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171 pages

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An updated collection of recent interviews with filmmakers whose works represent trends in the film industries of Turkey and Iran, this new geospecific edition expands upon the earlier volume Cinemas of the Other: A Personal Journey with Film-Makers from the Middle East and Central Asia.Following an introduction delineating the histories of the film industries of the countries of the Middle East, the book contains interviews stretching over a decade, which position the filmmakers and their creative concerns within the social or political context of their respective countries. The striking variety of approaches toward each interview creates a rich diversity of tone and opens the door to a better understanding of images of 'otherness' in film. In addition to transcripts of the interviews, each chapter also includes stills from important films discussed, biographical information about the filmmakers, and filmographies of their works.Dönmez-Colin offers in this expanded edition a carefully researched and richly detailed firsthand account of the developments and trends in these regional film industries that is sure to be appreciated by film scholars and researchers of the Middle East.

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Publié par	Intellect Books Ltd
Date de parution	01 décembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781841507651
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	19 Mo

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Cinemas of the Other:
A Personal Journey with Film-makers from Iran and Turkey
2nd Edition
Cinemas of the Other:
A Personal Journey with Film-makers from Iran and Turkey
2nd Edition
by G n l D nmez-Colin

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
First published in the UK in 2012 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2012 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2012 G n l D nmez-Colin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Production manager: Jelena Stanovnik
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Typesetting: John Teehan
ISBN 978-1-84150-548-0
EISBN 978-1-84150-765-1
Printed and bound by Hobbs the Printers Ltd, UK
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
IRAN
Rakhshan Bani-Etemad
The Hidden Half
Bahram Beyza i
The Other Side of the Story
Abolfazl Jalili
Treading the Thin Line: Fiction as Documentary
Mahmud Kalari
Valuable Lessons of Camera
Abbas Kiarostami
Life and Nothing But
Reality Without Interruption
Majid Majidi
Refugees in Love and Life
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Portrait of the Revolutionary as an Artist: Take One
Take Two
Dariush Mehrjui
From Social Realism to Dramas of the Interior
Tahmineh Milani
The Real Identity of Women
Jafar Panahi
A Place of their Own
TURKEY
Kutlu Ataman
As Many Centres as Individuals
Handan pek i
Hidden Faces
Semih Kaplano lu
Fragments From Life in Reverse
Erden K ral
Exile s Return
Many Faces of Truth
Settling of Accounts
A Question of Conscience
Ali zgenturk
Film-maker in Times of Strife: A Journey into Self
Nostalgia for True Love
Tayfun Pirselimo lu
New Voices Raising Old Concerns
Portraits from the Periphery
Ye im Ustao lu
Taboos Can Also Be Broken
The Journey of Unlikely Souls
Who am I?
Pandora s Box
At f Y lmaz Bat beki
Whose is the Gaze?
Film Credits
Selected Bibliography
for Maya, In s and Phyllis
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to all film-makers who participated in this project, which would not have been possible without the generous contribution of their time and sincere and open sharing of their work, ideas, feelings and dreams. Special thanks are due to film festivals that focus on the lesser-known cinemas of the world, making it possible to view films that are not otherwise available, particularly, festival des 3 continents - Nantes , Cottbus Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival, Istanbul International Film Festival and Vesoul International Festival of Asian Cinemas.
Introduction
C inemas of the Other: A Personal Journey with Film-Makers from the Middle East and Central Asia is a collection of interviews with film-makers whose works are representative of the cinemas of their respective countries.
Cinema worldwide is dominated by the Hollywood film industry, which imposes its culture, values and cinematic gaze although its contribution is no more than a fraction of the annual production worldwide. National and regional cinemas/industries that cannot fight such an economically powerful giant have either withdrawn backstage or have begun to adopt the box-office success formula of the adversary. The other in the title has a dual meaning: (1) the non-western nations of the Islamic Middle East and Central Asia that are commonly perceived from a Eurocentric point of view as a distinctly separate entity - remote, alien, mysterious, exotic, barbaric, savage and even threatening and dangerous - (2) the cinemas of these nations, which are committed to voicing the social and political issues of their peoples, and/or oppose, both in style and content, dominant mainstream cinemas, inside and outside the country.
To examine the cinemas of all countries that could be defined as the other in this sense is beyond the scope of this book and also my expertise. I have chosen Iran and Turkey from the Middle East, the two non-Arab Muslim countries in the region, which were never colonized and the Muslim Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which share several common traits - history, customs, traditions, languages and religious affiliation - with Iran and Turkey. For the second edition in paperback, we have decided to divide the two parts of the book into two separate volumes to make room for new additions and to provide easier access to readers with different interests. Hence, Volume One is focused on Iran and Turkey, whereas Volume Two concentrates on the Muslim Central Asian Republics of the former Soviet Union. Naturally, the list of distinguished film-makers from these regions is not confined to those included here. Several other film-makers have already taken their deserved place in some of my other books.
The evolution of cinema in Iran and Turkey has been similar in several ways, and carries certain common elements - it s assimilation as a western non-Muslim invention, it s adoption or rejection, the forms of censorship imposed that arise from religious beliefs and the position of women as images and as image-makers. Other aspects are universal and related to geopolitical, social and economic circumstances and not necessarily religion.
Iranian cinema has had its roots in a popular art form called pardeh-khani - akin to Benshi of the Japanese silent cinema, which involves a narrator recounting a story around a painting. A similar art form, nagali , was performed in the ghahve-khanes (coffee-houses) that were the main venues for cultural interaction.
The first Iranian non-fiction film was shot in Ostend, Belgium, on 18 th August 1900 by Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkasbashi, the official court photographer, who used a Gaumont camera to record the ceremony welcoming the visiting Shah with bouquets of flowers. The first public screenings were held in Cinema Soleil, opened in 1900 in Tabriz by Roman Catholic missionaries, and commercial viewings were started by Ebrahim Khan Sahhafbashi-e Tehrani, first at the back of his antique shop and later, in 1904, in a cinema in Tehran. However, it took almost a quarter of a century for ordinary women to experience cinema and then, only in segregated sections.
Abi va rabi/Abi and Rabi (1930), a black-and-white silent film, directed by Ovanes Ohanian, is considered the first ever Iranian film. Abdolhossein Sepanta s very popular Dokhtar-e Lor/The Lor Girl (1933), shot in India, featuring a rural girl named Golonar who sang and danced in the teahouses on the Lorestan-Khuzistan road was the first sound film and the first film featuring a Muslim woman on screen. For many years, Iranian cinema was inundated with cheap imitations of Indian films, which showed women as gullible creatures. Such films that came to be labelled as film farsi alienated the families.
During the time of the imperial regime, both the government and the religious authorities aimed at controlling the images shown publicly. Censorship began in the 1920s when imported films dealing openly with sex were seen as a threat to the family. Political or social criticism was unthinkable in local films. By the 1950s and 1960s, censorship of political content tightened, whereas sex had a free rein. The clerics, on the other hand, condemned cinema, along with music and other art forms, as immoral and corrupt and, therefore, haram (forbidden). Abolfazl Jalili s autobiographical film, Abjad/ The First Letter (2003), elaborates remarkably the stifling religious oppression of the arts even before the revolution.
The credit for laying the foundations of Iranian new wave ( moj-e no ), a movement that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, goes to Forugh Farrokhzad, a rebel poet. Khaneh Siyah Ast/The House is Black (1962), a 22-minute documentary about a leper colony (a fitting metaphor for the Iranian socio-political atmosphere) is acknowledged as the most important influence on contemporary Iranian cinema. The film s delicate fusion of poetry with actuality and the use of non-professional actors are precursors of the works of several celebrated Iranian film-makers, particularly Abbas Kiarostami.
In 1970, Dariush Mehrjui s first film, Gav / The Cow , about a peasant who goes mad after losing his cow and identifies with the animal was heralded as cin ma verit . One of the most influential film-makers of the new wave was Sohrab Shahid Saless, who emigrated to the West after Yek Ettefaghe Sadeh/A Simple Event (1973) and Tabiate Bijan/Still Life (1974).
The new regime of the Ayatollahs was not against cinema as such. Khomeni called it one of the achievements of civilisation , however, starting from 1978, the fervour of the revolutionaries resulted in arson attacks on more than 180 movie houses killing hundreds of people. Many film-makers were indicted on charges of corrupting the public. Several prominent ones chose exile. The attempts to establish an Islamist cinema brought the film industry under the control of the government. Most of the repressive measures were related to the depiction of women on the screen - no close-ups, no women protagonists, no appearance of the female gender over nine years of age without the hejab (Islamic dress code), no tactual contact between unrelated members of the opposite sex, and so on. Women were erased from the screen unless they served the purpose of role models as dutiful and obedient wives, mothers and daughters. Innovative film-makers began to re-structure their scripts, using children as actors to avoid urban adult stories.
In the 1980s, when President Mohamm