Authorship in Performance in the Post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema This presentation explores the reappearance of stars in the post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. It argues that the star image in art-house movies is a new phenomenon, not comparable to the star image of the pre-revolutionary films as the rise of these stars is linked with a sense of style and artistic authority in performance. This is a novel phenomenon since art movies before the revolution were more or less associated with directorial authorship and never developed a well-established star system. I will study authorship in performance as represented by Ezatollah Entezami and Nikki Karimi to depict that the star image in post-revolutionary art cinema transcends the scopophilic and fetishistic approaches. I will show how the fruitful collaboration of a number directors and actors resulted in memorable productions like Banoo (1999), The Fifth Reaction (2005), and Sara (1990). The discussion will briefly explore the role of stars associated with the filmfarsi cinema before the revolution. In this period, Iranian celebrities were considered as visual commodities, commercialized through marketing channels and “consumed” by spectators. The Islamic government, however, resented the star-based cinema and the Ministry of Islamic Guidance (Irshad) advocated an anti-cultist film industry. In the new circumstances, the directors were not able to glamorize stars as such. Instead, the formal cinema further relied on performers whose acting technique could compensate for the sexual and violent scenes that proved lucrative in the box-office. Nevertheless, the stars in commercial cinema are still “viewed” as the subject of spectators’ visual pleasure in a more modest manner. The authorship of performance in the case of actors such as Entezami and Karimi resides in their mass popularity without the help of subsidiary circulation in tabloids or fanazines. They are not typecast but have played a wide array of roles. Both of them successfully evaded to be used as raw materials of mise-en-scene and editing. I conclude that the star image of actors like Entezami and Karimi relies on a more abstract and spiritual level similar to that of the pahlavans (in the wrestling and martial arts) and Persian poets. Although both Entezami and Karimi became initially popular for their good looks, their artistic persona has little to do with the fetishistic photo-effect. I believe that the emergence of strong male and female actors with style deconstructed the conventional gendered roles and furthered the flourishing of Iranian post-revolutionary art films.