A Social History of Iranian Cinema

Hamid Naficy is one of the world's leading authorities on Iranian film, and A Social History of Iranian Cinemais his magnum opus. Covering the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first and addressing documentaries, popular genres, and art films, it explains Iran's peculiar cinematic production modes, as well as the role of cinema and media in shaping modernity and a modern national identity in Iran. This comprehensive social history unfolds across four volumes, each of which can be appreciated on its own. The years since the Islamic Revolution have seen an extraordinary efflorescence in Iranian film and other visual media. In Volume 4, Naficy addresses film and television produced since the revolution, in Iran and by Iranian émigrés. In the past thirty years, new film forms have been developed and utilized. Documentary films have proliferated. Many filmmakers, both proponents and opponents of the Islamist regime, have taken as their subject the revolution and the bloody eight-year war with Iraq. Women's presence on and behind the camera has increased significantly in all genres and types of films, in the television and movie industries. A dissident art-house cinema, involving some of the best Pahlavi-era new-wave directors and a younger generation of innovative postrevolution directors, placed Iranian cinema on the map of world cinemas, bringing prestige to Iranians at home and abroad. The displacement, dispersion, and exile of a massive number of Iranians, many of whom worked in the cinema, television, and new media industries, resulted in a body of exilic films made by first-generation émigrés and their descendants. The wide international circulation of films made in Iran and its diaspora, the vast dispersion of Iranians abroad, and new filmmaking and communication technologies helped to globalize Iranian cinema. Other volumes in A Social History of Iranian Cinema Volume 1: The Artisanal Era, 18971941 Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 19411978 Volume 3: The Islamicate Period, 19781984