A Dangerous Shift in Iranian Cinema
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- jlichman
- added this
A few weeks ago, some utterly clueless study was conducted showing that the Romanian films so popular on the festival right now were, shockingly, not box office successes in Romania. Why anyone was taken aback by this is hard to guess. Most country's festival films have always been persona non grata—commercially and sometimes politically—in the places they emerged. (Recall, for example, Tony Rayns launching his war against Kim Ki-Duk by pointing out that his financing was almost entirely foreign, as if that were an automatic demerit.)
In the late '90s, Iranian cinema was the wave of the art-house future: Jafar Panahi, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and (grudgingly conceded) Majid Majidi were all enjoying fair success. Their films, too, weren't necessarily commercial hits in Iran (Panahi is used to having his work banned), but then something else happened: the amount of foreign cinematic attention paid to Iran these past few years—with the exception of Panahi's Offside—has been almost null. Kiarostami is off doing art installation-type dares to the audience, Makhmalbaf hasn't seen American distribution since 2001, Majidi continues to tickle the middlebrows with allegorical children and Panahi has to fight to make a film every three years. There is, of course, nothing inherently sinister about a country's cinematic profile temporarily ebbing a bit; certainly, given how the cinematic country du jour seems to change every few years (Iran, Korea, Thailand, Romania), it might just seem like some kind of anomaly. Given current events, that's really not the biggest of concerns right now. But what, precisely, has been going on?
In the late '90s, Iranian cinema was the wave of the art-house future: Jafar Panahi, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and (grudgingly conceded) Majid Majidi were all enjoying fair success. Their films, too, weren't necessarily commercial hits in Iran (Panahi is used to having his work banned), but then something else happened: the amount of foreign cinematic attention paid to Iran these past few years—with the exception of Panahi's Offside—has been almost null. Kiarostami is off doing art installation-type dares to the audience, Makhmalbaf hasn't seen American distribution since 2001, Majidi continues to tickle the middlebrows with allegorical children and Panahi has to fight to make a film every three years. There is, of course, nothing inherently sinister about a country's cinematic profile temporarily ebbing a bit; certainly, given how the cinematic country du jour seems to change every few years (Iran, Korea, Thailand, Romania), it might just seem like some kind of anomaly. Given current events, that's really not the biggest of concerns right now. But what, precisely, has been going on?
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- groups:
- Culture, Movies, Indie Film
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- tags:
- Culture, Movies, Iran, movies_featured, 2 more
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twitterbot
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@GrouchoMarxist on twitter says "This is what our friends in Iran are fighting against -- GreenCine Daily: A Dangerous Shift in Iranian Cinema #iran"
- 2 years ago
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twitterbot
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trelk
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i sure love the films of Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami. although i haven't seen a film from Panahi since 'the circle' nor one from Kiarostami since 'the wind will carry us'.
thank you for posting this.
- 2 years ago
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trelk
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twitterbot
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@cinemaminima on twitter says "Iran/ RT @current_movies RT @greencine Alarming shift in Iranian cinema"
- 2 years ago
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