Iran - Andrew Burke [52]
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The Blind Owl, by Sadeq Hedayat, published in 1941, a seminal and influential book, is a dark and powerful portrayal of the decadence of a society failing to achieve its own modernity.
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A 2005 study found 370 Iranian women had published novels – 13 times the number in 1995 and about equal with the number of published male novelists. Among the most popular is Fataneh Haj Seyed Javadi, whose 1998 novel Drunkard Morning is about a woman who defies her aristocratic family to marry a carpenter in the 1940s, then leaves him when he becomes abusive. Another is Simin Daneshvar, whose novel A Persian Requiem (Shavushun in Farsi) deals with life in Iran between the two world wars. Her husband was the prominent social commentator Jalal Al-e Ahmad whose novels – The School Principal and The Pen – have also been translated into English.
Iranians themselves tend to prefer short stories to novels. A selection of these are included in Minou Southgate’s compendium Modern Persian Short Stories.
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CINEMA
Iran’s love affair with cinema started at the dawn of the last century. Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkas-Bashi recorded a royal visit to Belgium in 1900, and in the same year the country’s first public cinema opened in Tabriz. By 1904 a cinema had opened in Tehran, and it has been the most popular form of artistic entertainment ever since. Avanes Oganian’s Abi & Rabi (1930) was the first silent Iranian movie, and The Lor Girl (1933), directed by Ardashir Irani in India, the first talkie. Producer Abdolhossein Sepanta’s love for Iranian history and literature helped him to craft films that appealed to Iranian tastes. Esmail Kushan’s 1948 The Tempest of Life was the first film to be made in Iran and since then, the home-grown industry has not looked back.
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For news and history of Iranian cinema, see the Farabi Cinema Foundation’s site at www.fcf.ir/english.
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It was not until the 1960s, however, that the first signs of a very distinctive Iranian cinematic language emerged. Poet Forough Farrokhzad’s 1962 film of life in a leper colony, The House is Black, anticipated much of what was to come. Darius Mehrjui’s 1969 film Gaav, based on a story by modern playwright Gholamhossien Sa’edi, was the period’s most important landmark film. Sohrab Shahid Sales’ early 1970s films, such as Still Life, introduced a new way of looking at reality; the influence of his still camera and simple stories is seen in Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s work.
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THE MAKHMALBAF FAMILY – A CINEMA DYNASTY
Born in 1957 in Tehran, Mohsen Makhmalbaf first gained infamy when he was imprisoned for five years after fighting with a policeman. He was released during the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and started to write books before turning to film-making in 1982. Since then he has produced more than a dozen films, including Boycott, Time for Love, Gabbeh Click here and, more provocatively, Salaam Cinema. Many of his films are based on taboo subjects: Time for Love was filmed in Turkey because it broached the topic of adultery; and Marriage of the Blessed was a brutal film about the casualties of the Iran–Iraq War.
Makhmalbaf refuses to follow the strict Islamic guidelines for local film-making and has become a virtual exile from Iran because of overzealous censorship. In 1997 Makhmalbaf’s daughter Samira produced her first film, The Apple, to critical acclaim. In 2000 her second film, Blackboards, was a smash hit at the Cannes Film Festival; she was the youngest director ever to have shown a film there.
The Makhmalbaf movie factory continues to churn out winners. Samira’s younger brother made a ‘making-of’ documentary about Blackboards; then younger sister Hana directed a feature about the shooting of At Five in the Afternoon. On the strength of that film, Joy of Madness, Hana beat Samira to a ‘youngest-ever’ record by being invited to the Venice Film Festival at the age of 14. Even