Mamta Kalia

of getting their scripts approved before
commencing actual shooting. But when
Rafsanjani took over in 1991, the radicals
in the government began to look at cinema
suspiciously. Actually, it was Khomeini’s
death in 1989 that had made the clerics
in Tehran uneasy. By 1991, the situation
became so volatile that Khatami was
forced to resign. Rafsanjani’s government
banned many films and charged
filmmakers of supporting western
imperialism. Rafsanjani’s presidency also
witnessed the privatization of many
industries. This led to the partial removal
of government subsidies from many
industries including film. In 1995, 214
people, associated with different
departments of filmmaking in Iran wrote
an open letter to the MCIG, demanding
simplification of rules related to the
production and exhibition of films. Six
years later Khatami was elected president,
defeating Rafsanjani and his radical
supporters decisively. Filmmakers like
Seyfollah Dad and Mohsen Makhmalbaf
played an important role in Khatami’s
victory. During Khatami’s tenure, prerevolutionary
veterans like Abbas
Kiarostami, Dairush Mehrjui and Mohsen
Makhmalbaf rose in stature, while a
younger generation of filmmakers such
as Majid Majidi, Abolfazl Jalili, Jafar
Panahi, Samira Makhmalbaf and Behman
Qobadi became international celebrities.
Post-revolutionary Iranian cinema is
certainly different in the way
spectatorship is constituted, women
objectified and the look organized. It
is this difference that requires further
exploration. According to film scholar
Shahla Lahiji pre-revolutionary cinema
(Film Farsi), portrayed women as
“unchaste dolls”. They appeared on the
screen as semi-naked dancing stars. Postrevolutionary
cinema sought to render
her into a “chaste doll”. 13 All real women
(working/professional/rebellious) were
banished from the screen. According to
the MCIG regulations women were to
be portrayed as chaste, God-fearing
housewives or mothers; their bodies could
not be displayed or shown walking
provocatively, eye contact had to be
avoided with men and she was expected
to remain covered with a chador even
in the presence of her closest kin. For
the Islamic state, gendering cinema was
both an ideological necessity as well
as a pragmatic measure. Here Lahiji’s
metaphor of the “chaste doll” for the
woman in the new Iranian cinema seems
somewhat quite misplaced. A careful
reading of the cinema of this period
reveals that many filmmakers were
successful in challenging and
transgressing MCIG regulations. For
example, as early as 1994, Abbas
Kiarastomi deployed panning and closeup
shots for his celebrated film Through
the Olive Trees. Later, similar techniques
were adopted by Samira Makhmalbaf in
The Apple (1998) and by Kim Longinotto
and Ziba Mir-Hosseni in Divorce Iranian
Style (1998).
Incidentally, when Hojjatoleslam Ali
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Speaker of
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