Mamta Kalia

away and screen space seems to have
become the singular habitat for
hegemonic Bollywood. In contrast to
Bollywood films, Hollywood productions
are positioned second or even third (when
the rival is a regional Indian film) in
the order of preference by Indian
audiences. Other foreign films, including
Iranian, are not normally screened in
Indian cinema halls. This is however
not the case with Iran where audiences
for Indian cinema had existed even in
the pre-revolutionary period. Reading
foreign films in India means, displacing
them from their contexts of production
and locating meaning in a culture with
different codes of exegesis. In the case
of Iranian cinema, a major encumbrance
has been that my familiarity with Persian
is restricted to words etymologically
related to Urdu. Also, like other national
cinemas, Iranian films deploy narrative
devices that owe allegiance to local forms
of telling and traditions of performance.
To understand majority of the dialogues,
I have to depend on the English subtitles.
Palpably, words do get lost in translation.
The Iranian cinema I am referring
to in this essay is largely postrevolutionary
cinema. I do not know
how correct would it be to term lowbudget,
post-revolutionary Iranian
cinema as ‘art’ or ‘realist’ cinema, even
though the Anglo-European scholars
would like all cinemas to be seen through
categories designed by them. At no point
did the Islamic revolution of 1979 mark
a complete break from the earlier genres
128 :: April-June 2010
of Iranian cinema. Indeed, many Iranian
directors were engaging contemporary
themes even before the revolution.
Modern Iranians are inheritors of the
tradition of Islamic Drama called Taziyeh
or Shabih Khwani. Such performances
were aimed at presenting dramatically,
the martyrdom of Imam Hussain. Staged
in inns, the Taziyeh Khani (like the passion
plays of medieval Europe), involved the
narration of events at Karbala. All roles
were performed by men. Taziyeh became
an institutionalized feature of Iranian
popular culture during the reign of Fateh
Ali Shah Qajar (1779 – 1834). Other
forms of audio –visual narration included
(a) the Pardeh-khani, where the narrator
unveiled a series of paintings during
narration (b) Nagali in which the Nagal
or the storyteller enacted scenes with
songs and dances in the background (c)
Khaymeshab-bazi or puppet shows and
(d) Rouhozi or comical plays. Thus, when
cinema arrived at the dawn of the
twentieth century, Iranian filmmakers
had a whole range of narrative forms
and practices to draw upon.
The pioneer of cinema in Iran was
Muzaffaruddin Shah Qajar’s photographer
Mirza Ibrahim Khan Akkas Bashi. A few
years later Ovanis Organians – a Russo-
American, produced and directed Iran’s
first feature film Abi and Rabi, followed
by Haji Agha, Actor-i-Cinemai (1932).
Around this time, the first Iranian talkie
Dokhtar-i-Lor, directed by Abolhossein
Sepanta and produced by Ardeshir M.
Irani (founder of the Imperial Films in