The 1960s saw the emergence of several New Wave cinemas across the globe one of which belonged to Iran. From its very conception, the Iranian New Wave, through filmmakers and critics such as Férydoun Rahnéma, Farrokh Ghaffari, and Fereydoun Hoveyda, was closely affiliated with the French cinema. Nevertheless, it managed to maintain a singularly Iranian cinematic accent. The following paper focuses on the career of Férydoun Rahnéma (1930-1975)—a relatively understudied filmmaker and poet whose influence not only haunted generations of Iranian New Wave filmmakers but also captured the imagination of some of the most prominent modern Persian poets such as Ahmad Shamlou and Bijan Elahi. As a liminal figure whose life was divided between Iran and France, Persian and French, Rahnéma stood at the interstices of French and Iranian poetic-cinematic traditions. It is precisely this interstitial position that enabled him to distance himself from the political fiction of modern national identity in Iran. In doing so, he was able to reevaluate, critically, the question of national history and identity in relation to the internationalist discourses of identity. My paper is structured around two interrelated sections. The first section reflects on Rahnéma’s engagement with the poetic Red Internationalism in France, specifically his acquaintance with French modernist poet, Paul Eluard; and the second section concentrates on his films and his poetic critique of national identity. Along with the close reading of some of his French poetry and a stylistic analysis of his films, I will examine the context of the circulation of his works in France and Iran. Rahnéma’s poetry and cinema constitute a third space upon which the tension between national and transnational, singular and universal, and root identity and relational identity is played out. The central question for him is still pertinent today: how to sing a song of the world without entrusting our singularity to the oblivious hands of mondialisation?

What does the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) do when faced with a popular cultural product that can easily be appropriated by its antagonistic factions? Taking the ever-changing reception of Kamal Tabrizi’s controversial Marmulak (The Lizard / 2003) as a micro-study, this paper aims to provide a theoretical framework for explaining the mindset of the IRI vis-a-vis such potentially disruptive phenomena. Marmulak depicts the story of a roughneck prisoner who escapes from jail by stealing the clothes of a cleric and then, maintains the pretense of a mullah in a small border town before getting arrested. It was the first Iranian comedy directly targeting the dress code of the clergy. Since its release fourteen years ago, it has continued to elicit a variety of opposing interpretations that position it as everything from a conservative, reformist, anti-clerical, or even transcendental film. How and why, then, did this film become a cultural battleground for the ulama; the speakers and heads of the judiciary, legislative and executive systems; many prominent political figures such as Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hasan Rouhani; and the intelligentsia both inside and outside Iran? And what does the vicissitudes of the reception of this film, from its ban, censorship and curtailed screening in 2004 to being claimed as a favorite film of the supreme leader and acclaimed as a nominee for the major award in the 2016 edition of the “Clergy and Cinema” festival tell us about the IRI’s treatment of confusing signifiers? I argue that, rather than evading these floating signifiers, the IRI welcomes them, overloads them with more possible readings, and aligns them with other, similar mass-produced phenomena. This is a strategy specially heightened in the times of intense cultural wars, such as Khatami’s reform and Rouhani’s moderate governments. A detailed examination of more than 250 Persian and English news items and critical pieces shows that, instead of considering Marmulak as a cinematic expression, both the journalists and scholarly have been mostly preoccupied with decoding the religious or political messages of the film. Analyzing and categorizing these mostly content-centered approaches, I further argue that not only they function as safety-valves, but the IRI uses them to re-assert its own definitive boundaries. Thus, studying Marmulak’s reception can serve as an indicator of both the IRI’s internal tensions and the mechanisms it employs to resolve them.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the lawfulness of film posed a challenge for the Muslim ‘ulama,’ who tried to expand and adapt the law to meet changing social conditions and accommodate innovations, while remaining as close as possible to the Lawgiver’s will as expressed in the sources of law. The fact that the film camera was a foreign innovation made in colonialist Europe further complicated the challenge. Simultaneously, the ‘ulama’ were trying to carve a space for themselves in predominantly secularist efforts of modernization in Egypt. They strived to show how Islamic law is not an obstacle to social reform; rather it has a rational framework of reference that is compatible with modern reform projects and can accommodate modern inventions. By focusing on the formative years of Egyptian cinema (1898-1952), this paper compares Islamic public discourses and legal opinions on the lawfulness of the two primary components of the film, namely, photography (taswir) and acting (tamthil). I examine the legal opinions of Rashid Rida, Mahmud Shaltut, Mahmud Abu al-‘Uyun, Hasanayn Makhluf, ‘Abdullah al-Ghumari, and Ahmad al-Sharabasi. These figures represent different generations of scholars and diverse channels disseminating legal opinions on taswir and tamthil at the time. I argue that the legalization of taswir and tamthil urged the ‘ulama’ to take positions from a set of orthodox legal disputes that could threaten the Islamic doctrine of the unicity of God (tawhid), violate the proper conduct of Muslim women, and cause hadith forgery. These disputes included but were not limited to, the figural representation in general, the figural representation of Prophets and Companions, and the lawfulness of acting as a profession for Muslim women. The activation of the legal concept of maslaha helped Rashid Rida and Ahmad al-Sharabasi sanction taswir, thereby setting the stage for the permissibility of tamthil in theater and cinema. Yet, maslaha also sat many limitations on the content presented; maslaha often resulted in the filmmaker exercising self-censorship. Primarily because maslaha sanctioned taswir and tamthil through a utilitarian approach that deemed the new medium of communication an instrument of Islamic cultural hegemony and ignored film as a domain for freedom of creativity and freedom of expression. Maslaha could not solve the Orthodox dispute on the lawfulness of representing Prophets and the participation of women in theater and film. These issues continue to be subject to dispute until today.

Of the fifteen Egyptian silent films extant and institutionally held at present, all but one were made by Egyptian film pioneer Mohamed Bayoumi (1894-1963). Fifteen of Bayoumi’s films have survived in full or fragment, made between 1923 and 1933, of which fourteen are silent, including the filmmaker’s eleven surviving newsfilms. In this essay, I examine Bayoumi’s news films topically and structurally, contextualizing them within nationalist discourses and national developments in an Egypt that had gained its independence from Great Britain in 1922. Egypt’s first national government then came into power the following year, the year that saw the release of Bayoumi’s first film as director/producer The Nation Welcomes Saad Zaghloul (1923). I also aim to correlate Bayoumi’s newsfilms to the interests of Egypt’s first national bank—Bank Misr, founded in 1920—and to its subsidiary Company for Acting and Cinema, established in 1925. This humble production house, renamed Studio Misr a decade later, would become a cornerstone of the Egyptian film industry, backed by the state and operating in film production, distribution and exhibition.

Ana Lily Amirpour's "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" (2014) and Babak Anvari's "Under the Shadow" (2016) have boldly claimed the horror genre as the next frontier for Iranian diasporic films. The two independently-funded directorial debuts premiered at Sundance, and received a flurry of media attention and awards from organizations excited by the idea of an “Iranian” horror film. Despite film critics' insistence on comparing Amirpour's style to Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, and Anvari's to Guillermo del Toro, film scholars have not treated this area of inquiry with the attention it deserves. Though existing scholarship has outlined the formal and thematic characteristics common to Iranian diasporic films, the horror genre represents new territory that begs investigation. Building on Hamid Naficy's foundational work in this area, I interrogate the ways in which Amirpour and Anvari re-imagine the Iranian cultural and historical landscape through a lens of terror and anxiety. I argue that the horror genre affords diasporic filmmakers new modes of communication, primarily through the figure of a powerful chador-clad woman who harnesses violence to achieve her goals. In "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night", the figure is a young, skateboarding vampire who ventures into the night to kill men that abuse others. In "Under the Shadow", she is a haunting, faceless specter attempting to steal a woman's daughter because she is a "bad mother". These veiled figures, the Persian language dialogue, and the setting of the stories in Iran point to their "Iranian" character. However, the films were made outside of Iran by children of Iranians living in the diaspora. Despite these complicating factors, film critics, journalistic sources, and the production companies' own promotional material often label the films as strictly "Iranian". I argue that ignoring the films' diasporic origins reflects an attempt to capitalize on the powerful cultural capital the national category of "Iranian" boasts in the field of cinema. These case studies thus allow me to examine the ways in which a national category can function as an auteur. My project combines textual and discourse analysis in order to explore the implications of using a national industry as a categorization tool.