repetitive reference to hiding at home: “light shall be hidden deep in the closet at home.” In a way, Shamlou is urging the beloved—the reader of the poem—to be cautious and to hide all things that are

also known as ,(ترانه های کوچک غربت) The poem belongs to the collection Little Songs of Homesickness 62 Little Homesick Songs, that comprises of the poems Shamlou composed between 1978 and 1981. The English translation is mine. 65 good or pure “deep in the closet at home.” The peril, as Shamlou conveys, is in thinking

(i.e., writing) as thoughts (i.e., songs and poems) are burned.

What further connects Shamlou’s Dead-end to the concept of the failure of collective in post-revolution Iran is the disbelief conveyed in the poem: “these are strange times, beloved!” Shamlou’s voice in the poem is in fact the voice of many others, who— in the aftermath of the revolution and the formation of the Islamic Republic—were unable to understand why things turned out the way did. The canaries grilled “on a flame set upon jasmines and lilacs” is a reference to the oppression of thought, but also to those who lost their lives for and in the revolution, only to be betrayed by it. Shamlou’s use of canaries in lieu of doves, and jasmines and lilacs instead of poppies is an intentional divergence from the Islamic Republic’s martyrdom narrative. The last three lines of the poem—perhaps the boldest statement in the text—make a reference to “the devil [who is] drunk on his victory,” while “God shall be hidden deep in the closet at home.” With this closing statement, Shamlou prophesizes that men of god, or those who claim to serve god may eventually outgrow him, replacing him in tyrannical oppression.

After the revolution, a necessary step in adopting cinema into the ideology of the

Islamic Republic was the process of cultural revolution, also known as “purification.”63

This involved the systematic and meticulous purging of cinema of all corrupt elements

(e.g., sexual or erotic imagery). The purification campaign was a rigorous process that included administrative and personnel changes, rectification of new regulations, altering

63 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 3, 14. 66 the names of venues, and at times even repurposing venues for other functions.64 The process essentially paralyzed narrative cinema of Iran, pushing it into a state of recession.

As a result, there was a surge in documentary production, which soon became militarized within the context of the eight-year war with Iraq.65 Wartime documentaries of Iran extensively covered the violence and destruction of the war, while building a consistently sentimentalized narrative about sacrifice and martyrdom. A prominent example of

(روایت فتح) wartime documentaries is a series of films known as The Chronicles of Victory by militant documentarian Morteza Avini (1947-1993).

Nevertheless, many filmmakers continued to produce films by familiarizing themselves with the new system and evolving professionally to accommodate the new changes. As Naficy suggests, during this period, Iranian documentary filmmakers incorporated “modernism as a style” in their work, often “as a discontinuity of time, space, and causality,” or even as “self-reflexivity,” and a general sense of “skepticism considering [film’s] own ontology.”66 As a result documentary filmmaking—and more generally, a documentary approach to production—became a significant formal element in the newly formed underground culture of Iran. The significance of documentary filmmaking in my application is due to the fact that it blends well with experimental improvisations imposed upon Iranian filmmakers who lived through the revolution and war in 1980s Iran.

64 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 3, 14-22. 65 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 1, 22-23. 66 Ibid, 23. 67

During the war, the Islamic Republic relied on the sentimentalized narrative of the war as the “holy defense,” to build an Islamicized national identity: an identity shaped around the values of collective resilience and endurance, tangible on an extremely personal level because of the trauma caused by the war. This sense of national identity was challenged in the wake of the early 2010s shutdown of post-election protests, as the public scrutiny of the state spiked to an unprecedented level. In 2016, a new wave of protests started in various cities across Iran, this time consisting of the general public dissatisfied with their economic condition. The difference between the civil protests that started in 2016 and the protests of the 2009-2010 era is that the post-election events did not reach across the nation. Of course, protests happened in various cities, but the concern then was more cultural than economic. In recent years, however, the lack of social freedoms has merged with the pressure caused by the economic duress caused both by the mismanagement of corrupt politicians, and the continuing economic sanctions against Iran that have further alienated the country internationally.

Cultural organizations in Contemporary Iran: Supervision, Censorship, and Statism

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 was a political movement with a fundamental ideological core that swiftly attacked the socio-cultural fabric of Iran. The Cultural

Revolution was a meticulously organized off-shoot of the larger revolutionary movement, sponsored and reinforced by the state with the main objective of pursuing Islamic reforms. However, contrary to popular belief, this was not a backward movement in its entirety, as it sought to consciously merge the principles of Islamic theology with the modernized nation-state inherited (or rather, confiscated) from the Pahlavi’s. 68

Regardless of the divided opinions of religious authorities, which prompted some to rely on extremist acts (e.g., Ayatollah Khalkhali), the Islamic Republic did not show immediate interest in the complete destruction of the country’s extant cultural infrastructure. This is more evident in comparison with more recent Islamic fundamentalists, such as the extremist militant group known as the Islamic State, that seek to overthrow and undermine existing cultures, substituting them with militarized fanaticism. The Islamic Republic was in fact more interested in expunging and reform, which of course came at a price for those who were the targets of this rigorous process.

Parallel to the expansion of the film culture industry, an intricate web of supervising bodies was formed that allowed the filtering and censorship of the productions. Multiple organizations were involved in this collective, with the ministry of culture as the leading authority. The system that was established at the time continues to operate in contemporary Iran.67 The ministry of culture is the vessel with executive power over cinema and its professionals. In the years immediately after the revolution, ministry’s backing of cinema had three main forms, namely support, supervise, and direct. They issued a booklet, titled The Cinematic Policies and Procedures of the Islamic

Republic of Iran to ensure that producers and filmmakers where aware of these policies during pre-production of their projects.68 This was also a way of telling the filmmakers,

67 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 332. 68 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 3, 128. 69 what kind of films would essentially receive the required production, release, and distribution permits.69

In its early years of establishment, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance provided support for filmmakers in a variety of ways. Provided that the subject and content of films agreed with the establishment’s policies, the ministry supported filmmakers by financing their projects; providing raw stock, cinematography and editing equipment and facilities; and by promotion of movies abroad. Part of the support provided by the ministry of culture was establishing or collaborating with smaller institutions with executive power to assist the development of cinema in the new directions. Examples of such institutions include Kanoon (IIDCYA), Young People’s

Cinema Society, The General Department of Research and Film Relations, the National

Film Archive, and the Farabi Foundation (established in 1983). A semi-independent institution, which implemented the cinematic policies of the ministry of culture, Farabi

Foundation planned and organized a variety of events, such as competitions and festivals, whereby it supported young filmmakers (particularly those affiliated with Islamic ideals) by awarding cash prizes. Farabi additionally attempted to reconstruct destroyed movie houses while constructing new ones, but it was not much successful in the arena of production.70

69 The supervisory aspect of the ministry’s mission is in itself an extensive project with several directions that extend to all foreign media representatives present in Iran. The International Media division of the ministry of culture is in charge of closely monitoring the activities of correspondents and staff (which includes many Iranian nationals as well), ensuring that they pursue stories that are approved by the state. 70 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 3, 127-129. 70

Bahman Shahravan (b. 1979), an Iranian independent filmmaker, who has also collaborated with the IRIB spoke to me about the declining role of Farabi Foundation in contemporary Iranian cinema. In my conversation with Shahravan, I asked him if the ministry or its affiliated institutions still offer support to independent filmmakers.

Shahravan maintained that “[…] due to administrative changes, Farabi [has] turned into a passive plug-in to the ministry of culture.”71 He further identified financial corruption and nepotism as the two main causes for the lack of support. However, in comparison to the elitist nepotism of pre-revolution cultural organizations (e.g., NIRT), Shahravan contended that, in contemporary Iran, nepotism has no cultural advantages:

The nepotism before the Islamic Revolution was a more productive case, in that it was based on merits to a large extent. So those who were brought into the National Iranian Radio and Television were qualified to contribute to it and facilitate its evolution; they were invested in it and desired to make valuable contributions. It was a rare system that really worked well, and I have never seen anything like it in terms of efficiency. But today, nepotism is at its extreme, since qualifications do not matter much, and near-sighted individuals are taking over, many of whom are financially corrupted, using the system for their personal agenda.

Shahravan added that the post-revolution media system in Iran is far more elaborate than what NIRT envisioned before the revolution: “we are coming out of an era, during which, Iranian cinema has grown in the quantity of its production, yielding a considerable body of work. So now, producers are looking for certain types of narratives.

I was recently offered to direct a film. When I read the script, I found the narrative extremely shallow [similar to the melodramas of pre-revolution Filmfarsi], with the only

71 My interview with Bahman Shahravan, 2019; see appendix. 71

Filmfarsi element missing from it being sex.”72 This means that national television of Iran actively resists creative ideas outside its pre-conceived production concepts. So what is the role of organizations like the ministry of culture or the Farabi Foundation within this dynamic?

Discussing the trajectory of these organizations, Shahravan stated that, for instance, Farabi Foundation made respectable efforts in its collaborations with Kanoon

(IIDCYA). However, he considered administrative changes to have caused the foundation to turned into “a passive plug-in to the ministry of culture.”73

Anything that happens at Farabi depends on the decisions made by the ministry. For instance, right now, a director who has built a good rapport with the ministry, can go to Farabi Foundation and request a [big] loan. But someone who is in a similar position, minus the rapport with the ministry, has to go through all these stages to secure a loan, that will not [be nearly as big]. And in these cases, within six months, they will have to start repaying the loan.

This means that the foundation does not offer any support in the form of grants.

One can argue that the financial support offered through Farabi follows a familiar banking pattern, which only offers a short grace period before payback begins. In film industry, particularly in Iran where producers face extra scrutiny to obtain distribution permits, ensuring capital return is no simple task. This highly competitive market either rejects or simply disappoints young filmmakers who produce non-statist work.

72 My interview with Bahman Shahravan, 2019; see appendix. 73 Ibid. 72

What further complicates this corrupt financial system is a new generation of stakeholders, which Shahravan considers to be “the so-called independent distributors” of

Iranian cinema industry:

I say so-called because at the end of the day, these are all ministry people. These are the people who have controlled our cinema over the past decades (for instance, what film gets to be Iran’s representative at the Oscars). So all those people that were at some point affiliated with the ministry and used to review films, taking issue with anything that looked remotely erotic or problematic to them, have turned into distributors. They have branched out to a commercial level that monopolizes cinema in their name, and provides them with an effective instrument of money laundering.74

The above discussion of the role of cultural organizations, (such as the Ministry of

Culture and Islamic Guidance) in the contemporary Iranian cinema, demonstrates that artists with non-statist creative vision continue to struggle to find support. Therefore, in addition to the break between public and private spheres of life in Iran, the refusal of cultural authorities to provide equal opportunities for artists further steers them toward underground modes of production and alternative distribution methods.

74 My interview with Bahman Shahravan, 2019; see appendix. 73

CHAPTER 2: WOMEN IN IRANIAN CINEMA: TENSE ENCOUNTERS AND

PIONEERS

Historical scholarship does recognize the contribution of pioneering women filmmakers (e.g., Maya Deren and Forough Farrokhzad), but this recognition is constantly challenged by the patriarchal hegemony that narrates the history of cinema as the legacy of fathers and sons.75 This is particularly evident in the historical accounts written and compiled by P. Adam Sitney (b. 1944). Sitney’s most considerable contribution, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde (1943-1978), has been published in three editions in the years 1974, 1978, and 2002 respectively. In the preface of the second and third editions, Sitney addresses some of the shortcomings of his earlier work. However, despite acknowledging the significance of female filmmakers, such as

Marie Menken, he fails to account for the full scope of women’s contributions to the art form. Because these acknowledgements are minimal, in the larger context of historicization, they are barely visible.76

75 Feminist histories of the avant-garde often discuss the contradictory treatment of female filmmakers by their peers. On one hand, because of the tightly-knit patriarchal communities, many female artists found their way into these circles through their male friends, partners, and spouses. On the other hand, once female artists found success, this forced heteronormative alliance would be used to argue against them. This narrative of claiming authority over female agency is often attempted with regard to Farrokhzad as well, particularly with the recent publication of personal correspondence allegedly belonging to her. See for instance: Rabinovitz, Points of Resistance, 3-10. 76 For instance, Sitney’s work broadly categorizes several artists and their oeuvres as belonging to a romantic tradition. While elements akin to those in Romanticism are present in experimental films of the period, Sitney’s generalization ghettoizes significant contributions to experimental film form. In contrast to Sitney’s approach in Visionary Film, which Rowe only praises for “its virtue as a fascinating catalogue,” In contrast, MacDonald’s Critical Cinema, provides a detailed archive of filmmakers across both genders; for more on this, see: Carol Rowe, “Visionary film: The American avant-garde (Book Review)." Film Quarterly 28, no. 4 (July 16, 1975): 34; Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers, Volumes 1-5, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 74

In a similar vein, existing literature on the earlier history of Iranian cinema either neglects the role of women, or dismisses it as insubstantial without investigating the reasons for their exclusion.77 In the historical accounts provided on the earlier history of

Iranian cinema, few women are mentioned, with minimal discussions of the extent of their involvement or contribution. The only exception, being Farrokhzad, whose impact is substantial enough to render it undeniable, even though pointless discussions of her personal life, particularly her relationship with filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan, continue to this day.

Nazokkar provides this early history, discussing the importing of the cinématographe and other technical equipment by the Qajar court, particularly Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar (1853-1907), who was quite fond of the new technology and the magic of representation.78 From the year 1900 (when the Qajar Shah purchased his cinématographe in Paris), until the year 1930, when the first narrative film was made in

Iran, Iranian cinema was exclusively reserved for the court. The films produced by the court during this period were shot in the style of early Lumière documentaries, often consisting of long shots of life at the court, footage of palace environment, significant events, etc. During this period, cinematographers were the directors of the films, as there were no specific aesthetic criteria, and the knowledge of operating the camera equaled the ability to produce films.79

77 See for instance: Parviz Jahed, From Cinémathèque in Paris, to Film Center in Tehran: Interview with ,Tehran: Ney Publishing) .[از سینماتک پاریس تاکانون فیلم تهران: رو در روبا فرخ غفاری :Farrokh Ghaffari [in Farsi 2014). 78 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 23-27. 79 Ibid, 32-33. 75

Following the first public screening in Iran In 1904, spectatorship became an intrinsic component of film culture in Iran, albeit progression toward a more inclusive form of spectatorship was quite slow during the first two decades of Iranian cinema history.80 The major problem that cinema spectatorship encountered in Iran was the fact that the simultaneous presence of men and women in the public space of the theaters was unprecedented. For instance, in their initial reaction to the new art form, religious leaders believed cinema to be a source of evil and the cause of sin, thus considering it Haram

They took issue with the public aspect of cinema spectatorship that allowed 81.(حرام) people “of both genders and all classes […] to socialize, be educated, be entertained." 82

At the time, the public sphere was mainly male-dominated, with larger gatherings forming in places like coffeehouses, where women had no right to be.

Naficy offers an Althusserian reading of the situation, maintaining that the cleric community took issue with popularizing cinema because it regulated exposure to an image that could interpellate the public in the long run.83 This was further emphasized by the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini (1902-1982), who identified cinema as the cause of

“corruption, licentiousness, prostitution, moral cowardice, and political dependence.”84

Under such circumstances, to garner larger audiences, individual patrons of cinema,

80 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 34-37. 81 What has been forbidden by Islamic law (e.g., pork meat, extra-marital sexual relationships, lack of hijab for women in the public, etc.) 82 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 1, 60. 83 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 3, 5. 84 Ibid. 76 particularly non-Muslims (often Christian Armenian and Zoroastrian communities), made efforts to normalize female spectatorship in theaters.85

One of the venues that held exclusive screenings for women was a screening room in the Zoroastrian School for Girls in Tehran. The screening room, which was later called “Zoroastrian Cinema,” had an all-female staff and would screen for women, the same films that were being screened at the Grand Cinema for men. To encourage women

,newspapers (ا العات) to attend the screenings, notices were printed in Iran and Ettelaat offering coupons for free admittance to the theater for evening screenings. If women were to bring their children to the theaters, they were offered half-price tickets, which further encouraged their attendance.86 Following the establishment of the Zoroastrian Cinema and its exclusive screenings for women, a screening hall at the Grand Cinema was dedicated to women, with a separate entrance gate and security staff to prevent promiscuous women and licentious youth from entering the theater. This family-oriented approach led to the further integration of women spectators in public theaters, where women would accompany their husbands or other male relatives to cinemas.87

Following these early efforts in the integration of female spectators, Armenian-

-opened “Cinema Pary,” a female (مادام پری آقابایف) Iranian Madame Pary Aghabayev exclusive Summer screening venue.88 After her resignation, another Cinema Pary was opened in a different neighborhood of Tehran that initially admitted women only.

85 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 35. 86 Ibid, 36. 87 Ibid., 38-39. 88 Born in 1900, Aghabayev was a multi-disciplinary artist, who was one of the first women to perform on stage in Iran. 77

Eventually male spectators found their way to this theater, and other female-exclusive venues. While at the beginning, male and female audiences continued to sit in segregated groups during screenings, this period essentially marked the end of complete spectatorial segregation of cinemas in Iran.89

With the progress toward more inclusive forms of cinema spectatorship, patrons started to shift their focus to the issues of casting and representing women in Iranian cinema. Armenian-Iranian physician turned filmmaker, Ovanes Ohanian (1896-1960), established the first art school for women in Iran, printing ads in mainstream newspapers to attract patrons. Despite Ohanian’s efforts, few women enrolled at his school. Almost a decade later, Ohanian established his second art school exclusively for women, with

.as the director (2009-1912 ; ّفخرالزمان جبّار وزیری) Fakhrozzaman Jabbarvaziri

Unfortunately, the school’s efforts in normalizing the enrollment of girls, particularly by appealing to the students’ relatives or parents to accompany them for registration, did not yield the desired outcome, and the school was shut down. The problem was not a lack of interest on the part of women, but rather the extremely conservative culture of Iran that was not ready to accept the representation of women in cinema.90 Therefore, the first female actors in early Iranian cinema were not Iranian nationals.91 Another way of avoiding the casting of female actors was casting teenage boys in their stead, who would perform as women by wearing wigs, make-up, and women’s clothing.

89 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 39-40. 90 Ibid, 42-44. 91 The first female actor that starred in an Iranian film was Merope Sahaki Kantarjian (1857-1932), who .and was an Armenian singer and stage actor (سیرانوش) used the stage name Siranoush 78

In 1932, Indian-Iranian filmmaker Khan Bahadur Ardeshir Irani made Lor Girl

which was also the first talkie in the history of Iranian cinema. This film is ,(دختر لُر) additionally significant because it marks the first time a Muslim Iranian woman was cast in cinema.92 In the film, Sedighe Saminejad (1916-1997), with the stage name

Roohangiz, played a brave woman whose love saves and liberates the male character. She went on to act in a second narrative film in 1933, which unfortunately received negative responses from the audiences. While Saminejad’s name will be remembered in the history of Iranian cinema as the trailblazer for the integration of women into the art form, the aftermath of her involvement in the film made her life quite difficult. She was subject of verbal abuse and harassment of the general public who considered her choice to be in the film a sign of her disregard for chastity. This aggressive behavior eventually forced

Saminejad to retire as an actor with only two films in her filmography. In the following years, more female actors appeared on screen, gaining recognition and even celebrity, effectively normalizing the presence of women in cinema. The roles played by these women often stemmed from the binary of the chaste good woman and the evil seductress.93 With this background, which reveals women and their representation as the core problem of the early cinema culture of Iran, let us now turn to Forough Farrokhzad

(1934-1967) and her venture into filmmaking.

92 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 64-65. 93 Ibid., 69-112. 79

Forough Farrokhzad: A Foremother

Farrokhzad’s personal life was quite tumultuous, punctuated by her early marriage to Parviz Shapour (1924-2000), the birth of her only biological child, Kamyar

“Kamy” Shapour (1952-2018), her marital struggles, and her subsequent divorce from

Shapour. During this period, she published two collections of poems, namely Captive

,in 1954. Thematically, her poetry was confessional (دیوار) in 1952, and The Wall (اسیر) and inspired by her troubled marriage to a possessive husband, her brief hospitalization for a nervous breakdown, her divorce, and losing the custody of her son.94

Farrokhzad’s poetry received both positive and negative feedback from critics, with the former praising her as the symbol of the progressive modern woman, and the latter denouncing the representation of her private life and intimate moments.95 For instance, in the poem, Red Rose, while offering a tender narrative of an erotic union between the lovers, Farrokhzad simultaneously shares her hesitation at the thought of intimacy: how she was led to the garden, with her “worried tresses.”96 Yet, her hesitation—perhaps prompted by the immanent loss of her virginity—does not foreshadow destruction. As she continues her narrative with an explosion of “red,” she announces the conception of a child within her core, content with the outcome of her lovemaking:

.[فروغ: نقطهی تالقی شعر و سینما :Jinous Nazokkar, Forough: The Meeting of Cinema and Poetry [in Farsi 94 (Tehran: Ghatreh Publishing, 2015), 11-23. 95 Ibid, 19. 96 Red Rose belongs to a collection of poems composed by Farrokhzad between 1959 and 1963, published in a book of poems, titled Another Birth. 80

Red Rose

Red rose Red rose Red rose

He took me to the garden of red roses, And in the dark, he placed a red rose in my worried tresses And then He made love to me on a red petal

O immobilized doves O you aged virgin trees! blind windows! Beneath my heart and in the depth of my core A red rose is growing now.

A red rose Red Like a flag In renaissance

Oh, I am pregnant pregnant pregnant97

Nazokkar celebrates Farrokhzad as the first female poet in Iran with an openly feminist perspective, dismissing the harsh criticism of her poetry and lifestyle as discriminatory; particularly because, other male poets were seldom criticized for their treatment of intimate or erotic subject matter. Nevertheless, despite the harsh criticism of her poetry and the crisis unfolding in her personal life, Farrokhzad continued to produce

published in 1964. The ,(تولدی دیگر) This poem belongs to the collection of poems, entitled Another Birth 97 English translation is mine. 81 work, while working on her existing poems. This resulted in the publication of the second edition of The Wall, with various edits and alterations, which Farrokhzad dedicated to her ex-husband. The edition starts with the poem “I Have Sinned, A Rapturous Sin,” which is the narrative of a mysterious love affair, for which the author is not apologetic.98 With this, Farrokhzad adamantly established herself as resistant to traditional values of modesty and chastity.

Following her divorce, Farrokhzad spent time studying religion and learning foreign languages. With her newly gained proficiency in Italian, she started translating poetry and producing subtitles for films. She traveled to Europe, where she spent several months, as she continued to educate herself. In 1957, she published her third book of

which consists of poetic narratives inspired by or in ,(عصیان) poetry, titled Rebellion reaction to religion and religious symbols. Soon after, she was introduced to filmmaker

Ebrahim Golestan (b. 1922), who had recently established a production company.

Farrokhzad joined Golestan’s production company, where he worked with other contemporary artists, such as Mehdi Akhavan Saless (1929-1990), Najaf Daryabandari

(b. 1929), and Iraj Pezeshknzad (b. 1928).99

There has been much speculation on Golestan and Farrokhzad’s relationship, to which I do not wish to add.100 However, within the historical context of this dissertation,

98 Nazokkar, Forough, 23-27. 99 Ibid., 29-42. 100 In Forough: The Meeting of Cinema and Poetry, Nazokkar provides thorough accounts of interviews by various artists, including Golestan, Farrokhzad, and Golestan’s son, photographer Kaveh Golestan, addressing the relationship. However, the details of this discussion are outside the theoretical domain of this dissertation. 82

Golestan’s role as a male subject who refuses to use patriarchy to his own benefit deserves recognition. While Farrokhzad’s Western counterparts often struggled with recognition in male-dominated art circles, Golestan either refused to comment on his relationship with Farrokhzad, or called speculations that their relationship was an amorous one unfounded fabrications. His purpose was not solely to keep their private lives private, as he was more concerned about feeding into the misconception that

Farrokhzad’s success was owed to him: “that is unfair. […] I don’t like to hear such speculations at all. If I am such a skilled alchemist that I can turn coal into diamond, then why have I failed to do so for myself?”101 Therefore, in acknowledging Golestan’s influence on Farrokhzad’s career, I consider their professional relationship as a moment akin to opening a door. What Farrokhzad discovered beyond that door and what she created with it was and shall continue to be hers.

After joining Golestan’s production company, Farrokhzad traveled to England, where she partook in intense cinematography and editing workshops. Upon her return to

Iran, she started editing Golestan’s film A Fire (1961). Farrokhzad started pre-production of her directorial debut—sadly her only project as a director—The House Is Black, at the isolated leper camp near the city of Tabriz, Northwest of Iran. At the camp, she met

Hosein Mansoori, a little boy, whom she later adopted. At the time, Farrokhzad had been deprived of visitation rights with her son for seven years, which manifested in the maternal grief of her later poems.102

101 Nazokkar, Forough, 38-39. 102 Ibid., 45-48. 83

Given the problematic treatment of women by early Iranian cinema, Farrokhzad’s historical significance cannot be restricted to her filmmaking style. I contend that her influential contribution to Iranian cinema should also be recognized as the first instance of professional contribution by women. Farrokhzad ventured into the world of film when she had already established herself as a competent and rebellious woman artist. Unlike women pioneers, like Saminejad, whose involvement in cinema is associated with objectification, Farrokhzad’s position as a determined artist with social, political, and aesthetic concerns marks her as the beginner of a female-specific tradition. Farrokhzad died in a car crash in 1967, before the revolutionary movement took on momentum.

However, throughout the decades following the revolution she has functioned as a horizon, inspiring many Iranian women to pursue freedom of expression and creative agency in the arts.103

Woman and Body Politics in Contemporary Iran: The Aesthetics of Concealment

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the conception of body politics, both in pre- pubescent years and during puberty, has different connotations for the two dominant genders.104 Additionally, regardless of individual physiology and whether they have started menstruating or not, girls are considered to be sexually mature when they reach

103 Farrokhzad continues to be highly popular in Iran, particularly among women. In my conversations with Iranian artists Nastaran Safaei and Newsha Tavakolian, Farrokhzad’s name often came up as an influential figure, especially with regard to realistically intimate portrayals of women in Iran. 104 Queer rights remain a problematic issue in Iran to this day, mainly because the authorities (political and moral) do not recognize gender diversity and its categorizations. However, transgender rights are to an extent recognized, in that trans-gender individuals who wish to undergo gender reassignment surgery or are eligible for it, are able to seek support and proceed with their medical and subsequent legal procedures (e.g., official name change) in a legal capacity. Therefore, the recognition of transgender rights serves the larger objective of preserving gender binaries by denying or eliminating any gender identity outside it. 84 the age of nine. Boys, however, reach sexual maturity at the age of 15, celebrating their coming-of-age ceremony in high-school, without the need to alter their public dress code.

In contrast, all female third-graders participate in collective coming-of-age ceremonies that celebrate their maturity, which also marks the time they will have to wear a scarf in public.105 Therefore, it is not an overstatement to contend that in Iran, with regard to girls, body politics is informed by a monolithic culture of chastity and godliness, which involves the notions of shame, fear, and a general sense of concealment, all associated with the materiality of the female body.

Prominent Iranian photojournalist, Newsha Tavakolian (b. 1981) has documented this phenomenon in her collection The Day I Became a Woman (2013):

The Day I Became a Woman emerged from a spontaneous thought. I saw Romina, my niece, the day before her ceremony at school. I remember thinking to myself that she was still so little. She was wearing a princess dress and a hat, and she was holding her Barbie doll. Her world was pink. And the next morning, she was putting on her school uniform and the white chador they wear for the ceremony. I could see how her movements, expressions, and posture was different. So I decided to follow her on that day; the day Romina was going to transform from a little girl, to someone who had to abide by certain rules and regulations. Of course, she wasn’t going to comply, because our family does not enforce those values. But the law perceived things differently.

Tavakolian further explained that when she attended the ceremony with her niece, she realized that for all the mothers of the girls, the ceremony was nothing beyond a ceremony: “they all removed their [chadors] afterwards, and left for home.”106

But we know that is not the case all over Iran. [In many regions] after the ceremony, girls are no longer allowed to play with boys as freely as they once

105 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 4, 103. 106 My interview with Newsha Tavakolian, 2019; see appendix. 85

used to. They are not allowed to wear mini-skirts; they need to wear the hijab; they are not supposed to shake hands with the opposite sex. Nevertheless, the duality I saw at Romina’s school was very fascinating, because the ceremony was a formality per the requirements of the Ministry of Education. […] it was funny because the school had had all these chadors made. But they had forgotten to put holes where the girls’ hands were supposed to stick out. So they all looked like they had been wrapped in bedsheets. They couldn’t hold the microphone. It was a comedy tragedy kind of situation.

Figure 18: The Day I Became A Woman, Newsha Tavakolian, 2013.

Figure 19: The Day I Became A Woman, Newsha Tavakolian, 2013. 86

Figure 20: The Day I Became A Woman, Newsha Tavakolian, 2013.

The woman’s body has always been a site for the manifestation of the clash between tradition and modernity in Iran, while it is often placed in the position of blame.

In the first Pahlavi period (1925-1941), before the forced unveiling project started, women were considered to be a symbol of backwardness, the evidence of the country’s need for modernization. During the unveiling process, also known as “Women’s

Awakening,” cinema acted as a facilitator, prompting audiences to accept the new unveiled woman.107 The cleric communities took issue with the normalizing effect particularly associated with the emergence of Filmfarsi. 108 With its simple plots, melodramatic twists, and stereotypical portrayal of women as either pure or evil (but physically attractive nonetheless), Filmfarsi quickly became an emblem of Iran’s commercial cinema.109 The cleric communities were especially concerned with the way

107 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 4, 103. 108 Film-Farsi (also spelled Filmfarsi) is a term coined by cinema critic Houshang Kavoosi (1922-2013), and refers to a genre of low-quality films that generally mimics Bollywood cinema. Film-Farsi typically features melodramatic events, as well as elaborate song and dance sequences. 109 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 58. 87 cinema could alter the traditional fabric of Iranian society. At the time, the key issue was a matter of looking and gazing as gateways to logic succumbing to sin.110

What further sexualized the diegesis of Filmfarsi produced in the 1940s and 1950s was exposure to Hollywood cinema and its over-sexualized objectification of women.

During this period the public had a love-hate relationship with the figure of the modern woman, on one hand seeking her as an eccentric object of affection, while on the other hand condemning her for being a seductress with ill intentions. Following the unveiling and sartorial reform, still objectified, women who quickly adapted Western sartorial and make-up styles, were considered to be symbols of modernity.111 The religious panic in

Iran that had been stirred by the emergence of cinema and the subsequent cultural contact with the West continued to shape-shift, surviving to the present day.

Several cliché archetypes of women were created by the post-1940s commercial cinema of Iran, such as the unfaithful lover, the lustful seductress, the passive beloved, etc. A significant digression from the stereotypical representation of women during the

1950s was cross-dressing by female actors who played the roles of strong-willed women, whose only way of becoming integrated into the society—without compromising their virtues—was dressing as men and pretending to be them. Nazokkar discusses the presence of cross-dressing women in the Iranian cinema of this period as a representation of an impasse in dialogue, whereby, to surpass the dismissal of masculinist patriarchy, the feminine subject pretended to be masculine.112 I contend that for Iranian cinema, the

110 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 1, 90. 111 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 4, 99. 112 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 187-208. 88 pretense of masculinity is an extension of a broader form of visual defamiliarization that counters the element of (erotic) visual pleasure associated with the feminine subject.

Teleplay adaptations of classical works of Western literature are appropriate examples of this defamiliarizing function in Iranian media. In these performances, period-specific wardrobe for women would have to be altered for public broadcasts (e.g., dark stockings, long skirts and sleeves, loose-fitting outfits, etc.). In the make-up department, this implied the use of wigs and hats in lieu of Islamic scarves, but the wigs would have to look unnatural (e.g., made of thick yarn).

Another device in removing the element of pleasure, which in turn has allowed for the partial removal of hijab (i.e., the headscarf), is the representation of women

by Masoud Kimiai (b. 1941), is an (سرب) without hair.113 The 1988 film, The Lead example of this removal of hijab in post-revolution Iranian cinema. The film is the narrative of a young Jewish Iranian couple in the 1940s who are in the process of migrating to Israel. As they go through their medical examinations, Mooness (Farimah

Farjami) is suspected of Typhus, which means she has to shave her head. Manijeh

-is another prominent film in post (زندان زنان) Hekmat’s 2000 film, Women’s Prison revolution Iran that represents women without hijab and with a shaved head. The common association between these instances is that the act of shaving a woman’s head is not presented as a style choice, but as an indication of force exerted by patriarchy. This

113 My discussion of the representation of hairless women without hijab excludes instances in which the lack of hair is a reference to illness (e.g., a female chemotherapy patient). These instances demonstrate that without the element of visual pleasure (i.e., hair), a headscarf may not be an essential instrument of concealment. But I do not consider them as creative decisions that are intentionally resistant to traditional patriarchy, as is the case with the instances discussed above. 89 does not imply that head shaving in women is necessarily an indication of oppression by patriarchy or resistance to it. My contention is that in the social context that surrounds the post-revolution cinema of Iran, the hijabless representation of women with shaved heads is often associated with trauma caused by patriarchy. Mooness, for instance, loses her hair as a consequence of her husband’s decision to migrate to Israel, while she personally was not inclined to migrate. Similarly, in Women’s Prison, Mitra (Roya Nonahali), a junior midwifery student, is in prison for the murder of her abusive stepfather, when during a strike she is punished by being beaten, and having her head shaved.

Figure 21: Screengrab from The Lead, dir. Masoud Kimiai, 1988.

90

Figure 22: Screengrab from Women’s Prison, dir. Manijeh Hekmat, 2000.

Following the Islamic revolution, the logistics and the aesthetics of women’s presence in cinema changed drastically. During this period (in particular the first decade of post-revolution Iranian cinema) women were effectively absent in films, occupying only a marginal space filled with stereotypical domestic roles. Nazokkar surveys the changes in the portrayal of women in post-revolution cinema of Iran vis-à-vis the general categories of roles written for them. These categories—e.g., woman and revolution, woman and war, rebellious wives, etc.—are often discursive as they overlap with each other. Nevertheless, they provide a context for the representation of new categories of women, such as divorced women whose social status was often stigmatized by the traditional culture of Iran. The films that do embrace the role of women as subjects of their own narratives, often portray Iranian women as “resilient, glorious, and 91 influential.”114 Considering two films, namely Beyzai’s Killing of Mad Dogs (2001), and

Mollagholipour’s Journey to Chazzabeh (1996), as examples, I discuss a resilient category of female roles in Iranian cinema that posits women as free agents, untethered to the towering male-figures of fathers and husbands.

Furthermore, any kind of physical touch between actors of the opposite sexes— even if the actors were married in real life—was prohibited. This specific shift, along with the fact that women now had to wear hijab even when portrayed at home, challenged the emotional fabric of Iran’s narrative cinema.115 As a result, in the cultural sector of the country, “segregated and un-equal was the norm,” implying that any representation of women that did not follow the moral codes of the regime would not be tolerated.116

Within these moral codes, modesty became a “social practice” for women, yielding a form of “gendered subjectivity.”117

The body politics of women in the Islamicized cinema of Iran entails a general sense of disconnection, whereby the concealed body of the veiled woman loses its material connection to her face. What further problematizes the representation of women is the fact that “Islamic metaphysics” are “seeking to transcend the real, [and] the irreducible facticity of being.”118 Therefore, the women artists of contemporary expanded cinema of Iran, who seek to openly engage with their femininity in their creative practice

114 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 404, and 410-420. 115 Ibid, 401-405. 116 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 4, 102. 117 Ibid. 118 Hamid Dabashi, “Body‐less faces: Mutilating Modernity and Abstracting Women in an ‘Islamic Cinema,’” Visual Anthropology 10, no.2-4 (1998): 366. 92

(e.g., Safaei), are effectively resisting the abstraction that they have been forced into.

What brings this abstraction to the foreground is the diversity of videos and other visual material that reveal the truth of the private lives of Iranians. Images and videos shared on social media platforms and artist webpages (personal websites, YouTube channels,

Vimeo accounts, etc.) contain representations that are visually different from representations that are deemed appropriate for public broadcast.

After the revolution, while some new wave filmmakers, such as Abbas

Kiarostami (1940-2016) decided to either forego or restrict their portrayals of women, other filmmakers tried to deal with representational challenges in innovative ways.

Kiarostami’s fellow new wave auteur, Bahram Beyzai (b. 1938), discussed his approach to portraying women as an effort in creating “strong female characters,” which according to him was missing from the cinema of the period.119 The woman figure in the New

Wave cinema—when she does appear in central roles—is shown to have become aware of her living conditions in the modern society of Iran, claiming some agency over her identity vis-à-vis the challenges imposed on her by traditional patriarchy.

One of the most powerful female characters in the post-revolution cinema of Iran is Golrokh Kamali, played by Beyzai’s wife, Mozhdeh Shamsai (b. 1968), in the film

Golrokh is a strong-willed writer who left her .(2001 ,سگ کشی) Killing Mad Dogs unfaithful husband, Nasser Moasser (Majid Mozaffari) at the beginning of the Iraq-Iran war. As the war ends, Golrokh returns to Iran to see that her husband has gone bankrupt and is about to go to prison. Driving around Tehran’s downtown neighborhoods, Golrokh

119 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 260-268. 93 negotiates with her husband’s business associates, who are mostly macho bazaar merchants. She navigates the aggressively patriarchal spaces of the film, and is subjected to verbal and physical abuse to the point of being violently raped by one of the merchants. Bruised and battered, Golrokh finally manages to free Nasser, only to realize that the whole ordeal was a plotted by him, as she is presented with divorce papers and the news that Nasser is about to marry his assistant and leave Iran for his honeymoon.

Figure 23: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001.

Beyzai’s choice of names for his characters is often intentionally ironic or metaphorical. In Killing Mad Dogs too, Golrokh’s retaliation against her husband carries a metaphorical meaning that goes beyond the scope of the film. The killing of Nasser

Moasser (a name which literally means “the contemporary victor”) takes a jab at a more general idea of patriarchy that can arguably be considered the victor in contemporary post-revolution Iran. As the film comes to its closing point and Golrokh returns to her 94 car, she adjusts the rear view mirror to look at Nasser and his fiancé in the field, surrounded by his angry former associates.

Eivaz: your face is in bad shape, Ms. Golrokh. You should rub lotion on it.120 Golrokh: he didn’t even bother to ask what’s happened to me.121

As the tension escalates in the field behind the car, Nasser is shot (by one of the four gunmen) while trying to run for his life. Eivaz says to Golrokh: “wounds take time to heal. You have to be patient.”122 Lost in thought, Golrokh muses: “so this was the end? The end of killing mad dogs?” As we hear the screams coming from Nasser’s fiancé, Golrokh takes a shuddering breath before resting her forehead on the steering wheel.

Eivaz: Are you crying, Ms. Golrokh? [a beat] Don’t worry. Golrokh: You’re right Eivaz. It takes time, but it will heal.123

120 Eivaz is Nasser’s faithful servant and confidante, who leads Golrokh to his hideout in the outskirts of Tehran. He is the only male character in the film that has no ill intentions toward Golrokh. 121 Hosein Jalilvand, Killing Mad Dogs (Beyzai, 2001), YouTube video, 02:17:00, March 18, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjkrHLyN9wc

122 Hosein Jalilvand, Killing Mad Dogs (Beyzai, 2001), YouTube video, 02:17:00, March 18, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjkrHLyN9wc 123 Ibid. 95

Figure 24: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001.

Figure 25: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001.

With this, Golrokh starts the car, say, driving away and leaving Nasser and the four gunmen in the dust. Golrokh’s refusal to execute Nasser is not a sign of indecisiveness or sentimentality. In abandoning Nasser and the four gunmen, Golrokh is a metaphor for the contemporary Iranian woman, aware of her systematic oppression by patriarchy, yet uninterested in playing the victim and unwilling to seek revenge from the 96 masculinist subject. This contemporary female subject does not consider the persuasion of patriarchy as a priority. Instead, she initiates a progressive discourse that stands on its own, yet can segue into a socially constructive dialogue with willing male subject.

Figure 26: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001.

In addition to its progressive feminist discourse, Killing of Mad Dogs is noteworthy for its treatment of femininity and body politics in post-revolution Iranian cinema. In the immediate aftermath of the Islamic Revolution and the subsequent cultural reforms that effectively restricted creative liberties, filmmakers such as Beyzai, resorted to creative ways in order to avoid making further aesthetic compromises. In Iran’s

Islamic cinema, this entails a process of using the veil and its representations “against their intended purposes.”124 Beyzai often attempts this by applying tighter angles in

124 Dabashi, “Body‐less faces,” 369 and 373. 97 which objects such as a hair brush function as a confirmation of a female body that is hidden from the camera.

Figure 27: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001.

Figure 28: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001.

In Killing of Mad Dogs, however, Beyzai gives this narrative device a comically aggressive twist. In the sequence, Golrokh walks around in her hotel room, towel-drying her hair, tightening the tap that is still leaking from her shower, before she goes on to 98 pick up a hair brush. Note that all of these visual cues are there to confirm the fact that

Golrokh has showered, which could not have been represented in a more realistic manner. The sequence ends with a close shot of Golrokh’s hand picking up the hair- dryer. However, the hand does not leave the frame as anticipated to be used in off-screen space. Instead, Golrokh aims the blow-dryer at the camera, its coil glowing red, as it blows out hot air. The blow-dryer functions as an agent of aggression, a reminder of frustrating dynamics of female representation.

Figure 29: Screengrab from Killing of Mad Dogs, dir. Bahram Beyzai, 2001.

In the war narrative series Journey to Chazzabeh (dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor;

,Atefeh Razavi plays the role of Maryam Ghandi, a volunteer nurse (1996 ,سفر به چزابه stranded in the minefields of Kurdistan, Iran, as she drags along Behrooz, a wounded 99 soldier with severe spinal cord injury.125 In one of the sequences, Maryam comes across an abandoned building and decides to stay there for the night. This is the first chance she gets to take care of her own needs. Once alone in the room, as she gestures to remove her scarf, the extreme close-up of her face without the scarf reveals only the roots of her dark hair that has supposedly been pulled back. The camera then cuts away to another close- up, when Maryam’s hand comes into view, holding a hair brush, with long soft hair sticking to its spikes, glimmering in the sun. For a cinema that refused to portray the realities of the lives of female characters, these details function as significant disruptions that pave the way for more realistic representations.

Figure 30: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996.

125 Journey to Chazzabeh is a television series based on two feature films by Mollagholipoor, namely which did not receive the seal of approval from ,(1995 ,نجاتیافتگان) Journey to Chazzabeh and The Rescued the cultural authorities of Iran for timely public screening. The series comprises of 12 episodes; the segment with the volunteer nurse and the soldier on the gurney mainly happens in flashbacks in episodes three through eight. 100

Figure 31: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996.

Figure 32: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996.

As stated above, another significant element in the representations of women in post-revolution cinema of Iran is the lack of contact between characters. In Journey to

Chazzabeh, during a particularly dramatic scene, when the gurney carrying Behrooz is about to slide off the edge of a hill, Maryam grabs the gurney realizing that she cannot 101 hold on for much longer. She asks Behrooz to grab her hand, so she can pull him back up.

At this point a comical exchange starts between the two, with Behrooz repeating “sister, you save yourself,” and Maryam screaming back at him: “shut up and just grab my hand!” The tension is eventually resolved as we see their hands reaching out in separate shots, which imply that Behrooz indeed relented and allowed Maryam to pull him up, saving them both from falling off to their deaths.

Figure 33: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996.

This is a recurring theme during their less dramatic exchanges as well, since

Behrooz is prohibited by Islamic law to touch a woman to whom he is neither married nor related. Maryam constantly dismisses his concern, maintaining that she is doing her job, and that he is not attractive enough to cause her to succumb to sin. In another scene, annoyed by the fact that Behrooz constantly addresses her as doctor or sister, Maryam lashes out at him, further revealing the subtext of ideological break between two major 102 factions in Iran—namely the secular and religious fundamentalist factions. Maryam tells

Behrooz that she is merely a volunteer: “I am not a doctor, not a holy sister, and certainly not Florence Nightingale! I am a human.” She later reveals to Behrooz that the only reason she ended up at the front lines was that she wanted to run away from the stifling family situation she was in. Maryam vaguely talks about a heartbreak—a break-up or a divorce—that prompted her parents to fear for her future: “[they kept saying] girls must get married before they become spinsters.” While some of these exchanges function as a form of comic relief against the bleak narrative of war trauma, they also demonstrate

Mollagholipoor’s empowering characterization of the female lead. Maryam refuses to be objectified by the traditional argument that considers women as the source of sin. She goes beyond this, by assuming the position of the subject—the potential sinner— maintaining that she does not find Behrooz that interesting.

In Journey to Chazzabeh, Mollagholipour additionally stitches his critically feminist narrative into the predominantly male-oriented statist war narrative of Iran. As stated earlier, the majority of war dramas and documentaries produced during and in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq-Iran war either excluded women, or simply portrayed them in the background in insignificant roles. Therefore, Mollagholipour’s film is an influential counter-narrative of the war that refuses to glorify the war in any capacity. He celebrated the sacrifice and heroism of the Iranian men who fought at the front lines. But in doing so, he was conscious of equally important, yet marginalized, perspectives of women.

103

Figure 34: Screengrab from Journey to Chazzabeh, dir. Rasool Mollagholipoor, 1996.

In this chapter, I have provided a survey of the trajectory of women in Iranian cinema—as spectators, actors, and filmmakers—in relation to the problematic issues of their presence in the public sphere, as well as their visual representation in film. In addition, by discussing the issue of body politics in Iran, vis-à-vis the traditional patriarchal culture of the country, I posited Farrokhzad as a foremother: a trailblazer in

Iranian cinema, who consciously resisted traditional patriarchy. The following chapter offers an examination of the contemporary underground art-culture of Iran, within which a female-specific tradition has manifested. My discussion of Farrokhzad’s role as a foremother in this chapter is additionally tied to a discussion of her film The House Is

Black in the next chapter, whereby I discuss the way she weaves personal—or even confessional—content into her critique of society, culture, and religion. As we shall see in chapters three and four, this merging of personal narratives into socio-culturally conscious art is of essence in the contemporary expanded cinema of Iran. 104

CHAPTER 3: UNDERGROUND AS THE CHRYSALIS: THE EMERGENCE OF AN

EXPANDED CINEMA

In previous chapters, I provided an overview of the history of Iranian cinema vis-

à-vis spectatorial formations, the representation of women, and the prominent currents that informed Iran’s film culture during the second Pahlavi Period (1941-1979) and the

Islamic Revolution. The currents that informed Iranian cinema during this period include a diverse form of foreign influence, domestic factionalism, the need for defining a new unified identity, and state or statist propaganda. While these currents continued to inform the post-revolution cinema and film culture of Iran, factionalism has proven to have a more comprehensive impact in comparison.

Post-revolution factionalism, which has taken the form of parallel administration in recent years, has caused an imbalance in executive affairs, providing state-affiliated organizations and individuals with far more power than any independent artist or cultural institution.126 Furthermore, realizing the importance of visual media (particularly video) in influencing the public mind, all political and executive organizations of Iran benefit

شبکه ) from a form of media division that supports and spreads their agenda. IRIB Ofogh

is one such institution, with ties to the cultural sector of the Revolutionary Guard (افق

Corps, and a thinking council that consists of statist filmmakers such as Nader

Talebzadeh (b. 1953).

In the following pages, I will discuss the social presence of Iranian women in the public sphere, as well as their representation in visual culture, specifically film. In

126 For more on this, see appendix, my interview with Independent Filmmaker Bahman Shahravan, 2019. 105 addition, I will investigate how the experience of collective trauma during the unstable socio-cultural condition of Iran after the revolution—and during the devastating war with

Iraq—has affected the underground art and culture of the country. I argue that the dual identity encouraged by the gap between the public and private spheres of life in Iran was internalized in the underground during the 1980s and 1990s. I consider the election of

Mohammad Khatami as the new president in the August of 1997 as a new horizon for the gradual resurfacing of individual identity, setting the stage for tidal waves of socio- cultural reform that challenged the patriarchal culture of Iran.

An overview of the footage from the protests leading to the revolution clearly demonstrates the involvement of women, who were ever-present in marches and sit-ins.

Women, with or without hijab, often appear together, shoulder to shoulder to men, with their fists in the air, chanting, and marching the streets of their hometowns. Yet, the traditionalist patriarchal culture that had been somewhat tamed following the reforms of the Pahlavi era, transitioned into a relentless beast after the revolution.

While cultural progress, specifically in regard to the social status of women, was a slow process in Iran, prior to the revolution, some reforms were aligned with the reforms demanded by Western communities of feminists. Examples of such reforms include

,(کانون بانوان obtaining the right to vote, the establishment of Women’s Council (in Farsi the right to go to college, and permission for employment at government organizations.127

These reforms continued during and after the Islamic Revolution, with women quickly

127 Nazokkar, Women’s Role in Iran’s Cinematic Literature, 186 and 217. 106 learning to navigate the economic scene by working outside their homes.128 Furthermore, because women’s involvement in the socio-economic sphere was increasing quickly, cinema was eventually prompted to catch up by addressing this involvement. For

Iranian director Mehdi Fakhimzadeh ,(1993 , همسر instance, in the film Spouse (in Farsi

(b. 1942) cast Fatemeh Motamed-Arya (b. 1961) in the role of a woman who works for a corporate company along with her husband. When the CEO of the company is arrested for embezzlement, the husband—who is the vice president of the company—expects to be elected as the new CEO. But when the position is offered to his wife, tensions arise both in the company and in their marriage.

Nonetheless, despite the progress in the more realistic representation of the social roles of women, the contradictory coupling of tradition and modernity in Iran continued to plague the socio-cultural politics of the country. Within this arena, women were rendered as “second-class citizens” in their homeland.129 As a result, both pre- and post- revolution cinemas of Iran were typically male-dominated.

After the revolution, what further complicated the controversy over women’s representation in cinema was an alternative form of victim shaming, whereby women were blamed for conforming to their own objectification, or in Naficy’s words, to being

“modernity’s excesses and vices.”130 This was the argument with which the post- revolution cultural authorities exonerated patriarchy and exerted control over women.131

128 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 4, 96-97. 129 Ibid, 96. 130 Ibid, 99. 131 Ibid, 98. 107

While the religious community of post-revolution Iran may have been right about the sexual objectification of women in pre-revolution cinema and media, they refused to include women in the composition of the constitution and in other significant policy making efforts. As a result, the traditional patriarchal culture resurged in a new authoritative body, enforced by a singular male subject, i.e., the Supreme Leader, and buttressed by multiple legal and political administrative bodies, which were arguably all male-dominated.

Thus, in post-revolution Iran women continued to be considered “agents of moral and political corruption,” implying that the presence of women in the public sphere and mainstream media may lead to corruption.132 A recent example of such treatment of women is a viral video of Negar Moazzam, a young woman, wearing a flower crown in the historical village of Abyaneh (Isfahan Province) while serenading a group of cheering

Iranian tourists with a pop song. Once the video was shared widely on social media, particularly Instagram, the local authorities were quick to take action and summon her to the court for spreading corruption in the public sphere.133

132 Ibid, 99. 133 Unknown Author, “The Risks Facing Iranian Women Who ‘Dare’ to Sing Solo,” The Observers in France 24. June 7, 2019, https://observers.france24.com/en/20190607-video-iran-women-singers-solo. 108

Figure 35: Screengrab from the Instagram video of a young woman serenading a crowd in Abyaneh, Kashan Province, Iran, 2019.

The cultural spectacle of contemporary Iran which has been snowballing via social media over the past decade is rife with instances similar to Moazzam’s public performance. Since the 2009 post-election protests, social media and citizen journalism have transformed the culture of Iran into an open forum for public observation and dialogue. This new culture that constantly merges the public and private is drastically different from the culture of fear and paranoia that emerged from the revolution.

Revolution and War: Trauma and Post-memory

The Islamic Revolution of Iran would not have been victorious without the intervention and support from several other revolutionary and/or reformist movements. In fact, the Islamic front was only one of the several currents that sought to revolutionize

Shah’s monarchy and break the pattern of social marginalization caused by economic imbalance. The factionalism that lay in the heart of the movements that converged during the months leading to the revolution, eventually failed to reach consensus over the 109 formation of the new state. Under these circumstances, theocrats had the upper hand, since Grand Ayatollah Khomaini had already established a positive rapport with the masses of dissatisfied working classes. He was the fierce theoretician of a grand political movement, yet to the people he was a relatable character who spoke their vernacular and understood their plight.

After the new Islamic state was established, the authorities were quick to quiet the voices of those who challenged or disapproved of the new administration. The new state showed little to no leniency towards groups or individuals associated with Shah’s regime.

Former officials, politicians, and military leaders were tried and executed, while secular politicians were either dismissed or forced to resign. This, combined with the systematic purging of cultural and intellectual figures, marked a violently traumatic experience that spared neither the individual nor the collective. Everyone knew someone that had been arrested, questioned, persecuted, tortured, or killed. It could be a family member, a colleague, or a neighbor. Everyone had been involved with the revolution and its aftermath, from those who organized the protests, to those who marched, and those who simply lived their day to day lives through months of revolutionary action and state measures such as public protests and traffic restrictions prompted by military curfew.

The betrayal felt by Iranian women, who were promised that hijab would not become a requirement in the public sphere, became one of the most prominent instances of public response to the Islamic reforms. Despite the protests, debates, and half-hearted promises made by religious and state authorities, the mandatory hijab law was rectified in

1983, forcing all women (including foreign nationals and non-Muslims) to submit to 110 proper hijab in public spaces. The representation of women in film during the Islamic

Republic era has been “entirely dedicated to this veiled and veiling ideal, the cultural imperative of a metaphysics of concealment.”134

Soon after protests against mandatory hijab began, the state started calling women who choose not to wear hijab “anti-revolutionary monarchists.”135 This was the essence of the revolutionary movement backstabbing women, by denying them their rights, and antagonizing them for demanding it. By calling dissatisfied women “anti- revolutionaries,” the Islamic Republic alienated women from the revolution, rendering them a potential obstacle for its ideals. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that in the following decades, the already established patriarchal culture of Iran was further revitalized, asserting its power and rigor with the support of the legal system. Random slashing, verbal abuse, and gruesome acid attacks are only a small fraction of the public violence against women in post-revolution Iran. Zahra Gholizadeh (b. 1965) is an Iranian social worker and the co-founder of The Society for Social Workers of the Green

a non-profit organization that specializes in ,(جمعیت همیاران استان سبز) Province preventative social work and humanitarian aid in underprivileged neighborhoods of

Guilan Province, Iran. Gholizadeh spoke to me as an eyewitness who lived through the revolution in Tehran, particularly as a woman who chose hijab for herself, but believed that other women deserved to choose not to wear it:

When we started to hear rumors of the consequences of not wearing hijab in public, it was very heartbreaking. […] when we went shopping to the grand bazar,

134 Dabashi, “Body‐less faces,’: 364. 135 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 3, 107. 111

we would see people from all walks of life; people used to more social liberties, who were clearly suffering under the new circumstances. […] they would crowd women without hijab, hit them, give them a scarf or chador and force them to wear it. […] My great aunt was a veteran teacher. She was a tall, very well- dressed woman, always wearing costume-made dresses, pumps or stilettos, with her hair in a stylish up-do and her make-up impeccable. She would comply by wearing a tiny scarf over her hair, which she used to wear around her neck as an accessory. […] they would stop her on her way asking her if she was not ashamed of herself for not wearing a scarf. […] for several years after hijab became mandatory, pants weren’t really part of the dress code for women. We would wear manteaux with stockings that weren’t too thick, and of course skirts or dresses underneath. But the pressure increased until everyone was squeezed into the formal dress code that featured pants. [Women were very concerned], because at the time there were people who would grab [them], beat them, or randomly slash them with razors as they passed them by. There were many reports of acid attacks. So the fear forced women to comply. I hated that. This suppression was harmful to the entire society.136

I contend that from this point onward, the private sphere of life became the equivalent of an underground culture, while the public sphere demanded women to create for themselves a safe façade that allowed them to avoid or survive persecution.

Nevertheless, the public persona or façade that underground women maintained gradually departed from the general model of appropriateness that the cultural sector promoted, which was essentially a chador-clad woman with no face. Nazokkar postulates this as the complicated matrix within which purity becomes the equivalent of hijab or concealment.

Personal trauma, experienced individually or as part of a collective (e.g., detention, prosecution, being subjected to torture, etc.) was one of the most prominent themes of post-revolution art in Iran. The eight-year war with Iraq (1980-1988) further

136 My interview with Zahra Gholizadeh, email correspondence, July 2019. 112 intensified both the traumatic experience and the cultural responses to it. Furthermore, the prisons of the Shah regime that once housed odd communities of anti-establishment activists and protesters, were adopted by the Islamic Republic, maintaining their function of quieting the opposition voices. I use the phrase “odd communities,” because the freedom fighters and reformists of the pre-revolution era belonged to a variety of movements and schools of thought that did not necessarily agree with each other. For instance, Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei (b. 1939) and Houshang Asadi (b.

1950), a leftist writer, translator, and journalist, shared a cell for four months, establishing a close friendship. Asadi published his autobiographical account of the experience in

2011, in a book titled Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in

Iran. Additionally, many of the country’s prominent artists and intellectuals spent time in the Shah’s prisons, where they shared cells, as well as thoughts and ideas.

In discussing the responses to post-revolution trauma, one needs to be mindful of the fact that the event and its repercussions were not equally traumatic for everyone, and of course, not in the same capacity. These traumatic responses can thus be investigated under two categories: 1) those affected by trauma because they opposed the new administration, and 2) those affected by trauma because they fought for the administration to take charge by eliminating the opposition. While the responses of both groups are significant in understanding the socio-cultural texture of post-war Iran, I focus my attention on the first group, because of their integration into the underground culture.

Many of the artists who had individually or collectively experienced post- revolution or post-war trauma would continue to be engaged with it, contributing to an 113 ongoing dialogue between the past and present moments of their lives as Iranian nationals. Artists with political affiliations were particularly active in producing such responses. Renowned Iranian singer songwriter Shahyar Ghanbari (b. 1950) and several of his peers, such as Iraj Janatie Ataei (b. 1947), and Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000) were among the artist-intellectual collectives imprisoned before the Islamic Revolution. Their poetry and lyrics, specifically those produced during the peak of their activism and following their exile provide intimate insight, not only into their personal experience of fear and oppression, but also into a dark layer of Iran’s history that the Islamic Republic tries to erase.137 In this context, the experiences of those with Marxist-communist affiliations was more traumatic, as they were neither tolerated by the Shah regime, nor by the Islamic Republic. Shamlou’s infamous tribute poem, Vartan Said Nothing, honoring

Vartan Salakhanian (1931-1954), a young Armenian fighter, who was tortured to death by Shah’s notorious intelligence officers (SAVAK), is an example of this aggressive treatment:

Vartan Said Nothing

“Vartan! Spring smiles in the blossoming Judas Tree At home, under the window, the old lilac has bloomed

Dispel your doubts! Do not wrestle with ominous death

Being prevails not being, especially in Springtime…”

Vartan said nothing.

137 Ghanbari and Ataei both left Iran after the revolution, while Shamlou stayed in the country, Nevertheless, Shamlou—like many other activist intellectuals, particularly those with left affiliations— spent many months in self-exile while he was trying to avoid persecution. 114

Victorious, but weary He gritted his teeth in silence, and left.

“Vartan! Say something! The bird of silence nests the offspring of a dreadful death”

Vartan said nothing; Like the sun he rose from the darkness, sat in blood, and left.

Vartan said nothing; Vartan was a star Glistening for a beat In this bleakness, before vanishing

Vartan said nothing. Vartan was a violet in bloom, with the joyful news:

“the bitter cold has broken away, winter is gone.”138

In lamenting Vartan’s death, Shamlou’s poem functions as a narrative of resistance against the crushing force of totalitarian authorities. Shamlou’s admiration for

Vartan’s adamant refusal to reveal critical information to his interrogators is intertwined with a sense of guilt, perhaps for having failed to save Vartan from his inevitable death.

Shamlou may celebrate Vartan as a hero of the resistance, glistening like a star against the dark sky. Yet, Vartan’s light vanishes in the bleakness of the night. Shamlou ends the poem by maintaining that like the blooming violets in Spring, Vartan’s death is a sign that “the bitter cold has broken away.” However, in retrospect, this statement can be understood as the expression of the poet’s desire for a future possibility, when the

published in 1957. The English ( هوای تازه) The poem belongs to Shamlou’s collection Fresh Air 138 translation is mine. 115 sacrifices made by Vartan and other political or civil activists can amount to positive reform.

Music in the Iranian Underground: Reverberations of Melancholia and Chronic Grief

Following the revolution, when most of the members of Iran’s entertainment community moved abroad to avoid unfair persecution and severe punishments, an era of longing started in Iran that extended over the eight years of war with Iraq, as well as the post-war period. Lyrics would find their way from the corners of prisons and safe-houses to the far corners of the world, where popular singers such as Ebrahim “Ebi” Hamedi (b.

1949) and Dariush Eghbali (b. 1951) would perform them. The songs would then somehow find their way back home, in the form of nameless coverless smuggled cassette tapes that would then circulate among friends and family members. So the longing, nostalgia, and melancholia reverberated between these communities, feeding into a legacy of chronic grief.

The state of chronic grief—or melancholia for the unobtainable—can also be understood vis-à-vis the concept of “post-memory,” a form of the collective memory of

“a generation that grew up dominated not by traumatic events, but by narrative accounts preceding their births.”139 In the case of the post-revolution baby-boomers of Iran, post- memory is the memory of the trauma the previous generation experienced during the revolution and the Iraq-Iran war. Of course, those born during the eight years of war in

Iran were exposed to varying degrees of its traumatic effects on everyday life, depending

139 Masiha Vaala, “The Dynamic of Identity and the Generation of Post-memory in Post-revolution Iran,” IJSSIS 1, no. 1 (2015), 4. 116 on what they can remember. For instance, the children born immediately after the revolution (1979-1980) or at the beginning of the war (1980-1983), such as Newsha

Tavakolian (b. 1981), have clear recollections of airstrike sirens and seeking shelter with their families in the basement or designated community shelters. However, those born in the middle or final years of the war (1984-1988), like Nastaran Safaei (b. 1984), have clearer recollections of immediate post-war conditions of life.

[I remember] the coupon [i.e., food stamp] period […] food was rationed; there wasn’t enough milk or other basic nutritional products. My mother would have to stand in long lines for hours, with me in a stroller, and my older sister tagging along, so she could get our cooking oil and rice rations. [Gasoline too] Oh and I vividly remember when water and power would be out. My grandmother would bring ice blocks from the freezer and place it [in a large pot] over the gasoline heater, so it would melt.140

Therefore, when we speak of post-memory in contemporary Iran, we should be mindful of the parameters that complicate it. “This includes the renewing of stories, histories, prejudices and suffering across generations, as well as the selective forgetting of a past that has been purposefully erased, denied, or collectively ignored.”141 After the

Iraq-Iran war, as the Iranian society continued to digest the trauma and recover from it, a new form of post-memory started to form. The post-memory of this period was complicated not only by the second-hand trauma of the parent generation, but also by the experience of living in a militarized society where there was no active war anymore. This generation—to which I also belong—were immersed in the glorified narrative of a war that had already ended. The 1990s, which is commonly known as the post-war

140 My interview with Nastaran Safaei, 2019; see appendix. 141 Masiha Vaala, “The Dynamic of Identity and the Generation of Post-memory in Post-revolution Iran,” 4. 117 reconstruction period in Iran, was dominated by the discourse of martyrdom and sacrifice, along a parallel narrative of statist propaganda that blamed the West, particularly the United States for the post-revolution maladies of Iran.

However, the experience of post-memory and generational second-hand trauma did not remain tethered to the past. Three incidents, namely the Chain Murders of dissident Iranian intellectuals (1988-1998), the Iranian Student Uprising of 1999, and the post-election social protests in 2009-2010, created ripples in the Iranian society, reopening old wounds, while inflicting new ones. In comparison to the older narratives of the post-revolution and post-war trauma, these three incidents contributed to a newer narrative of trauma, shaped around the violent treatment of student protesters, media silence and the shutdown of reformist newspapers, the gruesome deaths of popular intellectuals such as Dariush Forouhar (1928-1998) and his wife Parvaneh Forouhar

(1939-1998), and the repetition of all of the above in the aftermath of the 2009 presidential election.

I contend that video is the element that distinguishes the 2009-2010 protests—and any social unrest in Iran that has happened since—from the previous moments of social protest in contemporary Iran. Because of its ease of production, video is historically linked with significant instances of socio-political conflict. Examples of such conflicts recorded on video are the Korea and Vietnam wars in the 1950s and 1960s respectively.

The guerrilla conflicts in Algeria and the student protests of May 1968 in France are among other instances of socio-political conflict recorded on video. A direct result of these protests that quickly spread through Europe (from France to West Germany, Italy, 118 and the United Kingdom) was the revision and reform of the academic system and curriculum. New universities and arts/humanities programs were established, and the number of faculty and student positions increased.142

Naficy maintains that the social protest documentaries of the post-revolution era are straightforward in approaching their subject matter.143 While this may be true about a certain genre of the documentaries produced in Iran, there is an undeniable sentimentality to social protest documentaries or videos that sometimes complicates the message they are trying to convey. This was a prominent element in the social protest videos of post- election incidents in Iran (2009-2010), where montages of still images or short clips of protests were paired with revolutionary songs. Of course, these videos garnered widespread national and international sympathy, and perhaps increased the amount of support available to the dissatisfied protesters. But eventually, their sentimentality, which gave them a dominant music-video feel, did not allow them to reach beyond their immediate moment of materialization.

To understand the historical status and significance of music video—or any video art in which music has a central function—in contemporary Iran, we have to be mindful of the history of music and its reception in post-revolution Iran. Music was one of the arenas of Westernization projects undertaken in pre-revolution Iran. The outcome of this long-term process became evident during the second Pahlavi period, especially in the

1970s, when pop singers such as Ebrahim Hamedi (b. 1949), Dariush Eghbali (b. 1951),

142 Chris Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art, 80-88. 143 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 4, 51. 119

Hayedeh (1942-1990), and Googoosh (b. 1950) became international celebrities.144

However, with the victory of the Islamic revolution, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s return to

Iran, the dynamic changed severely. In an ironically Marxist vernacular, Khomeini considered music to be like “a drug” that prevents individuals from committing to their important life activities.145 Khomeini considered music to be not only “an instrument of the foreign rhetoric of cultural colonization,” but also “a metaphysical expression of evil.”146 Therefore, following the Islamic revolution, and with the beginning of the rigorous process of cultural purge undertaken by the new authorities, music and music industry of Iran reached a dead-end of suppression and censorship.147

However, the fact that the Islamic republic’s cultural authorities chased away musicians, singers, and entertainers does not imply their absolute opposition to the concept of music. I contend that like cinema, music was an instrument the Islamic republic discovered after its victory, realizing that instead of uprooting it completely, it could adopt and utilize it. Bahman Shahravan, independent filmmaker—who has the experience of working for the IRIB—stated that despite the similarity between the treatment of music and cinema by the Islamic Republic, “regarding music, it was more extreme, because the gentlemen in charge consider music to be haram. So they pulled the plug on it, [because] for them, music was defined as upbeat dance tunes.”148

144 Massimo Leone, “My Schoolmate: Protest Music in Present-Day Iran,” Critical Discourse Studies 9, no. 4 (November 2012): 349. 145 This is reminiscent of Marx’s infamous quote, where he considers religion as the opiate of the masses. 146 Leone, “My Schoolmate: Protest Music in Present-Day Iran,” 348. 147 Ibid, 348-349. 148 My interview with Bahman Shahravan, 2019; see appendix. 120

Nevertheless, to purify and adopt music, the Islamic Republic had to eliminate two problematic elements: its sensual popular appeal, and its function as a Western instrument of cultural colonization. This essentially meant that only certain types or genres of music would be approved by the state, which were often associated with

Islamic literature and propaganda.149 Organizing concerts or live performances, utilizing musical instruments—particularly Western ones, such as the guitar—and the singing of female vocals were the three main areas where the full scope of the ban on music industry can be understood. These areas remain problematic in contemporary Iran, despite the fact that after Khatami’s two terms in office concert culture—both in terms of organizing and attending—improved significantly. For instance, concert cancellations by cultural authorities, particularly in cases where all required permits have been obtained, is common practice in Iran. Shahravan maintains that the ban on music in post-revolution

Iran eventually worked against the Islamic republic. As the state halted the creative music production in the country, it opened the field for further influence by Western music:

[the music video industry] in Iran is very much under the influence of Western music and its growing popularity. […] The influence of Western music on our culture stems from the fact that following the Islamic revolution, the evolution of our music industry stopped all together. The revolution uprooted Iran’s music industry. Of course there were many people who did not stop their work. We have masters such as Hosein Alizadeh (b. 1951), Majid Entezami (b. 1948), Mohammadreza Shajarian (b. 1940), Mohammadreza Lotfi (1947-2014), and

149 An example of the kind of music approved by the Islamic Republic, and frequently featured in its Tawashih is an originally .(تواشیح) broadcasts is Muwashshah, commonly known in Iran as Tawashih Arabic genre of religious or spiritual music, which often features instruments such as oud (lute), spike fiddle, the qanun, and daf (tambourine). In Iran, Tawashih is generally associated with ensembles of men, singing in unison, with the instrumental component either minimized or missing. Even when instrumental music is featured in Iranian Tawashih, per the general strategy of the IRIB, the instruments are not visually featured. The melodies of Tawashih may be used both for the celebration of religious occasions, and for eulogy recitation. 121

others who are, or were, still working. But what have they produced? Works such as Ney Nava (1983), the Symphony of Sacrifice (2004), or Brother’s Drenched in Blood (1979).”150 Therefore, as Shahravan suggests, the post-revolution music of Iran turned into a tedious narrative of loss, mourning, and melancholia, easily regurgitated through the fabric of traditional Iranian music, established in previous centuries. Nevertheless, this stagnation caused Iranian music industry to “[lose] its chance for diversification,” preventing it from properly developing into symphonic state.151

With this brief background in mind, let us now take a closer look at specific instances of collective and individual expression of protest or critique through music, in post-revolution Iran. The significance of these examples is both in terms of their contribution to revitalizing the music culture of Iran, as well as their connection to political change, especially social and civil protest and activism. In the following section,

also known as Planting ,(سر اومد زمستون) I shall discuss two examples: 1) Winter Is Over

.(and 2) Bella Ciao (Goodbye Beautiful ,(آفتابکاران جنگل) Sunshine in the Woods

Winter Is Over: Embers of a Red Sun

Winter Is Over is a renowned revolutionary song, released during the 1979

by the Organization of (شراره های آفتاب) revolution in an album titled Embers of Sunshine

The .(سازمان چریک های فدایی خلق ایران :Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG; in Farsi

an operation against the ,(واقعهی سیاهکل) song originally refers to the Siahkal Incident

Pahlavi government, organized by the OIPFG. During the ordeal, which happened at a

150 The pieces mentioned by Shahravan, as their titles may suggest, are all connected to the post-revolution, war, and post-war melancholia in Iran. Their celebration of concepts such as sacrifice, patriotism, and camaraderie—brotherhood in its Islamic context—reverberated through public broadcast media, reinforcing an extended state of public mourning. As a result, melancholia seeped into the collective memory of at least two generation of Iranians who lived through the first two decades that followed the revolution. 151 My interview with Bahman Shahravan, 2019; see appendix. 122 gendarmerie post in Siahkal town (Guilan province, Northern Iran) on February 8, 1971, three policemen were killed and two guerrillas were freed. Both freed members of the

OIPFG, and eleven others, were later apprehended and executed by firing squad.152

Inspired by an Armenian folk song titled Sari Sirun Yar (the beautiful beloved of the mountains), the Farsi lyrics for Winter Is Over were composed by Saeed Soltanpour

(1950-1981), a writer, director, poet, and a member of the OIPFG.153 Already popular for its catchy melody and descriptive tone, the song was adopted into a secondary narrative of resistance by the supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh (b. 1942), during the

2009 post-election protests. At the time, in addition to contemporary artists who released covers of the song, numerous individuals, many in the form of male-female duos, performed the song on video, sharing it on social media, particularly Facebook.154

,BBC Persian in BBC. February 9, 2011 ”, سیاهکل: شکستیکه حماسه شد“ ,Masoud Fathi 152 http://www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2011/02/110204_l13_siahkal_masoud_fathi. 153 Soltanpour was one of the thousands of opposition activists/fighters who were executed during the decade following the Islamic Revolution. A great many of those executed during the period were members of leftist groups such as People’s Mujahedin of Iran, the OIPFG, the Communist Tudeh Party of Iran, among others. The pinnacle of these executions—which remains controversial to this day—was the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, when collectives of prisoners were executed in quick procession, without the appropriate legal proceedings, and later buried in unnamed graves in Khavaran Cemetery in the slums of Southeast Tehran. In recent years, efforts to address the incident have become more prominent, .(مادران خاوران) specifically through the collective Mothers of Khavaran 154 Rafaello Al, Sar Omad Zemeston, YouTube video, 02:50, June 12, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PH43PBZ7cw. (Last accessed on July 20, 2019) 123

Figure 36: Screengrab of video duet by unidentified artists, covering Winter Is Over, 2009.

Winter Is Over quickly turned into a contemporary revolutionary song, given the fact that the treatment of those apprehended during the civil unrests was reminiscent of the treatment of opposition members in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Winter Is Over

Winter is over Spring blossoms The red flower of the sun has risen again, chasing the night away

The mountains are poppy fields The poppies are alive

They plant sunshine in the mountains, one poppy at a time

In the mountains Her heart beats As she brings Rifles, flowers, and wheat

In her heart, beat beat beat She has a forest of stars 124

--beat beat-- A forest of stars

Winter is over Spring blossoms The red flower of the sun has risen again, chasing the night away

Her lips, the laughter of lights Her heart, aglow in joy Her voice, a spring And her memory, a fawn in the faraway forest

In the mountains Her heart beats As she brings Rifles, flowers, and wheat

In her heart, beat beat beat In her heart, beat beat beat She has a forest of stars --beat beat-- A forest of stars155

With the release of cover versions, and as the popularity of the song increased, it became a social media trend, with search engines connecting the song to its original historical episteme of early 1970s. Within the nostalgic context of longing for the unobtainable—the lost glory of the past, or the simple desire for social freedoms—Winter

Is Over functioned as a requiem, perhaps a eulogy, for the lives lost. Within this, poppies and the crimson glow of the rising sun provide powerful allegories to the concept of martyrdom.

155 The English translation of the lyrics is mine. 125

Mourning, Martyrdom, and Social Critique in the Age of Social Media

In Islamic culture, a martyr can be anyone who has lost their life while on a righteous path. A martyr could simply be a father who dies in a car crash, on his way to work (where he provides for his family). In the Islamic Republic of Iran, however, martyrdom has a specific connotation, strongly associated with those who died during the eight-year war with Iraq. However, in associating martyrdom with a different category of martyrs, Winter Is Over functions as an instrument of documenting a counter-history. The vernacular of the Islamic Republic, best showcased in its public broadcasting media, reflects this in the subjective way fatalities are reported in news. For instance, reference to the fatalities of opposition members—be it the insurgents who fight Bashar al-Assad in

Syria, or the members of the Israeli army in Gaza strip—is given with phrases such as

“being killed off.”156 However, if the subject is an appropriate reflection of the values of the Islamic Republic, their death is often reported in poetic vernacular, with verbs connoting martyrdom or ascending the earth to be with God. The casualties of the 2009-

2010 civil unrests were no exception. At the time, the public broadcast and right-wing print media either did not report on the casualties of protesters, or simply reported it in

.(Romanized: fetneh-gar ,فتنهگر) passing, referring to them as insurgents or trouble-makers

Therefore, I argue that cultural products such as the song Winter Is Over, were collectively countering the historical erasure heralded by the Islamic Republic.

Romanized: be halākat rasīdan) implies death without conveying any) ه هالکت رسیدن The Farsi verb 156 sympathy for the person who has died. In that, it implies resentment, hence the lack of an objective approach to hard news journalism. 126

Bella Ciao: A Meeting in the Mountains

Another significant instance of music and music video contributing to social protest in Iran is the song Bella Ciao (Goodbye Beautiful). A folk song used originally by the partisans of the Italian Resistance (1943-1945), Bella Ciao has since turned into an international anthem for anti-fascist resistance. In July 2009, the YouTube handle

IranUltimatum, released a music video titled Bella Ciao, Iran, referring to the civil protests in their caption, stating that “[the] video is made for all brave Iranians who stay against bullets and despite brutal repression ask for their vote and freedom.”157

One morning I woke up Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao One morning I woke up And I found the invader Oh Partisan, carry me away Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao Oh Partisan, carry me away Because it feels like death And if I die on the mountain Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao And if I die on the mountain You must bury me And you must bury me Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao And you must bury me Under the shade of beautiful flowers And all those that pass Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao And all those that pass Will say what beautiful flowers And this flower of a partisan

157 IranUltimatum, Bella Ciao, Iran, YouTube video, 02:13, July 28, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNocyz1NRjA. (Last accessed on July 20, 2019) 127

Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao, Bella Ciao Ciao Ciao And this flower of a partisan Is the flower of freedom.158

The imagery in Bella Ciao and the descriptive narrative of Winter Is Over come to overlap in addressing the loss of the revolutionary subject, while keeping the beacon of hope alive by serenading the surviving fighters. Both songs celebrate remembrance as an essential act in keeping resistance narratives vibrant. The partisan in Bella Ciao meets the guerrillas of Winter Is Over in the mountains, where flowers like poppies grow from the graves of the opposition martyrs.

Figure 37: Screengrab from Bella Ciao, YouTube video published by IranUltimatum, 2009.

158 The translator of the song (from Italian to English) has not been identified by IranUltimatum. 128

Figure 38: Screengrab from Bella Ciao, YouTube video published by IranUltimatum, 2009.

Narratives of martyrdom were a crucial component of the revolutionary movement in 1979. The mourning rituals for those who lost their lives during demonstrations, or in Shah’s prisons, turned into meetings for dissatisfied communities of citizens, who would go on to shape new collectives to continue the anti-Shah protests. In the aftermath of the 2009 civil unrests, the Iranian authorities made sure to prevent this form of collective action, by pressuring the families of victims to remain silent on the details of the deaths. Those families who were fortunate enough to receive the body of their loved ones, were often deprived of the opportunity for public mourning. So as gatherings at grave sites, or visiting grieving families became risky, the world wide web provided the platform for the mourning and celebration of opposition martyrs. Within this context, videos such as Bella Ciao or Winter Is Over brought these scattered collectives together, evading the dangers of physical gatherings.

Another significant reason for the surge in video documentations of social protest was the accessibility of equipment that facilitated immediate recordings of ongoing 129 events. Citizen journalism was one of driving forces behind the international spectacle of the 2009 presidential election in Iran. At the time, Facebook was fairly new to the world, and Instagram had not been launched as a public platform yet. In Iran, the number of providers was limited and the quality of high-speed wireless or data internet was not optimal. Additionally, while as a new technological phenomenon, smartphones had an appeal, people still had not fully transitioned to the widespread use of smartphones, as is the case today. However, random recordings of the protests and the violence that ensued were uploaded to online platforms, getting the word out. With the easy access to recording and editing equipment and the agency provided by them, it has become a fairly easy task for individuals to approach subjects and record them from any angle they see fit. As a result, subjective individuality has become an inseparable part of this video production mode.

In discussing this particular moment of citizen journalism, we have to be mindful of the precautionary measures taken by the Iranian state to make access to social media extremely difficult. At the time, I was an undergraduate student at the University of

Tehran, living in an off-campus apartment close to one of the main locations of the student and civil protests. During the initial week after the election, as we continued to visit the campus to negotiate the official postponing of our finals, we got used to the fact that all cellphones would lose reception around a certain time in late afternoon until late in the evening. Additionally, accessing social media such as Facebook had become difficult due to the filtration system applied by the state. Yet, in the pre-smartphone era, when high-speed data and DSL connections were not nearly as efficient as they are today, 130 words and images spread across the world, uploaded to a collective memory with a scope beyond the borders of Iran. I consider this historical moment as the point of departure, a form of awakening, for a society alienated by a fundamentalist state, whereby awareness leads to the reclaiming of individual, and ultimately, collective agency.

In addition, the audience has become more intelligent and more alert in receiving content from media. This is particularly resonant about Iranian audiences, who are veterans in dealing with restricted access to media. Over the course of the four decades following the Islamic Revolution, video has had an irrefutable affect in raising the level of political awareness in Iranian audiences. I remember a time when as a junior in high school, I, along with hundreds of other girls from my school, had to wait in the yard, so that we could enter the building one by one showing the content of our bags, because allegedly someone was carrying a mixed CD with a collection of foreign pop music videos. Yet, despite the searches, warnings, and raids, people continued to watch illegal satellite TV, listen to opposition radio channels, and reproduce recordings of music videos, concerts, movies, or leaked home movies.

The major difference between the protest and social critique documentaries of pre- and post-revolution eras in Iran is that socially conscious documentaries of the post- revolution period are far more political and complex, both in regard to their form and content. These documentaries are often made with the objective of exposing or disclosing information. 159 Of course in recent years, particularly after the civil unrests of 2009-

2010, another strong motive for shooting documentaries of social protest is recording the

159 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 4, 51. 131 aftermath of such events. For instance, the extent of injuries sustained during clashes with militia forces is often overlooked by domestic broadcast media. Therefore, following any protest that amounts to violent clashes, videos surge online, documenting the extent of injuries sustained by protesters. These videos are often re-shared on social media platforms, where they are not only seen by the general public, but also by humanitarian organizations, such as Amnesty International.

As discussed in previous chapters, documentary and narrative styles of filmmaking were the two dominant film movements in pre-revolution cinema of Iran.

After the Islamic Revolution, and the comprehensive purging of the political and cultural spheres of the country under the guise of Cultural Revolution, narrative cinema lost one of its central components, i.e., the figure of the unveiled and often erotic woman. Under these circumstances, documentary filmmaking, already a prominent style in the pre- revolution era, turned into the frontrunner of film production activities in Iran.

On one hand, the simultaneity of this major shift with the peak of video-art movement in the West provided an open field for visual experimentation with affordable portable cameras. On the other hand, the diversification of documentary films continued, as the style matured, creating various offshoots. I dedicate specific attention to the rapidly evolving and diverse documentary style of Iranian cinema, because I contend that the contemporary condition of Iran’s expanded cinema is largely founded upon the post- revolutionary documentary cinema. Certain offshoots of this explosive documentary movement have seeped into the contemporary expanded cinema of Iran. In the following 132 section, I provide brief descriptions of these offshoots, while discussing their status in contemporary Iranian cinema.

Poetic Realist Documentaries

The purpose of such documentaries was to educate, not to entertain, as they were often produced by intellectual educated filmmakers who were given relative creative freedom over their projects. These documentaries were often lyrical, highly symbolic, and often indirect in their treatment of their content and subject matter. Additionally, these films featured “poetic and verbose narrations,” often informed by the lyrical traditions of Iran’s classic literature. The omnipresent narration turned the tone of these documentaries “mono-vocal and authoritarian,” without the possibility for any real dialogue.160

In contemporary Iran, this style of documentary filmmaking is mostly present in the projects produced by the IRIB. It is akin to a simplified template for the production of statist documentaries that are often commissioned by state organizations and ministries, or other institutions affiliated with them.

Fine Arts, Architectural, Archeological, and Performing Arts Documentaries

These films were often marketed for educational purposes; for instance, to be screened at schools or foreign embassies. Because of their international audience, they often had subtitles in at least two languages (Farsi and English) and sometimes in additional languages, such as French, and German. All of these films were produced by male filmmakers, as no evidence exists of women’s activity in this arena. Similar to the

160 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 75-76. 133 poetic realist documentarians, the filmmakers of this movement were often educated abroad, particularly in Europe. The movement was quite historically conscious in that it served a more general purpose of reclaiming an authentic identity associated with Iran.161

This style of documentaries also continues to thrive in Iran, especially in the form of advertising or promotional campaigns that are not necessarily commercial. For instance, cultural development is one of the areas in which many documentaries are produced that address issues related to the environment, globalization, and other contemporary notions. These documentaries are often made by independent filmmakers who have secured their budget through external sponsors, as the IRIB does not provide

(خشت بهشت) much funding for such projects. Ramin Heydari Farooghi’s Khesht-e-Behesht is an example of these documentaries. Farooghi has shot this documentary in over 50 cities in Iran and across the world over the course of a decade, offering an observationist commentary on the human-environment interaction.

Documentaries about Film History

These documentaries were mostly prevalent during the 1980s and were considerably informed by Iran’s rich film archives (e.g., early Qajar period films).

Salvaged or found footage was a significant formal element in the production of these films, while they often carried references to the modernization and Westernization of

Iran.162 Documentaries on the history of Iranian cinema have taken an investigative turn in recent years, such as Khatereh Khodaei’s Kanoon (2015), which delves into the post-

161 Ibid, 92-96. 162 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 97-98. 134 revolution history of the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young

Adults (i.e., Kanoon). Khodaei’s documentary provides an instance of the alliance between personal and public archives as an influential element in building revisionist narratives.

Social Protest Documentaries

This form of documentary filmmaking first emerged in Iran during the social protests of the 1960s, particularly to cover the events of the White Revolution (1963).

The films were socially conscious and critical of the Iranian culture. Social protest documentarians (professional or amateur) paid specific attention to the lives of ordinary people. They challenged the positivism of state-funded documentaries (e.g., industrial documentaries) by their criticism of dominant ideology. In these films, visual narrative replaced the oral narratives of the omnipresent voiceover of poetic realist cinema. Social protest documentaries were in general, conceptually modernist and counter-hegemonic.163

In contemporary Iran, with the growing dissatisfaction of the public with their immediate conditions of life, social protest documentaries and citizen journalism have joined forces in a new form of visual documentation. Because one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Islamic Republic was its treatment of women as second-class citizens, any examination, evaluation, or criticism of women’s status became a judgement of the regime.”164 As a result, social protest documentaries made about or by women

163 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 118-128. 164 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 3, 52. 135 often put on display angles of the lives of Iranian women that may not be deemed appropriate by the cultural politics of the country.

In recent years, particularly in light of natural disasters such as a series of earthquakes in 2018 that rattled Iran (particularly Kermanshah Province), and the devastating floods of Spring 2019, the social media scene of Iran has witnessed a surge in the emergence of self-starter civil activists, particularly Instagram influencers, who use their platforms both to do relief work and to document the reality of ongoing social struggles in Iran.165

Covering the civil unrest during the months leading to the 1979 Revolution was a significant moment in the history of video production in Iran. The sheer number of amateur documentaries produced during the protests is proof of a widespread interest in the individualistic desire to document. Additionally, there is a sense of paralleling between this moment and the more recent events of the 2009 presidential elections in

Iran, which resulted in a spectacle of citizen journalism and video documentation of civil unrest. What Naficy suggests in regard to the 1979 protests also resonates with the events of the 2009 elections as when “public fear seemed to have evaporated,” creating

165 An example of this form of individual social work—that ultimately serves the collective—is relief work provided by Navid Koohi, with whom I have been collaborating. Koohi is an MBA instructor from Using .(حافظان مهربانی) Mashhad, Iran, who has founded a humanitarian NGO, called Hāfezān-e-Mehrabānī his Instagram account (@navidkoohi) as a platform, Koohi shares the progress of his social cases with his 174K followers, who often support his campaigns with their donations. Koohi publishes video reports on the progress of the cases, informing the patrons that their donations are helping those in need. While he consciously avoids political commentary and urges his followers not to engage in it in the comment section, his social work has expanded in several directions, ranging from relief work for larger communities (e.g., leper camps) to singular cases (e.g., child abuse victims in impoverished families). My collaboration with Koohi started after I saw one of his video reports, on a teenage girl named Setareh, from a remote village near the Afghanistan border. Through this collaboration, I was able to visit Setareh and her family, provide minimal support for their sustenance, and start a documentary project starring Setareh (in pre-production as of July 2019). 136 spectacles of civil resistance to organized military action against civilians.166 According to Naficy, this social spectacle of justice seeking protest presented “cinematographers with a quandary: to participate in the revolution or film it.”167 Furthermore, video was a significant communication tool for the opposition groups that were dissatisfied with the formation of the Islamic Republic as the final product of a revolution they had supported.168 This chapter offers a closer look at the documentation of civil protests in post-revolution Iran, particularly during the past decade has evolved into a hybrid form that is facilitated via widespread access to social media platforms.

Avant-garde Documentaries

Avant-garde documentarians often sought to evade censorship by going against official styles of filmmaking via bold experimentation with form and structure. This movement marked the rise of Auteurism in Iranian cinema. Compared to other documentary styles, avant-garde documentaries required audience engagement, which was a significant shift, given the fact that in previous decades, the audience was assumed to have the passive role of a collective that either seeks entertainment or requires education.

In the contemporary context of expanded cinema in Iran, avant-garde documentaries either overlap or completely merge with video art in that they historicize the practice of artists that critically engage with hegemonic discourses, while challenging traditional mentalities, such as that of patriarchy. In these films, artists offer an object—

166 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 3, 50. 167 Ibid. 168 Ibid, 83-109. 137 namely an artwork or a performance—while at the same time prompting their audiences to consider said object against its socio-cultural implications.

A particular formal element of this style was experimentation with hybrid form

(for instance, blending documentary style with fiction), as a stepping stone to the postmodern style of filmmaking that relies much on intermediality. Another important element in avant-garde documentaries was the addition of music as an editing element, where sound preceded image by dictating the rhythm.169

Following this process of rapid diversification, the Islamic Republic sought to rectify new policies to oversee documentary production and regulate its output. “The institutionalization of official documentary by the state proved a double-edged sword. On one hand, it meant steady support for documentary productions [while] on the other hand, it meant that even if at times nontraditional, nonofficial films escaped censorship during the script-approval phase, there was no guarantee that they would be exhibited once completed.”170

The common element shared by all of the movements mentioned above is the use of video in a non-narrative, semi-experimental style. In contemporary Iran, the connection between the underground culture and avant-garde styles provides the grounds for the development of a vibrant underground art scene that utilizes video as the instrument that stitches together the public and private spheres of life. I argue that the combination of the avant-garde and underground approaches to art, along with their

169 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 128-133. 170 Ibid, 133. 138 synergies with other forms of expanded practice (e.g., sculpture, painting, architecture, etc.), constitutes a particular form of expanded cinema in Iran. Neither acknowledged nor refuted by the public sphere, this expanded cinema functions as a fluid arena for artistic experimentation and expression that flows into the public sphere of life through the cracks created by pioneering underground artists such as Nastaran Safaei (b. 1984) and

Newsha Tavakolian (b. 1981). But what is expanded cinema, and how can it cater a burgeoning feminist discourse in Iran?

The term Expanded Cinema was first used by author Gene Youngblood (b. 1942) in his monograph of the same name.171 Youngblood maintains that, in order to understand expanded cinema, one needs to seek distance from the stereotypical connotations of the word cinema. The cinema that Youngblood discusses is farthest from narrativity, entertainment, and the hierarchical relationship between creator (the active producer) and spectator (the passive recipient). Furthermore, Youngblood’s use of the notion of

“becoming” speaks to the process of creation and all of the elements and parameters that exist within it, but do not make it to the surface (i.e., the finished product) in mainstream or narrative cinema. Therefore, the core idea of Youngblood’s definition is the fact that, unlike narrative cinema, in expanded cinema visuality is not reserved for the final product, as the process of creation is as important as—or perhaps more significant than— the final product.

Inspired by Youngblood’s theorization, Meigh-Andrews discusses expanded cinema as the location for the synergy between the experimental and avant-garde artist

171 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 2, 133. 139 videos. For Meigh-Andrews, the major difficulty in defining expanded cinema and its specific characteristics lies in the fact that it is a highly stratified current in contemporary art. The synergy that Meigh-Andrews discusses is the point of convergence for a variety of “art movements, theoretical ideas, and technological advances, as well as political and social activism.”172 Therefore, to understand expanded cinema means to have an understanding of its informing elements, such as performance art, body art, pop art, conceptual art, experimental music and sound work, experimental film, etc. Researching these creative fields and their incorporation into expanded cinema may appear to be an overwhelming task. However, video—as the common platform of expression that connects creative variants—provides the reliable context for my investigation.

Another reason that makes defining expanded cinema difficult is its application as an umbrella term that has replaced a variety of terms that were used once to describe the emerging movement. Terms such as video art, artists’ video, experimental video, artists’ television, the new television, and Guerrilla TV are sometimes the cause of confusion about the creative and theoretical implications of expanded cinema. I contend that the problem arises when we consider expanded cinema as a general term that has absorbed its earlier versions, wiping them out completely. Yet, through a survey of video pieces produced by contemporary artists, we shall see that several of these older forms or versions of expanded cinema still exist. Therefore, understanding expanded cinema requires the understanding that it consists of several other subgenres that may never

172 Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art, 2. 140 completely dissolve into the overarching concept of expanded cinema, while characteristically belonging to it all along.

Meigh-Andrews locates the specific characteristics of expanded cinema via his close examination of the formal and conceptual qualities of works by various filmmakers, such as Stand Brakhage (1933-2003), Michael Snow (b. 1928), and Peter Gidal (b. 1946).

173 Among these figures, Gidal was specifically influential in the formation of a more well-defined expanded cinema, with his take on structural/materialist film. The core concern of structural/materialist film is producing or recording a specific image at a specific moment in time. Therefore, it is essentially non-illusionist in that it engages in an effort to demystify film processes. It does not “represent” or “document” anything, particularly not on purpose. In other words, one could argue that structural/materialist film produces relations between what surrounds the camera and the image that is presented, providing the process with more agency than the final product.174

Long zoom sequences with minimal action shot entirely in slow-motion are frequently used in expanded cinema, whereby action is delayed to the extent of appearing like still photography. This in turn provides the viewer with prolonged exposure, similar to the experience of the artist who was present when the action was taking place. This is a device frequently used by photographers to extend the moment they capture, in order to emphasize emotion or affect. Newsha Tavakolian’s recent projects incorporate extremely slow motion zoom sequences, whereby the viewer immersed into a single moment (e.g.,

173 Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art, 89-93. 174 Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art, 92-93. 141 the blinking of an eye) that has been extended across time. As a result, space often has agency in expanded cinema, turning into a subjective part of the visual texture. This implies that what lies in the background may be as important, and at times even more important than, the action or subject. Nastaran Safaei’s videos often engage with this notion, particularly through her unique framing of her personal space.

Meigh-Andrews additionally incorporates Malcom Le Grice’s “abstract film” in his definition of expanded cinema, in particular Le Grice’s idea that films that engage with the concept of time and temporality can be considered abstract, even if the camera has used them to create specific imagery.175 The main characteristics of abstract film are the separation of the visual aspect of an object from their organic visual context (e.g., extreme close-ups, or exaggerated lighting and stylization); the montage of film sequences based on their kinetic or visual similarities; the direct exposure of objects onto film stock, which disregards the actual frame divisions (e.g., the photogram technique); and drawing attention to the photochemical or material nature of the film. This last characteristic is no longer popular in Iranian expanded cinema, mainly because access to raw film stock and labs has become quite limited.

Loop structure is also one of the elements that expanded cinema has borrowed from early avant-garde experimental films, such as Fernand Leger’s Ballet Mecanique

(1924). Its quality to encapsulate action and movement in small time pockets is of formal significance in expanded cinema.176 For her 2013 exhibition, titled Look, Tavakolian shot

175 Meigh-Andrews, A History of Video Art, 97-98. 176 Ibid, 89. 142 portraits of several male and female subjects at her home in Tehran. During the exhibition, a looped video montage was played on repeat in a dark room. The video consisted of several sequences, each less than a minute long, revealing the course of action before and after a certain photograph on display in the main gallery. For instance, one of these sequences had captured the moment a tear rolled down a girl’s cheek, enhancing the experience of the photograph of the same girl in the adjacent room, in which her eyes were merely glazed, hinting at the formation of a tear drop. In chapter four, I have discussed the way this looped video sequence enhances the experience of the visitors at exhibitions of Look.

A Female Auteur: Social Critique and Poetic Expression in The House Is Black

Petrolle and Wexman define avant-garde films as “short-format, usually non- narrative films made and exhibited outside major channels of film production and distribution.”177 Additionally, they maintain that women’s experimental cinema resists

“masculinist avant-garde aesthetic dogmas,” by threading the line between narrativity and non-narrativity, while disrupting the element of pleasure that provides viewers with identification, “as well as critical distance.”178 With these characteristics in mind, ff we are to consider a point of origin for the female-specific tradition in the Iranian expanded cinema, we must look back to 1962 and the making of Forough Farrokhzad’s iconic experimental documentary, The House Is Black.

177 Jean Petrolle, and Virginia Wright Wexman. Women and Experimental Filmmaking, (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2005), 3. 178 Ibid. 143

I have already discussed Farrokhzad as a cultural anomaly at a time when female presence in non-segregated spaces was a complicated issue. Farrokhzad wrote freely of her body and her intimate desires and emotions in a sophisticated, yet accessible vernacular. She burrowed her way through the rigid structures of classical Persian poetry, eventually settling into the liberating framework of New “Nimaic” Poetry.179 Farrokhzad is often compared to Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) on the grounds of her personal struggles

(e.g., her suicide attempt), and her confessional style of writing on concepts such as sex, marriage, and womanhood.180 However, in her later career, her poetry grew more and more socially and politically conscious. In her history of women’s role in the evolution of

Iranian cinema, Nazokkar dedicates well-deserved attention to Farrokhzad, pinpointing

The House is Black (1962) as the conjunction between cinema and poetry in Iran.181

However, in venturing into non-narrative cinema of Iran, first as an editor, and then as a director, she merged her unique poetic vision with her new-found knowledge and experience in cinema. Her short documentary The House Is Black, is poetic, yet not in the verbose way of poetic realist documentaries of her time. In her representation of the life of the leper community living in seclusion near the city of Tabriz, Farrokhzad avoids sentimentalization of the reality that unfolds before her camera. Her attention to details—hands, bodies, eyes, and legs, all crooked under the spell of the disease—is

179 New Poetry or Nimaic Poetry refers to a free-verse form in modern Persian poetry, pioneered by Nima .(1960-1897 ;نیما یوشیج) Yushij 180 See for instance: Mohsen Mohammad Pour, and Hossein Valizade, “Sylvia Plath’s ‘Mirror’ and Forough Farrokhzad’s ‘The Bird May Die’: Comparative Analysis from a Mystical Perspective,” Advances in Language and Literary Studies, no. 1 (2017): 162. .[فروغ: نقطهی تالقی شعر و سینما :Jinous Nazokkar, Forough: The Meeting of Cinema and Poetry [in Farsi 181 (Tehran: Ghatreh Publishing, 2015). 144 reminiscent of the descriptive passages of her poems that immerse the reader in a diegesis that is uniquely hers, yet tangible to the other.

The House Is Black starts on a black screen, as a male voice-over (voice of

Ebrahim Golestan) reads a short statement: “[…] on this screen will appear an image of ugliness, a vision of pain no caring human being should ignore. To wipe out this ugliness and to relieve the victims, is the motive of this film and the hope of its makers.”182 The screen then reveals the face of a woman, half of it lost to leprosy. Little by little, the black and white footage reveals more of the everyday life experience at the camp. Throughout the visual narrative, Farrokhzad recites excerpts of her poetry in her signature solemn voice-over:

Who is in this hell Praising you, O Lord? Who is in this hell?

Farrokhzad’s camera captures the tediousness of life with a long-take of a leper man first limping away and then back toward the camera, as she announces the days of the week, from Saturday to Friday, and back.183 As the man makes his way along the wall, the camera cuts to shots of still life by the camp windows: a clay flower pot with wilting plants, a woman sitting by the window, a pair of worn-out boots, etc. The voice- over is rife with religious imagery, as Farrokhzad challenges them, and against the flow of the words, image provides much irony.

182 Alanshore, The House Is Black,Vimeo Video, 21: 23, 2015. https://vimeo.com/136522352 183 The first day of the week in Iran is Saturday, with the weekend being Friday, and for certain institutions (e.g., schools) a combination of Thursday and Friday. 145

Figure 39: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963.

I will sing thy name, O Lord With the ten-string lute For I have been made in a Strange and frightening shape

As the camera pans on the faces of a group of lepers sitting by a wall, landing on the last one who tries and fails to light his tobacco pipe. Farrokhzad challenges the god that has inflicted leprosy upon the hand that holds a rosary in his praise. Her musings are cut by a shot of a patient being wheeled toward the camera by a uniformed nurse. This marks the beginning of the purely documentary segment of the film that has been neatly tucked in between two poetically existential segments with brushes of abstract imagery. 146

Figure 40: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963.

Figure 41: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963.

In the documentary segment, a male voice-over (again, the voice of Ebrahim

Golestan) provides information on leprosy, as the footage shows shots of different patients being treated and rehabilitated. Farrokhzad continues to experiment with cinematography within this segment, by placing the camera underneath a glass table, upon which a woman’s hands are laid under sandbags that would improve the range of motion in her fingers. The documentary segment comes to an end with sequence of 147 medicine and food rationing among the patients residing the camp. As the whistle screeches, announcing that food is being served, diegetic sound slowly fades away into the lulling voice of the poet.

Figure 42: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963.

Figure 43: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963.

In the next segment of the film, Farrokhzad continues to challenge religion, as she speaks of time and the inertia of existence. She has paired the text in this segment, with more shots of life at the camp, including several close-ups of the details of afflicted limbs 148 or faces, and a long sequence of a child holding a doll, as she is carried in a rusty wheelbarrow.

Figure 44: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963.

If I hang on to the wings Of the morning breeze And reside in the deep of the sea Your hand will still weight on me You have made me drunk With indecision How magnificent are your deeds!

The last phrase of the poem is paired with rapid cuts of the leprosy-stricken limbs and faces of the patients, before the screen cuts away to an entirely different scene. Here,

Farrokhzad’s camera is an instrument of abstraction, as footage of damp glass, a puddle of water with a single leaf on it, and the mud on the ground are all that she offers visually. 149

Figure 45: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963.

However, as a constant counter-image to the bleakness of the disease stricken community and the existential weight of her poetry, Farrokhzad offers the image of the child. Many children are represented in the film, with different degrees of infliction by leprosy. But in this instance, I am speaking of the healthy children, infants in specific, who are frequently featured in the film. Farrokhzad’s personal struggles as a mother may be one reason for her interest in featuring them in her film. But by her purposeful insertion of the image of the healthy infant, half bare and staring into the camera, or nursing on a young mother’s breast, conveys a sense of hope for the future; a future to which she tries to contribute by adopting Hosein Mansoori, a young boy living at the leper camp. 150

Figure 46: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963.

Figure 47: Screengrab from The House Is Black, dir. Forough Farrokhzad, 1963.

Farrokhzad’s film marked her as the first female filmmaker in the Iranian New

Wave. However, the uniqueness of her feminist filmmaking style, establishes her as the mother figure of a female-specific tradition, with influences across arenas such as poetry, film, social critique, etc.

In the West, historical avant-garde followed the more or less coherent ideological model, but following the 1960s it became more inclined towards “spontaneous alliances,” 151 responding to political, social, cultural, and technological phenomena.184 This concept is crucial in understanding the underground culture of Iran and the art scene that it caters.

Because of the problematic issue of forming collectives in Iran, artists—or intellectuals in general—often work independently or within artist collectives that get together for exhibition or production purposes. In Iran, the risks of responding to social, political, and legal issues, are quite high for individuals, even if they do not personally identify as activists. Nevertheless, in recent years, sparks have started to emerge within the Iranian artist community in forming spontaneous alliances in responding to social issues, such as protesting and preventing capital punishment, demanding reform in the legal persecution of minors, supporting victims of vicious acid attacks who are championing for law change, etc.

Within this hybridized art scene, artists particularly seek to bridge the gap between the past and present moments of their lives. This flux between the past and present takes many shapes, often bordering on nostalgic—and even melancholic— longing for what has been lost, particularly during the early years of the revolution and the eight-year war. Another form of temporal flux explored by Iranian underground artists is investigating the past (through objects such as archived footage or newspaper clippings) and bringing certain elements into contemporary creative practice. I will discuss the contemporary expanded cinema of Iran in the following section.

184 Juan Antonio Suárez, Bike boys, Drag queens & Superstars: Avant-Garde, Mass Culture, and Gay Identities in the 1960s Underground Cinema. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 53. 152

Music Video, Home Video, and What Leaks in Between

Music video in Iran is often associated with a stereotypical form of video produced by the diasporian communities of Iranian pop musicians in the United States

(particularly LA) and Europe. The stereotypical form of these videos is specifically associated with the low budget and arguably low quality videos produced during the first two decades after the revolution. These videos are sometimes shot in a simple studio setting, with the singer sitting solo on a bar stool, or accompanied by a band, back up dancers, and other stage or performative elements. At other times, the videos may have a simple narrative story line, often a melodramatic conflict between two lovers or members of a family, and the singer or band playing a part in the narrative.

However, over the course of the past two decades, new approaches have started to diversify the production of music videos inside and outside Iran. The diasporian music video industry of Iran is part of a larger industry in the West, with its specific production and distribution sponsors. The type of socially-conscious music video that I have been investigating falls outside said industry. For instance, in the following section, I will discuss social critique presented in a popular music video by Ali Azimi (b. 1977) engages with the socio-cultural issues that are ongoing in contemporary Iran.

(2013 ,آقای پست) Mr. Mean

Mr. Mean is the name of a song by Ali Azimi, and the title of the official music video of the song, created by KAJART.185 The video is a realistic Claymation of the

185 Ali Azimi, Aghaye Past (official), YouTube video, 03:40, August 21, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4RMcTFIFzU. (Last accessed on July 26, 2019) 153 narrative of the lyrics.186 In the lyrics, via the symbolic characterizations of Mr. Mean, his wife, and their eldest son, Azimi criticizes a generation of corrupt statist patriarchs. As the song begins, Mr. Mean is described as a man of faith, with a clean conscience, and a pure character. Azimi then describes the physical appearance of Mr. Mean—white beard, shiny shoes, and a loose fitting suit—an ensemble associated with statist patriarchs, particularly those with government posts, in the mind of the Iranian public.

Figure 48: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013.

His name is Mr. Mean, And he is a model citizen, One of the many in our town

The newspaper held by Mr. Mean during his introduction sequence confirms this association as its headline addresses the issue of a recent series of legal cases of

186 Claymation, or Clay Animation, refers to a stop motion technique that animates figurines made of clay or other materials, such as plastic or cotton. 154 embezzlement by corrupt politicians. In contrast to Mr. Mean, his wife—who is identified as “the lady of the house,” and not Mrs. Mean—symbolizes the domestic objectification of women in the traditional patriarchal culture of Iran. In a series of 360° pans, the wife is shown to be doing tedious domestic chores (sewing, cleaning vegetables, ironing Mr. Mean’s underpants, etc.).

Figure 49: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013.

Figure 50: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013.

155

Azimi’s reference to domestic violence in the song offers an additional criticism of the traditional culture of Iran via an instance of women against women. Mr. Mean’s wife is heartbroken because when she was a new bride, she was slapped by her husband for the first time. But when she informed her mother of the incident, instead of supporting her, the mother tells her that there is nothing to be done: “It’s just a slap in the face/ It is what it is.”187 What connects the wife’s sequence to the next sequence, which discusses

Mr. Mean’s son, is her teardrop falling in the sink and travelling in water pipes to a new location. The teardrop eventually pours out of a water cooler and into the cup held by Mr.

Mean’s son, described as “stupid,” yet nevertheless, holding the position of CEO at his company.

Figure 51: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013.

187 Ali Azimi, Aghaye Past (official), 2013; The lyrics appear in Farsi in the video captions. English translations are mine. 156

The son’s transformation to a crow—a bad omen foreshadowed in the first sequence of the video—happens in the elevator as he leaves the office early. The financial corruption of the statist patriarch (symbolized by Mr. Mean) is shown to have mutated in the son, as he cruises the streets of Tehran in his Mercedes, looking for female company, Barbie dolls in hijab, with clear signs of plastic surgery on their faces. The social critique of the song and the music video targets traditional patriarchy and economic corruption in Iran. Thus, I contend that Mr. Mean belongs to the progressive discourse of Iranian expanded cinema, as opposed to the more general category of Iranian video art that engages with nostalgia and sentimental treatments of collective trauma and post-memory.

Figure 52: Screengrab from Mr. Mean, KAJART, 2013.

Similar to music videos produced in diasporan communities, the music videos produced in Iran (particularly in the first two decades after the revolution) contain sentimental musings on the sense of nostalgia or longing for a past life. This nostalgia, 157 which at times borders on a form of unresolvable melancholia, often shapes around the impossible desire to return to the past—particularly pre-revolution past and its social liberties—or restore the past within the present context. This often manifests in visual material that support or praise the disgraced royal family of the second Pahlavi king, who are all living in exile at the moment.

Toward the end of Khatami’s presidency, with the rapidly growing access to high speed internet and personal computers, the underground culture of Iran witnessed a surge in the production of anonymous footage, usually montages of found footage (video and still photographs) of the royal family or life during the Pahlavi period, paired with sentimental music using editing presets. These videos were often wedged in mix CDs that otherwise contained selections of new pop or rock videos, circulated among friends and family members, feeding into the sense of longing of a generation that had realized the revolution was just a mirage of an unattainable dream.

A smaller, perhaps disregarded, part of the circulation of creative videos within this underground video movement was leaked home videos. As discussed earlier, following the revolution and the formation of an underground culture, the sense of paranoia, combined with the consequences of snitching culture, added to the traditional reservations about sharing private lives in the public sphere. Iranian families, particularly those with young daughters, were extremely cautious about producing or sharing visual representations of themselves. For instance, in traditional families, footage from the women’s section of segregated weddings is often kept hidden from male family members, let alone strangers in the outside world. Under such circumstances, the 158 tendency to peek behind the curtains and find ways to access the secrets of these extremely private lives increased.

Whether by the hands of vengeful boyfriends or untrustworthy photo lab staff members, private home videos started to leak into the underground, stirring controversy.

Early instances of such incidents include leaked videos of weddings or marriage ceremonies of celebrities, videos of private non-segregated parties, and of course sex tapes. What transpired in these videos (a famous actress making out with her husband on their wedding day; a group of popular soccer players dancing with girls at a house party; or a female acting sensation making love to her boyfriend on the couch in a homely living room) was undoubtedly controversial for a culture that resisted any kind of public display of affection and still problematized the simultaneous presence of male and female citizens in a university classroom.

However, in all its ephemerality, video undeniably confirmed the existence of an underground, positioning it as a threat to the traditional cultural integrity that the Islamic

Republic desperately tried to maintain. The celebrities in question were one by one summoned and persecuted for allowing their private lives to become public. For some of them, this came in the form of temporary suspension from work in the public sphere, and for others, it came as a higher price of having to depart a hostile homeland that does not recognize the rights of those victimized by leaked videos as those who should be protected by the law, rather than alienated by it.

Despite their controversial nature, in hindsight, leaked home videos paved the way for an inevitable wave of cultural reforms that were to be facilitated by the new age 159 of global connections through the world wide web and later through the explosion of public access to social media platforms. Initial reactions to these videos led to discussions among friends and family members who had come across them, with the first line of discussion being the decision to pass on a leaked sex tape or to take the time to watch and re-watch it. Nevertheless, this was the first step in accepting that there is a cultural underground that is thriving, yet drastically different from the general perception of how life should be in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Furthermore, the discussions brought on by these videos provided the ground for critical considerations, and opening a new field for an updated conception of the relationship between the public and private spheres of life in

Iran.

Zolf (2007)

Zolf is a music video by Hamed Safaei, for a song of the same name by Mohsen

Namjoo.188 The video features Iranian actress Zahra Amir-Ebrahimi (b. 1981). Amir-

Ebrahimi appeared in a successful television series, titled Nargess (2006), directed by

Siroos Moghaddam. As the cast of the series enjoyed the celebrity and success that came with the show, Amir-Ebrahimi established herself as a promising talent in Iranian television and cinema. However, with the release of a leaked sex tape that was associated with her, she found herself in hot water. While Amir-Ebrahimi denied the allegations that she was the woman in the controversial video, the pressure from cultural authorities who persecuted her for obscenity eventually led her to leave Iran, choosing to live in self-exile in Paris, France.

188 Hamed Safaei, Zolf, video, 06:35, 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D99mkPYwnlU 160

While the story of the sex tape was still a hot topic of conversation, a music video was published, with Namjoo’s Zolf, a love song, that featured Amir-Ebrahimi as the talent. In the video, shot mostly as a stop motion with a low frame rate, Amir-Ebrahimi can be seen as she walks the uptown neighborhoods of a rainy Tehran, holding an umbrella. The Tehran sequences are intercut by shots of Amir-Ebrahimi making coffee in a cozy apartment, and various close-ups of her face, fingers, hands, and lips. The video ends with shots of Amir-Ebrahimi on a rooftop in a residential neighborhood of Tehran.

Figure 53: Screengrab from Zolf, Hamed Safaei, 2015.

161

Figure 54: Screengrab from Zolf, Hamed Safaei, 2015

Figure 55: Screengrab from Zolf, Hamed Safaei, 2015.

162

Figure 56: Screengrab from Zolf, Hamed Safaei, 2015.

The juxtaposition of Amir-Ebrahimi’s personal ordeal with the leaked video and her appearance in this video caused many Iranian viewers to contend that the video was an effort in celebrating and supporting Amir-Ebrahimi. In an interview published shortly after the release of the video, Namjoo clarified the ambiguities surrounding the video and his intentions. Namjoo maintained that he had composed the melody initially for a short animation film by Iranian painter and animator Fatima Yasrebi. He later came across a poem by renowned classical poet, Hafez, which he thought matched the melody quite well. Namjoo insisted that for him, the lyrics had a personal meaning, maintaining that he was unaware of the production of the video. Namjoo even hypothesized that Amir-

Ebrahimi’s presence in the video was the reason for the popularity and high download rate of his song.189

189 Unknown Author, “Zahra Amir-Ebrahimi’s Troubles for Mohsen Namjoo,” Iranian UK. September 1, 2006, https://iranianuk.com/20060910051200009/%D8%AF%D8%B1%D8%AF%D8%B3%D8%B1%D9%87% D8%A7%DB%8C-%D8%B2%D9%87%D8%B1%D8%A7-%D8%A7%D9%85%DB%8C%D8%B1- %D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%87%DB%8C%D9%85%DB%8C- 163

Amir-Ebrahimi’s persecution and the trial of the suspects in her legal case did not yield any immediate changes within Iran’s judiciary system. She left the country to leave the controversy behind, while the fate of the suspects—whether they served prison sentences or were exonerated—remains unknown. However, with the media and public attention garnered by the case—which was arguably facilitated by the release of Zolf—in

June 2007, the Iranian parliament passed a bill, according to which, any involvement in the production and distribution of pornographic media would be recognized as an offense punishable by death.

Despite the public outcomes of leaked home videos, the legal system and the state authorities often refused to validate the existence of underground culture. So their general approach was criminalizing any action that questioned or challenged the traditional mainstream culture. However, not all leaked videos were of celebrity weddings or dance parties. Another form of leaked videos that unfortunately plagued both the private and public spheres of life in Iran, and eventually led to serious legal discussions, was leaked videos of criminal acts. These videos were not particularly snuff films, in that the violence that was captured in them was often in the service of rape, rather than murder.

Such videos raised the level of concern about public safety for women, particularly girls who had to leave the traditional space of home to go to college in another city, where they would have their first experience of interacting with the opposite sex in co-ed classes.

%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%A7%DB%8C-%D9%85%D8%AD%D8%B3%D9%86- %D9%86%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%AC%D9%88. (Last accessed on July 19, 2019). 164

Furthermore, after the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein (1937-2006), a series of videos were circulated in an unofficial capacity in Iran, which depicted footage of the violence unleashed upon Iraqi nationals (e.g., political prisoners) at the hands of Saddam’s militants. Videos of decapitations and other forms of graphic violence were easily accessible or even sold at local stores without any trigger warnings for an eager audience that had just started to discover the nuances of this new cultural product. All legal discourses in Iran are problematized because they cannot proceed without the intervention of Islamic law.

However, these early ruptures that created inevitable connections between the underground and the public sphere of life, provided the grounds for the reconsiderations of laws or approaches to visual culture and media.

Artist’s Video and Video Art

I differentiate between Artist’s Video and Video Art because of the different intentions that inform their production. Artist’s Video is the type of video that is produced with the core intention of documenting exhibitionist work by artists of various mediums. These videos may be shot at gallery spaces where exhibitions or shows take place. They usually contain a discussion, either in voice-over or captions and often subtitled in English, about the idea and process behind the project. Artists sometimes appear in artist’s videos to discuss their work, sharing information that would be demanded by an in-house audience during post-show question and answer sessions.

Individual access to public platforms such as personal channels on YouTube combined 165 with the use of social media enables artists based in Iran to reach out to an international audience and market.

Video Art however, is the type of video that is the final product of a creative project that can contain the very process of creation as well. Therefore, I argue that video art functions as a vessel that connects non-cinematic art forms (e.g., sculpture) to film, weaving them into the texture of an expanded cinema. This definition of video art resonates with Youngblood’s words who postulates expanded cinema as “a process of becoming” and a “historical drive to manifest [one’s] consciousness outside of [their] mind, in front of [their] eyes.”190

The contemporary art scene of Iran, which is tightly connected to the underground culture of the country, is a manifestation of such state of becoming. Within this arena, practicing artists face various obstacles, many of which they cannot anticipate. Sculptor and experimental video artist, Hamed Rashtian, who has been a practicing artist in Iran for over a decade, spoke to me about this confusing state. He maintained that artists in

Iran constantly deal with two forms of censorship, one being self-censorship, and the other censorship by authorities:

[…] In Iran we have a body of rules that are at times loosely applied because of mismanagement; either those who are supposed to supervise, do not take things seriously, or are simply not good at supervising. This leads to periods of relative openness. And [these periods are] quite random. So you may decide to do something that was fine until a little while ago, but now it has become problematic.

190 Youngblood, Expanded Cinema, 1. 166

Therefore, all practicing artists in contemporary Iran are responding to these restrictions and are shaped by them (whether they choose to abide by them, or to work against them). For instance, Safaei acknowledges that she will not be able to publicly showcase some of her work, e.g., the winged breast series: “it also halts my progress in certain instances. If I had managed to showcase my work at the Tehran Auction, like many of my male counterparts who all have participated in the auction, I could sell more of my work and gain recognition for it. My life may have been easier. I still have these issues, but I go to all the meetings, and laugh about this condition, thinking that I will showcase those works [that have been rejected] 20 years from now. I have done my part, which is paying the production costs and producing the work.”191

As a result, for the contemporary Iranian artists, Youngblood’s idea of becoming happens in terms of a socio-cultural process that is equally affected by the politics of the country. In established artists, particularly those interested in intermedial experimentation, this state of becoming is often joined by another state of becoming, through which interdisciplinarity thrives. Safaei and Rashtian, for instance, both started their careers as amateur sculptors, experimenting with different mediums and materials for a period of ten years, before utilizing video in creative ways. Safaei’s most recent show at the Aaran Projects Galley in Tehran involved an interdisciplinary project, consisting of collected objects, constructed models, video art, and an interactive performance. She has since published an artist’s video of this show on her YouTube channel, where she provides brief statements on each component.

191 My interview with Nastaran Safaei, 2019; see appendix. 167

In contrast to video art that is based on studio practice and the application of various aesthetic elements, another form of underground video art emerged in Iran in the mid-2000s. These videos often comprise of collages of official sermons or speeches by high ranking officials of the Islamic Republic, paired with music and sound effects. The content of these videos is quite text-oriented, as the creators often rely on the reshuffling of chopped-up speech in their efforts to create new speech that undermines the cause of the speaker. For instance, in 2009, a series of clips started circulating in the Iranian underground, in which the supreme leader, then president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and other key politicians are featured. In this clip, their speech is altered in a self-deprecating manner, while opposition leaders and reformist politicians (e.g., former president,

Khatami) are pronounced as enemies.

With the possibilities provided by social media, and user friendly video editing applications, in recent years, the production and circulation of such videos have increased significantly. As a result, mixed videos of Iranian clerics, have turned into a subgenre of protest video that are built upon a satirical foundation. An appropriate example is a recent video of a group of clerics at a mosque, being instructed by a fellow cleric, how to teach

Namaz (daily prayer) to the youth, using songs and simple choreographed movements.

Among the users who had found the situation ironically comic, one user had maintained that it is interesting to see how hard the Islamic state is trying to make religion appealing to the contemporary youth, while for the previous generation religious indoctrination was based on instilling the fear of punishment (whether by god or unrelenting fundamentalist school administrators). 168

Soon after the original version of this video was published, a second version of it went viral, this time mixed with Adele’s song “Someone Like You.” The video was

an Instagram user, who identifies as a “video ,(نیک یوسفی) created by Nik Yousefi creator.”192 In the black and white video, a short sequence has been added, in which a cleric is seen playing the piano, as we hear the introduction of the song. Before the viewer can wrap their mind around a cleric playing the piano and if he is in fact playing an Adele song, Adele’s voice is heard— “Never mind I’ll find someone like you”— confirming the fact that the video is indeed a parody. The video then cuts to the familiar sequence of the clerics imitating their instructor as he demonstrates the Namaz dance.

The editing marvel of the video is in that the audience singalong at Adele’s concert has been matched to the collective participation of the clerics in the dance. These videos may not have high aesthetic merits, but they function effectively as popularized socio-cultural criticism, whereby they manage to soften the sharp edges of pre-conceived notions of theocratic conservativism.

192 As of July 26, 2019, Yousefi continues to be active in his Instagram account, @nik_yousefi. 169

Figure 57: Screengrab from the Instagram video parody of Adele’s “Someone Like You,” Nik Yousefi, 2019.

Figure 58: Screengrab from the Instagram video parody of Adele’s “Someone Like You,” Nik Yousefi, 2019. 170

The Archive as Counter-History: A Revisionist Discourse

Recent scholarship considers contemporary experimental cinema as a medium that is in constant dialogue with its past forms. Flaig and Groo suggest that we utilize

“new silent cinema” as an alternative term that describes the present moment of experimental cinema. In “the present moment of digital anachronism,” they suggest, “the most contemporary of media are haunted by celluloid specters—through a diverse series of images, texts, and concepts spanning film history.”193 In other words, they articulate their discussion of experimental cinema, neither teleologically, nor in terms of its linearity, but as a “vertiginous ground upon which the past is seen in the present, and the present in the past.”194

Furthermore, Flaig and Groo draw on the term “parallax view” proposed by

Catherine Russel.195 A parallax view is “a parallel that exceeds the merely analogical, the comparative shift in perspective across areas in film history.”196 In this dissertation, I have followed a similar approach, with the objective of reconciling influences that may not demonstrate an obvious connection to each other. By utilizing the discourses of postmodernism and postmodern feminism vis-à-vis a historical revision of underground art in Iran, I have attempted to produce an inclusive history of the medium that combats gender bias and refrains from focusing exclusively on the work of Western filmmakers. I

193 Paul Flaig and Katherine Groo, New Silent Cinema. (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016), 3. 194 Ibid, 3. 195 Catherine Russel, “Parallax Historiography: The Flaneuse as Cyberfeminist,” in Scope: An Online Journal of Film and TV Studies (July 2000): https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/scope/documents/2000/july- 2000/russell.pdf. Last accessed 12 November 2017. 196 Ibid. 171 argue that the pre-revolution experimental art of Iran was a short-lived period of development during the two decades that led to the Islamic revolution of 1979. This budding experimental film culture waned during the process of the revolution and eventually went dormant with the beginning of the eight-year war with Iraq. I discuss the re-emergence of the movement in recent years as an underground avant-garde culture that relies on Western audiences in order to be recognized.

Within this, a significant element that facilitates the diachronic dialogue between the past and present moments of Iranian history is the archive. The concept of the archive encompasses all forms of historical documentation—public or private—that can offer numerous possibilities for revisionist studies. In redirecting our attention from the origins of events, the archive provides an arena for a fluid body of rules that can produce discourse. Additionally, by encompassing various forms (e.g., private or public, and their respective subcategories), the archive manages to evade the perils of monolithism. Flaig and Groo apply the Derridean concept of “mal d’archive,” that implies the “evil” nature of the archive in that it cannot prevent the expiration of the very objects it promises to preserve and protect.197

The Islamic Republic of Iran has remained aware of the potential (threat) of the archive. A significant part of the purging process carried out by the cultural divisions of the Islamic Republic targeted film and video archives. Similar to the book burnings or

197 Flaig and Groo, New Silent Cinema, 21-22. 172 library torching incidents in the past, film archives were raided by new authorities, with many original copies in various genres being destroyed eventually.198

On the occasion of the first anniversary of the victory of the revolution, the Voice and Visage of the Islamic Republic (VVIR) issued an open call to collect footage of the revolution. A great number of films were turned in by filmmakers and ordinary citizens, many of which were original copies. The result was a magnificent visual archive of a pivotal moment not only in Iranian history, but also in world history. The problem however, was that this archive was at the mercy of a ruthless gatekeeper. The footage was gradually reviewed, to be destroyed or altered and edited into new compilation pieces that agreed with the cultural policies of the new establishment.199

I have previously discussed Kiarostami’s First Case, Second Case (1980), as a documentary narrative that reveals the reasons for the failure of collective action in Iran.

However, the film is of particular significance in this section, as it provides an example of the archive working against the historical erasure promoted by the Islamic Republic.

Little is known about the individual(s) behind the film’s re-release. The Vimeo handle that initially released the film was called Green Mind and incidentally it had only uploaded two files, namely First Case, Second Case and a short documentary about the legendary maestro of traditional Iranian music, Mohammadreza Shajarian, one of the prominent advocates of the freedom of speech and thought, who publically supported the

198 Naficy, A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Vol. 3, 28. 199 Ibid, 80-82. 173

Iranian protestors in 2009. The Australian documentary also featured his now infamous

.(تفنگت را زمین بگذار) resistance song titled Lay Down Your Gun

My initial research for information about this film did not yield any useful data.

Aside from a few nominal references, and a sketchy Wikipedia page—with very different content in the English and Farsi versions—there was no indication of any scholarly material written about or related to the film. There was no way of confirming the reason(s) behind its timely re-circulation either. Did someone who had access to

Kanoon’s dusty archives decide that it was time for the film to be circulated widely, or did Abbas Kiarostami feel like the historical moment was right for the rebirth of his neglected work?

I contacted Azin Feizabadi, the translator of the subtitles of the film, who in turn shared the two short essays he had written about the film. Feizabadi is an Iranian artist and researcher based in Berlin, who told me that he had contacted Kiarostami in 2013 when he was doing research on the film. He stated that even the director himself was

(perhaps intentionally) not helpful in clarifying the issues that surround this film.

Nevertheless, Feizabadi informed me that Kiarostami had sent him a 16mm copy of the original film at the time of his research. I maintain that this gesture shows that Kiarostami was supportive of the re-circulation of the film. Perhaps he believed that the film could serve as a wake-up call for the Iranian nation (and the international community) to take a closer look at two historical moments that changed the definition of Iran’s identity permanently. Although it is difficult to determine the exact reason why Kiarostami did not get more actively involved in promoting the film, one can assume that his reluctance 174 is related to the conservatism that the artist needed in order to avoid any unwanted brushes with totalitarian authorities.

Despite all the ambiguities that surround its production and (re)circulation, First

Case, Second Case is undoubtedly a time capsule in which, as MacDougall suggests,

“objects survive from the past, people reminisce, and certain objects [and perhaps ideas] evoke or resemble those of memory.”200 The passage of time gives any film, especially those in the documentary genre, the status of a case study in revisionist historical scholarship. Human memory may not be reliable as it naturally fades through time, particularly if it is accessed frequently. But films of memory are not prone to this flaw and therefore can accommodate new perspectives.

In Iran, access to public archives, specifically those belonging to the IRIB, is quite difficult. News organizations, particularly international media, have to endure a complicated process to obtain review or visit permits at the archives. Similar complicated processes apply to individuals who desire to do archival work—e.g., scholars and researchers—particularly if they are associated with international academic institutions based outside Iran. In addition, because of the public fear of persecution during the post- revolution era, many individual archive owners or collectors either moved their archives to alternative locations, or became extremely cautious with revealing them to the public.

Now after four decades, bits and pieces of these archives are resurfacing on various platforms, both inside and outside Iran, and particularly on social media.

200 David MacDougall, “Films of Memory” Visualizing Theory, ed. Lucien Taylor, (New York: Routledge, 1994): 261. 175

In recent years, newer forms of archival flow have been initiated by individuals, who simply wish to share their personal history. These individuals garner audiences who eagerly follow their stories through photos and home videos that reveal the intimate details of the private lives hidden away during the two decades after the revolution. On a larger scale, more substantial archives with a significant public appeal are now resurfacing on independent or external media and news outlets, such as BBC Persian.201

Regardless of the source or location of the archive, its recent emergence as a destabilizing force is facilitating a critical dialogue between the past and present moments of Iranian history. The availability of archival footage has provided an opportunity for the newer generations of Iranians—those disconnected from the experience of the revolution and the war—to form a better understanding of their immediate conditions.

Within this narrative of resurfacing of archival footage, specific attention is dedicated both to the contemporary history of Iran, and to the history of Iranian cinema.

In recent years, popular experimental bands and musicians such as Pallett Band, and Ali

Azimi (b. 1977), have released videos that feature archival footage, particularly those belonging to old Iranian films. In the following section, I will discuss four examples that utilize archival footage in creative ways that pertain to the idea of historical revision.

201 In recent years, BBC Persian has been broadcasting a series of rare documentary and archive footage from the pre-revolution period. There has been some speculation about BBC obtaining archival footage that has been smuggled out of the IRIB archives. Nevertheless, many of the viewers of BBC Persian—including private owners of archival footage—willingly share their archival material with the network. 176

Ain’t My Home (2015)

Pallett Band is a fusion jazz-rock band from Iran. The band initially released two separate singles, one for a theater performance and the other for the Iranian slasher film

Fish & Cat (2013). Soon after, the band found success, as it started to tour in Europe and

North America. Produced by Ehsan Rasoulof, and directed and edited by Siavash

Naghshbandi, Ain’t My Home is a song about the point of convergence between the post- memory (or memory) of war and an imminent threat for it. The lyrics are a disjointed narrative of alienation and loss, as the chorus calls out “brothers, brothers, there has to be a mistake, this ain’t my home.” The use of theocratic wartime vernacular—brother was a popular term used by Iraq-Iran war comrades during and after the war—against found footage of war. The video reaches beyond its immediate context of Iran under the threat of new wars, by incorporating video excerpts of the world war, the US invasion of Iraq, among other conflicts.

Figure 59: Screengrab from Ain’t My Home, Siavash Naghshbandi, 2015. 177

Figure 60: Screengrab from Ain’t My Home, Siavash Naghshbandi, 2015.

Ain’t My Home is a mostly monochrome video that begins with a black screen that is slowly covered by tens of identical soldier figures that appear one by one to the beat of music, each holding a rifle. Movement can be detected beyond the black screen covered with tiny soldiers, as superimposed images start to merge into the visual narrative. Soon, single soldiers start to disappear from the screen: as the war wages forward, soldiers die. Colors start to appear after in the final segment of the video, as figures of dictators, war mongers, and weapons turn into solid flat colors with soft edges.

The band makes an appearance as the video reaches a climax, and soon, as the projected footage of a nuclear cloud is shown in slow motion, the screen cuts back to the remaining soldiers from the beginning of the video. The soldiers drop their rifles one after the other, obtaining color as the rifles fall to their feet. The video ends with a rainbow of human figures.

178

Figure 61: Screengrab from Ain’t My Home, Siavash Naghshbandi, 2015.

Figure 62: Screengrab from Ain’t My Home, Siavash Naghshbandi, 2015.

(2016 ,نیمی از ما) Half of Us

Half of Us, directed and edited by Farahnaz Sharifi, is the title of a music video for an eponymous song by Pallett Band. The video is a nostalgic treatment of archival home footage associated with the post-revolution culture of Iran. The main subject of the video are the children of the 1980s Iran, who appear in a series of videos, playing around, smiling at the camera, or blowing out birthday candles. In contrast to the nostalgic, yet 179 hopeful, image of the 80s children of Iran that appears repetitiously both at the beginning and end of the vide, the middle sequence provides a visual narrative of the revolution and war.

Figure 59: Screengrab from Half of Us, dir. Farahnaz Sharifi, 2016.

Figure 63: Screengrab from Half of Us, dir. Farahnaz Sharifi, 2016. 180

Figure 64: Screengrab from Half of Us, dir. Farahnaz Sharifi, 2016.

The lyrics make repetitious references to a sense of sacrifice: “My hands are yours to plant and grow/ My wings are yours to spread and fly.”202 However, through its melancholic treatment of past life and post-memory, the song laments the lost or impossible hopes and dreams of the 1980s generation of Iranians. Melancholia dominates both written and visual narratives in Half of Us. However, Pallett’s vocalist and lyricist,

Omid Nemati’s final stanza stresses the importance of historical documentation:

Half of us left with the storm Half of us was left in the night Half of us poured with the rain Half of us sang of the rain

Nemati identifies collectives (halves) of Iranian people that have witnessed the socio-cultural transformations of post-revolution Iran. I contend that the collectives—or halves—identified in this final stanza serve a symbolic purpose. Within the historical context of the song, words such as “storm” or “night” can represent significant historical trauma such as the Islamic Revolution and the Iraq-Iran war, both of which affected the

202 Lyric excerpt translated by me. 181

Iranian collectives (e.g., diasporian migration caused by the revolution, or the fatalities and casualties of the war). Despite the bleakness of the song and its lamenting tone, the final line—which refers to the half that sings “of the rain”—offers a small window of hope. The half that sings of the rain here stands for a historically aware subject that narrates history—particularly via art—for the newer generations.

(2013 ,پیش درآمد) Prelude

Prelude is another found footage music video by Arash Ashtiani, produced for Ali

Azimi’s song of the same name.203 The video is an exquisite montage of clips of over 20 influential films in the history of Iranian cinema, among them masterpieces such as

Dariush Mehrjui’s Hamoun (1989). The visual narrative of the video is determined by the rhythm of the music, and in that, it does not follow a narrative pattern. However, passages of the song have been matched to visual cues to enhance the emotional experience of the viewers. These passages are often those with a sentimental lyrical basis

(e.g., “I will become the wind to blow in your hair”) that correspond to the presence of a female character on screen. In this vein, the video attempts a roll calling of beloved women of Iranian cinema, such as Farimah Farjami (b. 1952), Susan Taslimi (b. 1950),

Niki Karimi (b. 1971), and Hedieh Tehrani (b. 1972).

203 Arash Ashtiani, Prelude, video, 04:58, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUi9uYUeX9I 182

Figure 65: Niki Karimi in a Screengrab from Prelude, Arash Ashtiani, 2013.

Figure 66: Hedieh Tehrani in a Screengrab from Prelude, Arash Ashtiani, 2013.

In his homage to the women of Iranian cinema, while featuring iconic female characters of post-revolution Iranian cinema, Ashtiani has incorporated clips of pre- revolution films that offer more realistic representations of women. While post-revolution women appear with headscarves and in public spaces, the pre-revolution women can occupy any space, from the streets of Tehran to the intimacy of a bedroom before love making. Prelude offers few instances of physical proximity between men and women in 183 post-revolution cinema of Iran; for instance, Golshifteh Farahani in a scene from the film

Santouri, in which she places her hands on her husband’s (Bahram Radan) chest and pushes him.

Figure 67: Screengrab from Prelude, Arash Ashtiani, 2013.

Figure 68: Screengrab from Prelude, Arash Ashtiani, 2013.

(2016 ,ایستاده در غبار) Standing in the Dust

Standing in the Dust is a 2016 biographical war drama about Ahmad

Motevaselian (b. 1953, disappeared July 5, 1982), a young Iranian military attaché who disappeared in Lebanon. Directed by Mohammad Hossein Mahdavian (b. 1981), the film 184 provides a revisionist narrative of Motevaselian’s military career, leading to his disappearance. I contend that the film’s revisionist nature stems from Mahdavian’s meticulous use of archival footage, to reveal a realistic portrayal of Motevaselian. A commander in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Motevaselian played a key role in the

Liberation of Khorramshahr, which established him as a highly respected war hero, often celebrated by the Islamic Republic. While Mahdavian’s biographical account does not negate this, his use of archival documentary footage offers a more realistic portrayal of

Motevaselian.

Figure 69: promotional poster for Standing in the Dust, dir. Mohammad H. Mahdavian, 2016.

In Standing in the Dust, Motevaselian often appears as himself, while in the footage shot for the film, body doubles are used from creative angles, in order not to 185 reveal the actor’s face. Therefore, the film is quite successful in creating a realistic narrative, in which Motevaselian appears, as a task-oriented unyielding military leader.

The footage of Motevaselian shouting at soldiers, and shoving them forward as he trains with them is quite different from the state propaganda produced about him. Some of these images portray Motevaselian as a young father, while others function as posters commemorating him, while expressing home for his return home. In recent years, age progression images have been appearing online, with Motevaselian’s hair and beard appearing grey and his complexion aged. Mahdavian’s film may not be a counter- narrative, as it does not negate the core concept of Motevaselian’s heroism. However, in utilizing the archive in revisionist methodology, Mahdavian distances himself from over- sentimentalized narratives of statist war films. I argue that this sense of honesty in creating a visual narrative, is a leap forward in forming an objective understanding of the historical trauma experienced by the Iranian nation.

186

Figure 70: promotional poster for Standing in the Dust, dir. Mohammad H. Mahdavian, 2016.

I started this chapter with a discussion of the underground art-culture of Iran as site for the reverberations of collective trauma and post-memory, particularly through music and music video. Furthermore, through the examples and case studies in this chapter, I posit non-statist art practice as a form of resistance to statist narratives of heroism and martyrdom. Within these resistant counter-narratives, I have identified the archive as an instrument that facilitates historical revision. In the following chapter, I will discuss how individual artists based in Iran contribute to said counter-narratives, while initiating a female-specific tradition in contemporary expanded practice in Iran. 187

CHAPTER 4: VIDEO-ART IN CONTEMPORARY IRAN: A FEMALE-SPECIFIC

TRADITION

To understand the development of the contemporary expanded cinema of Iran as a function of its post-revolution underground culture, we first need to establish what expanded cinema means. Expanded cinema—a term coined by Gene Youngblood— implies “an expanded consciousness,” as opposed to “computer films, video phosphors, atomic light, or spherical projections.” 204 Youngblood suggests that understanding expanded cinema requires one to let go of any pre-conceived notions of cinema: “[it] isn’t a movie at all: like life it’s a process of becoming, man’s ongoing historical drive to manifest his consciousness outside of his mind, in front of his eyes.”205 Note that

Youngblood’s notion of a consciousness that manifests outside the mind implies a materiality that is beyond the projected image offered by cinema. Therefore, he is including fine arts in his definition of expanded cinema. In this context, interdisciplinarity becomes a platform through which the artist can engage with their environment: “one no longer can specialize in a single discipline and hope truthfully to express a clear picture of its relationships in the environment. This is especially true in the case of the

[intermedial] network of cinema and television, which now functions as nothing but the nervous system of mankind.”206

I argue that in contemporary Iran, expanded consciousness refers to the overlapping of two forms of awareness: 1) an often collective awareness of the

204 Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema. (London: Studio Vista, 1970), 44. 205 Ibid. 206 Ibid. 188 immediate conditions of life, which entails basic knowledge of contemporary social, cultural, economic, and political issues; and 2) a more individualized form of awareness of the singular subject’s placement within national and global discourses. The artists of the Iranian underground demonstrate both forms of awareness, in a continuous state of becoming, whereby their creative practice reflects their critical engagement with serious social discourses. For instance, Safaei’s representation of the female body serves a twofold objective: 1) challenging traditional Iranian culture, and 2) contributing to a universal discourse regarding the authority of women over their own bodies.

Therefore, I postulate the contemporary expanded cinema of Iran as a counter- cinema with a strong progressive feminist core that challenges socio-cultural hegemony.

The phrase “progressive feminist core” in my definition refers to two qualities of resistance to patriarchal hegemony, and disrupting the element of pleasure, which I contextualize within a female-specific tradition. Furthermore, I identify Youngblood’s notions of intermediality and interdisciplinarity as the key elements that connect artworks and artists within the context of Iran’s contemporary expanded cinema.

I should note that my research on the contemporary expanded cinema of Iran is also an effort in historicizing the careers of artists whose influence may not be recognized in the current socio-political landscape of Iran. Safaei’s work, for instance, has been rejected at prestigious auctions in Iran that could earn her much recognition and success.

The sole reason for these rejections has been the fact that her works deal directly with the female body, any and all representations of which can have erotic implications in the

Islamic Republic. The galleries and auctioneers may admire the merit of the works, yet 189 they are not willing to risk the consequences of featuring such work. Safaei admirably refuses to compromise her aesthetically critical vision, asserting that she will showcase her work eventually, perhaps decades from today.207 This intentionality and perseverance is an instance of the resistance against the hegemonic force of traditional patriarchy that has the potential to garner change.

Relying on my case studies—who are all artists based in Iran, with their careers overlapping the underground—I argue that Iranian women have used the spaces of the underground to evolve beyond rigid traditional definitions, ultimately initiating a new discourse in body politics, and creating a female-specific tradition in art. Through a close examination of my case studies, I argue that the pioneering female artists based in Iran are utilizing an innovative experimental approach to their practice, forming a tradition of subjective resistance to cultural hegemony. Their art may be at times indirectly confrontational, yet it never regresses to a state of passivity. With this background in mind, let us now consider the historical and chronological context that led to the formation of expanded cinema.

I have previously discussed the underground art culture of Iran as a function of the post-revolution rift between the private and public spheres of life. Additionally, using specific examples, I discussed how within the context of the contemporary expanded cinema of Iran, certain categories—e.g., video art—function as a vessel for the critique of the social, cultural, economic, and political conditions of life. I additionally identified

207 My interview with Nastaran Safaei, 2019; see appendix. 190 social media accessibility as the facilitating element in sharing said critique with a wide array of audiences, regardless of physical borders or locations.

In this chapter, presenting my case studies, I will discuss how over the course of the past decade, individual artists have initiated a progressive feminist discourse. I should note that my application of the term feminist does not imply that said discourse exclusively serves a feminist cause. My emphasis here is on the fact that women have been the main driving force behind the progressivism that promises equality, by creating a fluid web of associations that connects their socio-legal status to the conditions of their private lives. Within this, video and video art play a key role in creative expressions.

As discussed earlier, due to the particularities of post-revolution international relations with Iran, the flow of information to and from the country is never straightforward. On one hand, state-funded media and news outlets are extremely cautious about content production and sharing, as they follow rigid guidelines that maintain and protect the myth of the victorious Islamic Republic of Iran. On the other hand, preserving this myth requires close monitoring of all other public media

(newspapers, periodicals, art magazines, etc.). Failure to comply with state guidelines leads to consequences ranging from individual court summoning and subsequent trials to complete shutdown of institutions. Therefore, research about Iranian underground culture and art is minimal, sporadic, and inconsistent at best.

Furthermore, much of extant material on the underground art and culture of Iran has been produced by diasporan artists or scholars, such as Hamid Naficy himself. These accounts are valid and offer valuable insight into this illusive subject. However, because 191 of the severed connection between diasporian subjects and their homeland, they fail to account for the contemporary state of the underground. Moreover, a clear connection between the underground and the video art movement of Iran is yet to be established.

Therefore, my in-depth examination of Iranian underground art offers a new understanding of the fabric of Iranian culture from the intimate corners of the private lives of the artists, yielding an image drastically different from what is deemed appropriate for representation in Iran’s public sphere.

Under such circumstances some artists, like Shirin Neshat (b. 1957) who can no longer travel to Iran, live in diasporic communities and produce work that openly challenges the values of the Iranian regime. A second group of artists, who are the central figures of my study, choose to stay connected to homeland. These artists thrive in an underground avant-garde culture formed in the private spaces of their homes and studios.

I spent over two years doing research and collecting information about the condition of expanded cinema in Iran, as well as the current moment of the country’s art scene. In the

Summer of 2018, I traveled to Iran, where I approached several artists, all based in the country with careers that extend internationally, whose work I have closely followed during the past decade. My friendship and professional relationship with some of these artists (particularly Newsha Tavakolian and Nastaran Safaei) have provided me with a new horizon for contextualizing the contributions of women pioneers in the chaotic cultural arena of contemporary Iran.

This chapter consists of excerpts of interviews, analyses of artists’ creative and conceptual work, and a collection of illustrations. The main case studies of this 192 dissertation are Tavakolian and Safaei, whose creative work as visual artists has evolved significantly during the past decade. Both additionally engage with the challenges of addressing and representing the female body in Iran in innovative ways that do not involve claims of victimhood or objectification. Instead, they provide realistic, yet empowering, perspectives that challenge patriarchal norms without antagonizing masculinity. Additionally, by featuring two male artists—Hamed Rashtian and Hooman

Mortazavi—I seek to demonstrate that male artists too can join forces with women in countering patriarchal hierarchy.

Artists that are active in contemporary art scenes—regardless of their nationality or location—are still in the process of becoming. They may follow trends, be influenced by current political or social events, or simply engage with different mediums. However, an extended amount of time has to pass for an artist to become historicized within a critical context. But scholarship cannot simply wait without critically engaging with its target art scene. Under these circumstances, integrating the artists and their perspectives into scholarship provides invaluable opportunities for discussions of art and culture that can bring together the worlds of academia and creative practice. It is this relationship that can provide both sides with more credibility and depth, perhaps even increasing the chances for the formation of new discourses with pragmatic implications. In her preface to Points of Resistance, Rabinovitz states that her book, “a feminist film history,” offers an understanding of the agency assumed by texts and individuals in specific historical moments.208 I argue that the agency that Rabinovitz discusses is a direct product of

208 Rabinovitz, Points of Resistance, xvii. 193 assuming a feminist approach to historical analysis, where the mere acts of discovery and remembrance trigger a change in the perception of extant histories, demonstrating that

“women pioneers of experimental cinema continue to serve as points of resistance.”209

The agency of women pioneers is often questioned by the type of politically correct, yet practically unaware, treatment that categorizes individuals based on their nationality, ethnicity, or gender. What is lost to this reductive categorization is the fact that within any seemingly oppressed society, there are individuals who have refused to be victimized, forming a force that may not equal the grandiosity of the force of hegemony or tyranny, but it ruptures the obstacles enough to enable them to move forward.

Tavakolian spoke to me about her experience of this reductive treatment following her nomination at Magnum Photos.210

There was an article on The Guardian, about women photographers at Magnum, including me. The article mentioned nothing about my work, instead writing that Newsha Tavakolian lives in Iran and has to wear the hijab, as in she is not as free as other Magnum women. It was really upsetting. I sent an email to Magnum, because when things like that happen, I react fast, never opting to remain mum… [people] want to box you in categories, so they won’t have to think critically. So [the West has these keywords:] Newsha, Iranian, hijab, the Middle East, oil, and so on, which it uses as tags in creating identities for people [like me].211

However, Tavakolian went on to say that she does not believe that Western media is singularly responsible for such mistreatments:

[…] we are to blame for this as well. I will start with myself: when I first started to work internationally, I didn’t pay specific attention to these issues and I wasn’t

209 Ibid. 210 With offices in New York City, Paris, London and Tokyo, Magnum Photos is an international photographic co-op owned by member photographers (active associates). Photojournalism and stock photography are the two main fields in which Magnum operates. 211 My interview with Newsha Tavakolian, 2019; see appendix. 194

that sensitive to them. […] I was very young and not quite aware of what was happing [in the international mediascape]. So I don’t think we can singularly blame the Western world or audience. We are at fault too, and within that, some people willingly embrace labels, because it garners them exposure and a shortcut to celebrity. I never cared for that [kind of exposure]. I have always tried to express myself in my work, so that it can be the object of discussion (as opposed to my personal life, my gender, my appearance, etc.).212

Tavakolian’s resolution is that the individual needs to be committed to their vision, and aware of how they are being represented: “[…] I am very sensitive about the captions and titles that are used for my photos when they are going to illustrate the texts written by others. It’s a preventative measure so that others cannot put their words in my mouth.”213

In my conversations with Iranian artists, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, I asked them about their perception of the female body, how it may have been complicated or problematized by the cultural politics of the Islamic republic, and how they have decided to treat it or respond to it. Safaei often presents her work with an intention to defamiliarize and de-sentimentalize it. Her breasts, fingers, lips, and other body parts that have been featured in her work are not meant to be sensual or provocative. The aesthetic judgment here is concerned with form, rather than sensible content (color, tone, etc., since they have been peeled off already).

In comparison, Tavakolian’s approach to the problem of body politics is similar to

Safaei’s, in that she avoids sensual or provocative treatments. However, she contextualizes issues pertaining to body and body politics within a global landscape:

212 My interview with Newsha Tavakolian, 2019; see appendix. 213 Ibid. 195

“[…] in Iran, body politics is a strange concept, because the entirety of the body— regardless of gender—is a form of politics. It is ‘body as politics’ here. […] It is as if the woman’s body is a political arena: a war zone, where everyone has something at stake, and stick the flags that represent their ideas in the woman’s body.”214 Tavakolian takes issue with clichéd representations of the female body in Iran that do not serve the purpose of social documentation:

[…] Unfortunately, works by contemporary photographers who have approached [the] issue of body as politics is very stereotypical and sentimental […] I don’t want to mention any names, but there are many photographers who have attempted to [represent the contemporary Iranian woman], only ending up with stereotypical images.215

While women continue to be central to Tavakolian’s work, after project Listen, she intentionally tried to maintain a less gendered perspective: “[…] I have gravitated more toward human concerns, and the sense of [existential] stuckness in a state of purgatory, which encompasses women, men, children, animals, and the earth. […] The subjects that I choose are quite global, even though they may be happening in Iran now.

[…] Perhaps from a visual standpoint, when you see an image from Iran, because of the

[unique] dress code, you can tell the location. But once you immerse yourself in the concept, you can look beyond visual cues like hijab, at the stories of people and the world they inhibit.”216 The artists featured in the following sections are connected within expanded cinema and in their contribution to counter-hegemonic cultural discourses.

214 The interview was conducted in Farsi, but the phrase in quotes is Tavakolian’s English intervention in her own speech. 215 My interview with Newsha Tavakolian, 2019; see appendix. 216 Ibid. 196

However, by distancing themselves from stereotypical expressions, they contextualize their work more universally.

197

Newsha Tavakolian (b. 1981) Photojournalist and Social Documentary Photographer

Figure 71: Newsha Tavakolian, 2019; photo courtesy of the artist.

in Tehran (مجلهی زن) Tavakolian started her career as an assistant at Zan Magazine at the age of 16. She was one of the few women who started their careers as photojournalists at the beginning of Khatami’s presidency. Mentored by veteran photojournalist Kaveh Golestan (1950-2003), Tavakolian worked diligently to establish herself as a serious photojournalist in an arena ruled by men.217 In doing so, she remained committed to her job as a hard news photojournalist, often traveling to conflict zones in the Middle East to cover the human condition in war stricken regions.

217 Son of author and filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan, Kaveh died at the age of 53 after stepping on a land mine, while he was on assignment for BBC in Kifri, Iraq. As a veteran hard news photojournalist, Golestan was quite supportive of the younger generation of photojournalists. He provided constructive feedback on Tavakolian’s early work, influencing her career as a hard news photojournalist, particularly during the time she covered the war in Iraq in the early 2000s. 198

The beginning of Tavakolian’s career coincided with Khatami’s presidential campaign in

1996. At the time, she was in high school, while taking classes in photography.

When I started working for Zan Magazine, I was just an assistant, answering the phone and doing mundane office work. At the time, there were only three or four female photojournalists in Iran. The atmosphere was very patriarchal. My male colleagues were very supportive of me [and other women in the field]. But their support only extended for so long. I was an amateur, and the few other women were not that ambitious. So because we weren’t really a threat to [our male colleagues], they tolerated us. In the early years of my career, I had no issues with my male colleagues. The problem started where my work outranked theirs.218

Tavakolian additionally spoke of the public aspect of her work as a photojournalist, at a time when the site of a woman holding a camera was a reason for scrutiny: “people would approach me to ask all kinds of questions. They wanted to know if my parents were OK with me outside holding a camera.” Therefore, as individual women, such as Tavakolian, actively resisted cultural stigma, the Iranian public learned to accept their presence. Tavakolian was one of the first few female photojournalists in

Iran who covered all of the significant incidents of social protest, political meetings and events, among others: “I was everywhere you could think of. Other [female] photojournalists would only cover sports, or [remain focused] on other subjects. But I would go anywhere and cover anything. So through me and my presence, people got used to seeing female photojournalists at work [in public].”219

While Tavakolian remains critical of the conditions of life in the Islamic

Republic, she refrains from making direct political statements, or identifying with any

218 My interview with Newsha Tavakolian, 2019; see appendix. 219 Ibid. 199 movement or faction. Furthermore, in her highly successful international career, she has remained consistent in her critique, expanding it to a global level during the past decade.

For instance, her project, Öcalan’s Angels (2014), comprises of the personal accounts of young female militia members of The Women’s Protection Units, commonly known as

YPJ in Syria. Tavakolian spent several days in Syria during the fallout of the Rojava

Conflict, documenting the daily lives of the fighters at their camp.220

Figure 72: Öcalan’s Angels, Newsha Tavakolian, 2014.

220 The Rojava Conflict or Rojava Revolution (2011-present) refers to operations led by Kurdish nationalists in Northern Syria. The movement is ideologically driven by Abdullah Öcalan (b. 1947), the leader of the militant Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), who is currently imprisoned in Turkey. 200

Figure 73: Öcalan’s Angels, Newsha Tavakolian, 2014.

In Free Falling in Samburu (2014), Tavakolian documented the lives of the rescued child brides of the Samburu people in North-central Kenya, at a safe house operated by the Samburu Girls Foundation. Similar to her other projects, in Free Falling,

Tavakolian places her subjects in the center of the frame, opting for a simple aesthetics that remains mindful of the trauma of the subject and does not negate the documentary nature of her work. She often pairs these images with captions that expand on the situation of the subject, often using direct quotes to maintain a sense of reportage.221

221 I should note that in projects such as Free Falling, reportage is an essential component of Tavakolian’s work as a photojournalist on assignment. 201

Figure 74: Free Falling in Samburu, Newsha Tavakolian, 2014.

Listen (2010-2011)

Following the social unrests of 2009-2010, when the ministry of culture exerted an increased level of control over all media, many journalists, including Tavakolian, were forced to halt their activities. This prompted Tavakolian to consider alternative ways through which she could contribute to a cultural critique that both addressed contemporary issues in her home country, as well as those pertaining to global discourses. I met Tavakolian through her husband, Thomas Erdbrink (b. 1976), who, at the time, was the chief correspondent for Washington Post’s Tehran Bureau. Tavakolian had recently finished shooting Listen, a collection of portraits of women vocalists in Iran.

Listen was the first project in which I collaborated with Tavakolian as a writer, editor, and translator. 202

Tavakolian created glamorous portraits of female vocalists based in Iran, who are not allowed to perform publicly per the country’s law. Then, in addition to the photo prints available for purchase, Tavakolian created a series of symbolic albums, with the vocalists’ portrait as the cover. The irony however, was in the fact that all CD cases were empty. In the same year (2010), Tavakolian also produced a series of photographs, representing the contemporary woman in Iran. In the series, Tavakolian experimented with form, adding abstract elements to her work. Glass Ceiling, for instance is a photo of a young woman in a black Manteaux and scarf (modeled by Tavakolian’s younger sister,

Negin), whose head has been placed inside of a glass box. In another snapshot, the same woman, wearing the same get-up, holds a large whole chicken in each hand, as she stares into the horizon in a residential block in Tehran.

Figure 75: Listen, Newsha Tavakolian, 2010. 203

Figure 76: Listen, Newsha Tavakolian, 2010.

Figure 77: Listen, Newsha Tavakolian, 2010. 204

Look (2012-2013)

Look is the title of a collection of images, as well as a video installation by

Tavakolian, which in a semi-documentary style, captures the mood of the artist’s neighbors in her residential complex in Western Tehran. For the project, Tavakolian transformed her bedroom into a shooting location with minimal mise-en-scene elements, e.g., a bed, a dresser, a vanity, etc. During the course of six months, she brought her participating neighbors to her home, and captured their mood in various staged settings.

The documentary aspect of the work stems from the fact that the emotional state of the subject is not dictated by the artist (as the case would be in a promotional photoshoot, for instance). The subjects are in dialogue with Tavakolian, both literally as they have all known her for several years, and metaphorically, because they are all confined within the spaces of the same city, living in the close proximity of a single building.

Figure 78: Look, Newsha Tavakolian, 2012. 205

Figure 79: Look, Newsha Tavakolian, 2012.

The Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album (2015)

In The Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album, Tavakolian contextualizes the collective mood represented in Look. Expanding her subject pool beyond her immediate surroundings, Tavakolian engages in long conversations with various individuals—all baby boomers of the 1980s and 1990s Iran—while taking photos of them in private and public settings. Her conversations with the diverse group of Iranian youth provide a fascinating account of the hopes and worries of a generation caught in the inertia of post- memory. Against the backdrop of the impending nuclear deal and the possibility of economic improvement, the narrative provided by Tavakolian’s Photo Album remains focused on the narrative of one generation that is highly aware of its maladies. 206

Figure 80: Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album, Newsha Tavakolian, 2015.

Figure 81: Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album, Newsha Tavakolian, 2015. 207

Figure 82: Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album, Newsha Tavakolian, 2015.

Starting in 2010, Tavakolian transformed her career from hard news photo journalism to social documentary photography. In doing so, she additionally created a margin for creative experimentation within which video plays a key role. Projects Look and Blank Pages of an Iranian Photo Album both feature video pieces as part of their exhibition material. In Look for instance, in addition to taking still photographs,

Tavakolian recorded her subjects on video, creating silent sequences of them making minimal movements in between images. In her exhibition, these sequences were assembled in a single silent video played on loop inside a dark room. This video piece exposed the audience to the real moments before or after photos were captured. For instance, having seen the image of a young woman looking solemn and glassy eyed, the visitors who ventured into the dark room would see a tear rolling down her cheek. 208

Looking at the photographs featured in Look, one may wonder about the extent to which the photos are staged. After all, the location—Tavakolian’s bedroom—remains the same for all subjects who are invited to occupy it temporarily as they pose for the camera.

However, through the silent video sequence, Tavakolian reveals to the audience that the location may function as a staged setting, but it does not dictate the mood of the subjects.

In that sense, the collection functions as an intimate form of social documentary photography: all of the subjects are non-actors, appearing as who they are in their everyday lives; additionally, the artist knows all of her subjects personally and is engaged in serious conversations with them. These conversations invoke natural reactions (e.g., crying, lighting a cigarette, etc.) that are then captured by the camera.

209

Nastaran Safaei (b. 1984) Sculptor, and video artist

Figure 83: Nastaran Safaei, 2019; photo courtesy of the artist. 222

Safaei started her career in fine arts by experimenting with pottery and clay in

2000. She was mostly self-taught as an artist, until she attended Iranian leading sculptor,

Parviz Tanavoli’s workshops in 2006, taking an interest in the Bronze technique. Safaei had her first solo show at Assar Art Gallery in Tehran, becoming a member of the

Association of Iranian Sculptors. In her art practice, she often revisits concepts of femininity and body politics, and tradition. Additionally, Safaei is a socially-conscious artist, inspired by the contemporary conditions of the Iranian society. She is currently working on a project about the concept of time and the subconscious human engagement with it. In addition to the Bronze technique, Safaei uses other materials in her work, such as Aluminum, Brass, Fiberglass, papier-mâché, among others.

222 All of the images included in this section are courtesy of the artist, Nastaran Safaei. 210

Figure 84: Goddess, Nastaran Safaei, Bronze: 145*80*80 cm, 2014.

Figure 85: Goddess, Nastaran Safaei, Bronze: 145*80*80 cm, 2014.

While many contemporary artists in Iran tend to deal with feminine phenomena in vague and indirect ways, Safaei openly embraces her femininity and refuses to allow the social branding of art taint her idea of it. She is specifically known for her creative use of everyday objects and materials to express her ideas, as well as incorporating busts of her own body parts in her creations. In presenting and exhibiting her work, Safaei relies on 211 the engagement or involvement of her audience, often drawing them in by providing a statement, or at times a question or a request.

Figure 86: What Do You Think About Me?, Nastaran Safaei, Mirror Steel: 117*50*76 cm, 2014.

For instance, In What Do You Think About Me? Safaei created a bottomless ballot box made of mirror steel. Beside it she placed a notepad and a pen. The note on the box read: “What Do You Think About Me?” And visitors were expected to write their comment(s) on a piece of paper that they may put in the box. The irony however, was that in order for the visitor to comment on Safaei, they would have to encounter their own reflections on the box. And of course, their comment had no value because the ballot box was bottomless, letting the papers fall to the gallery floor.

Safaei’s earlier projects that incorporate femininity and the female body merged it with other objects, such as wheels (in Goddess, 2014). But her recent projects seem to be purer in a form, in that they are less object-oriented and more about the quality and 212 aesthetics of the woman’s body. Safaei maintains that the entirety of her career and the pieces that she has created are influenced by the trajectory of her personal life. The experience of a break-up after a long-term relationship, and the subsequent existential questioning of the self has led Safaei to distance herself from her “self-constructed heaven,” the home we see in her video of the same name.

Giving away her precious garden, and leaving her home with two suitcases, Safaei embarked on a series of travels inside and outside Iran, experimenting with a minimal approach to life. This transformative period has influenced Safaei’s work by making it more minimal and more fluid in form, structure, and the manner of exhibition. Safaei’s

Body Impressions for instance, which consists of impressions of her own body in black ink over thin layers of white fabric is one such work. I use the term “fluid” in terms of

Safaei’s recent work, which she documents in video, because of the mobility of the work.

This mobility is twofold, in that the pieces of fabric are portable, and Safaei takes advantage of this quality, taking them with her to alternate locations, swift and weightless like a dancer’s body in performance. Safaei displayed her body impressions in Qeshm

Island in Southern Iran, where she shot videos of their dance in the wind as they hung from the deck of an old boat that ran aground years ago, turning into a tourist attraction as it lies solemnly near the shore. 213

Figure 87: Body Prints, Nastaran Safaei, ink on paper: 90*140 cm, 2017.

Safaei stated that what triggered the formation of this project was a residency she partook in at the AB Gallery in Switzerland: “for two months, they gave me a studio that was basically appropriate for painting, not sculpting. I remember I went shopping for materials and everything was so expensive that I could not afford what I had in mind.

What I had in that studio was ink, paper, and of course myself. I was in this space that was far from everything, specifically from my home. I am, after all, very attached to 214

Tehran. So with the limited material that I had, I started printing myself onto paper. So

[the] sense of body admiration is there. It felt like I was documenting myself on paper in a meditative process, which was in itself being documented and preserved somehow.”223

Figure 88: Body Impression 11, Nastaran Safaei, ink on 308 gr paper: 42*59 cm, 2016.

223 My interview with Nastaran Safaei, 2019; see appendix. 215

While this was not the first residency experience for Safaei, but I contend that there is a clear connection between her shift towards documenting motion and using video as a primary medium and the experience of this residency. Safaei knew early in her career that her works pertaining to femininity, tradition, and the aesthetics of the female body may not be tolerated in Iran. She knew that, working with such sensitive subject matter could mean working as an underground artist for years without achieving well- deserved recognition. However, Safaei’s concern with the public aspect of her art is in finding a way to showcase it in Iran (publicly or in private shows) or abroad, in residency projects, group and solo shows. What further supports the fluidity of her art and character is the access to social media platforms that allow her to find a space where all her work can be viewed by the public. Her website, and her YouTube channel both make all of her video performance projects available to the public.

Furthermore, there is a sense of pluralization or multiplying of the body— partially or in its entirety—in Safaei’s work, such as the body prints, the winged breasts, or the Finger Food (2014) series. When I asked Safaei about the reason for this pluralization and if there are any conceptual reasons behind it. In addition to the economy of production, which makes it more affordable for the artist to produce a piece in multiple editions, Safaei spoke of the pluralization as a form of dance.224 “Even though I don’t wish to romanticize it, [the body impressions series] is like dance. In dance, there is one

224 In sculpting, the artist needs to create rudimentary casts of whatever they wish to create. Then the cast will go through the processing and production stages. The costs of this entire process must be divided by the number of pieces produced at the end. So if the artist produces a single piece, it has to bear a very high price. But if it is produced in editions, each edition will cost a more reasonable price in comparison. 216 body that is doing actions, so these prints are somehow like a performance, an act, a dance, or even sex. All of these acts can be associated with the prints. It is one body that is doing different things. It turns, and moves. You can even look at it like a sculpture, from different dimensions, as if it is moving.”225

Figure 89: Finger Food, Nastaran Safaei, Bronze and Aluminum, 12*8*8 cm, 2014.

225 My interview with Nastaran Safaei, 2019; see appendix. 217

Figure 90: Flying (also known as Winged Breast), Nastaran Safaei, Bronze and Fiberglass, 92*75*85 cm, 2012-2018.

In using Safaei’s own metaphor of dancing via pluralizing oneself in impressions,

I apply it to the larger context of her oeuvre, where I have been following traces of pluralization and the meaning they entail. Beyond the economy of production which can prompt any fine arts artist (e.g., sculptors or photographers) to produce work in multiple editions, Safaei’s engagement with pluralization has deeper roots in her career. In her

Finger Food Series, Safaei used bronze casts of two of her body parts (lips and fingers) combined together, placed on aluminum stands. In the exhibition, these pieces were served like finger-food, showing that Safaei had chosen them to be shared with others. “I want to have borders around me, which will not allow people to take whatever pieces of me they desire,” said Safaei about her intentions in creating the collection. 218

The plurality that lies in Safaei’s Finger Food series conveys plentitude that comes between the artist and the viewer, while also minimizing the inaccessibility that marks most art works on display. The mouths that have been mounted on top of each other, murmuring, whispering, uttering, and screaming: “help yourself”, and perhaps urging the viewer to do so, quite literally. Lips placed on top of two fingers that could be on either of two paths: running from the observers or sneaking towards them. In Islamic ideology judging someone in their absence – backbiting – is likened to eating the flesh of one’s spiritual brother/sister. But what if, like the lord Jesus Christ himself, we become multiplied in flesh and allow our brothers and sisters to devour us. Will they then become us through this “communion”? Will they see us for who we are by devouring pieces of us, pieces of our lives? And who will benefit from such plurality of being?

In her videos, Safaei often uses a small crew, consisting of one camera operator, and if necessary a sound recordist. Her editing style is simple and neat, as she does not experiment with cinematography. She often opts for natural lights and ambient sound.

However, in some of her works, such as Self Constructed Heaven, she uses non-diegetic sound, e.g., a Kurdish lullaby, to invoke emotional empathy in the viewer. Until 2014

Safaei’s use of video was mostly in the capacity of artist’s video, as she produced recordings of her shows with the main purpose of documenting them. However, her project 30 (2013) turned video into a primary medium in her work.

It started when I realized that I had an idea that I could not produce with the materials I usually work with. So I had to change my medium. […] The idea behind [the video] came to me one day when I had bought a whole chicken that I was cleaning on the kitchen counter. And I realized that I was slaughtering that chicken violently, tearing it to pieces. I thought to myself ‘this could be one of the 219

30 birds in the Legend of Simorgh and I am slaughtering it!’226 So the association of that with the number 30 and me turning 30 amounted to an exhibition and that video piece. Turning 30 was this stage that I had to pass and for that I needed a sacrifice. A wedding dress is something that particularly marks this passing stage and going from one area in life to another. So in the video, I slaughtered 30 chickens, wearing a wedding dress.

Figure 91: Screengrab from 30, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2013.

In 30, during the course of over 40 minutes, we are merely presented with Safaei, calm and serene in her sleeveless white wedding dress, with her hair pulled back under white lace, immersed in the whiteness of the background and foreground. She does not break the fourth wall by acknowledging the camera, as Martha Rosler does in her

Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975). Instead, Safaei skillfully and confidently cleans chicken after chicken, putting them away, as her white dress remains unstained and intact.

pronunciation: see-murq—is the story ;سیمرغ :The Legend of Simorgh, also spelled Simurgh—in Farsi 226 of the mythical bird Simorgh, which has appeared in multiple sources of Persian classic literature, with the most renowned instances being Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and Sufi poet, Farid ud-Din Attar’s story of the pilgrimage and final arrival of 30 birds to the lake of truth and inner peace. 220

Rosler’s film mocks the traditional perception of women as objects of domesticity. Looking into the camera, Rosler wields cooking instruments and other items associated with the kitchen, assigning each to a letter (e.g., a for apron, etc.). In doing so, she challenges the role of language in establishing patriarchal structures that control and objectify women. In 30 however, Safaei does not acknowledge the camera, alluding to the cultural value of shame and guarding of the gaze (particularly for women engaging in public interactions). Her white wedding dress further enhances the traditional image of the shameful innocent bride. However, aggression in Safaei’s video is conveyed through the act of cutting, gutting, and cleaning raw chicken. Yet, similar to the 30 birds of the legend of Simorgh, the chickens function as the sublimation of Safaei’s desire to transform and evolve.

In Self-Constructed Heaven, we see a different side of Safaei, in the intimate spaces of her home, with one significant element missing: the artist herself. While Safaei does make a physical appearance in the video—sitting in the sunroom, or with her hands mixing a pot of rice and herbs—she carefully removes the element of realistic feminine presence in the home, by replacing herself with a bust. If we consider this videos vis-à- vis the matrix of female representation in post-revolution Iranian cinema, we can identify a lacuna being filled. This lacuna is twofold in that it reveals private spaces that have no place in the mainstream or public cinema of Iran, while also revealing the problematic of representing such private spaces where desexualization of the private space has been deemed impossible without the removal of the female character. 221

In the mainstream cinema of Iran—as it has been discussed extensively in previous chapters—the removal of the female character happens metaphorically by placing the veil as an alienating object. The veil not only alienates the woman from her own body by making it abstract and unattainable onscreen, but it also alienates the female character from the entirety of the visual narrative, simply because the viewer knows that, for instance, in real life, Iranian women do not wake up from a nightmare fully veiled under the blanket, in their own bed, inside the private space of their home.

In her Tehran series of video art performances—In Tehran and To Tehran (2017-

2018), Enghelab-Azadi and Azadi-Enghelab (2018), and High Heels (2017)—Safaei initiates a dialogue with her hometown, Tehran. Inspired by her love-hate relationship with the city, in this series, Safaei attempts to reach out to the city, gauging its reaction to her purposeful presence. In High Heels, Safaei walks Valiasr Street in Tehran, which connects the Southern part of the city to its Northern part. Wearing a dark ensemble complete with a pair of shiny black stilettos, Safaei walks with a GoPro camera she wears around her waist, hidden from the public.

Ambient sound is a significant component in this video, as visibility is restricted to Safaei’s body in motion as her long scarf and the corners of her manteaux sway against the camera. Safaei recorded 36 instances of catcalling and vulgar comments along this

18-kilometer walk and ended up with six blisters on her feet. The walk took over five hours to complete. In Enghelab-Azadi and Azadi-Enghelab, Safaei engages with the city in a different way, embracing a slice of its cultural tradition by offering votive dates to passerby on her way from Enghelab (Revolution) Street to Azadi (Freedom) Street, and 222 vice versa. Safaei maintains that Iranian culture’s immense respect for the dead was what came in between her and the city, as this time she received no vulgar comments, even though she was wearing the same ensemble from the previous performance.227

Figure 92: Screengrab from High Heels, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2017.

227 My interview with Nastaran Safaei, 2019; see appendix. 223

Figure 93: Screengrab from Enghelab-Azadi, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2017-2018.

While the first two videos of the series are about the reception and perception of the female body within a traditional public culture of Iran, In Tehran and To Tehran belong to a more intimate dialogue between Safaei and her city. In these two videos, she is not concerned with reactions from people; therefore, her dialogue with the city takes a more abstract form. In In Tehran, Safaei is followed by a camera, as she places stickers of her nude body upon lamp posts, utility boxes, stop signs, and other public objects. As soon as the sticker is placed upon its target surface, Safaei begins darkening her own figure using a black magic marker. Reminiscent of the magic marker period of censorship in Iran, her stickers then bear images of misshapen black volumes, with hands and feet sticking out of them. 224

Figure 94: Screengrab from In Tehran, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2017-2018.

Associations may come quickly, between Safaei’s censored nude on top of a utility box and Vida Movahed’s image on another utility box in the same city, waving her scarf in the air, as her hair flows over her shoulder. There is no denying that the public’s perception of the female body as problematic seeps into Safaei’s project, giving it a political undertone. However, as we shall see in To Tehran, the project carries a tangible confessional tone as well. In To Tehran, Safaei is recorded on video, as she pens letters to the city she both loves and hates, speaking of her life, thoughts, and emotions, without revealing them to the audience. The dialogue is between her and the city. However, as she places the letters inside envelopes, Safaei uses official stamps she ordered with a passport style photo of herself. Reminiscent of her nude stickers in In Tehran, the stamps legitimize the letters that are all addressed “To Tehran.” Safaei is still waiting for Tehran to write back to her. But her wait is marked by her actions, not a sense of passivity or disappointment. 225

Beyond and Above (2017) is an artist’s video that documents Safaei’s 2017 installation, consisting of two collections, namely Monuments for What is Forgotten and

Body Impressions. Monuments for What Is Forgotten is a collection of exaggerated casts of Safaei’s lips, some of which lay singularly on the floor, with some mounted on top of each other. The lips are in various states of expression, as they remain open or curled slightly along the corners. Safaei collected dirt and sand from different locations, particularly from Hormoz Island located in Southern Iran in the Persian Gulf. The sand from Hormoz Island is infamous for its unique crimson hue, which stands out against the paling ochre color that dominates the pieces. Towards the end of Monuments, in a long take that reveals the installation in its entirety, a four-lip piece stands out, which

pronounced: Aa-ra-mesh), which) ”آرامش“ according to Safaei, are mouthing the word means peace or calm.

226

Figure 95: Monuments, Nastaran Safaei; Fiberglass, Bronze, Cement, Hormoz island red soil and natural soil of Iran, 230*63*34 cm, 2017.

Figure 96: Monuments, Nastaran Safaei; Fiberglass, Bronze, Cement, Hormoz island red soil and natural soil of Iran, 60*43*60 cm, 2017.

227

In body Impressions, the hand-held camera passes through oversized silk draped from the ceiling in a rather narrow corridor, bearing impressions of Safaei’s body in black ink; impressions that repeat as they touch against the camera, swaying softly. The video then offers a series of both static shots and slow tilts along the screens, presenting a variety of the body impressions. The ink prints are abstracted in their partiality, yet they do not depart from the intimacy conveyed by the form of a body.

In Self Constructed Heaven (2017) Safaei provides the audience with an intimate view of her personal residence in Tehran. She does this through a series of close-ups of intimate corners of her apartment, such as her bedroom, sun room, bathroom, kitchen, etc. Safaei is a collector of random objects, a habit that often finds its way into her creative productions. In this Self Constructed Heaven, she has included multiple shots of these collections that she has placed in front of her vanity mirror, or on the walls of her small washroom. Safaei incorporates her love of hosting intimate gatherings through shots of her hands making tea or mixing rice with vegetables in a steaming pot. However, the intimacy of her space with the natural lighting and the bright colors that adorn her apartment is constantly disrupted by the way she incorporates herself in the space. In order not to compromise herself by revealing too much hair or skin, she foregoes real presence in the video, instead placing a rudimentary plain white cast of her bust.

Throughout the video, we see this bust in her bed, sitting on the toilet, taking a bubble bath, or watching TV in the sitting area. The only time we see Safaei herself is in a high- angle shot of her sitting in her sun room, writing in her notebook with her legs stretched 228 out, surrounded by her garden, or in her cooking shots, where we can see only her hands with her nails painted a bright jungle red tone.

Later, in 2018, by making Pre-Constructed Heaven, Safaei presents us with a counter-image to the intimate narrative of Self-Constructed. In this light, Pre-Constructed

Heaven can be understood both as a sequel and a prequel to Self-Constructed Heaven

(2017). Shot from Safaei’s point of view, the video starts from the front door of her apartment, as she descends the open staircase and starts to walk along the streets of her neighborhood in Northern Valiasr Street. The video, shot in a single long take, switches between fast-forward and normal 24 fps, pausing momentarily to show casts of Safaei’s bust, each crushed in its own way, laying in a different corner of Safaei’s route. Ambiant sound is absent in the piece, having been replaced by an experimental soundtrack.

Figure 97: Screengrab from Pre-Constructed Heaven,, dir, Nastaran Safaei, 2018.

229

As she progresses in her passage, anticipation builds up as the viewer wonders if she will come across another crushed bust, forming questions about what may have happened to them. Has a stranger picked one up? Did a passerby step on her face or did a car run it over? The fast motion does not allow the viewer to detect much detail about

Safaei’s surroundings. However, there is a sense of distraction that permeates the entirety of the video, and crisscrosses the pursuit of a self that is symbolized by the busts. Safaei cannot help but include a stray cat, the large Lego figure outside a toy store, or the colorful stairways that contradict the dismal image of wet cement, propaganda murals, and barren trees.

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Hamed Rashtian (b. 1985) Sculptor and Experimental Video Artist

Figure 98: Hamed Rashtian, 2019; photo courtesy of the artist.

Rashtian was a pure mathematics student at Beheshti State University in Tehran, when he was introduced to sculpting. He soon dropped out of college to pursue sculpting full time. He educated himself on art history and theory, before attending Parviz

Tanavoli’s sculpting workshop along with Nastaran Safaei and a group of other amateur sculptors. Rashtian’s work, particularly his early single pieces, are connected to his mathematics background, as he has sought to incorporate intricate architectural designs into his works. The Lonely Towers collection (2017) is an appropriate example of

Rashtian’s architectural design, in which he is also inspired by historical architecture of

Iran. 231

Figure 99: Lonely Towers, Hamed Rashtian, Bronze, 150*65*65 cm, 2017.

In the beginning of the 2010s, responding to the civil unrest and political crisis that was unfolding in Iran, Rashtian produced two works, namely Slot Machine, and Viva

Propaganda. Slot Machine is made up of 18 objects “that have become symbolic or of importance in the present Iranian climate,” which Rashtian has assembled into a gambling machine. “With each pull of the handle, the player experiences randomness but there are never any winners.”228 I have used an object from another culture to demonstrate an internal situation here in Iran. The piece was on display at the Morano

Kiang Gallery in Los Angeles. Viva Propaganda was an installation in which an old TV set showing static, mounted on a stool, held a loudspeaker to its screen. Rashtian’s intention for using the color white for the entire piece is to make a reference to the

228 This statement appears in Rashtian’s caption for the project, which appears on his website. 232 concept of “white torture used so often in repressive regimes.”229 Viva Propaganda was an interactive installation, in which visitors were allowed to detach the loudspeaker.

Figure 100: Slot Machine, Hamed Rashtian, 85*58*45 cm, 2010.

229 This statement appears in Rashtian’s caption for the project, which appears on his website.

233

Figure 101: Viva Propaganda, Hamed Rashtian, 150*100*50 cm, 2010.

As Rashtian’s art practice matured, his art became more stratified. His single lion series is a point of convergence in his career, where socio-cultural awareness meets his love of architecture, culture, and history. With each piece carrying highly symbolic elements derived from culture, art, and tradition, the lion series provides an appropriate context to study Rashtian’s engagement with traditional narratives (e.g., the historical nationalism of the Pahlavi period).230

230 The Lion Series refers to three projects in which Rashtian uses the figure of the stone lion as a motif. These projects are: and Lion and the Sun (2013), Trace-Scratch Series (2014), and Single Lions (2017). 234

Figure 102: Trace-Scratch series, Hamed Rashtian, bronze and fiberglass, 115*38*103 cm, 2014.

Inspired by Parviz Tanavoli’s Lions of Iran, Rashtian’s early lions were a play on the traditional tombstone lions of Iranian ethnic culture.231 On and around the lions,

Rashtian has used objects placed in the form of a collage that bear a personal meaning to him. In some cases, the processing of the piece, e.g., creating intricate etching designs on the body of the lion, is a visual representation of Rashtian’s “[delirious] state of mind at the time; a mind full of ambiguous thoughts and images which [he could not] decipher.”232 However, in the single-scratch lion series, his choice of objects and visual cues is more purposeful, as in addition to the inspirations discussed above, the whole

231 Lion Tombstone: (šir-e sangi; or bardšir, “stone lion” in Lori), a type of tombstone in the form of a lion, found mostly on the graves of Lor and Qašqāʾi nomads in the west, southwest, and parts of southern Persia. 232 This statement appears in Rashtian’s caption for the project, which appears on his website. 235 series is informed by a sense of self-doubt in masculinity. The lions all incorporate a human element, whether in the form of a dummy mounted on the lion’s back, wearing a golden crown, and holding a stick, or a rocking chair placed under a shade, with machine gun mounted in front of it, on another lion’s back with the human subject himself missing from the piece. The juxtaposition of missing genitalia or their replacement with odd objects (e.g., a small lion head, a dangling weight, etc.) and the aggressively sexual act of shoving objects, particularly guns, inside the lion’s mouth is indicative of an insecure masculinity that has failed in utilizing aggression to mask his insecurity.

Rashtian’s lion series additionally pertains to a contemporary revisiting of the discourse of nationalism and national identity in Iran. The project is shaped around an object with prominent nationalistic associations, i.e., the lion, which was featured on the

In an .(هللا) Iranian flag before the Islamic Republic replaced it with a stylized Allah

(شیر و خورشید) extension of his lion series, Rashtian has created the Lion and Sun collection, where he uses nationalistic symbols such as flag colors. But there are two specific elements in this collection that resonate with my discussion of Rashtian’s work within Iran’s expanded cinema: a) Rashtian’s use of a golden film reel, and two camera replicas inside two of the lions’ mouths; and b) the sun lion, whose golden beams are attached to batons and other hard weapons. The implications of the sun lion are more straightforward, in that it refers to the foundation of a political establishment on public intimidation and torture. However, I contend that the lions carrying cameras or film reels speak of the significance of film and film archive as two counter-hegemonic structures that interrupt traditional masculinity. The historically symbolic association of the lion 236 with masculinity and national pride, is interjected by the camera (a replica of older models) that has burrowed its way out of the beast. With the reel positioned in the lion’s back, the camera’s function doubles as a projector that grabs at the material history of masculinity—housed deep in the lion’s core, where the reel is inserted—and flushes it onto the outside world.

Figure 103: Lion and the Sun, Hamed Rashtian, bronze and fiberglass, 100*60*25 cm, 2013. 237

Figure 104: Lion and the Sun, Hamed Rashtian, bronze and fiberglass, 119*129*26 cm, 2013.

The lion series proceed Rashtian’s later video experimentations, when his work took an academic turn, leading to extensive research on gender, sexuality, and sexual orientation. While Rashtian himself maintains that in creating the lion series, his project was never about sex, gender, or sexuality, he does not refute that the pieces can have various such connotations, particularly in the social context of contemporary Iran.

Distancing from the highly symbolic tone of his earlier work, in his recent projects, 150

Days (2018) and Stories (2019), Rashtian has embraced academic research and creative experimentalism as the two core components of his practice. 238

150 Days is an installation that captures the memories of Rashtian’s day to day life as a student in Zurich. He used photo documentation of daily routines using his smart phone. During the photo documentation process, Rashtian also started ending each day by writing a brief paragraph about the events of the day. In this project, Rashtian’s primary concern was the personal process of remembering daily memories, with the intention of reproducing them later. To reproduce his mundane memories, Rashtian created drawings by digitally superimposing selected images on tracing paper, with a laser printer. Then, on the back of the paper, he drew the outlines of anything he could recognize from the mixture of forms. Finally, using a cutter blade, he scratched the printed image from the other side of the paper, keeping his drawing reproductions as the final product. In 150

Days, Rashtian has used analogue photography, developing his images manually in the darkroom, with the intention of turning the reproduction of memory into an instance of crafting an object. 150 days was a solo show at AB43 Contemporary Gallery in

Switzerland, with two different approaches toward the installation: in one room a cloud of photos, drawings, and texts was arranged in an organic style, while in another room the images and their corresponding texts appeared in a grid-like structure, similar to a calendar.

Stories (2019) is an interactive video installation in which Rashtian engages in conversations with several visual and performing artists and scholars. Because the conversations address intimate or personal narratives of the subjects, Rashtian has made every effort to maintain their anonymity. Therefore, in addition to recording sound, he has utilized video as a second line of documentation that only captures a part of the visual 239 ambiance of the conversations. The camera is often pointed at a random corner of the space or location where the conversations take place, rarely revealing a human element

(e.g., a hand, but never the face). In the public exhibition, visitors can select any monitor that plays the videos on loop, while using headphones to listen to the corresponding narrative.

Figure 105: Stories, video installation, Hamed Rashtian, 2019.

Figure 106: Stories, video installation, Hamed Rashtian, 2019.

240

Hooman Mortazavi (b. 1964) Graphic Designer, and Sculptor

Figure 107: Hooman Mortazavi, 2019; photo courtesy of the artist.

While Mortazavi’s creative practice in Iran does not incorporate video substantially—even in the capacity of informative artist’s video—his underground practice and his direct engagement with the perception of body politics is of significance in understanding a unique layer of underground art culture of Iran. Mortazavi’s practice can be divided into two main phases: pre- and post-return to Iran. As a graphic artist, he started his career in early 1990s. His move to the United States and his eventual residence in the West Coast, first in San Francisco, and then Los Angeles, provided him with the 241 opportunity to thrive as a talented designer. In the early 2010s, Mortazavi returned to

Iran, a decision which was twofold, as it allowed him to remain tethered to the location that he knew best, while providing him with the chance to live close to his parents.

Mortazavi maintains that his intention in returning to Iran had nothing to do with nationalism or homesickness, as it was more a matter of being within a space which you can comprehend better than any alternative location you may inhabit.233

Nevertheless, his sculpting career became more well-defined upon his return to

Iran. He self-identifies as a “junk collector,” often finding inspiration in the objects he finds. His projects are socially and culturally conscious, and he is often bold in tackling controversial issues such as body politics, and traditional masculinity. As a result, most of his sculpting projects remain in his personal archive, without the possibility of public showcasing. Here, I will discuss a grand-scale project of his, namely “Pashm,” which started in 2010, and is ongoing at the moment.

233 Hooman Mortazavi in discussion with the author, May 2019. 242

Figure 108: Pashm, Hooman Mortazavi, 2010-present.

refers both to wool or fur of certain animals, and to body hair (پشم) In Iran, Pashm in men. In the contemporary pop culture of the country, it is also used to refer to unwanted body hair on the female body, which is culturally supposed to be waxed or made invisible otherwise. In Mortazavi’s application, Pashm has a strictly masculine connotation, whereby he uses his own chest hair to dress a variety of objects and subjects in his masculinity. When the project started in 2010, Mortazavi’s bitter, yet comic, symbolism specifically targeted cultural icons and memorabilia of Iran. For instance, two of the pieces—both of which have been sold since—incorporate the cypress tree (a symbol of martyrs’ immortality), and the collective image of “the bird, the candle, and the flower,” as a popular reference to the classic literary traditions of Iran. Mortazavi’s 243 cypress tree looks like a bonsai hybrid of the species, with the major alteration being the fact that it has a golden trunk and is covered in chest hair, instead of leaves. Similarly, the bird is covered by chest hair, instead of feathers, as it sits upon a golden branch surrounded by flowers drenched in gold. Mortazavi’s Pashm series additionally crosses over into another recent project of his, namely Time Heals All Wounds. In one of the pieces from this collection, he has created a clock face covered in his chest hair, which only counts seconds. As the dial turns, it sweeps over Mortazavi’s planted pashm.

Figure 109: Pashm, Hooman Mortazavi, 2010-present.

244

Figure 110: Pashm, Hooman Mortazavi, 2010-present.

Figure 111: Time Heals All Wounds, from the Pashm series, Hooman Mortazavi, 2019.

According to Mortazavi, his persistent use of his own body hair is a part the physical labor he endures for the creation of his art. However, I argue that in his patient 245 plucking of his body hair, he is also joining a discourse of pluralization, which I have previously discussed in terms of Safaei’s work. What distinguishes between Mortazavi and Safaei’s modes of pluralization is the fact that the former has used organic matter in extending his being (e.g., thoughts, ideas, etc.) to an audience. Furthermore, I contend that Mortazavi’s use of his body hair to cover various objects functions as a metaphor of the way patriarchy has reigned over the Iranian society after the Islamic Revolution.

246

CHAPTER 5: CREATIVE PROJECT

In this chapter, I present the creative component of my Ph.D. dissertation, namely a short video piece, titled Heideh: A Return. In the video, I use rotoscope animation sequences as the main visual narrative, a symbolic representation of Hayedeh (1942-

1990) the exiled diva of post-revolution Iran. The animated sequence of Hayedeh is shaped around her constant desire for an impossible return to her homeland. However, I intercept this melancholic sequence via voice-over, as I weave my personal musings on the concepts of home, memory, and return into the visual narrative.

Introduction

In December 2016, my husband and I traveled to Iran to see our families after almost 20 months apart. As we both needed to return to the US before the beginning of the Spring semester, the short trip provided a rapid fire of imagery and associations that I documented in my journal. The evening before our flight back to Columbus, Ohio, I went on an urban adventure with my mother, my sister, and my uncle (my mother’s brother).

We ended up visiting the old neighborhood where my maternal grandparents lived until

1994. My grandmother died the following year, and I had personally not visited that neighborhood since her memorial service. In my random return to the physical site of my most pleasant childhood memories, my vivid memories of the space from the perspective of a seven-year-old girl with a small frame merged onto my real life return as a 28-year- old woman.

On the flight home (as in home away from home), and as we waited for our connecting flight to Columbus, I continued to write in my journal about the experience of 247 that particular return, as well as the return to our life in Athens. A week after returning to the US, I started working on a narrative on the concept of home, starting with detailed descriptive accounts of four locations, namely my childhood home, my maternal and paternal grandparents’ homes, and the neighborhood in which I lived until the age of 10.

While writing a descriptive account of each room or space within these locations, I emailed them to my parents in Iran, asking them to read through the texts and add any notes they wish to the margins.

As my parents sent me back their drafts, some via email and some in print, I started to piece together a visual re-creation of the spaces, a project that is ongoing at the moment. While my narrative is intentionally built around the concept of space, the association of certain memories with spatial elements have made frequent appearances in my writing. Within this, I found Hayedeh’s music to be a common auditory cue that often immediately follows the recollection of specific memories. While I meticulously engaged with spatial memory recreation through writing and drawing, I decided to produce a creative treatment of Hayedeh’s performance in an abstract visual context. I drew outlines of the singer’s face on tracing paper, which I then photographed for a test sequence. In the test sequence, I additionally experimented with placing the drawings, first in clear liquids, and then in ink, as I photographed them in two-second intervals. The test sequence was far from what I had envisioned for the project.

Initially I planned to produce a feature documentary film—I, Setareh—as the creative component of my dissertation. I started the pre-production of the documentary

(e.g., location scouting, crewing, etc.) during my last visit to Iran in Summer 2018. 248

However, as I was unable to secure the required budget, I postponed the production of the film, and decided to reconsider the content of my creative chapter. I returned to my notes, as I reconsidered the video piece within the broader scope of my dissertation research. I revised the original idea by identifying Hayedeh’s music as a manifestation of the post- memory associated with the Islamic Revolution. In the following section, I will discuss how my personal experience of post-memory merged into Heideh’s narrative.

Heideh: A Return: Post-Memory in Contemporary Iran

When I was a little girl, a portable SONY radio, a 14-inch monochrome Shahab

television set, and a SONY radio cassette-recorder boom box took turns (ش هاب) entertaining my family. My mother was particularly fond of the radio, and she would listen to certain programs as she did her morning routines. Since I never went to kindergarten or preschool, I spent most mornings of the first six years of my life listening to the radio with my mother. The boom box was a later addition (purchased in 1991 or

1992), when the possession of cassettes became a less dangerous offense. At the time the

IRIB had only two channels and the broadcast of children’s programs was restricted to short time slots. So the boom box turned into a primary form of entertainment at my home.

My first memories of hearing songs by female vocals are of mornings, when I would play on the front deck, as my mother listened to Hayedeh. There were other voices too that came later in the form of newer mix tapes. But Hayedeh’s songs were often full of specific descriptions of her melancholia for love, home, and an impossible return.

When I asked my mother why the songs were so sad, she told me an age-appropriate 249 story of the revolution. For me, the story of Hayedeh’s longing for home, merged into my mother’s longing for her family, particularly her mother, who lived five hours away in

Tehran. As I grew older, with each age-appropriate story my parents told me, I kept building up a narrative of life before me. This narrative was quite different of the historical narrative that was taught to me at school. Spring cleaning was one of my favorite times of the year, both because I was too little to have to help, and because my father’s vintage newspaper archive would have to be dusted. The archive comprised of

newspaper, which my father had (ا العات) hundreds of pre-revolution issues of Ettelaat carefully bound and preserved. I spent hours reading the giant newspaper book, looking at photos of celebrities, including Hayedeh, or any other photo that showed a recent history that felt hundreds of years away from the present moment.

What further enhanced my sense of disconnection from a history that had shaped the present moment of my life, was the fact that Hayedeh was dead. It did not matter how many times my father explained how audio is recorded and preserved in cassette tapes. I was quite aware that I was hearing a voice that reached beyond the grave, as it continued to long for a return home. While I continued to be fascinated by that experience of longing for home, I was not able to identify with it, especially because in my personal life, I tended to move in the opposite direction of any sense of belonging, as reflected in my voice-over narrative.

Production

For the production of the video piece, I used my cellphone to re-photograph short clips Hayedeh’s solo performances. After transferring the short clips to my computer, I 250 used Adobe Premier Pro software to edit them into a monochrome montage sequence of her most expressive moments, that draw attention to her eyes and lips in particular. I exported the sequence as individual images, meaning that for each second of video footage, I would have 24 images (each having been one frame in the 24 frame per second rate of playback). I ended up with 216 images, which I then divided into nine groups

(each containing 24 images) that represent a state of mind or an expression of fear, happiness, or pain. I duplicated the images (to a total of 432 images), which I then printed on A4 paper. The images are still divided in the same nine categories, while each one is a looped sequence starting with image number 1 to image number 24, followed by a countdown of images from number 23 to 1.

I started the manual processing of the images in November 2018, using a number of different methods, techniques, and materials, with the objective of highlighting the concept or expression in each sequence. Fear, for instance is conveyed in a sequence that

I also associate with censorship, particularly of women’s voice in Iran. In this sequence, black lines created by magic markers start to cover Hayedeh’s mouth and face, eventually encompassing the entire space other than parts of her face. The thick black lines created by magic markers are reminiscent of the early censorship of cultural product after the

Islamic Revolution (e.g., nudes in art history books). The sequence is interrupted by the sound of the 1980s airstrike siren that would prompt Iranian citizens to seek shelter in their basements. Upon hearing the siren, the video freezes, then rewinds, before cutting to the next sequence.

251

Figure 112: Screengrab from Hayedeh’s re-photographed clip.

After the manual processing of the images, I re-photographed them using a copy stand.234 I then imported re-photographed images into Adobe Premier, arranging them into nine sequences that can be digitally edited.

I recorded two versions of my personal narrative, once as a continuous monologue, and a second time with pauses at indicated intervals. I broke down the voice- over audio file in correspondence to the visual rhythm of the animated sequence. In doing so, I weave two audio threads together: the first one is my voice-over of a poetic narrative based on my childhood memories and the post-memory of war. The second narrative is an audio assemblage that consists of distorted excerpts of Hayedeh’s songs, soundbites of control keys on an old boom box cassette player, and radio static.

In designing the soundscape of Heideh, I collaborated with fellow scholar-artist and my husband, Shahriar Shafiani (b. 1987). An avid electric guitar player, Shafiani

234 A copy stand is a surface, usually a light table, with an adjustable arm on which cameras can be mounted over the surface of the table at the desired angle. 252 incorporated tuned down distorted noises and scratches into the basic soundscape of

Heideh. He additionally polished the sound of the video piece using the Adobe Audition software, matching all audio elements to their corresponding visual cues.

Figure 113: manually processed image from Hayedeh, 2019.

Figure 114: manually processed image from Hayedeh, 2019. 253

Figure 115: manually processed image from Hayedeh, 2019.

Figure 116: manually processed image from Hayedeh, 2019.

Statement

Hayedeh: A Return

In paying homage to one of the iconic divas of Iranian pop music, Heideh: A

Return offers an abstract experimental account of life in post-revolution Iran. The 254 experimental treatment of sound and image, defamiliarizes these two elements from those belonging to Hayedeh (1942-1990) to more general expressions of happiness, sadness, fear, and pain. In doing so, Heideh is an exploration of the concept of post-memory as a shared state of chronic grief, often belonging to a generation that grew up dominated not by traumatic events, but by narrative accounts of trauma preceding their births. 255

CONCLUSION

In offering a revisionist historical narrative, this dissertation has followed three main arguments. First, I have argued that the Islamic Revolution of Iran created a break between the public and private spheres of life in Iran. In previous chapters, I have investigated this break as the cause for the formation of an underground culture in the country. Second, I have argued that this underground culture has acted as the chrysalis for the formation of an expanded cinema, pioneered by female artists. Third, I have argued that the contemporary expanded cinema of Iran has initiated a progressive discourse in body politics, particularly with regard to the female body.

Understanding Iranian expanded cinema and the female-specific tradition it caters to will not be possible without an awareness of the country’s social, cultural, and media landscapes. By providing a wide range of examples and case studies, I have attempted to offer a realistic representation of contemporary Iran, from an objective academic point of view. However, as a scholar-artist born and raised in Iran, my authorial function in this dissertation at times doubles as the provider of an eyewitness account to history.

Nevertheless, in offering insight regarding the events or experiences discussed in the text,

I have restricted my contribution to providing facts, rather than personal or emotional musings, which in turn have been discussed independently in Chapter 5.

In understanding expanded cinema, a constant awareness is required of the fact that expanded cinema does not necessarily entail cinema, particularly not in its traditional sense. In this vein, it is a fluid term—a genre, a category, and an arena—that encompasses various modes of artistic, creative, and academic production. What makes 256 expanded cinema an appropriate object of study is that its fluidity allows for the application of established academic methodology to ephemeral subject matter that may appear trivial in the contemporary context. For instance, in the tsunami of Instagram videos and memes that are often forgotten as quickly as they go viral, the montage of a group of dancing clerics with Adele’s song, Someone Like You, may not reach beyond temporary entertainment. But given the cultural context of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in hindsight, the video functions as proof of the decline in religious authority in Iran.235

In the 1980s and 1990s, satirical treatments of religious authorities were quite unwelcome, and could lead to serious consequences if they became public. In fact, insulting the clergy—in particular, high ranking politicians, such as the supreme leader— is a serious offense in Iran, categorized under the blasphemy law. Therefore, the publication of such media in contemporary Iran is in itself a form of resistance that functions by demystifying the authority of fundamentalist theocrats. In comparison to these videos that have an ephemeral function unless historicized in writing or research, video art and artist’s video have a deeper influence.

On one hand, these progressive videos are preserved methodically in archives, particularly because they form the individual history of each artist. Moreover, as the artists seek to interact with the international art world, their works become a part of a larger archive that surpasses physical or political borders. On the other hand, by addressing or treating problematic or controversial subject matter (e.g., body politics), they challenge the authority that has deemed them publicly inappropriate. This is the

235 Adele and Dan Wilson, “Someone Like You,” in 21, XL Recordings, 2011, digital download. 257 most important function of the feminist expanded cinema of Iran, to reveal what traditional patriarchy has banished to the underground, and to stitch together the public and private spheres of life in Iran, thus normalizing the social role of women as independent capable subjects.

While I remained focused on historicizing women’s expanded cinema, I approached male artists that facilitate the wider reception of this cinema. The perspective provided by Hamed Rashtian, and Hooman Mortazavi, for instance, reveals that within the traditional patriarchal society of Iran—which informs its artist community as well— there are male artists who resist the dominant masculinist traditions. Rashtian acknowledges the fact that the art scene of Iran is discriminatory towards women, maintaining that as a man he finds this unacceptable. In a similar vein, Mortazavi speaks of the way the masculinist culture of Iran desires to own women, with the intention of molding them into mere objects. In covering various symbolic objects in his chest hair,

Mortazavi is not celebrating his prowess as a man. He is in fact making a sarcastic comment about the way patriarchy has used masculinity to consume the Iranian culture.

The presence of progressivie male artists such as Rashtian and Mortazavi in Iran may not be a necessary prerequisite for the feminist expanded cinema. But it does widen the scope for the further expansion of that cinema by creating socio-culturally conscious art that makes gender equality a more accessible concept.

The significance of a feminist expanded cinema can also be understood from another pragmatic angle. In previous chapters, I have spoken of the failure of collective action in post-revolution Iran. I specifically utilized Kiarostami’s iconic film, First Case, 258

Second Case (1980), as an example that demonstrates the lack of dialogue between revolutionary factions to be the main reason for this failure. Following the revolution, and the rigorous cultural and political purging of oppositional factions (e.g., communists), organizing any reformist collective action became a near impossible task. The crackdown of reformist campaigns, such as the Green Movement (2009-2010), is testimony to this claim.

As the collective fails, individual agency has become the main vessel of hope for the Iranian society. Within this, the individual agency demonstrated by the contemporary women of Iran deserves recognition. One of the factions betrayed by the Islamic revolution of 1979 was the burgeoning feminist movement of Iran, which was forced to abandon its campaign for the equal rights of men and women, and regress to the basic level of fighting for the choice of public dress code. As the war broke between Iran and

Iraq and Iranian citizens learned to run to their basements or other underground shelters during airstrikes, egalitarian reformists too sought shelter in the metaphorical space of the underground. I argue that the progressivist feminism of contemporary Iran is an entirely new discourse founded upon the principle of individual agency.

I consider women’s expanded cinema and progressivist feminism in contemporary Iran to be two sister movements that are in constant dialogue. Underground art may not have the possibility for appropriate public exposure in Iran, but it materializes concepts that political and legal discourses of Iran refuse to recognize. The academic investigation of contemporary underground art of Iran provides a context for such recognition. The recent passing of a bill that restricts the sale and purchase of acid in Iran 259 is an instance of feminist revisionism bearing fruit in the legal realm. Marzieh Ebrahimi, and acid attack survivor, utilized media presence as a tool for her legal campaign. In doing so, she provided an open arena for contribution, whereby artists and activists joined forces to pressure the parliament into addressing the issue.

In a similar vein, as I have previously discussed the archive as a historical entity with a destabilizing potential. For this, the archive functions as an invaluable tool at the disposal of any progressivist feminist discourse, particularly the one initiated via the contemporary expanded cinema of Iran. Within this, the collective is secondary to the individual, as an organization of a collective progressivist feminist movement under a traditional patriarchal regime is a perilous task with no guaranteed results. Under such circumstances, efforts by individual contemporary artists and scholars not only pave the way for the formation of new discourses, but also enhance the potential for spontaneous alliances along the way. Thus, the synergy between the individual movements within expanded cinema functions as an alternative to traditional forms of collective action.

Based on this premise, for the contemporary socio-cultural landscape of Iran, I argue that progressive feminist action encompasses any form of contribution to discourses or dialogues that challenge, destabilize, and criticize patriarchy without necessarily antagonizing it. This could be in the form of scholarly material that historicize and critique contemporary art of Iran, or by engaging in dialogue to form alliances with male subjects, such as Mortazavi and Rashtian, who are aware of the discrimination central to masculinist patriarchy and at times consciously resist it. 260

In my conversation with Rashtian, we specifically spoke about the difficult relationship between Iranian artists and the ministry of culture. Rashtian informed that— in addition to the existing processes required for obtaining exhibition or distribution permits—the ministry now requires all artists who are shipping their work abroad to obtain a special permit: “this is ridiculous... [Because] there is a process, and the customs department checks everything. It is obvious what is being sent. I see no logic in the requirement for permits from the ministry, except for the fact that it makes things very difficult for us.”236 However, Rashtian suggests that the randomness of such decisions made by the ministry often mean they will be short-lived. Under these circumstances, the dedication of Iranian artists to their creative practice deserves recognition. Therefore, the individual artworks (physical or virtual) that leave Iran for international exhibitions function as relics: pieces that have passed through many legal and administrative obstacles, to reach an audience that willfully receives and acknowledges them.

In recent years, the subjective agency of individual artists who have established their careers while still based in Iran has encouraged the formation of new collectives. An example of this form of contribution is Tavakolian’s endorsement of the Sheed Social

Documentary Photography Award in Tehran, Iran:

The idea for Sheed was not mine, but a couple of years after it was established, I went there and expressed interest in supporting them. I thought that as an independent award, Sheed was an important event in the arena of documentary photography of Iran, because it was the only independent award offered in recognition of social documentary photography. As you know well, social documentary photography in Iran does not receive the recognition it deserves, [especially in comparison to other countries]. I found Sheed to be an appropriate

236 My interview with Hamed Rashtian, 2019; see appendix. 261

platform, so I donated a 13’000 Euros of my award money [from the Carmignac Foundation] to Sheed, so that they could be financially independent. With that decision, my intention was to promote their independence as a respectable social agency, so they wouldn’t have to ask for meager funds from state institutions.237

Tavakolian went on to explain that Sheed is not merely an award ceremony: “it is a platform for networking, where photographers get together for a few days, attend workshops with career photojournalists.”238 Therefore, every year, Sheed functions as a hub for many young photographers who travel to Tehran from their hometowns to attend the events. Photographers network at these events, as they discuss their work and support each other within the social documentary photography community of Iran, which

Tavakolian describes as “a small family.”239 Additionally, Sheed offers annual grants to support the award winners to continue or complete their projects:

[it] is a small effort in the interest of social documentary photojournalism in Iran, because there is great potential for it here. This is especially important, because [without a platform for social documentary photojournalism] photographers will gravitate towards issues that appeal to a Western audience […] And it leaves a hole in historical discourses that have been addressing contemporary issues in Iran, but have not been documented in images. 240

237 My interview with Newsha Tavakolian, 2019; see appendix. 238 My interview with Newsha Tavakolian, 2019; see appendix. 239 Ibid. 240 Ibid. 262

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Alanshore, The House Is Black,Vimeo Video, 21: 23, 2015.

https://vimeo.com/136522352

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269

APPENDIX

Filmography (production year)

Enghelab-Azadi and Azadi-Enghelab, (2018), Nastaran Safaei. In Tehran and To Tehran (2017-2018), Nastaran Safaei. Self-Constructed Heaven (2017), Nastaran Safaei. High Heels (2017), Nastaran Safaei. .Mohammad Hossein Mahdavian ,(2016 ,ایستاده در غبار) Standing in the Dust .Farahnaz Sharifi ,(2016 ,نیمی از ما) Half of Us Kanoon (2015), Khatereh Khodaei. Ain’t My Home (2015), Siavash Naghshbandi. 30 (2013), Nastaran Safaei. .KAJART ,(2013 ,آقای پست) Mr. Mean .Arash Ashtiani ,(2013 ,پیش درآمد) Prelude Zolf (2007), Hamed Safaei. Killing of Mad Dogs (2001), Bahram Beyzai. Women’s Prison (2000), Manijeh Hekmat. Journey to Chazzabeh (1996), Rasoul Mollagholipoor. The Rescued (1995), Rasoul Mollagholipoor. Navayi (1994), Ramin Heydari Faroughi. The Chronicles of Victory (1986-1994), Morteza Avini. .Mehdi Fakhimzadeh ,(1993 , همسر Spouse (in Farsi The Lead (1988), Masoud Kimiai. First Case, Second Case (1980), Abbas Kiarostami. Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), Martha Rosler. The House is Black (1962), Forough Farrokhzad. A Fire (1961), Ebrahim Golestan. Haji Agha, the Cinema Actor (1933), Ovanes Ohanian. Lor Girl (1932), Ardeshir Irani.

270

Interviews

Newsha Tavakolian (b. 1981) Photojournalist

SK: let’s talk about your shift from hard news photojournalism to conceptual art. We started working together around the time of that shift, and it has been almost a decade since. How do you see that change now?

NT: you know well that the shift was not voluntary. I had no choice but to change my approach to photography, because at the time [2009-2010 in particular] it was hardly possible to work in hard news photojournalism in Iran. [In hindsight] I think the shift was going to happen in my career, but the circumstances of that period forced my hand, and the shift happened much earlier than I anticipated. In the contemporary arena of photography, it is no longer enough to capture a moment. Until 15 years ago, that still worked; to be [the one] who captures images of what transpires around them. But because of the rapid changes that happened in photography [as a discipline], photographers had to catch up with the new world. And I was no exception.

[…] In my work, my primary concern is reflecting on social issues in different countries, especially Iran. [In 2009-2010] it wasn’t possible for me to make the shift quickly and create a fantasy world of photography. I was quite committed to the primary function of photography, i.e., documentation. But in order to continue my work, and to ensure that the audience would follow it avidly, I had to make some changes [which pertain to] the language of my photography [becoming] subtle and metaphorical. [The shift] was about the form in which you materialize your idea. [The primary concern] is no longer taking a

“good” photo with the perfect light, saturation, and composition. The idea and the 271 concept of the work should surpass the aesthetics of the image […]. I should mention another shift that happened in my earlier work—2006 or 2007—with my project Mothers of Martyrs. [The shift was] to incorporate visual metaphors in my work, so that they could reveal things that I could not demonstrate openly [for various reasons].

In general, some changes in my work were involuntary in that they were imposed upon me. But in hindsight, that change and the pressure that caused me to commit to it worked to my benefit eventually. I was not the first photojournalist to make the shift, but among a group of my peers who made the shift by committing completely to conceptual art, I was one of the few photojournalists who [using the innovative way I just described] continued in documentary photography.

SK: you were already established as a serious photojournalist at the time. So I wonder how the shift changed the reception of your work.

NT: in Iran, my work was not well received or understood at all. There was a lot of harsh criticism directed at me and my work. Of course, I had support too, but my colleagues were all confused, wondering what had happened and what I was trying to convey. But now, after more than 10 years, they are also starting to venture into this [conceptual] direction, because they realize that pure hard news photojournalism—which prioritizes the capturing of moments—is no longer effective.

Hard news photojournalism is a crucial genre of photography, because it documents the history of the world, and that is very important. But at the same time, all photographers should have their personal projects, in which there are no rules, red lines, or other restrictions imposed in the professional world. [Under such circumstances] you can 272 approach and document your subject in any way you see fit, expressing your individual worldview, and influencing your audience.

In Blank Pages, I wanted to talk about the youth who were born after the Islamic

Revolution, or spent their early childhood in its aftermath. There is one particular subject,

Ali, who is a bit older, but fought in the [Iraq-Iran] war at 16. So that means he was born before the revolution. But with the revolution, and the things that happened to Ali were all caused by the revolution that had happened earlier. I think that the generations born in the 1980’s [and the late 1970’s]—have been the agents of numerous grand changes in

Iran and they have a lot to say. They are not discussed much, […] but in my opinion, they have caused a lot of socio-cultural, and maybe political, transformations. And I wanted to speak of the generation that brought on all of these transformations.

In addition, since my childhood, I have had an obsession with photo albums, because I never had a [personal] photo album as a child. And I think that a photo album has a lot to say [about its owner]. But in Iran, as I looked at various photo albums, I realized that after a certain age—roughly between 10 to 12—reality comes to replace the fantasy world of the photos created by parents for their children. Maybe parents no longer have the time or the inspiration and energy to document their children’s life, let alone filling the rest of the album with photos of their later life as teenagers and youth. And that is what I attempted in my project.

So there were a number of ideas behind the project, such as social concerns of the youth—and myself as the creator of the project, or the mentality of these people, in the way they make sense of the conditions of their life and learn to express them. I wanted to 273 show the world of these people without influencing their narrative or staging the scene for them. […] So capturing realities was central to the project. Furthermore, my position entailed a form of zoom-back, whereby [I looked at] a society from a distance. […] Each of the youth that I followed for the project [represents] millions of others that are living in the same conditions in Iran.

SK: how do you see body politics in Iran? how does its general perception affect your work, and what is your approach to it?

NT: for me, in Iran, body politics is a strange concept, because the entirety of the body in

Iran—regardless of gender—is a form of politics. It is “body as politics here,” and that is really important.241 And it is more problematic for women, because in Iran there are rules that completely restrict the woman’s body. It is as if the woman’s body is a political arena: a war zone, where everyone has something at stake, and stick the flags that represent their ideas in the woman’s body. It is a very sensitive subject in Iran. But unfortunately, from a visual point of view, [the representation of body politics] becomes quite cliché, because of hijab (whether it’s manteaux and scarf, or chador).

[…] Unfortunately, works by contemporary photographers who have approached this issue of body as politics is very stereotypical and sentimental, which are the elements that

I consciously try to avoid in my work. So [body politics] in its visual sense does not really work for me; instead, I write about it. It is a concern for me [to ask questions like] what is nudity in Iran? In the past—even until 100 years ago—there were nude sculpture

241 The interview was conducted in Farsi, but the phrase in quotes is Tavakolian’s English intervention in her own speech. 274 in Iran. Nudity is a foundation in the arts. And [in a social context] there are women who utilize their nudity in protest, thus giving it a political function as well. So I think it is important for us to talk about it here [in Iran].

In my research, I have realized that nudity in Iran has often been [a function of] the underground, because of religious and cultural concerns. Therefore, poets would visualize nudity using words, contributing to a discourse of nudity via words, rather than images. In a similar vein, the visual representation of nudity has never been of interest to me. I don’t want to mention any names, but there are many photographers who have attempted to do so, only ending up with stereotypical images.

Women are central to my work, but—particularly after project Listen—my work has become less gender-oriented. I have gravitated more toward human concerns, and the sense of [existential] stuckness in a state of purgatory, which encompasses women, men, children, animals, and the earth. My work is about all of these things. My intention has never been to become the photographer who only works on women’s issues, because that is not true. The subjects that I choose are quite global, even though they may be happening in Iran now. When someone else, in a different corner of the world looks at my photo, they can personally identify with it. That’s what I care about: creating work that surpasses borders, and cannot be confined to a specific geography. Perhaps from a visual standpoint, when you see an image from Iran, because of the [unique] dress code, you can tell the location. But once you immerse yourself in the concept, you can look beyond visual cues like hijab, at the stories of people and the world they inhibit. 275

SK: we have talked about the transformation and evolution of your career during the decade that is about to end (2010-2010). I see two significant events bookending this decade for you, the first being your imposed shift from hard news photojournalism to conceptual documentary photography, the second being your recent membership at the prestigious Magnum Photo Agency. We have already discussed the former at length.

Now let us talk about Magnum, in particular, the article in which you were the only nominee whose nationality had been mentioned.

NT: I want to start by saying that people are lazy, and they want to box you in categories, so they won’t have to think critically. So [the West has these keywords,] Newsha,

Iranian, hijab, the Middle East, oil, and so on, which it uses as tags in creating identities for people. But I think that we are to blame for this as well. I will start with myself: when

I first started to work internationally, I didn’t pay specific attention to these issues and I wasn’t that sensitive to them. Of course, it was partly because I was very young and not quite aware of what was happing [in the international mediascape]. So I don’t think we can singularly blame the Western world or audience. We are at fault too, and within that, some people willingly embrace labels, because it garners them exposure and a shortcut to celebrity. I never cared for that [kind of exposure]. I have always tried to express myself in my work, so that it can be the object of discussion (as opposed to my personal life, my gender, my appearance, etc.).

I am very sensitive about my work. I don’t have my work published extensively. […] I am very sensitive about the captions and titles that are used for my photos when they are going to illustrate the texts written by others. It’s a preventative measure so that others 276 cannot put their words in my mouth. I think each individual should understand this responsibility and fight against [misrepresentations].

There was an article on The Guardian, about women photographers at Magnum, including me. The article mentioned nothing about my work, instead writing that Newsha

Tavakolian lives in Iran and has to wear the hijab, as in she is not as free as other

Magnum women. It was really upsetting. I sent an email to Magnum, because when things like that happen, I react fast, never opting to remain mum. So I think it is the individual who establishes the way people can talk about them.

SK: I have always had much admiration for the way you make time to support other photographers, especially the younger generation that follows your work, and is influenced by it. Can you tell me about the Sheed Award and your involvement in it?

NT: the idea for Sheed was not mine, but a couple of years after it was established, I went there and expressed interest in supporting them. I thought that as an independent award,

Sheed was an important event in the arena of documentary photography of Iran, because it was the only independent award offered in recognition of social documentary photography. As you know well, social documentary photography in Iran does not receive the recognition it deserves, [especially in comparison to other countries]. I found

Sheed to be an appropriate platform, so I donated a 13’000 Euros of my award money

[from the Carmignac Foundation] to Sheed, so that they could be financially independent.

With that decision, my intention was to promote their independence as a respectable social agency, so they wouldn’t have to ask for meager funds from state institutions. 277

Sheed is not just an award ceremony; it is a platform for networking, where photographers get together for a few days, attend workshops with career photojournalists.

Many photographers travel to Tehran from their hometowns to attend the events. And this interaction between those photographers and their peers in Tehran is facilitated via Sheed.

They discuss their work and support each other within the small social documentary photography family that has been shaped [around Sheed].

After I made the donation, we created an annual grant program. The amount of the grants offered annually is not too considerable, but it supports the winners to continue or complete their projects. Sometimes we give them a subject to cover. For instance, two years ago, the subject was the environment, which led to an exhibition and it got a lot of exposure. [Sheed] is a small effort in the interest of social documentary photojournalism in Iran, because there is great potential for it here in Iran. This is especially important, because [without a platform for social documentary photojournalism in Iran] photographers will gravitate towards issues that appeal to a Western audience and that opens a can of worms, in terms of misconceptions or misrepresentations. And that leaves a hole in historical discourses that have been addressing contemporary issues in Iran, but have not been documented in images.

Jinous Nazokkar (b. 1975) Author and feminist film scholar

Born in Sanandaj, located in Kurdistan province in Northwestern Iran. She holds a master’s degree in Persian Language and Literature, and is currently a Ph.D. student in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Hamburg, Germany. From 2007 until

2013, Nazokkar worked at the Iranian Academy of the Arts (IAA) in Tehran, as a 278 writer, researcher, and editor. Nazokkar was the writer of several radio programs produced by the IAA, including Women and Cinema, the Woman in Shahnameh series. Her two monographs, Forough: The Point of Convergence between Poetry and Cinema and The Role of Women in the Cinematic Literature of Iran: Before and

After the Islamic Revolution, published respectively in the years 2014 and 2015 are of particular importance for the purposes of this dissertation.

SK: let’s talk about the book first. How long did it take to compose it, and how long was it stuck at the ministry?

JN: I think I should mention that the book we are discussing was a part of my master’s degree thesis. The other part of my thesis research was published as a separate book, Forough: The Point of Convergence between Poetry and Cinema and

The Role of Women in the Cinematic Literature of Iran: Before and After the Islamic

Revolution. The composition of the book—from forming an initial idea, to conducting extensive research, and finally producing a manuscript—took about two years. I successfully defended my project in 2005, when Mahmood Ahmadinejad was the president of Iran. It was a really dark time. I did not expect the process of evaluation and review of my book at the ministry of culture to take years. During those six years, I had a lot of difficulty obtaining the publishing permit and received disappointing comments. Eventually, I signed a contract with Ghatreh Publishing, and the request for the publication of two separate books based on my work was sent to the ministry. During the following three-year period, the books The Role of

Women and Forough were banned by the ministry, respectively five and three times. 279

After the end of Ahmadinejad’s presidency and the few changes that were made in review processes and committees during Rouhani’s first term in office, my publisher started to follow-up on my book once again. After many complaints, eventually the second book was permitted to be published without alterations, while the first book would be reviewed again for publishing if I agreed to omit 30 specific passages from it. We appealed the decision, and the number of “problematic” passages was reduced to seven. After 11 years of waiting, the books were published in 2015.

The seven omissions amounted to the elimination of 11 pages of the book, in addition to some of the images. These pages were specifically about two of the prominent women of Iranian cinema, ladies Mary Apick (b. 1954) and Shohreh

Aghdashloo (b. 1952). These two women, both international stars, were significant in the evolution of the representation of women in Iranian cinema.242 So it was necessary to write about their contribution.

I would like to mention two of the 30 specific problematic passages listed by the book committee of the ministry, which target free thought and slaughter our culture:

must be deleted from all passages; and, 2) passages (معشوقه) ”the word “lover (1 about the film Cheshmeh (1973) must be removed. Directed by Arbi Avanesian, this film was one of the most controversial films in the history of Iranian cinema. The passage the ministry took issue with was about an enlightening quote by Jesus

Christ, which I had used in my interpretation of the film; in that quote, Jesus

242 Apick starred in Deadend (1978) which premiered in the 10th Moscow Film Festival, where she won best lead actress; and Aghdashloo was nominated for an Oscar for the best supporting actress in A House of Sand and Fog (2003). 280 metaphorically addresses those who judge others and decide to stone Mary

Magdalene: “… very well, throw stones until she perishes; but the first stone should be thrown by the one who has not sinned…” When I contacted the ministry to inquire about this comment, they informed me that they took issue with the notion of

“stoning,” which is an act embraced and supported by Islamic law. However, fortunately, they relented after hearing my argument that because Jesus is a prophet accepted and respected by Islam as the initiator of a legitimate religion, then his word is timeless and irrefutable, so it should not be deleted from my book.

I mention these examples to shed light on the tediously long and exhausting process of getting my book published.

At the time, I was a graduate student based in Sanandaj in Kurdistan province. It was very difficult to gain access to resources, especially archived work from the pre- revolution era. The eight-hour commute between Sanandaj and Tehran was an unfortunate necessity during the time. It was easier to access illegal films in

Sanandaj, compared to Tehran, because similar to other border towns in Iran, it is easier to find people who secretly import, publish, and distribute cultural material.

My quest sometimes led me to strange locations on the ground and underground. I believe that these small communities have a significant impact on the formation of my books. For Forough, these people provided wonderful support by facilitating my access to the complete and uncensored collection of her poems, published originally in Germany, and in circulation as an offset edition in underground Iran. 281

SK: You have categorized the content of your book in two periods separated by the

Islamic Revolution. The first part examines the role of women against the evolution of Iranian cinema on a decade by decade basis. The second part considers an approximately 20-year period (between 1986-2005). What were your criteria for this classification? Can we differentiate between the representations of women before and after the war?

JN: well, the book is shaped around the role and characterization of women in the

“cinematic literature” or “scripts” in Iranian cinema. Of course, it is impossible to consider such subjects out of their temporal context. Time is of utmost value in clarifying, teaching, and revealing. […] So in my categorization, I looked at the pre- and post-revolution eras as two completely different periods with obvious cultural, political, economic, and social implications, all of which factor into the presence of women (e.g., representation, characterization, etc.) in Iran’s cinema.

My first step was doing research and gathering data. I reached for various resources, written or visual, that I could find. In my initial field work, I realized that there is satisfactory access to books, articles, and journals that contain reliable information about Iranian cinema prior to the revolution and immediately after the war (1980s).

But unfortunately, from that point on, there was a clear lack of literature, and I felt that this lacuna would be extremely challenging to deal with. Additionally, the limited material that was available was marred by censorship, oppression, and ideological conservativism of post-revolution era, […] meaning that finding objective points of view would be a difficult task, if not impossible. 282

[…] in any case, the increased presence of women in the “filmmaking and script- writing” scenes of Iranian cinema was a significant development in the 1980s, which accelerated during the next two decades, reaching its peak in the early 2000s, when I started my research.

Since I intended to investigate the cinema of these women directors and writers, with specific attention to women’s representation and characterization, I decided to shift my direction slightly. Instead of continuing with the approach used for pre- revolution era, [for the post-revolution era] I focused on an examination of the role and status of four prominent female filmmakers in Iran, namely Pouran

Derakhshandeh (b. 1951), Rakhshan Banietemad (b. 1954), Tahmineh Milani (b.

1960), and Ensieh Shahoseini (B. 1954). All of these women write their own scripts, opting to represent familial, social, political, and ethnic issues and struggles in Iran.

I should also note that Shahoseini, Milani, and Derakhshandeh were quite supportive of my project, providing me with their unpublished scripts.

SK: can we differentiate between the role of women in the post-revolution, war, and post-war cinemas of Iran and the representations of women in the past two decades

(2000s and 2010s)?

JN: similar to all other art forms, the art-industry of cinema mirrors the social, political, cultural, and even economic conditions of the society it belongs to; and of course, any process that takes place within the context of time is constantly changing and transitioning. […] Cinema scholars considering the presence of women in

Iranian cinema, categorize it under three titles of “absence,” “minimal presence,” 283 and “strong presence.” Absence is the period that started immediately after the revolution in 1979 and continued for less than a decade. It was a period of extreme censorship and fear that amounted to the complete elimination of women from cinema. In minimal presence, again shorter than a decade (which lasted until the late

1980s), women are in the background, usually at home, and rarely appearing in key roles. “Strong Presence” starts in early 1990s with the increase in women’s presence, and their further involvement in the industry, in key roles both in front of the camera and behind it. The 9th Fajr Film Festival in 1990 dedicated certain programs to “cinema of women,” thus officiating their strong presence.

In general, because of the foundational changes of cinema [after the revolution], the cinema of 1980s Iran criticizes the “modern westernized woman” and cherishes the

“passive, fragile, vulnerable woman.” Among the numerous films produced between the years 1979 and 1987 to represent the revolutionary fight against the Pahlavi regime, or the encounters between political activists and SAVAK agents, there are very few productions that cast female characters, albeit in marginal roles. Similarly, in the war films produced between the years 1980 and 1989, once again we witness women who are “passive, marginal, and shadow-like.” Very few instances of active, confrontational, and vibrant women are seen in this cinema. There are only two films that offer realistic representations of “independent women.”

During the first half of the 1980s, the scarce representations of women portrayed them as near-sighted, jealous, and self-centered, who refuse to comply. But in the second half of the same decade, cinema starts to regard women and their relations 284 more objectively. […] In fact, I believe that once again, it was Bahram Beyzai who pioneered such representations of women. In the years after the war, with the reconsideration of cultural policies at the ministry of culture, we witnessed a gradual improvement in the representation of women vis-à-vis their social presence (in education, professional careers, etc.).

SK: how much do you think the cinema of Iran has paralleled Western cinema? I am specifically interested in the pre-revolution cinema, in terms of its avant-garde movements. It is the decade of revolutionary, political, and war-related notions.

JN: Perhaps the term paralleling is not an appropriate descriptor of the relationship between Iran’s cinema before the revolution with Western movements in film. But if we consider the core component of avant-gardism to be innovation and experimentation in creating a work of art, in a way that differentiates it from the common mainstream, and challenges the accepted social norms, we can identify such movement in the cinema of 1960s Iran, which extended into the New Wave in the 1970s.

There were influential figures who impacted the formation of these movements. Dr.

Hooshang Kavoosi, film scholar and filmmaker, and Farrokh Ghaffari (the founder of the non-mainstream and cultural cinema of Iran) are such figures. Both educated in France, they were quite well-versed in Western cinema, literature, and culture.

Kavoosi was the first person to use the term loop sequence, and later coined the term

“Filmfarsi” in reference to superficial commercial cinema of Iran. […] Ghaffari 285

,which was banned from public cinemas four days after it premiered جنوب شهر made because of its representation of the slums in the suburbs of Tehran.

[…] I believe that by making House is Black, Forough Farrokhzad became one of the trailblazers of the avant-garde/experimental or documentary cinema of Iran. The film is presented in an innovatively experimental context, utilizing symbolic and metaphorical layers of meaning to offer social criticism. Forough utilizes the monotonous life of the quarantined lepers as a metaphor of the conditions of individual, social, and political life in Iran. […]

In the late 1960s, and during the 1970s, the filmmakers of the “innovative cultural cinema” and the New Wave produced works that countered the commercial mainstream cinema and its clichés, setting foot on a path that may not compare to the dominant film movements in the West—such as avant-garde and experimental cinemas—but it warranted change.

SK: you named pioneers such as Farrokh Ghaffari, and Fereydoon Rahnama. How influential were they in defining the context for the presence or absence of women in cinema?

JN: while it is undeniable that these pioneers made significant contributions to the formation of an innovative cultural cinema in Iran, we have to admit that they were not able to counter the all-consuming tidal wave of the commercial cinema that preferred eroticism over anything else; a commercial cinema that was simultaneously in competition with foreign cinema that exported its films to Iran. In addition, some of these figures, such as Rahnama, were active in the non-narrative 286 or documentary cinemas, and they were not equipped to counter the force of commercial cinema.

SK: how do you define independent cinema in Iran? Where do women stand within that cinema?

JN: if we consider two components for the art-industry of cinema, one component will be the hardware or material—capital, sponsors, producers, etc.—and the other will be the abstract or software—scripts, ideas, etc. If funds are available or accessible, and the mind is liberated (i.e., does not belong to a specific ideology, or organizations that support that ideology via politics and power games), […] then we will have a cinema that is not the cultural extension of any governing body or political/ideological/theological thought system. Such cinema will use the possibility of the creation of art for the sake of art, in order to reveal an aesthetic perspective, and convey concepts or human experience. Of course, independent cinema may lean on private or public sector sponsors, but it still refuses to conform to the preconceived notions expected from it. This can happen in commercial or non-narrative cinema as well.

287

Nastaran Safaei (b. 1981) Sculptor and video artist

SK: does a work of art need to stand alone, or the statement or manifest has to be there to compliment it?

NS: I think that some works do not need an accompanying statement, but the existence of a statement helps. It reveals the idea behind the work. The work itself has to be visually coherent, of course, but statements do help a lot, in showing the concept or the idea better. Statement should be a text that helps the audience better understand the work. It shouldn’t be verbose, or poetic, or difficult. It has to be easy to understand so one can understand the work better.

SK: would you consider the statement to be a part of the work of art, rather than a plate that is temporarily attached to it at an exhibition?

NS: definitely.

SK: in our contemporary art scene, what position would you say you and the artist community around you hold?

NS: I really don’t know. Because we are part of this chaotic world, and I don’t know how influential we have been or can be in the future. Perhaps celebrities like singers, actors, or maybe poets and writers have a lot of influence. But in fine arts, I don’t know. I think that the art we have now is very much under the influence of the West. I don’t know how that has influenced the art of Iran. There are sculptors in Iran that do not have the required background or expertise; there are “artists” that have others produce their work, without having a hands-on involvement themselves. If this is an influence, it may not be a positive one. 288

SK: I know that early on in your career, you shifted from graphic design to sculpting. In addition to participating in Parviz Tanavoli’s workshop, what prompted you to make this shift, and stick with it? And what elements of graphic design, if any, are still present in your creative work?

NS: I’m not sure. Because at the time, I didn’t really have many choices in terms of what discipline to study. There weren’t that many disciplines to begin with. At high school, I did not study theory and science, and opted for graphic because it was one of the few choices available to art students. I did a lot of creative work, like pottery, for which I took a class for a while. I used to make sculptures with mud. And when I studied graphic at high school, I was educated about new materials and mediums, [such as] photography, print design, color foundations, sketching and drawing. But I still wanted to study sculpting in college. Unfortunately, at the time, only 20 undergraduate positions were available for sculpting candidates at the University of Tehran. And I was not a great student back then, always getting poor grades. So I didn’t get in. It [Summer 2001] was a particularly difficult time for those who took the exam with controversially low acceptance rates at state universities.

SK: Well I remember that there were many students without any creative background, who would switch from math and science to art in their pre-university year. Something that is still problematic, because their math scores boosts them up against art students who are not advanced in mathematics. And the practical exam only comes after the theory exam, which prevents many art students to showcase their creative skills. 289

NS: Yes, that was always an issue, and still is. So with my score, I only managed to get into an Associate’s program at Soureh University, to study graphic design. But in terms of how it may have affected my work… Early on, I took part in a few festivals and biennales, with my poster designs. And I realized that I am not the type of person to work on commission based on the vision of my potential clientele. I am always immersed in my own headspace, and it is so hard for me to form that kind of connection with others. I want to do my own work. But the influence came from calligraphy, which I loved. And

It was .خانه هنرمندان my first show was in fact a calligraphy and painting exhibition at actually my thesis project, which combined my paintings and calligraphy designs. Shortly

And I continued to design posters for .باغ موزه هنر ایرانی after, I had a second show at different biennales and festivals. But I never particularly liked graphic design work.

The big change happened when I saw the ads for Parviz Tanavoli’s workshop at Mah-e-

Mehr (a private art institute in Tehran). It was the first class he was teaching after 25 years. The workshop was open to public, so half of the participants had a background in sculpting and the other half were completely new to it.

SK: how many of those people are still active?

NS: I would say more than half of them are still producing work. We had some shows together as a collective over the course of ten years. I cannot say that they were particularly successful. There was a lot of tension and I am glad we have moved past it.

SK: why, what happened?

NS: well it wasn’t the right kind of collective, because half of us matched really well, and the other half could not reconcile differences. We had our first show in 2006, and in 290

2016, we were supposed to have a reunion show, and it fell through because of those problems. The first show was very well-received. It became a platform for some of us, including myself. I had my first solo show at the same location (Assar Gallery) a short time after the group exhibition.

SK: what was your first solo show?

NS: It was a collection of purses spilling feminine objects. I continued taking art history classes at Mah-e-Mehr. I think I took a total of 10 courses in art history, and truly enjoyed it, because in college, they only taught art history up until 1960. There were no textbooks for what came after. And the existing textbooks were adapted haphazardly from multiple sources.

SK: Something that I have noticed in your sculpting career is an obsession with the figure of women, particularly women’s body. Was this an intentional decision, or was it something you simply related to?

NS: women are really important in my family. I have been surrounded by powerful and important women all my life. And they have always been role models for me. When I was a teenager, there were these women that I admired, and always looked up to… they were like legends in my eyes… like Forough Farrokhzad. I loved the style of her poems and always had her book nearby. There were others too. For instance, I loved looking at photos of Queen Farah Pahlavi (b. 1938) and hearing stories about her life. This is actually a project I have been working on for a while; a project about women in my family and other women I idolize. 291

I have some of my childhood drawings in which women are very tall and draped with jewelry… bathed in colors, while the men are super short in comparison to the women I drew. I think that in my subconscious mind I have this high regard for women. But I have to admit that some of my views are quite anti-women.

SK: can you elaborate on that?

NS: maybe we will get to talk about this more later. But there are certain women that really frustrate me. I hate weak women.

SK: so you don’t mean anti-woman, as in misogynist. You are against certain categories of women?

NS: yes, there are certain types of women that I hate… whom I think should not be allowed to roam our society. When I think about defending the rights of women, I always feel like I need to exclude these women.

SK: how did cinema and/or video affect your views on women?

NS: I think it’s similar to my real life hatred of weak women. Not particularly in Iranian cinema. Because I think weak female characters are very normal in films all over the world. Women who are waiting for someone to come and save them, who are always feeling ill or fainting, and cannot take charge of their own lives… whether in real life or in cinema, I despise these characters.

SK: what about women’s body? Given the fact that our culture takes issue with representations of the female body, or the presence of women in the public sphere unless in a specific dress code… how does this factor into your work? 292

NS: I think that a woman’s body is to be worshipped. You can absolutely commit to idolizing it. I find it extremely beautiful and attractive, and I do not see these elements in the masculine body. Even in classical art, like what we typically associate with Greek and

Roman sculpture styles, women’s bodies are present, but everything is in the service of celebrating the power of the muscular male body. For me, the feminine body is the most fascinating… every part and corner of it has a character, and a story. I love my own body very much, and I have a lot of respect for it. I have always taken great care of my body.

SK: were you always like that?

NS: yeah, since I was a kid. […] anything that changes in my body, no matter how small,

I immediately become aware of it. I am very connected to my body. And I think it is different from the natural instinct to survive. There is this sense of respect… and whenever I don’t take care of my body, it can truly upset me.

SK: correct me if I am wrong, but your earlier work with the feminine body is very different from your recent work. In your older pieces, there is this merging of the female body with other objects, such as wheels, or a focus on specific parts of the body, such as the empty bronze belly that stands alone. There is an undertone of an engagement with functionality in them. But your recent projects seem to be different, purer in a formal sense perhaps. What can you say about this evolution in your works?

NS: I think that the entirety of my career and the pieces that I have created are very much connected to my personal life. Recently, I have started to travel more, opting to live a simpler life in many respects. And everything is moving towards that simplicity. Last year, I—the girl with a bazillion lotions, shampoos, and necklaces—left my house with 293 only two suitcases. And I started to learn that you can make due with minimal material.

You can travel with a small backpack filled with light clothing and small items. If you run out of anything, you can get some more. It is not the end of the world. So I think this factors into my work.

The prints that you referred to… it all started about three and a half years ago during a residency I partook in. It was at the AB Gallery in Switzerland, which was affiliated with

Oryx Foundation at the time. For two months, they gave me a studio that was basically appropriate for painting, not sculpting. I remember I went shopping for materials and everything was so expensive that I could not afford what I had in mind. What I had in that studio was ink, paper, and of course myself. I was in this space that was far from everything, specifically from my home. I am, after all, very attached to Tehran. So with the limited material that I had, I started printing myself onto paper. So that sense of body admiration is there. It felt like I was documenting myself on paper in a meditative process, which was in itself being documented and preserved somehow.

SK: I have two questions. First, in several of your collections—the body prints, the winged breasts, or the Finger Food series with casts of your lips and fingers—there is a sense of multiplying or pluralization. You have a singular body, but you multiply it in your creative work. What is the significance of this pluralization to you?

NS: I haven’t given it much thought actually… the multiplying of the body. In sculpting, it happens because of the economy of production, anything that I want to make, I have to cast first. Then the cast moves on to the production stage. And the costs of this entire process—which is not a small amount—must be divided by the number of pieces 294 produced at the end. So if I produce a single piece, I have to give it a very high price. But if I produce it in editions, each edition will cost a more reasonable price in comparison. In print though, I have the liberty to create reproductions or reprints of the original. Still, all of the prints that I have made are originals. No two pieces are the same.

SK: of course, but what I am referring to, is how your body is reproduced in all these pieces.

NS: I think that somehow…even though I don’t wish to romanticize it… it is like dance.

In dance, there is one body that is doing actions, so these prints are somehow like a performance, an act, a dance, or even sex. All of these acts can be associated with the prints. It is one body that is doing different things. It turns, and moves. You can even look at it like a sculpture, from different dimensions, as if it is moving. I have large prints of the more recent ones that I will showcase for you after our talk.

SK: my second question is about something you mentioned earlier when you talked about your new lifestyle and how, when we run out of something, we can always find more of it. I see this in a more general context of our life experience during and after the war. For instance, while I was born in 1988 and the war was practically over, I carry that fear of things running out. If the tube of toothpaste is half-way empty, I need to know that I have another sitting in the cabinet, waiting to replace the current one. So sometimes I consciously fight against it. Just like you said. It is not the end of the world. But I think that this wartime mentality is with us, despite how differently we may have experienced it. You were born in 1981, so your experience is different from mine. How does this factor into your work? 295

NS: I think that both the revolution, and the war, have absolutely influenced our lives, and shaped our lifestyle. And there is no way to ignore that. Before I was born, my parents met each other right around the time of the revolution. And they went ahead and had babies. It was very customary then: people would get married, have a baby the very next year, and have another two years after, and so on.

SK: right, the Baby Boom period.

NS: yes… plus the coupon period [food stamps] … food was rationed; there wasn’t enough milk or other basic nutritional products. My mom would have to stand for hours in long lines, with me in a stroller, and my older sister tagging along, so she could get our cooking oil and rice ration.

SK: gasoline too!

NS: yes! Oh and I vividly remember when water and power would be out. My grandmother would bring ice blocks from the freezer and place it [in a large pot] over the gasoline heater, so it would melt. This is a part of our very being. And now, with how things are, we are in a similar situation. Right now if you go shopping for something, they will very likely tell you that “this is the last one, and next time, the same product will be priced based on the new exchange rates of US dollar.” But, [there is that realization of] how one can live despite all that is lacking. I am not insinuating that you should lower the quality of your life. On the contrary, the quality of life should be maintained. But you can live with the minimum.

SK: I want to ask you about your preoccupation with tradition. I am specifically thinking of “In Search of a Drop of Blood” where you have used sanitary pads. I don’t particularly 296 like “classifying” your work, but if I want to consider them in terms of categories, some of them are about the feminine body, some are shaped by objects associated with women

(e.g., high heel shoes), and some are connected to strictly feminine elements, such as menstrual blood. There is that clash with tradition in some of your works. For instance, two of my favorite pieces from A Drop of Blood are the one where a dagger has sunk into a sanitary pad, and another in which blood drips from the pad into a traditional tea glass adorned with the image of a Qajar king.

NS: I use objects associated or used by women, because I really love them and enjoy working with them. They are very symbolic for me. Men might wear high heels, but they were made for women and they are associated with femininity. Same with sanitary pads. I am fascinated with menstrual period, and I think that everyone’s period is uniquely theirs.

We menstruate differently, whether in terms of the pain, or the physical consequences, or the amount of blood we lose. And then we individually experience our periods differently: how I feel this month during my period can be very different from my next cycle. […] I really cherish and respect the unique nature of this experience and other ones associated with women, like pregnancy and labor.

I think that most of the artworks that I create, my intentions are subconscious. It depends on how I am feeling when I create the work. I always think that I am living my life on this road, and along the road, things are happening, politically, socially, economically.

Some things have been set in motion in the past, and some things are stirring now. I follow the news every day and I am aware of the political and social atmosphere, but they don’t necessarily “touch” me. So if something touches me, and only then, I engage with it 297 and draw inspiration from it. I don’t call this indifference. For instance, the 2009 incidents did not really affect me. My house was on Villa Street [located in central

Tehran and close to the Tehran University campus] and when I opened the window smoke [from smoke grenades] would fog the house. I would pass by the special force guards to buy fruits, and I wasn’t touched by the experience. Yet something small can have such a profound effect on me that I will not be able to let it go without engaging with it.

Femininity is something that I am very comfortable with. I cherish it. But sometimes, because of it, one gets hurt. You may notice that the society, your partner, or the people with whom you interact are hurting you specifically because of your femininity, for being a woman. For example, after my divorce, I went to this copy story to make copies of my passport and birth certificate. The clerk was a young man, who harassed me during the 20 minutes I was in the store, because he had seen the word “divorced” in my birth certificate, and a few visa stamps in my passport.

SK: was he trying to flirt with you?

NS: no, he would say things like “girls these days marry a guy to divorce him, and then take the settlement money and go vacation abroad, and we [men] have to be drafted into the army, and pay rent, etc.” I am sure he had his own issues in his personal life.

Nevertheless, this person feels entitled to publicly pass judgment on my personal life because he knows I am divorced. I am sure if I weren’t divorced, the fact that I would have had a husband would prevent him from showing the same behavior. Because in that case, there is this other man that could come and knock me out. 298

SK: you would be somebody else’s possession.

NS: yes, exactly, you can totally see that. And while I might be living surrounded by a community of artists, who are supposedly more cultured, but I am still living in this society. People, young people dressed in contemporary fashion, looking sharp, but holding the very same traditional mentality and living their lives based on it. They appear modern, but their mentality is the same old thing.

SK: where you able to showcase A Drop of Blood?

NS: no, I couldn’t show them anywhere. But recently, I sent some of them to an

Instagram page that’s about femininity and period. They have featured one photo reproduction of one of the pieces in the series. But other than that, they haven’t been displayed in public. But when they were around, at my atelier or at my home, people— even women—always showed negative reactions to them. Because it’s taboo that even women still have issues with, let alone men. So those are not that popular.

SK: when you were creating them, was there any negative reaction from your family or colleagues? Did anyone try to stop you?

NS: not in that sense. I never got that energy. But for my lip series, I created a large scale

aa—raa—mesh: peace). That) آرامش bronze sculpture of my lips, mouthing the word sculpture and my red high heels were supposed to be featured in the Tehran Auction for a few years, but the Ministry of Culture rejected them. One year, even the auction house refrained from accepting them. There was this one meeting in particular, where they were trying to sugar-coat things for me so I wouldn’t be offended. So all these men were sitting around a conference table, with me seated among them. 299

SK: were your lips there too?

NS: no, but they all had seen the photos in advance. They had said that it is a unique piece. They said “Ms. Safaei, we know that this is a great work. The idea and execution are both great and it works really well for the auction. But you know that we are in the

Rouhani [presidency] period, and some people are really against him. And if we send this to the ministry, we know what is going to happen. They had sent a representative here looking for excuses to prevent the auction from happening altogether.” And eventually they got to the point that the piece is “too sexy and we are afraid!”

SK: wow, so it had political implications for them too?

NS: yeah, I couldn’t see how a set of lips mounted on top of each other could be associated with President Rouhani. They said that they knew my works are very feminine, but perhaps if I make them in a way that they [the ministry] can’t take issue with it, things will be smoother. But I found it funny, I thought to myself that I am living in this era and this is a part of my experience. They really couldn’t showcase it, and probably some of them saw it and felt things. So I understand.

SK: Would you agree that Nastaran Safaei, is more accepted and recognized in her medium, outside of Iran? I ask this particularly because of the problematic issue of publicly displaying your works.

NS: I don’t see it that way. Maybe because I have spent most of my time working here. I have had fewer exhibitions abroad, compared to Iran. And my international shows have mostly been group efforts, rather than solo projects. I am not that famous either, not here and not internationally. 300

SK: of course my question was regardless of the recognition that is associated with fame and celebrity.

NS: you mean in terms of the works being “Accepted”?

SK: yes.

NS: I think that my works are accepted here too. In Iran, when somebody wants to introduce me to new people, or even when I introduce myself, people know me as the creator of the winged breasts. But the winged breasts have not been shown publicly in

Iran even once; only and only in private showrooms.

SK: did you send them to the ministry?

NS: never.

SK: but they are aware that you are the creator of the series?

NS: the ministry was not aware of the series, until very recently, during the lawsuit I filed

[regarding my work being plagiarized]. So I think it’s very interesting that people know me by a work that hasn’t been shown publicly. I make whatever I want, whenever I want, and I don’t think if I can show it somewhere or not. I make the work, and then think about the possibilities for showing it. But I have to say that the (winged breast) series were very well-received outside Iran. And I think that a part of the reason for that was that they were coming from Iran. A female artist from Iran makes winged breasts, creates body prints, and shows her work outside her country. She is showing breasts, a taboo that is never to be revealed publicly.

SK: before we move on to talk about video, I want to talk more about this. I see it in my own line of work in academia… there is still this fascination with the exotic other. It is as 301 if the Western audience is not quite ready to move past the identity they perceive for you—the woman who is coming from Iran—and that prevents them from seeing the work for what it is. A friend of mine recently told me that she was part of an international artist collective, and in the statement put up on their website, her bio was the only one that mentioned nationality [Iranian in her case].

NS: like I said, because I haven’t had that many shows abroad, I haven’t had such encounters so far. I was never the target of racial discrimination. In my experience, the way you present yourself is very influential. I am a little bit of a nationalist. I look people in the eye and confidently say that I am Iranian. So that doesn’t allow anyone to show a negative reaction. […] But over there [in the West] these things happen. For instance, I worked with a gallery that initially loved my work very much. They wrote this text for my solo show, which said that I was a girl who could not even present her work in her home country. And I said to them that I have had a career as a sculptor for over a decade.

I support myself by sculpting. They then said “but you have to wear hijab.” And I responded that I have no issues with it. It is where I draw a line: this is none of the gallery’s business. What they are supposed to do is look at my work, evaluate it, and decide if they want to feature it or not. Whether I wear hijab or not, what I do in my private life, or whether I can show my work in my home country has nothing to do with that. So we had a heated exchange until they agreed to remove that part of the statement.

SK: but someone like yourself is always considered within a context.

NS: and we are connected to a context. I don’t deny that. 302

SK: yes, but that context is not visible in its entirety to the Western audience. So you are in fact being considered against their perception of what your context is.

NS: what I truly believe is that we should not feed into these Western perceptions. I am not presenting them with anything that confirms what they have seen and heard in media.

And I will not say or do anything against my country. These are internal issues that I am handling.

SK: what was the first video that you produced? When did you start to consider video more seriously?

NS: it started when I realized that I had an idea that I could not produce with the materials I usually work with. So I had to change my medium. The first video that I made was for my 30th birthday. The idea behind it came to me one day when I had bought a whole chicken that I was cleaning on the kitchen counter. And I realized that I was slaughtering that chicken violently, tearing it to pieces. I thought to myself “this could be one of the 30 birds in the legend of Simourgh and I am slaughtering it! So the association of that with the number 30 and me turning 30 amounted to an exhibition and that video piece. Turning 30 was this stage that have to pass and for that you need a sacrifice. A wedding dress is something that particularly marks this passing stage and going from one area in life to another. So in the video, I slaughtered 30 chickens, wearing a wedding dress. It is a little over 40 minutes.

I don’t prioritize video over sculpting. It is about the idea and what material can best convey it.

SK: do you see yourself as an underground artist? 303

NS: I don’t think about it in those terms. I am very into showing my work. Whatever that

I make, I find a way for showcasing it.

SK: I know that you work with the ministry and they recognize you as an artist, and perhaps that contradicts any statement that claims Nastaran Safaei to be an underground artist. But I think that it is undeniable that our artist community, which is a portion of the larger community of us as Iranians, live a double life. Certain things can be revealed, but there are many things that are not to be revealed. It is as if existing in the public sphere of

Iran comes with specific politics.

NS: that is absolutely true. The life that I personally live is to a large extent against the norm. On a daily basis, I am breaking certain rules so I can live my life. It encompasses everything, from what I wear, to what I say, to how I behave. Many taboos are broken every day, because individuals—myself included—live life according to their personal standards. Many of the things that I do on a daily basis are against the rules of the Islamic

Iranian society. And a lot of the works that I create cannot be shown publicly. The winged breasts for instance, or anything that incorporates the female body cannot be shown publicly. It also halts my progress in certain instances. If I had managed to showcase my work at the Tehran Auction, like many of my male counterparts who all have participated in the auction, I could sell more of my work and gain recognition for it.

My life may have been easier. And I still have these issues. But I go to the meetings, and laugh about this condition, thinking that I will showcase those works [that have been rejected] 20 years from now. I have done my part, which is paying the production costs 304 and producing the work. So the fact that I cannot sell it now or cannot showcase it will not stop me for as long as I can survive.

I don’t know how I am going to show my nudes, though, That’s my next show in Tehran.

So I have to figure something out. I have to talk to my gallery about it, to see how I can edit the video to show it.

But yes, to answer your question, we have an underground life in Iran. Our personal space is very different from the life we lead in the society outside our homes.

SK: I know that there is the general assumption that intellectual or artistic communities think differently in comparison to the general public. But there are so many examples of these communities discriminating against women, not in an objective capacity, but in a patriarchal suppressive way. Is that present in Iran?

NS: it has improved in recent years, but it is still there. I would say it manifests mostly in a dismissive attitude: not taking women seriously. Certain cases are different. I have seen a woman for whom art is a hobby, because her father supports her financially, and she can decide to stop working any time. I think that, me and my contemporaries have worked the same amount but men have been more successful. It is because collectors or other artists may not take women seriously, because they assume women are not serious enough to stay in this field and continue to produce work. Even collectors have a hard time trusting female artists to purchase their works. They wonder if they add an artwork to their collection and the artist stops working, then having that piece does not bear any meaning. But they take men more seriously because they see them as breadwinners who take their work seriously. 305

SK: what is your solution to that mentality?

NS: I don’t think we can change the mentality. It has been that way for a long time and the patriarchal point of view is still dominant. I think we just have to keep working and presenting our work.

SK: let’s talk about copyright, or the lack thereof, in Iran. How does that manifest in fine arts?

NS: I think, copyright laws are like many other things that do not have a place in Iran yet, in that we still haven’t developed the culture for them. The contemporary art of Iran, in my opinion, does not have an “Iranian” foundation. And I am going to start with myself, to elaborate on the fact that our art imitates the art of West: in technique, concept, material, etc. Iranian artists look at the West, or at what is all the rage in the world, and start working on that. Social media and the internet are facilitators of this process.

I think that we definitely need copyright laws. It is so very easy to find art works that are similar to each other, not just in Iran, but all around the world. But in Iran, because it is a smaller and more restricted community, the issue of copying others’ work is more highlighted. Consider a small community [of artists] who are all following and copying each other’s’ works. That of course leads to a lot of tension and conflict.

SK: but when there is no official law to support that right, people have to make these decisions personally. I see it as a personal code of ethics that some decide not to abide by.

NS: yes, and there are artists who use this to their advantage. If I see something that inspires me, I will make sure not to copy it in my own work. But there is this concern, as you work on a new piece, that it—or something similar to it—has already been made. 306

And sometimes there is no way of confirming that. In art, there are trends that dominate the scene for different periods of time. It is as if artists are subconsciously drawn to similar themes. When abstract expressionism became a popular style in the US, at the same time, in the Soviet Union there were women who were doing very similar things, without having any awareness of, or association with, the American artists. And they were never “seen.” Some of them died in anonymity, and some of them were visited in their old age when they were noticed. They were doing the same thing [abstract expressionism] even with better quality and ideas, but they were never recognized. […]

So I think that sometimes, it is a matter of subconscious concerns or interests that become common among groups of people. And I don’t call that copying.

But then, there are artists who look for what is trendy. Iran is very much like that, even in terms of materials. For instance, there was a period of time when everyone was producing minimal work using paper. At the time, galleries were not interested in my bronze work, because they were looking for paper.

SK: where do you draw the line between being inspired and copying someone else’s work?

NS: about drawing inspiration… I think that it is a part of our life. You go to museums and exhibitions; you look around yourself, and you are always scanning your environment. You can be inspired by anything in your work and that is very natural.

Sometimes I go to exhibitions and look at the way the piece is mounted, installed, or framed. And I can be inspired by all of this in my effort to improve my work. I think that everyone does this to an extent. 307

SK: is the concern for originality or authenticity significant in the contemporary art scene of Iran? I know that historically, this undercurrent of originality or pioneering has been important for our culture. But is it present in our contemporary art scene?

NS: I personally believe that everything in Iran is caught in a pattern. Our artist community is not separate from the condition of our society, our government or state, and the complicated status quo in Iran. They are all connected. These artists are not coming from another planet. They have risen from this context and still reflect it. Nepotism, or forming “gangs” against other individuals or collectives is part of our art scene as well.

I am not a part of any gang or specific collective. I have to put a lot of time and effort into my career, and I think that if I were associated with one of these collectives, my career would have been more fruitful in a sense. It is as if I am walking this path along with other groups of people; these groups have their moments and conflicts, but they get to the finish line faster than me.

SK: in what ways do you think the contemporary art movements in Iran are influencing the culture or society?

NS: I think it is very chaotic at the moment. I don’t even think we have specific movements that can be recognized. Sometimes there are new ideas and projects, and they move forward for a while, but quickly people grow apart or get into disagreements and the collective dies. So the chaotic way our society has is present in the art scene as well.

In addition, artists share in the lack of hope or disappointment felt by the general public. I often wonder what are we doing all this work for? I have created this sculpture, but what is it doing really? What is the point of having an exhibition? 308

SK: you talked about divorce and its implications for women in Iran. What happens that something as personal and private as marital status becomes a public issue, posing problems in an individual’s professional career?

NS: in my experience, my ex-husband and I were both artists, within the small artist community in Iran, where everyone knows everyone. It is gossip essentially. When we got divorced, I did not feel the need to explain my personal life to anyone. I told people that we lived together for a while and it was fine, but we couldn’t continue together, and decided to separate. But my ex-husband did not do the same, and started to talk to people about me and my personal life, spreading false stories in the art community. As a result, there are galleries in Tehran that I still cannot work with. After seven years, it still has an effect on my life. That tells me that in the traditional environment of Iran, it is a challenge to be accepted as an independent artist [regardless of gender or marital status]. A divorced woman still carries that stigma stirred by tradition. And this translates into the professional art world, when a woman is not trusted or taken seriously because she is divorced.

SK: and the woman is always at fault?

NS: yes, all the fingers point to the woman.

SK: what about your ex-husband? Is he still active?

NS: yes, he has made a lot of progress. He took advantage of the potentials offered to him by this environment and successfully established his career. That experience told me that here [in Iran], not only the law is against women, but the entirety of the society is against 309 them. So I think perhaps the greatest of arts is being able to handle yourself in these conditions and move forward.

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Ramin Heydari Farooghi (b. 1976) Documentary filmmaker and cinema scholar Ramin Heydari Farooghi, (b. 1976, Tehran, Iran) is an Iranian documentarian and video artist. Farooghi has pursued cinema and art academically, earning a PhD in philosophy of art. He has taught cinema studies and production courses both in undergraduate and graduate levels in multiple academic institutions in Iran, including the prestigious Art

University of Tehran. He has appeared as a scholar and host in multiple television

.(مستند and Documentary 4 (4 (سینما projects such as Cinema 4 (4

Farooghi started his documentary career in 1994, producing over 9000 minutes of international documentary footage over the course of the next two decades. This is Africa, and A River to Heaven (shot in India) are two of his critically acclaimed international projects.

His most recent documentary project is a cross cultural work connecting Iran and 40

while focusing on the ,(خشت بهشت) cities around the world, entitled Khest-e-Behesht relationship between humans and their environment. The production of this project started in 2008 and wrapped in 2018.

As an author and critic, Farooghi has collaborated with journals and periodicals such as

Farabi, Soroosh, Sooreh, among others. He is also a writer and scholar in the field of art management and cultural development.

He has made over 20 music videos, with Navayi being one of his early works. As a video artist, he has also produced over 100 commercials in the field of economy and cultural development. 311

SK: the term “video art” in Iran is often associated with an amalgamation of superficial pop music videos produced in the West Coast (LA in particular), simple montages of old images or videos, or the interludes shot in natural scenery of Iran, often paired with instrumental music to be broadcast in between TV programs. So, within the extremely conservative environment of the first two decades after the revolution, I consider the production of “Navayi” is a point of departure in the history of Iran’s expanded cinema, particularly in the post-revolution era. What prompted you to make Navayi? How did the production proceed, and what obstacles did you face?

RF: I always loved poetry. As a child, I spent a lot of time daydreaming, and I would put together strange or impossible ideas, or imagine being on long journeys. […] My father was a military man, and before my sister was born—when I was 7—the reality of my life was intertwined with loneliness and alienation. The only security I felt was when we would come to Tehran by train to spend holidays at my grandfather’s house. Nobody likes loneliness and alienation, and time would pass very slowly until I would get to go to my grandfather’s house again. So to reach beyond the borders of time and place, making up stories about traveling everywhere, and looking for a safe place is a basic human instinct.

When I went to university to study film, I was thinking of a poetic imaginative experience in a journey that reflected the stories of my homeland: the land of literature, long winding narratives, a myriad of emotions formed around homesickness, and a tendency to reaching or arriving to a place that will never cast you away; a sense of unification, and the experience of security by reaching to a place of enlightenment. 312

In the final years of the 1980s, through smuggled tapes, and then later via illegal satellites, we saw video clips with those imaginative qualities. Music and video joined hands, in a brief amount of time, untethered to the need to report and cover all of the corners, and took the viewer on a journey to a world free of physical distances. These spaces reminded me of the minimality of poetry, or the density of miniature.

At the time, I was working in the research division of IRIB and there was an opportunity to produce a video piece that combined poetry and music, without any visual representations of the vocalist. So we were supposed to write a script, make some music for it, and create the visual world for a 5-10-minute timespan. I chose to make the video about a poetic journey based on the folk music, poetry, and dance of the Khorasan region.

The song Navayi was based on a mystic poem and the visualization of its narrative of separation, the caravan, and the journey were left to the audience. It was a challenging task to create an image that would enhance the experience of the song/music, not the opposite.

Video and the new possibilities it created in special effects—which were quite basic at the time, but fascinating nevertheless—was a great addition to the new tracking equipment that made moving around much easier. […] at the time, in the religious revolutionary context, especially within the conservative structure of state television and the taboo of dance and music, we knew that we were undertaking a difficult task. But my friends and I were quite excited about the project we had started, so we knew we would find a way. 313

We were lucky too, because the director of the research division at IRIB was a supporter of art and culture and had a different perspective that supported our work. Nevertheless, between its production and the first broadcast (a very stressful moment for us), Navayi was stuck for one year. All of the issues they took with the video were related to dance, the wedding scene, and the presence of women. But eventually, with some changes, the video was approved for television broadcast. It became popular quickly and turned into a part of the collective memory of the Iranian audience.

SK: how do you define video art in contemporary Iran? where does it fit in our art scene?

RF: video art means freedom in imagining, combining, and merging the various capacities of art. Yet, how one utilizes it depends on individual awareness, interests, and skills; how deep their world is, how much they have seen and experienced. Nowadays it is even more important for the artist to know what they are doing and what the target market is asking for. In Iran, we have everything, but persistence and perseverance to continue to work and maintain its quality. Artists are living in a very politicized world, and this politicization is ever-present in the market and [gallery or exhibition] spaces, permeating the perspectives of audiences, critics, and administrators. It is to an extent exaggerated too. This imposed exposure to politicized outlooks prevents the artist to form free and individualistic experiences.

Now video art in Iran means the artist and their relations to the domain of a target market.

[…] the market is dominating different disciplines all around the world. […] Under these circumstances, the smaller the market, the more stress on the artist to make it. 314

SK: Is there any room for experimentation in the contemporary art scene of Iran? I am asking this because I believe the term itself is misunderstood by our cinema community.

gravitates towards experience—as in the سینمای تجربه in تجربه For instance, the term experience of life—rather than experimentation. So it falls entirely into the documentary category.

RF: in recent years, there is much more interest in experimentation. But this is not a decision one has to make; it is a potential… a possibility, and an internal need for a person who has a unique idea. This individual needs to be different and have different experiences. We are witnessing a tidal wave of cultural products born out of imitation, and with the chaotic pluralization of instruments, platforms, and festivals, everyone is plagued by a sense of uncertainty. This prompts many to use experimentation as a tool to appear unique, but they do not realize that what they produce may appear different, but in reality it is just a collage of what has been done already.

In the world of rapidly changing fashions and trends, media, where credibility is temporary, it becomes difficult to form an individual identity and a unique world; the context of state administration and the restrictions of an idealistic ideological system makes that even more difficult.

SK: following the revolution, because of the forced decline of commercial cinema, the documentary cinema of Iran had an outstanding opportunity to grow (at least for one decade). How has this cinema changed or transformed during the past two decades? 315

RF: the documentary cinema has evolved in comparison to other art movements, but the potential of its filmmakers or the diversification of its social subject matter has not changed.

We have lighter and more efficient equipment. We have various web channels that facilitate marketing. But still, making documentaries is not a reliable day job for a documentarian. There is never enough time for pre-production research and production itself, because there is not enough capital. So filmmakers have to do most of the work themselves. […]

If we are seeing a bigger number of films now, it is because more films are being made, among them a small number of small-budget personal productions, that will eventually compete in the marathon for getting into festivals.

Documentary cinema is the basis for qualitative changes in social behavior and thus, it must be supported more. It deserves a bigger market. Nevertheless, there is an enthusiastic new generation of filmmakers who are working very hard, because that is their only way to go forward.

Iran has great potential for historical, geographical, and social exploration, with a young population. In addition, the economic and political tensions in the country, in order to better understand its conditions and make appropriate decisions, the society needs the more extensive documentation of all its facets; something beyond narratives of the loneliness and alienation of its peoples. Iran and its talents should be the ultimate destination of all documentarians—Iranian or otherwise—but that is not the case! Yet, what we have now is moving forward. We have more access to and a better presence in 316 international festivals, but the Iranian audience is still not engaging with documentary cinema as it should.

SK: is the New Wave still inspiring or influencing contemporary cinema? Or would you consider it a short-lived wave born out of a tumultuous political situation, which has been channeled into other movements since?

RF: in today’s world, all new waves eventually become old. Everywhere is the same. The wave of temporary distracting news impacts everything. If a “new” can be born, it will never get a chance to mature. Consider France, for instance. Did it have more than one new wave? Why should Iran be different? Everything is in a constant state of transformation. There is a general lack of hope for bridging the gaps in social and economic sectors. There is a distrust of the elite and political leaders. And all these factors have caused people to be stuck in their everyday survival. […] These people hardly have the patience to endure another uncertain change. On the other hand, with the failure of liberal projects in creating order and stability, the decline of various left movements, and the surge in the formation of racist movements in the West, which has prompted the wave of revenge seeking in the third world, the global society is on the verge a grand transformation. It is as if nobody can identify a viable potential for investment in the lives of the ordinary people, and philosophy and sociology too are either engaged in narrating the misery of the human race, or doing abstract academic work.

SK: what are the advantages and disadvantages of working with the IRIB? 317

RF: working for the IRIB is more difficult than it was in the past. Many of the productions of the past are no longer appropriate for broadcast, because administrative positions are now short-lived, while those who occupy these positions are more conservative about the consequences of their decisions. The society is less receptive than the past. Social media have turned into a violent force that does not spare anyone. It took me 10 years to produce my most recent documentary, […] while the plan was for a two- year production period. But we pressed on, despite all these circumstances, and now it is being broadcast on Channel 2. […] I am happy with my share of opportunities in my life so far, but that is because of the personal or spiritual aspect of my work, and it does not extend to economic fulfilment.

I think to work for the IRIB today, you need to have sponsors. This issue of sponsorship is devouring the industry. There was no time or place, where it was easy to find a financial sponsor for the type of work that encourages thinking. But now it has become even more difficult.

SK: the restrictions on the representation and involvement of women in the post- revolution cinema of Iran have created a complicated matrix because of which the woman either has an unrealistic presence (required to cover up her entire body, even at home and in the privacy of her bedroom), is in a constant state of commotion, or is entirely absent. How have you dealt with this issue? What is your approach to the sensitivities of the presence of women in cinema and media in general?

RF: what you said is more or less still a problem. And I think that the representation of

Iranian women, in comparison to their prominent presence in different sectors of social or 318 domestic/home life is not realistic at all. The circumstances that you described create obstacles for anyone who decides to approach the private lives of women, and for a documentarian who needs to create realistic representations, that is a big problem. But I think that the presence, the scope, and the quality of contributions by Iranian women in different areas and categories will have a defining impact on the future of Iran, and a part of that is being captured by documentary cinema, and will continue to be so.

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Bahman Shahravan (b. 1979) Independent filmmaker

SK: could you talk about the status and position of experimentalism in contemporary film culture of Iran?

BS: I don’t think that is has received the attention it deserves. It is certainly not a significant or considerable part of our cinema now. We’ve had little sparks, where individual patrons (filmmakers, producers, distributers) have made efforts to bring non- mainstream films into the mainstream cinema. But the structure that is enforced by the state problematizes film production at its most basic levels. Censorship issues, the tedious process of obtaining the required permits, and the regulations enforced by the ministry of culture limit filmmakers in their creative efforts.

SK: could you name some of these individual efforts?

BS: yes, people like Zavon Ghokasian have made solid efforts in documenting and historicizing avant-garde movements in Iran. We have Ramin Heydari Farooghi who was the first filmmaker to make a music video in post-revolution Iran; a music video which was broadcast on national TV and became quite popular at the time. Kamran Shirdel and

Kianoush Ayyari are other names that come to my mind, as filmmakers with creative visions and keen eyes for nuances that could be incorporated into their filmmaking style.

SK: you mentioned music video, and I want to specifically ask about the evolution of music video—perhaps as a movement—in post-revolution Iran. How has it changed?

BS: music video in Iran is very much under the influence of Western music and its growing popularity. I think that with the video art movement of Iran dead, or almost non- existent, due to the state’s aversion to music in general. 320

The influence of Western music on our culture stems from the fact that following the

Islamic revolution, the evolution of our music industry stops all together. The revolution uprooted Iran’s music industry. Of course there were many people who did not stop their work. We have masters such as Hosein Alizadeh, Mohammadreza Shajarian,

Mohammadreza Lotfi, and others who were still working. But what are they producing?

Works such as Ney Nava, the Symphony of Sacrifice, or Brother’s Drenched in Blood. So our music remains stagnated. What had already been established as our traditional music continued to thrive, but lost its chance for diversification. Our music did not even fully blossom into symphonic state.

SK: this is very similar to what happened to Iran’s narrative cinema. When the revolution happened, narrative cinema was halted until it could be transformed into something the state could accept.

BS: yes, that is true. But regarding music, it was more extreme, because the gentlemen in charge consider music to be haram. So they pulled the plug on it. […] for them, music was defined as upbeat dance tunes, which is problematic. The fact that they loosened up later and the music scene changed later was a historical moment, and outside the context of this discussion.

But those who contribute to music video are specific individuals and their contributions do not amount to a considerable category. Perhaps that is why music video is not a serious genre in Iran.

Right now, on a daily basis, I could say that at least 2-3 music videos are produced in

Iran. Because, in comparison to other countries, Iran has a much cheaper production 321 market, many artists based outside Iran find it convenient to ask artists in Iran to produce their videos. Until a very short time ago, there were artists who quietly traveled to Iran

(e.g., Sogand) to shoot their videos, until it raised flags and they stopped doing that. But the market is there, like a business avenue parallel to advertisement. But it is problematic in that producers of these videos cannot claim credit for them, and need to be cautious in general.

SK: I know that nepotism was an issue in the pre-revolution cinema of Iran. Is it still part of the dynamic? How does it affect Iran’s cinema now?

BS: the nepotism before the Islamic Revolution was a more productive case, in that it was based on merits to a large extent. So those who were brought into the National Iranian

Radio and Television were qualified to contribute to it and facilitate its evolution; they were invested in it and desired to make valuable contributions. It was a rare system that really worked well, and I have never seen anything like it in terms of efficiency. But today, nepotism is at its extreme, since qualifications do not matter much, and near- sighted individuals are taking over, many of whom financially corrupted, using the system for their personal agenda.

Additionally, pre-revolution broadcast media of Iran was still rudimentary in production, because programs were limited and still underdeveloped. The system that we have now is more elaborate. We are at a point in our cinema and film industry that we have started to make Filmfarsi again. We are coming out of an era, during which, Iranian cinema has grown in the quantity of its production, yielding a considerable body of work. So now, producers are looking for certain “types” of narratives. I was recently offered to direct a 322 film. When I read the script, I found the narrative extremely shallow [similar to the melodramas of pre-revolution Filmfarsi], with the only Filmfarsi element missing from it being sex. Sex in today’s Filmfarsi is verbal. Not physical. It is the much worse in theater. Iran’s contemporary theater is very erotic. During the past year, I have seen many plays, and it seems like they are trying to attract audiences by words or behaviors that are controversial, perhaps because theater is not as closely monitored as film.

SK: how does an organization like the ministry of culture or the Farabi Foundation factor into this?

BS: well we have to look at the trajectory of these organizations. For instance, Farabi

Foundation initially made some respectable efforts, especially in its collaborations with

Kanoon (IIDCYA). But due to administrative changes, Farabi turned into a passive plug- in to the ministry of culture. So anything that happens at Farabi depends on the decisions made by the ministry. For instance, right now, a director who has built a good rapport with the ministry, can go to Farabi Foundation and request a 1 billion Toman loan.243 But someone who is in a similar position, minus the rapport with the ministry, has to go through all these stages to secure a loan, that will not be over 300 million Tomans. And in these cases, within six months, they will have to start repaying the loan.

SK: oh, so it is not like a grant.

BS: not at all. These are grand scale loans. They are the product of a system that was trying to take charge and control everything.

243 Toman or Tooman is the unofficial currency in Iran (as opposed to Rials). Each Toman equals 10 Rials. One US Dollar equals approximately 14’000 Tomans at the moment (July 20, 2019). 323

SK: this is very similar to what happened to Kanoon as well.

BS: very much so. And now, those people who used Farabi as a launch pad and made it to international festivals, have turned into these “so-called” independent distributors. I say so-called because at the end of the day, these are all ministry people. These are the people who have controlled our cinema over the past decades (for instance, what film gets to be Iran’s representative at the Oscars). So all those people that were at some point affiliated with the ministry and used to review films, taking issue with anything that looked remotely erotic or problematic to them, have turned into distributors. They have branched out to a commercial level that monopolizes cinema in their name, and provides them with an effective instrument of money laundering.

SK: we know that Iranians often live with an inherent duality in character, whereby their behavior in private is very different from their behavior in public. However, I think that during the decades that have passed since the revolution, the hidden private world has simmered in the underground, to a level that it is now oozing out of its cracks, leaking to the surface. How would you say cinema facilitates this?

BS: You are right, and I think that this oozing out is to a large extent owed to social media. I would even say that in this process, other factors are not as significant as social media. But we have to be mindful that the underground of Iran is restricted to groups or communities of people who have had the ability to widen their horizons beyond the existing system. For instance, those who listened to metal music, hang out with the opposite sex, go to non-segregated parties, etc. This is a subculture that is arising from another location. And within our underground, these groups or communities brush 324 against each other, find common interests, marge and stabilize. And this cycle keeps repeating, until it yields a product or an outcome. I think that statistically, these communities are small.

SK: what prevents them from growing or branching out? Is it fear?

BS: No, I don’t think so. I think it is a cultural issue. I think that a lot of the people who get into [the underground subculture] are in their teenage years. So naturally they are less concerned with the consequences of their actions, that fear does not have grand implications for them.

SK: the reason I mentioned fear is that no matter what generation we belong to [you are eight years older than me, so your experiences are closer to the incident of the revolution and the war], it is instilled in us by our environment. We learn very soon to be wary of forming communities or gatherings with an agenda or specific cause. When I was an undergraduate in Iran, this was an ongoing paranoia that forming an organized group with any cause could complicate life for us.

BS: I acknowledge that. Yes, we have these social norms or definitions, based on which any gathering of more than two individuals has the potential to raise flags. But forming a collective with a common objective is a different story. Initially, there are many people who are willing and enthusiastic about being a part of a collective. It is a natural humane desire that everyone embraces one way or another. But the issue of survival of underground movements is more restricted by our own approaches, rather than a general sense of fear. 325

The problem with our approach is that when we desire something, we are not willing to embrace the drill that leads us there. Imagine a musician who cannot be consistent with playing his bass guitar. It is a cultural problem and a failure of education. They never taught us the importance of consistency, neither at school, nor in our families. We don’t learn to embrace challenge. We are taught to be “smart” about things, which essentially translates to foregoing the labor, and finding shortcuts to the objective.

I know of people who have pressed on, believing in their work, and have managed to reach their desired results. This started during Khatami’s time. At least I can’t think of any examples of such efforts before Khatami. It is very individual and cultural.

SK: you talked about Khatami and his influence on the cultural scene of Iran. How do you think Khatami’s presidency provided that space?

BS: the only way I can describe Khatami’s presidency is considering it as the product of a form of “collective wisdom.” […] I can’t really attribute that era to Khatami’s personality or vision. We had this period of transition [after the revolution]. There was the war, and once it ended, we had the reconstruction period, and everything flows into infrastructure.

At that point we thought our economy was thriving. So it is very natural for any society to move on to social or cultural liberation once its economy is stabilized.

SK: melancholia and nostalgia seem to be two of the dominant themes in Iranian culture.

There is this sense of longing for the past or for the impossible that manifests in the art, specifically after the war. How does this factor into our contemporary cinema?

BS: I don’t think we should restrict that to the war or post-war period. It is something that emerged a very long time ago. […] for Iranians, this “longing for home” is not just a 326 sentimental phenomenon; it is beyond that. It has become a part of the collective memory of the people of this land, who believe that they have lost a common home. But they are unaware that none of them are able to carry the real history of their lives. Their historical memory just freezes, and after a certain point, they start sharing each other’s nostalgia or longing. There are kids these days who were born long after the Pahlavi era, but constantly talk about it as if they witnessed in person.

SK: how does the public access to social media affect this cultural phenomenon of collective longing?

BS: unlike many, I do not find social media to be harmful. We have a society that is in a constant state of transition, and in dire need of input. With all the nihility of social media, and the superficiality it nurtures, it is gradually creating sparks in our society. The transformation of hijab to a state of near nakedness is the product of one such spark.

Such a fast-forward movement is the first of its kind in the history of this country.

SK: yes, it happened in less than a decade, but it was extremely fast. I was a graduate student in Europe in 2010-2011, and while there were people who had smartphones, the standard communication devices were old flip phones. Video-calling with my family was also a challenge.

BS: yes, the transformation happened quite fast. And there were specific moments that contributed to the popularization of social media as a means of keeping up with the world. For example, when the exchange rate of USD started to skyrocket, Iranians collectively became hyper-aware of the market, following all related news about it through their smartphones and personal high speed internet connections. 327

We have social media platforms that are more verbal. Facebook or Twitter for example.

But then there was Instagram, which put everything in one platform. So now the audience that never liked to read, or simply does not wish to read and prefers to see, can seek all they want on this platform.

SK: and they may become mesmerized by it.

BS: yes, and we always have this mesmerized layer in society, everywhere in the world, not only in Iran. They are never the leaders. They are consumers. However, there is enough individuality infused in it that we no longer witness disastrous social epidemics.

People are under such duress that they are no longer easily frightened. I think all the people who are living in Iran at the moment are prepared for any possible scenario.

SK: how do you see the progression of documentary cinema in Iran following the revolution?

BS: I think the pre- and post-revolution cinemas of Iran are quite different, with the latter emerging much later than it is generally believed to have emerged. [If we are to consider a specific moment for the emergence of a more defined post-revolution cinema] we have

and more generally (سینما حقیقت) to look at a fairly new festival named Cinema Haghighat at the accessibility and affordability of technology. I differentiate between this wave of documentary cinema and a much earlier wave pioneered by the likes of Avini, who were commissioned to produce (and the contributions of Farabi Foundation).

The group of filmmakers who produced documentaries during that period [the war with

Iraq], all had privileges that were not available to others. Avini had access to reels and equipment that he required for his work. So individuals did not really have much to work 328 with. It was a similar situation before the revolution as well. For instance, Kamran

Shirdel was commissioned to make documentaries, otherwise he was not a self-starter.

SK: How do body politics and gender binaries manifest in post-revolution cinema of

Iran? As a director, how does that challenge you?

BS: after making The Report, Kiarostami was told that he could not cast women without hijab. So self-admittedly, he stopped casting women in his films. You only see women in public spaces in his film, where it makes sense for them to wear hijab.

SK: or, in Cetified Copy he simply casts an international actress.

BS: but the context of contemporary cinema is very different from what they experienced. I personally believe that we are in a process that is less affected by hijab or other social obstacles, than it is affected by our perspective. So again it is a matter of culture and education. We are raised to self-censor. School makes us even more self- aware. And the cycle goes on and on as we move on to college, the society, etc., until we become unaware of it. It becomes second nature. […]

So in my cooperation with the IRIB, I have worked for an organization that was paying me. It would not have been the right environment for me to express my views on body politics or realistic representations of women. In my career as an independent filmmaker,

I decided not to make that compromise. It is the choice of refusing to work for that system, even if it is extremely difficult to make ends meet. In my last film actually we had these issues. Even though my actors are covered properly, all of the issues they took

[at the ministry] were erotic.

329

Hamed Rashtian (b. 1985) Sculptor and experimental video artist

SK: how does body politics manifest in Iranian art? particularly in sculpting, what are some of the contemporary approaches to the human body, its form, and its representation?

HR: well, the human body is something that has always been problematic in Iran, whether in terms of its representation, in sculpting, for instance. So that’s why sculpting in Iran has distanced itself from representations of the body, moving toward abstraction, because of the practical obstacles it encountered. But essentially, in the fine arts scene of

Iran, there is this gray area, where many things are forbidden, but people and artists indulge in them, without getting in trouble. Of course sometimes, people do get in trouble. So body is always sensitive, because one of the issues in the post-revolution Iran has been the treatment of the body. I just read today that they are going to increase security at airports [in Iran] to enforce hijab. It has always been an issue, how to show your body, or make decisions for it.

We do have some movement in the arts now, especially by younger artists, who do certain things. But in general, body is always problematic in Iran. And I think that is the main reason it hasn’t received much attention. For example, performance art in Iran is not comparable to the way performance art thrives abroad. The reason is that in performance, the artist is working with their body, and because the human body is problematized in

Iran, performance art cannot move forward.

SK: what is the position of sexuality in your work, especially in the pieces you created before your move to Switzerland? 330

HR: Before I came to Switzerland, sexuality was never a central subject for me. Perhaps in my lion series, signs of masculinity appear, but it was never with an emphasis on sexuality. I made genitals only for a couple of the lions, where I wanted to convey something. But in general, [sexuality] was never my issue. While I was in Iran, sexuality was not something that I critically thought about as the subject or material of my art practice. Perhaps because it is sensitive or forbidden or whatever, I never ventured into it.

I am not saying that I never thought about it. It just didn’t become a part of my practice.

But I made something recently, before my move, which is a machine that plays a looped sequence. That piece is about the relationship between men and women. They go to bed, wake up, walk around, and go back to bed. This could probably have some connotations in terms of sexuality.

So sexuality was something that I discovered here in Switzerland. I realized that I could work with it. And I opened this door and realized “wow, there is so much potential here, and I can do a lot with it.” And I spent over a year of my studies here working on it. It amounted to two projects, of which you are well aware.

SK: How do you utilize video in your work?

HR: Video is another discovery I made here. In Tehran, I was not really into it, and I was actually quite resistant to it. My father is a documentary film producer and perhaps I have had the opportunity to get involved in his line of work. But in Tehran, my approach was very medium-based, and I insisted on it, maintaining that “I want to be a sculptor, and I want to create sculptures.” So everything that I did catered to that decision. 331

I am not a tech savvy person, especially in terms of digital media and visual work. So video emerged in my work just recently, as a “tool.” It was a medium that I utilized as a tool in order to get my work done. Of course the videos I have produced are very simple, but nonetheless the result of my recent project is video installation. And now I see a lot of potential in video, thinking that I will be engaged with it in the future too.

The reason I avoided in the past is that—because of that medium-based way of seeing things—I always felt like video is not my medium and I shouldn’t work with it. But I don’t see it as a medium. I simply think that my project needed video and in the course of creating the project, this need manifested itself. And I added it to the project because of that need, not because I wanted to work with video. I first felt the need for vide, then did some tests, realizing that it works. It was only then that I started learning what video is. I watched tutorials, and asked help from colleagues. This is how video entered my creative practice. Now I think that research and social observations is something that I am interested in and video can really facilitate that. I am doing my research, within a specific process, and video is a medium that has the capacity to document this process. That’s why I think I will continue to use it in my work.

SK: does video and video art have a specific position and definition in Iran? if not, is there a prospect for it?

HR: I think video entered Iranian art as a medium, meaning that Iranian artists decided to do video work as well as a new thing. That is how they first ventured into video, regardless of the quality of their work. Some of our painters tried to make video too, in addition to painting. Perhaps they thought that video is an updated form of visualization 332 in art. But, it has a lot of potential. I think that in comparison to our generation, for the newer younger generation, video is a more comfortable medium. They relate to it more easily. The reason is the accessibility of digital media and internet. It started with our generation, when access to computers was normalized. So the generation after, has always had the use of the computer and other digital tools. And it is very practical.

Video not only offers a great potential for creative work, but it is also quite affordable.

You don’t need a space like an atelier or other equipment. Everything can happen in your bedroom at a computer. So the accessibility of the equipment has made it easy. […] So my observation is that video became a part of our art scene not because of there was a need for it, but as a curiosity in a nuance to be explored.

SK: as an artist that has worked in Iran for over a decade, and is familiar with the market there, how do you think the contemporary art scene of Iran treat sexuality?

HR: I think that the atmosphere is still quite discriminatory. The kind of discrimination that we see in the art scene of Iran may differ from the discrimination we witness in other sectors of the society. But I still see the fetishized way of looking at women. Women are not taken as seriously as men, especially in sale records, where male artists always fare better. Women might be encouraged to show more of their work, but you notice it in a subtle way that they are still not being taken seriously. Nobody admits to this, but I have seen it in practice.

However, there is also this romanticized way of looking at women and female artists, which I think comes from the West to a large extent, whereby women are sometimes given special opportunities; they get much more exposure internationally, particularly 333 female photographers. This is the fetishized way of looking I talk about. They look at female artists of Iran like this, because of the difficulties the Iranian women face in their lives.

I have a very personal experience that applies here. In my relationship with Nastaran, as two artists who were at the same level when they started, sat in the same class, in the long-term, it was completely evident that we were seen in different ways. In certain contexts, she received more attention, especially where there was a tendency to see here as a “woman” artist in Iran. But when it came to sales, I was taken more seriously. And this bothered us both. We did not like the discrimination and the discriminatory treatment. That was when I really felt the discrimination on a personal level.

SK: what are the positive and negative outcomes of working under the supervision of an institution like the ministry of culture? Has censorship ever been an issue for you?

HR: Censorship and the involvement with the ministry affects artists in a variety of ways.

Censorship is one of the smaller impacts. I think that the biggest influence is preventative. For people like us, who were born and raised in that environment, we automatically do no venture into certain areas, unless you have a very serious political cause and statement, and are ready to fight for it and pay the price. And that is something that we have seen over the years… all those who decide to pay the price [for change], pay too much, and it is so irrational and unpredictable that one may think it is best not to risk it. I think this is the biggest influence of censorship. So we stop ourselves, before they have to censor us. 334

Another issue in Iran is that we have a body of rules that are at times loosely applied because of mismanagement; either those who are supposed to supervise, do not take things seriously, or are simply not good at supervising. This leads to periods of relative openness. And it is very random. So you may want to do something that was fine until a little while ago, but now it is problematic. For instance, I am currently involved in something with the ministry. A few months ago they made a new rule that all artworks that are being moved abroad must obtain permits from the ministry. This is ridiculous and it was never an issue for me, since I started working. There is a process, and the customs department checks everything. It is obvious what is being sent. I see no logic in the requirement for permits from the ministry, except for the fact that it makes things very difficult for us, with the visits and correspondence. So with the ministry, there is this sense of randomness that makes it unpredictable. But usually, the gallery or those around the artist manage to address the problematic elements of the work, so that it doesn’t get filtered by the ministry.

I had an idea for Mohsen Gallery. It was supposed to be a two-week workshop, during which I would produce the entire work. The idea was to make an archive of all the information I could find online about the conflict between the US and Iran. This conflict has been the topic of conversation for the past 40 years, but no classic war has ever happened between the two countries; but the paranoia of war is so intense that it continues onward. So the idea was to compile information about the conflict during a two-week period. But it was censored. The gallery told me that it is best not to do it at that stage. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

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