The Cinema Studies Colloquium presents:

"The Aesthetics of Reform: Film and Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran"

Speaker: Blake Atwood, Middle East Center at Penn

Atwood writes: "Scholars have recognized the special relationship between Iranian cinema and Mohmmad Khatami, who was the face of reform in Iran during his presidency (1997-2005). The current accounts identify this relationship in permissive terms, noting Iranian filmmakers’ support of Khatami during his campaigning efforts and the liberal cultural atmosphere that Khatami fostered during his presidency. However, my research indicates that this relationship is much more complicated than modes of permissibility. I draw on recent examples of film to demonstrate that a new reformist aesthetic has emerged in Iranian cinema. This new aesthetic includes a revival of mystic love, the use of Tehran as a metaphoric site of social and structural reformation, reconfigurations of perceptions of time, and the democratization of filmmaking through digital video. The Reformist Movement, therefore, marked a change on Iran’s political landscape at the same time that it signaled a new trend in the country’s cinematic history."