Farshad Zahedi

We are pleased to announce that the proposal submission is now open for the two-days conference Reflections on Asian Eco-Culture: Audiovisual Portraits of Ecology Thought. <http://eventos.uc3m.es/go/ecoasianculture> The main objective of this conference is to bring together presentations that highlight Asian thinking towards nature and new ways of depicting and producing ecology through audiovisual devices. By Asian thinking, we understand the vision of a global community that transcends Asia and addresses solutions to future challenges on a global scale. This thinking, though in itself stems from Asian cultural roots, is a way of considering humanity as a whole beyond geopolitical borders. In this context, it is crucial to consider how the global and Asian perspectives respond to climate challenges given the significant impact of this area, and the enormous influence of different audiovisual devices today. The aim is to bring together academic works that explore images, imaginaries, and concepts that approach nature as an evolving subject, poetic interpretations of the Earth (geo-poetics), or audiovisual responses to the climate crisis. This conference is part of a project that is supported by Eurasia Foundation (from Asia) and Instituto Universitario de Cine Español (UC3M). It also involves publication of a compilation book (Springer), that includes a selection of papers presented at the conference.

RESUMEN (English below): En este estudio se han analizado las películas de world cinema exhibidas en los dos festivales de cine internacionales más importantes de España: el Festival Internacional de Cine de San Sebastián y la Semana Internacional de Cine de Valladolid. Se ha buscado cuáles de ellas se han exhibido en salas de cine españolas durante el periodo 2016-2021. Los resultados muestran que cerca de un tercio de las películas de estos dos festivales
son  de  world  cinema,  y  que  alrededor  de  un  tercio  de  estas  películas  exhibidas  en  los festivales se exhiben también en salas de cine.

ABSTRACT: In this study, we analyze the films in the world cinema category that have been screened at the two most important international film festivals in Spain: The San  Sebastian International Film Festival, and the Valladolid International Film Week in the period of 2016-2021. It also studied the output of these festivals in terms of screenings in the Spanish cinemas during the same period. The results show that nearly a third of the films at these two festivals belong to world cinema, and about a third of these films screened at the festivals have been shown in cinemas.

El propósito de este estudio no es proporcionar una cartografía de cine de mujeres iraníes en exilio y diáspora, sino analizar una cierta estética espaciotemporal de una selección de las películas. En este sentido una primera aproximación será hacia la imagen de la casa. Como un espacio que aborda en ocasiones dimensiones abstractas, la casa en la obra de autores migrantes aparece con frecuencia como un lugar entre la tierra de origen y la tierra de acogida. Un lugar deseado y añorado, a la vez que desafiado y criticado. La casa tal y como en su día apuntó Sujata Moorti es un punto de anclaje emocional y corpóreo visto en este cine desde la “óptica diaspórica” (2003: 357). En las películas analizadas en este estudio, esta mencionada óptica enfoca hacia las nociones de memoria. En este sentido la teoría de Moorti de nuevo tendrá que ser repensada cuando aporta análisis para demostrar un carácter específico de cine de mujeres en diáspora, fundamentalmente distanciado de la visión mítica y nostálgica del pasado, para tratar un nuevo imaginario de la casa como un lugar al que mirar desde una posición no directa, “una visión oblicua para reconstituir la casa manteniendo la fidelidad hacia múltiples sitios de afiliación” (Moorti, 2003: 360). Desde esta perspectiva, los casos de estudio consisten en Mujeres sin hombres (Shirin Neshat, 2009), Red Rose (Sepideh Farsi, 2014) y Una chica vuelve a casa sola de noche (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Ana Lili Amirpour, 2014). Rodadas en persa, las tres películas son producciones transnacionales, en las que las experiencias personales de las protagonistas se interconectan con la memoria colectiva, donde la casa encuentra valores alegóricos como un lugar en el constante proceso de resignificación.

(English below)
Resumen: La obra de Neshat, desde varias perspectivas teóricas, merece un estudio pormenorizado. Mi intención en este estudio es, a propósito de dos de sus videoinstalaciones, Zarin (2005) y Munis (2008) de la serie Mujeres sin hombres (Zanan bedun-e mardan, 2004-2009), examinar la visión de la artista al orientalismo y a las geometrías del poder. Forma parte del marco teórico de este estudio una relectura al contexto histórico del orientalismo, además de las teorías de los espacios generizados en una intersección con los estudios de la representación en las artes visuales. La pregunta principal de esta investigación es cómo la estética elegida por Neshat responde al potente imaginario orientalista, a la vez que a las coordenadas espaciales y arquitectónicas de la cultura de segregación. Se ha observado que la estética de los casos de estudio contiene un método latente de arqueología de medios, implicando desaterrar memorias y nociones del imaginario, a fin de provocar una nueva lectura y posición para el sujeto femenino que representa.

Abstract: Neshat’s work, from several theoretical perspectives, deserves a detailed study. My intention in this study is, as for two of her video installations, Zarin (2005) and Munis (2008) from the Women Without Men
series (Zanan bedun-e mardan, 2004-2009),  to examine the artist’s vision of Orientalism and power geometries.  A re-reading of the historical context 
of Orientalism is part of the theoretical framework of this study, in addition to the theories of the spaces generated at an intersection with the studies of representation in the visual arts. The main question of this research is how Neshat’s chosen aesthetic responds to the powerful Orientalist imaginary, while also responding to the spatial and architectural
coordinates of the culture of segregation. It has been observed that the aesthetics of the case studies contain a latent method of media archaeology involving the earthing of memories and notions of the imaginary, in order to provoke a new reading and position for the female subject it represents.

Resumen (English below)

El objetivo de este estudio es explorar el retrato del espacio urbano en la película Princesas (Fernando León de Aranoa, 2005). En una intersección entre los estudios del espacio fílmico y la geografía y las fronteras urbanas, el marco teórico de este artículo aborda una nueva visión a una de las películas que fue considerada un síntoma de cambios estéticos del cine español al inicio del nuevo milenio. La película procede a una lectura crítica de Madrid en pleno cambio sustancial hacia la globalización, poniendo de relieve los espacios urbanos invisibilizados y marginados. El rasgo importante de la película es su aproximación a los personajes fronterizos que atraviesan las fronteras invisibles de la ciudad en su negociación cotidiana con la interpelación espacial. De ahí que el enfoque principal de este estudio sea examinar la relación entre este retrato fílmico con las diferentes islas urbanas y sus correspondientes fronteras.

Abstract
The objective of this study is to explore the portrait of Madrid in  Princesses  (Princesas,  Fernando  Leon de  Aranoa,  2005).  At an intersection between studies of film space,  urban geography,  and the recent border studies,  the theoretical framework of this paper is applied to a film that was considered a symptom of aesthetic changes in Spanish cinema at the beginning of the new millennium. The film offers a critical reading of Madrid in the midst of substantial changes toward globalisation by focusing on its invisibilised and marginalised urban spaces and their inhabitants. An important feature of the film is its exploration of subaltern characters who cross the city’s invisible borders in their day-to-day negotiation with the spatial interpellation. The main focus of this paper is therefore on examining the relationship of this film portrait with different urban islands and their corresponding borders.

The widespread acknowledgement of Kiarostami as a global auteur provides us with a background against which to reconsider one of his most local films as well as one of the most important representations of children in Iranian cinema. When interpreting Where Is the Friend’s House?, many critics and scholars see metaphysical references in the simple act of a child attempting to overcome obstacles put in his way by adults. But any mystical reading of the film runs the risk of closing off consideration of Kiarostami’s endeavour to offer a cognitive map of a crucial moment in Iranian history. This study aims to rethink the film, focusing on Kiarostami’s depiction of social conflicts through an exploration of quotidian spaces and a portrayal of simple objects such as doors, windows and homework notebooks. Abbas Kiarostami, in creating such a microcosmic space, was following great Iranian thinkers and poets such as Hafez in expressing his contestation of the dominant ideologies of post-1979 Iran.

RESUMEN: Los inquilinos (Eyareh neshinha, 1987) cuenta la historia de un
edificio. Dirigido por Dariush Mehryui, un destacado miembro del nuevo cine iraní, la película establece una relación alegórica con el contexto social de Irán en los 80. En clave de humor, un tanto satírico y a veces burlesco, pero en todo momento una comedia absurda, el filme caricaturiza relaciones entre vecinos que disputan sin cesar para mantener sus intereses propios. Son inquilinos de un edificio decadente y estructuralmente dañado, que necesita reformas urgentes, lo que no ocurre por falta de concordancia y colaboración entre el colectivo, que a su vez recurre a las competiciones, conspiraciones, peleas y perseguimientos. La lucha absurda entre el vecindario daña todavía más el edificio. Una polémica imagen social del Irán posrevolucionario que en el estreno de la película levanta reacciones políticas que curiosamente son de la
misma naturaleza que la narrativa de la película. Más de tres décadas después del estreno, Los inquilinos sigue siendo un referente alegórico que pervive en el tiempo.

ABSTRACT: The Tenants (Eyareh neshinha, 1987) tells the story of a building. Directed by Dariush Mehryui, a leading member of the new Iranian cinema, the film establishes an allegorical relationship with the social context of Iran in the 1980s. In a humorous treatment, somewhat satirical and sometimes burlesque, but at all times as an absurdist comedy, the film caricatures relationships between neighbours who quarrel incessantly to maintain their self-interest. They are tenants of a decaying and structurally damaged building in need of urgent renovation. But this does not happen in the lack of agreement and collaboration between the collective, which in turn resorts to competition, conspiracies, fights, and persecution. The absurd fighting in the neighbourhood further damages the building. The film was a controversial social image of post-revolutionary Iran that at its release raises political reactions, which are curiously of the same nature as the film's narrative. More than three decades later, The Tenants remains to be as an allegorical reference that lives on in time.

Este estudio es una revisión de la historia del cine popular iraní en sus años de formación después de la llegada del sonoro. Conocido como filmfarsi, este cine se estructura mediante una relación con el cine indio, particularmente procedente de Mumbai. Se abordan los eventos históricos que posibilitan el traspaso desde India a Irán, un nuevo conocimiento, una nueva fórmula de creación fílmica de enorme recepción popular. Será objeto de una exploración historiográfica, la creación de los primeros filmfarsi, desde los primeros contactos entre los cineastas artesanos de ambos países en la década de 1930, hasta los casos paradigmáticos como Sangam (Ray Kapur, 1964) y El tesoro de Gharun (Gany-e Gharun, Siamak Yasami, 1965), películas que marcan un punto de inflexión en la historia del cine iraní. Además, el texto examinará las coproducciones irano-indias que, aunque escasas, muestran la colaboración profesional entre ambos países que resultan en tendencias estéticas y narrativas comunes.

This paper will explore Shirin Neshat’s adaptation of Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel Women Without Men (1989). A primary focus will be on Neshat’s aesthetic choices related to the creation of space and the depiction of bodies and the extent to which they reflect her exilic condition. Another distinctive aspect to be explored concerns the dialectical relations in the film that visually depict gendered spaces inside homes and in public spaces. A related area here is the representation of an orchard as a heterotopian third space that gives shelter to wounded women. While both the novel and the film portray this orchard as a place of becoming, the film’s garden contains allegorical relations that portray it as a place of imaginary exile. Finally, the paper will argue that the portrayal of wounded female bodies is a political sign and a metaphor for women’s traumatic experiences of patriarchal culture.

Resumen.
En el contexto del cine español del tardofranquismo, a finales de los años sesenta, surge un particular círculo de cinefilia conocido como la Escuela de Argüelles (EA). Los miembros de la EA encuentran serios obstáculos para incorporarse a la industria
del cine español, por los cambios fundamentales que sufre el sector en el umbral de la transición a la democracia. En busca de una alternativa,  algunos  miembros  del  círculo  encuentran  a  la  televisión  como  un  laboratorio  idóneo  para  experimentar  sus  ambiciones estéticas. Este artículo es el estudio de caso de Emilio Martínez Lázaro, cuya colaboración con TVE hasta la llegada de la Ley Miró a principios de los ochenta, aporta importantes datos para analizar nuestra propuesta: la TVE durante la Transición se convierte en un laboratorio estético alternativo al cine, y en un espacio transitorio que paradójicamente posibilita la carrera cinematográfica de una generación de cinefilia española.

[ENGLISH]
La Escuela de Argüelles  in Spanish Television. The Case of Emilio Martínez Lázaro
Abstract.
Escuela  de  Argüelles  (EA)  was a  cinephilia  circle that  emerged  in  Madrid in  the  late ’60s.  The young  EA’s members encountered serious obstacles for initiating their career in the Spanish film industry since some fundamental political changes of late Francoism had made difficulties for new filmmaker’s accessibilities. Some EA members found opportunities for filmmaking, paradoxically in Spanish TV (TVE). This study analyses the historical circumstances that transform TVE as a perfect laboratory for experiencing the aesthetical ambitions of these mentioned members of  EA.  By focusing on the case of  Emilio  Martínez  Lázaro,  an outstanding member of EA, this paper will explore the result of this mentioned collaboration. As the hypothesis, this study proposes considering TVE during the Spanish Transition as an alternative educational space for experiencing film aesthetics. In this regard, the TV series, literary adaptations made in film format, gave an opportunity for and contributed to the emergence of a new generation of Spanish filmmakers.

Michel Foucault describía a la revolución iraní como «un acto, político y jurídico, que se celebró colectivamente en el interior de ritos religiosos» (1980). Foucault tal y como apunta Ian Almond, pasa por alto «cualquier sentido individual o conflictos internos que conformaron el movimiento», y a su vez se deja llevar por los clichés orientalistas al considerar el carácter esotérico de la voz colectiva. Irán, para Foucault, fue como un lugar prelapsario que conserva algo auténtico y atemporal: un útopos adverso de un Occidente que para él, de nuevo con palabras de Almond, estaba «asociado con la tragedia, individualidad, inautenticidad y la represión» (2007). Pero lo que está ausente en los apuntes de Foucault había aparecido en el imaginario del público revolucionario en forma de un potente retrato de un héroe trágico: un rebelde moderno, o modernizado, que manifiesta el malestar histórico del pueblo y se convierte en el justiciero que entra en conflicto contra la ley imperante y al final se sacrifica para recuperar su dignidad. Lo que aquí proponemos es una introducción a este retrato de la masculinidad como una manera de aproximación a un potente imaginario que a lo largo de cuarenta años acompaña a la revolución iraní. Dicho de otra forma, mi intención es abordar los periplos de esta representación ideológica, que toma vida en un cuerpo a veces malherido del héroe trágico.

This study aims to explore how European critics and scholars go about constructing meaning in the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami. The lack of a fixed signified ascribed to Kiarostami’s work has meant that he has been bestowed with the myth of a great –and mysterious auteur.  In his minimalistic treatment of modern subjects, Kiarostami is regarded as creating premodern artefacts that resist incorporation into the European imaginary. The case study here is his Koker Trilogy, which allows for an exploration of opposing interpretations, that is, between distant observer eager to create a meaning for filmmaker, and the filmmker who seeks a worldwide recognition for his world view.

Javanmards has been depicted in Iranian movies since the beginning of Iranian cinema. Whereas the popular movies invite the audience to identify with the javanmards, a minority of films, especially those made by women and independent filmmakers, question their authority. The tension and challenge posed by the javanmard seems to be a symptom of socio-historical conflicts. This study traces the portrait of the javanmard's portrait in a number of noteworthy films from Iranian cinema and observes the ways in which the javanmards sometimes conceal dominant ideologies. I also seek to demonstrates how the concept of javanmardi gradually transforms and disintegrates in the aftermath of a deep identity crisis.

Los estudios sobre el cine de Dariush Mehryui, tanto en occidente como en iran, son escasos en numero y poco relevantes en planteamiento. El principal objeto de esta tesis es volver a reflexionar sobre la obra de este autor desde la perspectiva historico-social. La tesis utiliza como recurso metodologico fundamental al analisis de peliculas, (por lo tanto de los textos concretos) en el contexto historico-social de su produccion y establece un dialogo entre la recepcion social y los entrevistas del autor.

Nearly 30 years after the release date of Kiarostami’s Where is my friend’s home? (1987), it is time and there are enough historical perspectives to come back and reanalyse the movie. The wide acknowledgment of Kiarostami as a global author, maybe, provides us a certain terrain to rethink one of the most local films of his filmography, and one of the most important representations of children in Iranian cinema. What makes the film interesting to this retrospective reading, is its apparent pre-ideological space in which a little hero moves. Many of the scholars saw some metaphysical references in this simple action of a child out of home, and his poetic will to overcome the adult’s absurd obstacles. But any esoteric reading of the film may close the way to observe the cognitive map that the movie offers. In other words, and apropos of the hypothesis, Where is my friend’s home? explores a microcosmic village and the dwellers of a system of social relations and power. With regards to what was mentioned, the object of this study is rethinking the movie focusing on the kiarostamian way of depicting the social conflicts through exploring the quotidian spaces and simple objects like doors, windows and homework notebooks.

Drawing upon Naficy’s ideas of “accented cinema” and the theories of “representation of invisibles” and “subaltern voices”, this paper attempts to analyse three films made by exilic Iranian female directors: Women without Men (Shirin Neshat, 2009), Red Rose (Sepideh Farsi, 2014) and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lili Amirpour, 2014). The aforementioned movies share a particular reading of Iranian history and present a -coming-back-to-the-trauma narrative from a female point of view. They also share the diasporic space from which the filmmakers reflect on the memory of their homeland. In this sense, the plots of Women without Men and Red Rose reconstruct the traumatic episodes of Iranian history to give voice to their female characters, who not only object to male repression, but also narrate and revise their personal contact with history. Amirpour’s film, nevertheless, goes a step further from this practice of historical materialism and constructs an ahistorical narrative, in which the density of memory provides powerful metaphors within a certain abstract space.

If we want to reformulate Stuart Hall’s question of “Who speaks?” into the cinematic realm, the result would probably be: Who looks? Cinema’s storytelling techniques from the very beginning of the history of film have been based on the way looking is organised. This has been largely argued by different film theories, such as feminist theory or suture theory. We, as spectators, identify with the film’s characters, not only by what they express verbally but also by what they look at, which makes and transmits their subjectivity. Our gaze, in short, sutures, with their looks—both the character and the camera—and we see the world from their perspective. We see the world through a complex construction of looking.
This study is an attempt to approach the Point of View (POV) shot—which gives an identity to the characters and whom we identify as the spectators—in selected movies of Iranian cinema. How do the main characters of Beyzaie and Kiarostami’s films look at the world? What do they see? How do they react to what they look at? The selection of these two directors was made because they are widely known by local and international filmgoers alike, and because of their own creative way of filming and editing POV shots as well. Both directors belong to an earlier generation of filmmakers; however, a new generation of directors, who have grown up in the digital era, continue to explore this narrative style in a new way.
But why are the POV shots especially important in Iranian cinema? As Hamid Naficy pointed out, Iranian cinema owes its popularity partly to the Iranian government’s unpopularity. The central question about Iranian cinema then is how directors could have confronted government restrictions. There are, nevertheless some controversial positions –such as that of Abbas Kiarostami’s—who considers censorship as a shadowy power which gets involved indirectly in shaping the visual aesthetic of films. Perhaps we can contemplate this in a different way with the background of the Soviet cinema experience: whereas the scripts—and accordingly, the dialogues and voiceovers—have been under rigorous systematic control, the POV shots found a very particular function to convey the ideology—say the cosmovision—of the filmmakers.
For Jonathon Rosenbaum the attraction of Iranian cinema during the nineties in International festivals was brought about by an unspoken need to look at the Iranian socio-political context. Additionally, one also can find this mentioned need in an important part of critics’ and academics’ works on Iranian cinema: to observe the reality from a cinematic distance. In this regard, sometimes the very gap between reality and realism—a space in which normally POV shot takes place—has been ignored. The most important question which this study seeks to answer is the primordial one: How does Iranian cinema deal with reality? Here, we need to go back to a Lacanian framework: if you want to find a reality more real than reality itself, then see the fiction. In other words, if every narrative is a distortion of reality, and consequently, a fundamental failure to depict the ultimate dimension of reality structures the cinematic realism, then how can we find realities in realistic films? This paradox can be resolved with the well-known Levi Strauss theory: even if every realism falsifies the reality in a certain way, a universal truth will be found when an observer compares the different realist narratives, let us say the different falsified version of the same reality. Hence, we have the objective of this study: how Iranian cinema reconstructs reality by the creative use of narrative style.