Iranian New Wave

Iranian New Wave
Years active1960s–2010s
LocationIran
InfluencedItalian Neorealism, French New Wave

Iranian New Wave (Persian: موج نوی سینمای ایران, lit. 'the new wave of Iranian cinema') refers to a film movement that took shape in the late 1960s and lasted about a decade. It caught fire with Dariush Mehrjui's The Cow and Masoud Kimiai's Qeisar (both 1969). The ground had been prepared by earlier films: South of the City (1958), Night of the Hunchback (1964) and Brick and Mirror (1965), by the social-realist filmmakers Farrokh Ghaffari and Ebrahim Golestan, followed by Fereydoun Rahnema's Modernist Siavash in Perspolis (1967). While Qeisar gave rise to the modernized jaheli genre (tough-guy movies), The Cow led to the new-wave movement. Its filmmakers came from diverse class backgrounds and had different training, tastes, and styles, and the movement lacked a publication of its own. It was therefore less a cohesive movement than a filmmaking "moment", though it continued, through several of its key filmmakers, in the art cinema of the mid-1980s.

History

Early Iranian cinema

Cinema in Iran began to develop in 1900, when Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar was introduced to the cinematograph upon traveling to France. He ordered his chief photographer, Mirza Ibrahim Khan Akasbashi, to buy one. Visiting the Festival of Flowers in Belgium, Akasbashi turned the cinematograph toward the flower-adorned carriages, making him the first Iranian to ever film anything. Theaters were opened beginning in 1903 by Mirza Ibrahim Sahafbashi. The first film school was opened in 1930 by Russian-Armenian, immigrant Ovanes Ohanian, who had studied at The School of Cinematic Art in Moscow. He started his first cinema school 1924 after arriving in Calcutta, India: after facing many difficulties he decided to move to Iran to start the first cinema school in Tehran where he created the first full-length Iranian silent film called Haji Agha, the Cinema Actor and his second movie Abi and Rabi. After traveling to India in 1927, Abdul-Hussein Sepanta was inspired to make Persian language films, of which he ended up making four. Due to domination of the Pahlavi regime over all aspects of culture and the economy, as well as its very harsh censorship of films from 1925 to 1979, the cinema had difficulty developing in a way that reflected its own culture. In this time, Filmfarsi began which has been described as “low-quality movies for audiences who were becoming addicted to such fare, losing any taste or demand for anything different.” Film Farsi is characterized by its mimicking of the popular cinemas of Hollywood and India, and its common use of song and dance routines. Forough Farrokhzad made the short documentary film The House Is Black in 1963, and this film is considered to be a precursor to the new wave cinema. Its unflinching depictions of life in a leper colony, paired with artistically composed shots and her own poetry, made this a truly unique film. Other films such as Farrokh Ghaffari's The Night of the Hunchback (1964), Ebrahim Golestan's Brick and Mirror (1965), and Fereydoun Rahnema's Siavush in Persepolis are all considered to be precursors as well.

First Wave

The first wave of Iranian new wave cinema came about as a reaction to the popular cinema at the time that did not reflect the norms of life for Iranians or the artistic taste of the society. It began in 1969 and then ended with the beginning of the Iranian revolution in 1979. The films produced were original, artistic and political. The first films considered to be part of this movement are Davoud Mollapour's Shohare Ahoo Khanoom (1968), Masoud Kimiai's Qeysar and Dariush Mehrjui's The Cow (1969). Other films considered to be part of this movement are Nasser Taghvai's Tranquility in the Presence of Others (1969/1972) which was banned and then heavily censored upon its release, Bahram Beyzai's Downpour, and Sohrab Shahid Saless's A Simple Event (1973) and Still Life (1974).

Second and Third Wave

The factors leading to the rise of the New Wave in Iran were, in part, due to the intellectual and political movements of the time. A romantic climate was developing after the 19 August 1953 coup in the sphere of arts. Alongside this, a socially committed literature took shape in the 1950s and reached a peak in the 1960s, which many consider the golden era of contemporary Persian literature.

Iranian New Wave films shared some characteristics with the European art films of the period, in particular Italian Neorealism. However, in her article 'Real Fictions', Rose Issa argues that Iranian films have a distinctively Iranian cinematic language "that champions the poetry in everyday life and the ordinary person by blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, feature film with documentary." She also argues that this unique approach has inspired European cinema directors to emulate this style, citing Michael Winterbottom's award-winning In This World (2002) as an homage to contemporary Iranian cinema. Issa claims that "This new, humanistic aesthetic language, determined by the film-makers' individual and national identity, rather than the forces of globalism, has a strong creative dialogue not only on homeground but with audiences around the world."

Moreover, Iranian new wave films are rich in poetry and painterly images. There is a line back from modern Iranian cinema to the ancient oral Persian storytellers and poets, via the poems of Omar Khayyam.

Features of New Wave Iranian film, in particular the works of Abbas Kiarostami, have been classified by some as postmodern.

In Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future (2001), Hamid Dabashi describes modern Iranian cinema and the phenomenon of [Iranian] national cinema as a form of cultural modernity. According to Dabashi, "the visual possibility of seeing the historical person (as opposed to the eternal Qur'anic man) on screen is arguably the single most important event allowing Iranians access to modernity."

Significant works

Precursors

First Wave

Second Wave

Third Wave

Major figures

Some major figures of the Iranian new wave include:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Naficy, Hamid (2011). A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941-1978 (Social History of Iranian Cinema). London: Duke University Press. p. 352. ISBN 0822347741.
  2. ↑ Naficy, Hamid (2011). A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 (Social History of Iranian Cinema. London: Duke University Press. p. 336. ISBN 0822347741.
  3. ↑ Naficy, Hamid (2011). A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 (Social History of Iranian Cinema). London: Duke University Press. p. 336. ISBN 0822347741.
  4. ↑ Naficy, Hamid (2011). A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2: The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 (Social History of Iranian Cinema). London: Duke University Press. pp. 352–353. ISBN 0822347741.
  5. ↑ http://www.facebook.com/Ovanec-ohanian-532280010120156/ [user-generated source]
  6. ↑ Mirbakhtyar, Shahla (2006). Iranian Cinema And The Islamic Revolution. McFarland & Company Incorporated.
  7. ↑ Rose, Issa (1999). Life and Art: the New Iranian Cinema. London, UK: National Film Theater. pp. 17, 27. ISBN 0851707750.
  8. ↑ "The New Wave in Iranian Cinema - From Past to Present". Hamshahri. Vol. 3, no. 639. 7 March 1995. p. 10 – via Pars Times.
  9. ↑ "Real Fictions". Archived from the original on 2011-07-18. Retrieved 2007-02-19.
  10. ↑ Nottingham, Stephen. "Iranian Cinema". ourworld.compuserve.com. Archived from the original on 2004-10-15. Retrieved 2025-10-11.
  11. ↑ Daly, Fergus. "Abbas Kiarostami? The Truth Behind Reality". www.iol.ie. Archived from the original on 2001-02-19. Retrieved 2025-10-11.
  12. ↑ Dabashi, Hamid (2001). Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, and Future. Verso. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-85984-626-1.
  13. ↑ Hamrah, A. S. (July 21, 2020). "Taste of Cherry: Stay Near the Tree". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 2025-10-11.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 "Iranian Cinema Before and After the Revolution: Three Documentaries by Jamsheed Akrami (DVD)". Kino Lorber. 9 January 2019. Archived from the original on 12 August 2025. Retrieved 20 September 2025.
  15. ↑ Niasari, Noora (24 May 2022). "The eternal student: Noora Niasari on Abbas Kiarostami". ACMI: Your museum of screen culture (Interview). Interviewed by Gunawardana, Dilan. Retrieved 16 September 2025.
  16. 1 2 3 "18 Important Film Movements Every Movie Buff Should Know". Taste of Cinema. 6 April 2015. Archived from the original on 22 May 2025. Retrieved 20 September 2025.