Jafar Panahi

This introduction to my book, Jafar Panahi: Interviews (ed. Todd, Uni Press of Mississippi, 2019), provides a critical overview of second-wave Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi's life and filmmaking career. In it I address certain tendencies in Panahi's cinema, including the influences of neorealism and Abbas Kiarostami, but also his distinctive modernism and politics.

Iranian filmmakers have long been recognised for creating a vibrant, aesthetically rich cinema whilst working under strict state censorship regulations. As Michelle Langford reveals, many have found indirect, allegorical ways of expressing forbidden topics and issues in their films. But for many, allegory is much more than a foil against haphazardly applied censorship rules. Drawing on a long history of allegorical expression in Persian poetry and the arts, allegory has become an integral part of the poetics of Iranian cinema. Allegory in Iranian Cinema explores the allegorical aesthetics of Iranian cinema, explaining how it has emerged from deep cultural traditions and how it functions as a strategy for both supporting and resisting dominant ideology.
As well as tracing the roots of allegory in Iranian cinema before and after the 1979 revolution, Langford also theorizes this cinematic mode. She draws on a range of cinematic, philosophical and cultural concepts - developed by thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Christian Metz and Vivian Sobchack - to provide a theoretical framework for detailed analyses of films by renowned directors of the pre-and post-revolutionary eras including Masoud Kimiai, Dariush Mehrjui, Ebrahim Golestan, Kamran Shirdel, Majid Majidi, Jafar Panahi, Marziyeh Meshkini, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Asghar Farhadi.
Allegory in Iranian Cinema explains how a centuries-old means of expression, interpretation, encoding and decoding becomes, in the hands of Iran's most skilled cineastes, a powerful tool with which to critique and challenge social and cultural norms.
Available 25 July 2019

Under repressive regimes, wherein overt social, political and/or religious criticism is censored, filmmakers rely on symbolism to express resistance.  This essay analyses and compares two Middle Eastern films which both use vehicles and colour symbolism in narratives about female suppression. Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Wadjda (2012) follows a young female protagonist’s efforts to purchase a bicycle – a vehicle forbidden to girls in Saudi Arabia, while Jafar Panahi’s Offside (2006) explores tensions between female football fans trying to sneak into a World Cup qualifying match in Iran, and the male guards whose duty it is to stop them. Both the bicycle in Wadjda and the football fan buses in Offside are green: a religiously significant colour in Islam, as well as a colour more widely associated with growth and new beginnings. In film, vehicles have historically symbolised freedom and social mobility. By making them green, Al-Mansour and Panahi create potent, multi-layered, culturally-specific symbols which address what Al-Mansour refers to as a ‘tension between tradition and modernity’.  Blending the traditionally significant colour green with symbols of modernity, these filmmakers acknowledge the necessity of compromise and negotiation. As audiences we benefit from learning how to read and understand the rich visual language of symbolism.

In post-revolutionary Iran, cinema has long been a site of contestation between the Islamic government and filmmakers attempting to resist socio-political and religious censorship of film form and content. In the wake of the Iranian revolution in 1979, strict censorship guidelines were introduced to ensure that films conform to revolutionary values and codes of modesty in line with Islamic law. Between 1979 and the present day, these censorship rules have shifted slightly with the ebbs and flows of Iranian politics, with a perceptible loosening of codes during the presidency of reformist Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) and the gradual tightening of restrictions again following the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. With the entry of the country into political crisis in 2009 following President Ahmadinejad’s contested re-election and emergence of the Green Wave protest movement, yet another raft of restrictions have been placed on Iran’s film community. These restrictions, which have seen travel bans placed on various filmmakers and actors, the arrest of numerous filmmakers, actors and producers and a 20-year filmmaking ban imposed on prominent director Jafar Panahi, are increasingly designed to control the people with the means and expertise to produce meaningful content, rather than the content itself. Arguably, this is in part a result of the sophisticated practices of allegorical encoding that Iranian filmmakers have developed over more than three decades of censorship and political scrutiny.  Authorities have become increasingly aware of and sensitive to the openness and critical potential of such ‘texts’ and the attendant capacity of audiences to read into them. At the same time, digital and Web 2.0 technologies are enabling filmmakers to connect much more directly with viewers, bypassing the many layers of censorship imposed at all stages of the filmmaking process: production, distribution and exhibition.

This article, originally published in Screen in 2003, argues that the appeal of recent Iranian films to international audiences is due at least in part to their use of 'open', ambiguous, epiphanic images. In answer to concerns about the apolitical trajectory of these films, it suggests that the repressed political dimension returns within the aesthetic form of the open image.

This paper aims to investigate the role(s) of the draconian censorship laws imposed on post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema, which caused significant alterations in the aesthetic of Iranian Cinema since the 1980s onwards. These laws were established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to regulate and control the media, especially the cinema against any anti-establishment propaganda. Through these laws, Iranian filmmakers are banned from representing images of themes such as love, violence, westernization, politics, sexuality, etc. Influenced by the aesthetic styles of Italian Neorealism and French New Wave, Iranian New Wave innovates a new cinematic language. This study focuses on Jafar Panahi, who is on house arrest for 20 years because of his controversial films. This paper further analyses two of his films-This Is Not A Film (2011) and Taxi (2015) in order to establish the magnitude of control that changed narrative style drastically. As he was barred from making films, he invents a new cinematic language that defies the very notion of traditional filmmaking process and forms. Panahi extends the typical use of docu-fiction style of Iranian New Wave in to an entirely new level that sets up an endeavour based on basic cinematic apparatus, yet creates a unique visual narratology. This paper will critically analyse the new form by separately scrutinising the use of camera, editing technique and sound.

Quando si parla di sport e della risonanza che esso raggiunge a livello mediatico, non bisogna mai dimenticare che quest'ultima è un fattore dato dalla quantità di persone che si riuniscono dietro ad uno schermo per seguire un match sportivo. La squadra o l'altleta del cuore diventano un simulacro pagano da seguire e sostenere con fervore, specialmente quando ad essi si associa il patriottismo legato a manifestazioni sportive di carattere continentale o mondiale.
Quello che può apparire curioso è come il tifo possa in qualche modo diventare una questione sociale, una battaglia per l'ottenimento di un diritto per certi versi banale ma che, se contestualizzato, è invece indice di necessità a lottare per avere la libertà di pensiero e di espressione negati da un regime che tende invece ad essere autoritario e repressivo.

Doses de  originalidade dão o tom nesta estreia em longa-metragem de Panah Panahi.  Nem tanto como o filme se apresenta, mas a família na qual ele é centrado, cultiva um  humor particular. O humor de Pegando a estrada (Jaddeh Khaki, 2021), num certo sentido disfarça o sofrimento que está na base da viagem feita  de carro, percorrendo estradas de Teerã até a fronteira.

Politique du cinéma iranien
De l’âyatollâh Khomeyni au président Khâtami , Éditions du CNRS, 2004
par Agnés Devictor

L’auteur de ce livre examine tout d’abord le cinéma iranien parce qu’il n’y a pas assez travail à propos de ce cinéma intéressant selon elle. Elle dresse l’histoire et le développement du cinéma iranien avec la dimension politique et culturelle à partir de 1979 jusqu’à aujourd’hui en deux partie. Elle se pose aussi comment le cinéma a été utilisé comme un outil politique et religieux par le nouveau régime après la révolution. Quelles films ont été réalisés et autorisés après la révolution ? Qu’dit l’àyatollâh Khomeyni sur le septième art modern etc

Esta pesquisa analisa os processos de realização do cineasta iraniano Jafar Panahi após a sentença judicial que, em 2010, o vetou, por um período de vinte anos, de realizar filmes, escrever roteiros, conceder entrevistas e sair do Irã. Panahi, não obstante, continua a filmar de
forma discreta, independente e clandestina, tendo realizado dessa maneira Isto não é um filme (2011), Cortinas Fechadas (2013), Táxi Teerã (2015), Onde está você, Jafar Panahi? (2016) e 3 Faces (2018). Abordo o que nesses filmes se delineia como um pensamento fílmico da interdição. Ao identificar as marcas estéticas e as estratégias de realização que Panahi passou a explorar, descrevo as linhas de força desse seu projeto cinematográfico pós-condenação, analisando como os filmes confrontam, negociam e transgridem as condições restritivas da interdição.

Both Hana Makhmalbaf (in 'The Joy of Madness') and Jafar Panahi (in 'This is not a film') are implicitly gesturing to the idea of filmmaking as a politically reconfigurative activity. Yet, at the same time, both films seem explicitly to mark their documentaries as, in some way, unfilmic or adjacent to film. A ‘behind the scenes’ documentary, it is regularly made apparent that 'The Joy of Madness' is something other than ‘film’. Firstly, there is its sister text – 'At five in the afternoon'; and secondly, the film is mainly comprised of people telling Samira Makhmalbaf that they do not wish to be in a film but are happy to speak on camera here. Panahi’s documentary wears it’s unfilmic nature more overtly, directly confronting the discrepancy of form between documentary and fiction. Thus, between the two documentaries’ ontological debates and cinematic antagonisms, lies a shared interest in capitalising on something productive about the documentary form that either isn’t available in fiction (in the case of Makhmalbaf) or is prohibited in general (in Panahi’s). I would like to suggest that the documentary format offers these filmmakers a discursive space in which to negotiate the socio-political issues on the surface and the politico-aesthetic issues implicit within.

Des États-Unis à l'Argentine, de la Colombie à l'Iran, il n'est de cinématographie au monde qui ne fasse la part belle au voyage, que celui-ci représente un élément scénaristique ou la notion de franchissement des frontières géographiques, esthétiques ou éthiques (transgression). De la rue à la route, des rails à l'espace, des bikers aux fugitifs, des travellings aux pauses contemplatives, les façons de filmer le voyage sont multiples et ne cessent d'évoluer, comme autant de reflets du monde moderne, pris entre la facilité de communiquer et de se déplacer et le désir de fuir pour retrouver une nature rêvée. Conquête de l'Ouest ou de l'espace, quête de l'El Dorado ou sortie de route, voyage en solitaire ou portrait de groupes multilingues, la route au cinéma trace des croisements et des itinéraires communs entre Kubrick, Spielberg, Eastwood, Sorín ou Panahi. Les analyses réunies dans ce volume dépeignent les constantes et les variantes du road movie d'Hollywood à Téhéran, des années 1940 à nos jours.

Iranian national cinema is showing the scars of artistic persecution. The aesthetic landscape of this national cinema has become one of stark confines – both in its thematic allowances and its aesthetic possibilities. However, these confinements, both physical and technological, have not merely been passively affected by ideological constraints but have also been active in affecting ideological discourse, answering back as it does within imposed limitations. What we are seeing in contemporary Iranian cinema, I believe, is a complex movement of aesthetic novelty, provoking some important questions regarding the relationship between politics and aesthetics. The relatively high-profile instance of which I am concerned here is Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film (2011): a work that denies its ontological category and, in turn, furthers its medial possibilities. Panahi’s confinement is an
example of enforced asceticism: an asceticism of necessity, groundbreaking in its approach. So much potential arises from this “non-film” – too much to find any answers here. However, this Collision presents the perfect space for briefly outlining some of the questions emanating from a film that is “not a film”. I raise some striking similarities between what occurs with Panahi and the politico-aesthetic ideas of Jacques Rancière in order to
contemplate Panahi's use of asceticism to political effect.

Panahi’s This is Not a Film (2010) is an urgent appeal for sight upon a helpless situation, an effort to confront and disrupt the Iranian state’s decree upon his movement and vocation. However, confined to the absurd situation of attempting to describe a film he was banned from making, I claim that while intervening in the social situation in which he finds himself, Panahi also produces a rich investigation into the politics of aesthetics. As he sets about delineating the limits of his film, he tests and stretches the limits of film in general. This presentation considers the productive capacities Panahi imagines while imprisoned, and the radical potential cinema has to intervene upon state imposed confinement. Taking-up Jacques Rancière’s “distribution of the sensible”, I consider Panahi’s video-diary in the context of its breaking of laws: first, the law imposed by the Iranian state, and second, the “implicit law governing the sensible order that parcels out places and forms of participation” – in the cinema.