When cultural modifications are taken into account: Ibsen's a doll's house on Iranian screen

How cross-cultural communications terminate in imperfect understanding can arguably be rendered by critical awareness about culturally differentiating conceptions in the interacting communities. This study aims to shed light on how an awakening message of a Western literary work can achieve a functional realization in an Eastern society via domestication of the cultural mnemonics. To this end, the present paper explored how Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House was introduced to Persian culture as a movie entitled Sara by Dariush Mehrjui mediated by apprehending the intended function of the original work and cultural capital of the target community. Meticulous comparative analysis of A Doll's House and Sara yielded that the given successful 'transmission' was materialized through two levels of macro contextual and micro cultural domestications. Generic and thematic transformations at the former level and various strata of cultural turns at the latter have conceivably lent verisimilitude to Sara and its proximity to the cultural schema of Iranian audience, through which Nora in Norway could be 'translated' to Sara in Iran to enlighten both audience. It is hoped the arguments of this research can offer some critical points for both proponents and opponents of the debates on cultural turn in generic translation. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s2p21

The representation of women’s gender roles In the Iranian cinema : a study of the stranger (2014)

La película iraní La forastera (Bigāneh, 2014) dirigida por Bahram Tavakoli, es una adaptación libre de A Streetcar Named Desire, de Tennessee Williams. Tanto la obra como su adaptación versan sobre la condición de las mujeres. Pretendemos explorar comparativamente los roles de género de las mujeres, representados en el drama y en su adaptación. Tras examinar los roles genéricos de las mujeres como esposas, madres y hermanas, se concluye que el director iraní ha adaptado exitosamente el personaje de Stella a la cultura iraní, como Sepideh. Manteniendo el argumento del texto fuente, ha creado un nuevo personaje que se imbrica en la cultura iraní-islámica. En cambio, ha incorporado el personaje de Blanche-Nasrin para contrastar con una mujer ideal en el contexto iraní. Nasrin pertenecería más al mundo de Williams, debido a sus pautas de comportamiento, ajenas a los códigos culturales de Irán, de raíz islámicaThe Iranian movie The Stranger (Bigāneh, 2014), directed by Bahram Tavakoli is a free adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Both the play and its adaptation concentrate on the life and condition of women. In the present study, we aim to assess comparatively the gender roles of women represented in the play and its Iranian adaptation to see how these roles have been de/stabilized. After investigating the roles of women as wives, mothers, and sisters, it is concluded that the Iranian director has been successful in appropriating Stella’s character to the Islamic-Iranian culture. In order to highlight her characteristics as an ideal woman in the Iranian context, he has reconstructed the character of Blanche-Nasrin so as to create a dichotomy between Iranian and western cultures. Nasrin would belong more to Williams’s world because of her alien behavioral characteristics to the cultural codes of Iranians which are based on Islamic doctrine

Asghar Farhadi: Acknowledging Hybrid Traditions: Iran, Hollywood and Transnational Cinema

Post-revolutionary Iranian cinema has been praised for its emotional immediacy and compositional simplicity. The work of Asghar Farhadi stands as an exception to this canon. His films focus on domestic conflicts and cultural contradictions in urban life and are marked by emotional complexity and intricate narrative structures. Focusing on these characteristics, critics have stressed his proximity to mainstream American cinema. The article analyses this proximity by discussing the thematic parallels that Farhadi's work enjoys with classical Hollywood films, as conceptualised by philosopher Stanley Cavell. The article explores the limit of this approach by connecting Farhadi's films to pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, a body of work that, despite the little attention it has received, can nonetheless provide significant insights into Farhadi's oeuvre to date, whilst bringing to the fore the heterogeneous tradition of Iranian cinema

Remembering Salinger\u27s Franny And Zooey Through Pari And The Royal Tenenbaums

This paper explores the ways in which Mehrjui’s Pari and Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums borrow from Salinger’s Franny and Zooey. My argument is that Salinger and the concepts he introduced in the book are remembered through both films. Being a product of their historical/cultural contexts, The Royal Tenenbaums embraces the aesthetics of the text and Pari converses with the spiritual aspect of the main text. Anderson’s film captures the United States’ preoccupation consumerism and the hollowness at turn of the twenty-first century, while Pari explores the angst and despair in the post Iran-Iraq war context of the film’s release, feelings that were similar to that of the post World War II context in which Franny and Zooey was published. All texts introduce concepts like alienation while presenting characters that speak to/for the intellectuals of their time

An investigation into representations of women in Iranian New Wave cinema

In an analytical look into the history of the formation of Iranian New Wave cinema, this research explores the key elements that constitute integration between the women representation and the evolution of New Wave visual narrative. The paper will preliminarily examine the public’s response to the early representation of women in classic Iranian cinema and discusses the impact of the socio-political modifications, imposed by the process of modernisation, on the reception of the early representation by the Iranian public. The paper then discuss aspects of the philosophical framework in relation to the role of gender in the conception of artwork. The artistic growth of Forugh Farrokhzad, a prominent figure in modern Persian poetry and the New Wave Iranian cinema will be explored. Through the example of Farrokhzad, the intention is to identify the key elements regarding the influence of Persian poetry on the formation of New Wave visual narrative. This brings the paper to the third chapter where the implications of the Islamic revolutionary regime’s regulatory frameworks on the image of women in cinema will be discussed. Also the paper examines the role that the representation of women plays as an instrument of the Islamic republic to generate a process of reproduction of new national culture. In contrast, the alternative response of independent filmmakers to the mainstream representation of women will be explored by the means of re-examination of the structure of the film star system, the aesthetic of censorship and the act of viewing approach in relation to images of women. In the final chapter, the connection between my film practice and the characteristics of Iranian New Wave visual narrative is established through analysis of the key elements associated with the representation of gender in the works of New Wave filmmakers such as Forugh Farrokhzad, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Bahram Beyzai, and Abbas Kiarostami

Technique and Form under the Veil: The Aesthetics of Hijab in Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema

This thesis focuses on the representation of Iranian women in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema from the perspective of the cinematic form and language, within the social and political context of their time. The term “aesthetics of the hijab” does not refer only to the cover for women. It is rather a type of ideology of the power discourse that came to power in the Iranian society, art, and cinema after the Revolution. The hijab that played the roles of censorship, absence, elimination, hiding, and covering— a concept much broader than just the cover for women. In this thesis, the aesthetics of the hijab in cinema refer to a type of hijab in the form, mise-en-scène, narration, size of the shot, camera angle, camera movement, lighting, the cast’s acting and movements, the clothes of the female actors, the structure and technique in Iranian films. It is, in short, a kind of Islamicate mise-en-scène. When watching Iranian films, the audience is constantly noticing the conditions of film production under the shadow of the Islamic government and the rules of production under the principles of modesty and aesthetics of hijab. For this reason, this thesis pertains to the field of production aesthetics and production studies, and addresses some questions of this field: how and why do the filmic aesthetics—such as lighting (or mis-lighting for women), mis-en-scène, filming location, the mode of acting (like veiled look), and encoded film language— exist in a particular way in the Iranian films? Which issues and limitations concerning the representation of women, particularly those relevant to the representation of sexuality and depiction of male-female intimacy, does this aesthetics resolve? How does this filmic aesthetic answer the problems of censorship, Islamic codes of morality and the veiling code, and the unrealism of veiling

Periodismo comprometido: reportero y barrendero /

La carátula del libro titulado: El periodista en imágenes de cine. Autor: Beatriz Peña Acuña (Coordinadora). Editorial: Visión Libros. Año de publicación: 2012. (Madrid. España). ISBN: 978-84-9011-494-0 El libro incluye un capítulo publicado por la docente Clara Janneth Santos. Capítulo II. "Periodismo comprometido: reportero y barrendero". pp. 37-62.El director iraní Dariush Mehrjui relata una historia en clave de comedia, definida por diversos temas y motivos con los que exalta y contradice tópicos culturales dando cuenta de un sistema de valores que intenta escapar de los corsés convencionalistas pero que requieren una nueva orientación. En "El Traje Naranja/ Orange Suit/ Narenji poush", 2012, Mehrjui se propone como interlocutor mediático para mostrar dos problemas cruciales de la sociedad actual iraní: el resquebrajamiento de los roles de género y la necesidad de un compromiso -tanto individual como colectivo-, para adaptarse a los cambios multiculturales y a la globalización en la nueva Sociedad de la Información y la Comunicación. Para ello se vale de la imagen "no contaminada" de los niños, a quienes delega -en su calidad de autor implícito y narrador subrepticio-, el papel protagónico de asumir el relevo generacional con ideas nuevas. Las historias de "El Traje Naranja" son síntoma de un sistema de valores en crisis al interior de una sociedad ancestral inspirada en la poesía y la lírica como fundamento espiritual y basada en la tradición y el androcentrismo como modelo social y cultural. Mehrjui contrapone dichos elementos mediante una puesta en escena al fresco, modernista, ágil, con historias que demandan armonizar tradición y cultura proponiendo, al ciudadano del tercer milenio, un rol comprometido

Adaptation in Iranian Cinema: From Literary Inspiration to Social Critique in New Wave and Child-Centred Cinema

This thesis examines the degree to which two key turning points in the development of Iranian cinema – the pre-revolutionary Iranian New Wave movement and post-revolutionary child-centred cinema – are influenced by modern Persian fiction. Considering Iranian film adaptations have barely received any scholarly attention, this thesis makes on original contribution to the scholarship on Iranian cinema by providing an overview of Iranian cinema’s adaptations from Persian fiction and its role as one of the influential agents on developing Iranian film during the pre- and post-revolutionary years. It closely examines case studies of New Wave films and post-revolutionary child-centred cinema through the lens of adaptation studies. This examination draws on comparative narratology of adaptation and considers the socio-political context of adaptation and its role as an intertext infused in the adaptation process. This thesis argues that literary adaptation from contemporary Persian fiction not only played an influential role at key turning points in the development of Iranian cinema, but also furnished filmmakers with provocative source materials that enabled them to put forward social commentary in their films. This thesis focuses on Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow/Gav (1969) and The Cycle/Dayereh-ye Mina (1974), two pioneering and significant New Wave films which are adapted from the works of Gholamhosein Sa’edi. This thesis also investigates Ebrahim Foruzesh’s The Jar/Khomreh (1991) and Mohammad Ali Talebi’s The Boot/Chakmeh (1992), two important, critically acclaimed child-centred films, which are based on stories by Hushang Moradi Kermani. This thesis examines how Sa’edi’s stories present criticisms of the socio-political atmosphere of the late 1960s and the 1970s and argues that Mehrjui’s films complicate Sa’edi’s critical perspective to mount a social commentary on the period prior to the 1979 revolution. Additionally, with a close analysis of two child-centred adaptations, this thesis addresses the socio-critical allusions in Kermani’s children’s fiction and argues that Foruzesh and Talebi not only draw on Kermani’s works to reinforce the social-realist perspective of the films, but also to develop critiques of the post-revolutionary Iranian society and specifically, the years of the late 1980s and 1990s, following the eight-year Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). This thesis highlights the underexamined yet significant role of modern Persian fiction and adaptation strategies in establishing the perspectives of New Wave cinema and realist child-centred films which both can be read as social commentaries