Over the last decade and a half, there has been a steady stream of films whose financing, labor, and talent were shared between the Iranian and Lebanese film industries. Big-budget movies like 33 Days (dir. Jamal Shoorje, 2012) and Damascus Time (Ebrahim Hatamikia, 2018) have shown not only the financial and political connections between Iran and Lebanon but also their cultural exchanges. These contemporary exchanges were formalized in 2012 when Mohammad Hosseini, Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and Gaby Layyoun, Lebanon’s Minister of Culture, met in Beirut to announce plans to expand cinematic collaborations between the two countries, including shared financing schemes and educational exchanges for cinema students. Film critics have often understood films like 33 Days and Damascus Time through the lens of contemporary geopolitics, claiming that the Iranian government is simply subsidizing Hezbollah propaganda through these collaborative efforts. However, such readings of these collaborations obscure a much longer history of cinematic exchanges between Iran and Lebanon—exchanges that have benefitted not just from proximity and trade routes between the two countries but also their cultural ties and global ambitions. This presentation considers perhaps the earliest example of a co-production between Iran and Lebanon: the 1967 film That Man from Tehran (dir. Frank Agrama). Shot in the tradition of the 1960s spy thriller, That Man from Tehran features famous actors from both Iran and Lebanon, including Iranian leading man Mohammad Ali Fardin and Lebanese diva Sabah. With an English-language script and an Egyptian-American director, the film is an example of blurred borders, even at a time when film industries in the region were seeking to establish tighter national bounds. In this presentation, I study That Man from Tehran’s production and reception history to challenge the idea that cultural exchanges between Iran and Lebanon are (a) entirely recent and (b) simply the result of political alliances. My analysis joins the work of other scholars who are documenting co-productions within the Global Majority and decentering North America and Europe as global financial and cultural capitals.

There is general consensus among researchers about what has been obscured by the national and metropolitan frameworks that have established the field of cinema history. Principled challenges to these frameworks is a first step. Processing legacy of a field’s methods is another matter. To do so, we must consider how uneven these trajectories have been in the different periods within our field. In the study of twenty-first century transnational film coproductions, the analysis of cross-border connections is a matter of course. It is no stranger to the study of cinematic new waves either, especially after recent theorizations of “global art cinema” have updated the foundational cinema studies texts on art cinema written in the 1970s. One period and phenomenon that has lagged behind others is that of the “golden age” or the first flush of organized studio production. These ages delimit periods of growth of a medium-sized studio system, in which production norms, star systems, professional specialization, and stylistic conventions stabilize. These, more often than other periods, have a tendency to be discussed affirmatively in terms of national development or negatively in terms of derivation from a global dominant cinema. This tendency has obscured the transnational, transregional, and multiethnic dimensions of small studio formation. It also creates problems for film preservation. Genre films made by filmmakers who do not align with national narratives of industry development are rarely top preservation priorities. This paper takes the career of Sardar Sager, beginning in Bombay and ending in Tehran, as a way to track regional formations of expertise. Sager is the best known filmmaker among dozens of film workers in the early studio period in Iran--the 1950s and early 1960s--who worked in relation to media institutions (schools, studios, professional disciplines, technical infrastructure) of South Asia. More important to the argument of this paper than the fact of Sager’s émigré status in Tehran studios is the way this status was crafted in the public eye alongside his rise to become a major director for Studio Caravan Film and Studio Kohinoor Film. This status pervades the trade press and, I argue, is taken up reflexively in his early films. Global golden ages, therefore, lend themselves to work against the national frameworks, and in so doing they also reveal regional correspondences of craft and expertise.

The tale of Shirin and Farhad has emerged as a prominent subject for adaptation, imitation, and translation across the Persianate world, spanning from South Asia to the Middle East. Its origins can be traced back to numerous allusions within the poetry of Persian poets, although it attained its pinnacle of romanticism through Nizami’s renowned tragic romance “Khosrow and Shirin” during the twelfth century. These oral traditions of storytelling have been adapted by cinema in silent and talkie eras. This tale has served as a catalyst for a multitude of cinematic productions, beginning with Homi Master’s 1926 rendition by Kohinoor Film Company in India, culminating in unconventional adaptation by Abbas Kiarostami’s 2008 film “Shirin,” and Bhansali Sehgal’s romantic-comedy “Shirin and Farhad ki toh nikal padi” (2012). Our analysis centers on “Shirin-o-Farhad”, directed by Abdolhossein Sepanta and produced by Ardeshir Irani’s Imperial Films of Bombay in 1934. This film holds significance for feminist historiography, exploring its impact within the broader context of global South cinematic history. By examining the non-extant film through extra-filmic materials and ephemera, we challenge traditional perceptions of cinema production, history, and reception. “Shirin-o-Farhad” followed J.J. Madan’s musical “Shirin-Farhad”, both adaptations of the renowned narrative, notably surpassed the popularity of India’s first full talkie, “Alam Ara”. Moreover, It introduced innovative techniques, like separate recording for sound and image, developing a star-cult strategy, featuring Fakhrozzaman Vaziri and Roohangiz Saminejad, while simultaneously providing a platform for Iranian Muslim actresses to appear on screen. Miriam Hansen’s perspective on classical Hollywood cinema as a popular form of modernism, serving as a reference point for various cultures to reconcile with modernity, underscores the importance of examining ephemera from “Shirin-o-Farhad” for insights into modernity’s circulation within the Indo-Iranian cinematic landscape. Recently, the Hindi film industry has witnessed a surge in historical films and biopics, reflecting a syncretic tradition and a Persian-Indian cultural worldview shaped by the nation's secular and socialist aspirations. However, the current trend in Hindi cinema’s historical films must be scrutinized in light of the Hindu nationalist agenda, which seeks to revive historical narratives to reinforce a particular vision of the past. In this context, it is crucial to analyze different iterations of Shirin Farhad, along with related film literature, to emphasize the syncretic origins of Indian cinema and counteract narrow nationalist interpretations.

Indo-Persian romance and female stardom in the late silent and early sound era Anupama Prabhala The late silent and early sound era in India saw two notable films made by the Iranian scholar Abdolhossein Sepanta. Both were romances: “Cheshman-e Siah” (Black Eyes,1936) and Leyli and Manjun (1937). Given that Sepanta had played the male lead in, and written the script for, Lor Girl—produced by the Imperial Film Company and directed by Ardeshir Irani for Iran, both Cheshman-e Siah (Shree Krishna Film Co.), and Leyli and Manjun (East India Film Co.) mark a departure to unusual Indian studios and production companies. The two films also mark an ironic geographical shift away from Bombay as a site of film (co)production into different metropolises in order to enhance the imagination of Iran as a locus of “Oriental” romance. Shree Krishna was located outside Bombay in Pune and the East India Film company in Calcutta. However, both studios were stakeholders in disseminating a Parsi-Irani film culture through Sepanta’s involvement with Indian film production and its circulation in “foreign” countries like Iran that were nevertheless aligned with India through Islam as a religion and culture. This paper is framed around the following set of questions: in what ways was Iran imagined as the Orient in a South Asian country like India? To what extent, and how, did Sepanta intervene in the Persianate and Islamicate idioms circulating in the historical romance and costume genres prevalent in Indian cinema of that time? Last but not the least, given the taboos on female acting in cinema in both Iran and India, how did Sepanta’s introduction of Fakhrozzaman Jabbar Vaziri, who starred in three of Sepanta’s films, including Shirin Farhad (1934), Cheshman-e Siah, and Leyli and Manjun, enhance the imagination of Iran as an exotic but still accessible foreign space? Could one Orient (India in the British imaginary) cancel out another Orient (Iran in the Indian imaginary)? Could Vaziri’s Iranian identity—outside Iran but within India—circumvent shared taboos on female acting?