Grammatical Fiction

Grammatical Fiction:

The Next Generation of Iranian Propaganda Cinema

a public lecture by

Dr. Amir Khadem

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Toronto

Abstract:

From its very inception, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been quite successful in appropriating the cinematic medium for ideological purposes, not only producing works of high artistic merit that fortify its popular base, but also creating indigenous genres of cinema, with their own unique visual language and style. The so-called Sacred Defense cinema, pertaining to the Iran-Iraq War, recreates a version of the war in which violence is not only justified but glorified in the name nationalistic and religious values. This presentation examines the works of a new generation of filmmakers, who have not been eyewitnesses to the political events during first decades of the Islamic Republic. In particular, the works of the highly celebrated young director and writer, Mohammad Hossein Mahdavian, whose two feature films, Standing in the Dust (Istāde dar ghobār, 2016) and The Noon’s Adventure (Mājerā-ye nimruz, 2017) have ushered a rethinking of the pro-governmental Iranian cinema, will be discussed. I will analyze the political framework that informs his unique visual language, and place his burgeoning oeuvre within the context of Iranian propaganda art.

Bio:

Amir Khadem is the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute, where he also teaches at the department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. He holds a doctoral degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta, and is currently working on his first monograph provisionally titled, “Trauma Emplotment: The Poetics and Politics of Survival.” His latest essay on the political frameworks of memory in Mana Neyestani’s An Iranian Metamorphosis is forthcoming in Iranian Studies.