Yorkshire Sculpture Park
SHIRIN NESHAT
Resource file
Shirin Neshat Biography Born in Qazvin, Iran, Shirin Neshat (1957) is an Iranian artist who left Iran to study in the United
States when she was seventeen years old. She moved to Los Angeles to study art before the
Iranian Revolution in 1979. When the Islamic Revolution overtook her homeland, Neshat was exiled
and was not allowed to return until eleven years later. She attended the University of California,
Berkeley, earning her B.A., M.A., and M.F.A in 1983.
Neshat became fascinated with the situation of women in her native country after visiting Iran in
1990, for the first time since the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Neshat discovered that the
culture she had grown up with had changed, inspiring her first major work. In 1993, then working in
the medium of still photography, Neshat began a series of images entitled Unveiling (1993). She
first gained international recognition for the Women of Allah series (1993-1997), a body of
photographic work exploring women and martyrdom in Islamic culture. Since 1996 her work has
progressed from photographs to video installations and short films, covering difficult topics such
as Eastern and Western boundaries, men and women, the sacred and the profane, exile and
belonging. She uses the specifics of her personal background, experiences in exile and Islamic
culture to create works that communicate universal ideas about loss, meaning and memory, which
often address social, political and psychological issues.
1957
Born Qazvin, Iran
1974
Left Iran to study art in Los Angeles, USA
1979
Moved to San Francisco and studied at Dominican College, before enrolling
at the University of California, Berkeley for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree
1981
Master of Arts degree
1983
Master of Fine Arts degree
Moved to New York, USA to work for the non-profit organisation
Storefront Art and Architecture, an interdisciplinary alternative space
1990
Visited Iran after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini
Begins artistic practice
Receives New York State Council Sponsored Project Grant
First small group show Fever at Exit Art Gallery, New York, USA
1992
First residency at Henry Street Settlement, New York, USA
1993
Began to produce a series of groundbreaking black and white photographs
called Unveiling and Women of Allah
First solo exhibition at Franklin Furnace in New York, USA
1995
Took part in the 46th Venice Biennale
1996
Awarded a grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, USA
1998
Met Iranian artist and filmmaker Shoja Azari
First film and video installations
First video installation: Turbulent, part one of a trilogy
1999
Second film: Rapture, part two of the trilogy
Won the International Award of the 46th Venice Biennale with Turbulent
and Rapture, Turbulent later shown in her solo exhibition at the Serpentine
Gallery in London, 2000
Travels back and forth between USA and Iran
Makes double-screen colour film Soliloquy
2000
Fervor, the third part of the trilogy
Won the Visual Art Award from the Edinburgh International Film Festival
2001
Collaborates with singer Sussan Deyhim to create Logic of the Birds.
Visiting Artist, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan,
Maine, USA
2002
Infinity Award for Visual Art, International Center for Photography, New
York, USA
2003
Honored at The First Annual Risk Takers in the Arts Celebration, given by
The Sundance Institute, New York
2004
Mahdokht, a three-channel audio-visual installation forms part of the
Women Without Men series
2005
Zarin a single channel video/audio installation
Award, Hiroshima City Museum of Art, Hiroshima, Japan
2006
Exhibits extensively throughout Europe
Awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize
2007
Begins shooting Women Without Men, first feature film
2008
Films Munis, Faezeh and Farokh Legha, which completes the Women
Without Men series, first presented at Aros Museum in DenmarkCultural
Achievement Award, Asia Society, New York
2009
Awarded the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 66th Venice Film Festival
for her directional debut Women without Men and the Cinema for Peace
Special Award – Hessischer Filmpreis, Germany
2010
Solo show at La Fabrica Galeria, Madrid, Spain. Women Without Men is
screened extensively through USA and the Netherlands
2011
Soliloquy (1999) shown at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Selected Solo Exhibitions
1993
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
Franklin Furnace, New York, USA
Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, USA
Centre d’Art Contemporain Kunsthalle, Fribourg, Switzerland
Marco Noire Contemporary Arts, Turin, Italy
Marco Noire Contemporary Arts, Turin, Italy
Haines Gallery, San Francisco, USA
Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovania
Annina Nosei Gallery, New York, USA
Lumen Travo, Amsterdam, Holland
Artspeak, Vancouver, Canada
Tate Gallery, London, UK
Whitney Museum of American Art, Philip Morris Branch, New York, USA
Maison Européene de la Photographie, Paris, France
Thomas Rehbein Gallery, Köln. Germany
Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden
Art Institute of Chicago, USA
Patrick Painter Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
D’Amelio Terras, New York, USA
Galerie Jerôme de Noirmont, Paris, France
Henie Onstad Artsentre, Oslo, Norway
Tensta Konsthall, Spanga, Sweden
Serpentine Gallery, London, UK
Pitti Discovery, Florence, Italy
Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria
Lia Rumma, Milan, Italy
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, USA
Matrix, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, Canada
Wexner Center, Columbus, USA
Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montreal,; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Contemporary
Arts Museum, Houston; Miami Art Museum
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
Barbara Gladstone Gallery , New York, USA
Kanazawa Contemporary Art Museum, Kanazawa, Japan
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany
Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy
Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw
Banco di Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Aarhus, Denmark
Passage Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Tooba Asia Society Museum, New York, USA
Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, Portugal
Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, Mexico
Shirin Neshat Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand
Zarin Gladstone Gallery, New York, USA
Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum Für Gengewart, Berlin, Germany
Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Leon, Spain
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan
Shirin Neshat Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo, Finland
Shirin Neshat: The Last Word Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran
Canaria
Shirin Neshat Stedelijk Museum CS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Shirin Neshat Lumen Travo Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Shirin Neshat Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, Portugal
Shirin Neshat Gladstone Gallery, New York, USA
Shirin Neshat : Women Without Men Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, New
Orleans, USA
Shirin Neshat: New Works Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont, Paris, France
Women Without Men ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark; Gallery Faurschou, Beijing,
China
Shirin Neshat National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjevik, Iceland
Women Without Men Galleri Faurschou, Beijing, China
2009 Games of Desire Gladstone Gallery, Brussels, Belgium/ Galerie Jerome de Noirmont, Paris,
France
Women Without Men National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece
Shirin Neshat: Turbulent Galleri Faurschou, Copenhagen, Denmark
2010 Shirin Neshat La Fabrica Galeria, Madrid, Spain
2008
Selected works
Women of Allah series (1993-1997) series of prints
Turbulent (1998) Two channel video/audio installation
Rapture (1999) Two channel video/audio installation
Soliloquy (1999) Color video/audio installation with artist as the protagonist
Fervor (2000) Two channel video/audio installation
Passage (2001) Single channel video/audio installation
Logic of the Birds (2002) Multi-media performance
Mahdokht (2004) Three channel video/audio installation
Zarin (2005) Single channel video/audio installation
Munis (2008) Color video/audio installation based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel
Faezeh (2008) Color video/audio installation based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel
Possession (2009) Black and white video/audio installation
Women Without Men (2010) feature film based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s novel
Soliloquy 1999 Two screen projection, and audio installation
16mm colour video transferred to digital video
17 ½ minutes
(Shirin Neshat, Soliloquy, Film Stills, 1999)
Soliloquy is a double-screen colour video projection produced in an edition of six plus one artist’s
proof. Tate’s copy is number six in the edition. The work was shot on 16mm film and transferred
to video for editing. The two videos are projected on opposite walls, usually in an enclosed space.
They depict a veiled woman, the artist herself, and taking parallel journeys in two different cultural
landscapes. In one video she is depicted in a Middle Eastern city on the edge of the desert while in
the other she is in a western metropolis. For most of the seventeen and a half minute duration of
the work, the action in the films alternates between the two settings. When the woman on one
screen is active, walking from place to place, her counterpart in the other projection stays still,
often staring directly at the camera and thus appearing to watch her alter ego on the opposite
screen. At these moments her face seems to register recognition and longing. The films are
structured in parallel. Both begin with the woman looking out a window at the city below her.
The woman in the Middle Eastern setting ventures out down cobbled streets until she reaches
an ancient palace. A group of men in dark shirts and trousers and women in chadors gather and
begin singing a prayer. In the modern western city the woman walks through busy streets and
the atrium of a building as rush hour travellers emerge from the subway. She comes to a church.
From a window in the transept she sees a group of men and women in white robes singing a
Christian hymn. The soundtrack merges the music of the two groups of worshippers. Towards
the end of the narrative, the two women are seen running, one into the red expanse of the
desert, the other between white modernist buildings.
Neshat was born in Iran and moved to the United States to study art at the age of seventeen
at the urging of her father. She began making the work for which she has become known
after a return visit to Iran in 1990, her first since the 1979 revolution that brought the Ayatollah
Khomeini (1902-89) to power. She was struck by the changes that had taken place in her
homeland, not least the regulations insisting that women veil themselves from head to toe
in the chador.
The veil has become a central motif of her photographic and video work. Since the early
1990s she has travelled frequently to Iran and Soliloquy is a comment on Neshat’s experience
of living between two cultures. She has said of the piece, ‘although Soliloquy was not a
biographical piece, it is based on my personal experience ... those of us living in a state of
the “in between” have certain advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of being
exposed to a new culture and in my case the freedom that comes with living in the USA.
The disadvantages of course being that you will never experience again being in a “center”
or quite at “home” anywhere’ (quoted in ‘Ask the Artists: Shirin Neshat’, CI: 99/00, 1999,
www.cmoa.org/international/html/forum/neshatresponse.htm).
The mirroring and doubling effect in Soliloquy relates to cultural critic Edward Said’s
description of the state of exile. In his essay ‘Reflections on Exile’, Said (1935-2003) wrote,
‘for an exile, habits of life, expression or activity in the new environment inevitably occur
against the memory of these things in another environment. Thus both the new and the
old environments are vivid, actual, occurring together contrapuntally’ (quoted in Wallach, p.140).
There is also a directly autobiographical element to the work’s elegiac quality.
Neshat made Soliloquy soon after the deaths of both her father and her seventeen-year-old
nephew. These losses made fresh her memories of leaving Iran and beginning the life of an
unintentional exile. Neshat was not able to obtain permission to film in Iran, so she and her
collaborators filmed the eastern scenes of Soliloquy in Mardin in southern Turkey, seven miles
from the Iranian border.
The Western scenes were shot mainly in Albany, New York. The sequence outside the subway
station was filmed in the foyer of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. It is possible to speculate
that many of the passers-by in this scene were killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001. If Soliloquy expresses the desire for dialogue between east and west, it also acts as an
unintentional memorial to those who died for lack of such a dialogue.
(https://www.tateetc.com/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999965&workid=76323&searchid=
18569&tabview=text)
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Central Eurasia and Western
Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanian era (pre-Islamic
Persian Empire, ruled from 224 to 651) and came into use internationally in 1935,
before which the country was also known to the western world as Persia. Both Persia
and Iran are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, Iran is the name used
officially in political contexts.
The 18th largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km 2 (636,372 sq m)
Iran has a population of over 74 million. It is a country of particular geostrategic
significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia. Iran is bordered
on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the
Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea and condominium, Kazakhstan and Russia are also
Iran© s direct neighbours to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and
Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq
and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country© s largest city and
the political, cultural, commercial and industrial centre of the nation. Iran is a regional
power, and holds an important position in international energy security and world
economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas.
Iran is home to one of the world© s oldest continuous major civilisations. The first Iranian
dynasty formed during the Elamite kingdom in 2800 BC. The Iranian Medes unified Iran
into an empire in 625 BC. They were succeeded by the Iranian Achaemenid Empire, the
Hellenic Seleucid Empire and two subsequent Iranian empires, the Parthians and the
Sassanids, before the Muslim conquest in 651 AD. Iranian post-Islamic dynasties and
empires expanded the Persian language and culture throughout the Iranian plateau.
Early Iranian dynasties which re-asserted Iranian independence included the Tahirids,
Saffarids, Samanids and Buyids.
The blossoming of Persian literature, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics
and art became major elements of Muslim civilisation and started with the Saffarids and
Samanids. Iran was once again reunified as an independent state in 1501 by the Safavid
dynasty– which promoted Twelver Shi© a Islam as the official religion of their empire,
marking one of the most important turning points in the history of Islam. ` Persia© s
Constitutional Revolution’ established the nation's first parliament in 1906, within a
constitutional monarchy. Iran officially became an Islamic republic on 1 April 1979,
following the Iranian Revolution.
Iran is a founding member of the UN, NAM, OIC and OPEC. The political system of Iran,
based on the 1979 constitution, comprises several intricately connected governing
bodies. The highest state authority is the Supreme Leader. Shia Islam is the official
religion and Persian is the official language.
Iran, Persia and Islamic Republic of Iran.
The term Iran (‫ )ﺍﯼﺭﺍﻥ‬in modern Persian derives from the Proto-Iranian term Aryana,
first attested in Zoroastrianism's Avesta tradition. Ariya- and Airiia- are also attested as
an ethnic designator in Achaemenid inscriptions. The term Eran , from Middle Persian
Eran (written as ’yr’n ) is found on the inscription that accompanies the investiture
relief of Ardashir I at Naqsh-e Rustam. In this inscription, the king's appellation in Middle
Persian contains the term eran (Pahlavi ’ry’n ), while in the Parthian language inscription
that accompanies it, the term aryan describes Iran. In Ardeshir's time, eran retained this
meaning, denoting the people rather than the state . The name Iran is a cognate of
Aryan , meaning ‘Land of the Aryans’.
Notwithstanding this inscriptional use of eran to refer to the Iranian peoples, the use of
eran to refer to the geographical empire is also attested in the early Sassanid period.
An inscription relating to Shapur I, Ardashir's son and immediate successor, includes
regions which were not inhabited primarily by Iranians in Eran regions, such as Armenia
and the Caucasus. In Kartir's inscriptions the high priest includes the same regions in
his list of provinces of the antonymic Aneran . Both eran and aryan come from the
Proto-Iranian term Aryanam , (Land) of the (Iranian) Aryas. The word and concept of
Airyanem Vaejah is present in the name of the country Iran inasmuch as Iran (Eran ) is
the modern Persian form of the word Aryana.
Since the Sassanid era the country has been known to its own people as Iran; however,
to the western world, the official name of Iran from the 6th century BC until 1935 was
Persia or similar foreign language translations (La Perse , Persien , Perzie , etc.). In that
year, Reza Shah asked the international community to call the country by the name
Iran. A few years later, some Persian scholars protested to the government that
changing the name had separated the country from its past, so in 1959 Mohammad
Reza Shah announced that both terms could officially be used interchangeably. Now
both terms are common, but Iran is used mostly in the modern political context and
Persia in a cultural and historical context. Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the
official name of the country has been the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Taken from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran
Recent history (1925-present)
In 1925, Reza Khan overthrew the weakening Qajar Dynasty (1794 to 1925 ruled by the Qajar family)
and became Shah. Reza Shah initiated industrialisation, railway construction, and the establishment of
a national education system. Reza Shah sought to balance Russian and British influence, but when
World War II started, his nascent ties to Germany alarmed Britain and Russia. In 1941, Britain and the
USSR invaded Iran to use Iranian railway capacity during World War II. The Shah was forced to
abdicate in favour of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
In 1951, after the assassination of Prime Minister Ali Razmara,
Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh was elected prime minister by a
parliamentary vote, which was then ratified by the Shah. As prime
minister, Mossadegh became enormously popular in Iran after he
nationalised Iran's petroleum industry and oil reserves.
In response, the British government, headed by Winston Churchill,
embargoed Iranian oil and successfully enlisted the United States to
join in a plot to depose the democratically elected government of
Mossadegh. In 1953 US President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorised
The 1953 Iranian coup d'état (Operation Ajax) The operation was
successful, and Mossadegh was arrested on 19 August 1953. The
coup was the first time the US had openly overthrown an elected,
civilian government.
The White Revolution
After Operation Ajax, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's rule became
increasingly autocratic. With American support, the Shah was able to
rapidly modernise Iranian infrastructure, but he simultaneously
crushed all forms of political opposition with his intelligence agency,
SAVAK. (The National Intelligence and Security Organisation).
1953 Iranian coup d'état 15–20
August 1953
The White Revolution was a far-reaching series of reforms in
Iran launched in 1963 by the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Muhammad Reza Shah’s reform program was built especially
to strengthen those classes that supported the traditional
system. The Shah advertised the White Revolution as a step
towards modernisation, but there is little doubt that the Shah
also had political motives: the White Revolution was a way for
him to legitimise the Pahlavi dynasty. Part of the reason for
launching the White Revolution was that the Shah hoped to
get rid of the landlords' influence and create a new base of
Shah distributing land deeds
support among the peasants and working class. The bulk of the
programme was aimed at Iran’s peasantry, a class the Shah hoped
to gain as an ally to thwart the threat of the increasingly hostile middle class. Thus the White
Revolution in Iran represented a new attempt to introduce reform from above and preserve
traditional power patterns. Through land reform, the essence of the White Revolution, the Shah
hoped to ally himself with the peasantry in the countryside, and hoped to sever their ties with the
aristocracy in the city.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (an Iranian religious leader and politician)
became an active critic of the Shah's White Revolution and publicly
denounced the government. Khomeini was arrested and imprisoned for
18 months. After his release in 1964 Khomeini publicly criticised the
United States government. The Shah was persuaded to send him into
exile by General Hassan Pakravan. Khomeini was sent first to Turkey,
then to Iraq and finally to France. While in exile, he continued to
denounce the Shah. In this interim the budding Islamic revival began to
undermine the idea of Westernisation as progress that was the basis of
the Shah's secular regime, and to form the ideology of the 1979
revolution. The first militant anti-Shah demonstrations were in October
1977, after the death of Khomeini's son Mostafa. Khomeini's activists
numbered perhaps a few hundred in total, but over the coming months
they grew to a mass of several thousand demonstrators in most cities
of Iran.
Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of
the Islamic Republic of Iran
The Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution, also known as the Islamic Revolution, began in
January 1978 with the first major demonstrations against the Shah. By
summer 1978 the level of protest had been at a steady state for four
months — about ten thousand participants in each major city. A new
prime minister, Jafar Sharif-Emami, was installed in late August and
reversed some of the Shah's policies. Casinos were closed, the imperial
calendar abolished, activity by political parties legalised — to no avail. By
September, the nation was rapidly destabilising, and major protests were
becoming a regular occurrence. The Shah introduced martial law, and
banned all demonstrations but on 8 September thousands of protesters
gathered in Tehran. Security forces shot and killed dozens, in what
became known as Black Friday.
Protesters in Tehran, 1979 by the
On 2 December, during the Islamic month of Muharram (the first month
people of Iran
of the Islamic calendar), over two million people filled the streets of
Tehran's Azadi Square (then Shahyad Square), to demand the removal
of the Shah and return of Khomeini. By late 1978 the Shah was in search of a prime minister and
offered the job to a series of liberal oppositionists. While months earlier they would have considered
the appointment a dream come true, they now considered it futile. Finally, in the last days of 1978, Dr.
Shapour Bakhtiar, a long time opposition leader, accepted the post and was promptly expelled from
the oppositional movement.
After strikes and demonstrations paralysed the country and
its economy, the Shah fled in January 1979 and Ayatollah
Khomeini returned from exile to Tehran on 1 February, 1979.
Khomeini appointed his own competing interim prime
minister Mehdi Bazargan, with the support of the nation and
commanded Iranians to obey Bazargan as a religious duty.
Bakhtiar dissolved SAVAK, freed political prisoners, ordered
the army to allow mass demonstrations, promised free
elections and invited Khomeinists and other revolutionaries
into a government of ‘national unity’. The Pahlavi Dynasty
Mass Demonstrations during the Islamic month of Muharram
collapsed ten days later, on 11 February, when Iran's military declared itself ‘neutral’ after guerrillas
and rebels overwhelmed troops loyal to the Shah in armed street fighting. Iran officially became an
Islamic Republic on 1 April 1979, when Iranians overwhelmingly approved a national referendum to
make it so.
This period is celebrated every year in Iran as the Decade of Fajr. 11 February is Islamic Revolution's
Victory Day, a national holiday with state sponsored demonstrations in every city.
In December 1979, the country approved a theocratic constitution, whereby Khomeini became
Supreme Leader (The highest ranking political and religious authority in the Islamic Republic of Iran)
of the country. The speed and success of the revolution surprised many throughout the world, as it
had not been precipitated by a military defeat, a financial crisis, or a peasant rebellion. Although both
nationalists and Marxists joined with Islamic traditionalists to overthrow the Shah, tens of thousands
were killed and executed by the Islamic regime afterward, and the revolution ultimately resulted in an
Islamic Republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
From 1979 to 1982/83 Iran was in a ‘revolutionary crisis mode’. The economy and the apparatus of
government had collapsed, military and security forces were in disarray. But by 1982 Khomeini and his
supporters had crushed the rival factions and consolidated power. Events that made up both the
crisis and its resolution were the Iran Hostage Crisis, the invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussein's Iraq,
and the presidency of Abolhassan Banisadr. (The first President of Iran, following the 1979 Iranian
Revolution and the abolition of the monarchy.)
The Iran hostage crisis
Iran's relationship with the United States deteriorated rapidly during the revolution. The Iran hostage
crisis arose from the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran. On 4 November 1979, a group of
Iranian students seized US embassy personnel, labeling the embassy a ‘den of spies’. They accused its
personnel of being CIA agents plotting to overthrow the revolutionary government, as the CIA had
done to Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. While the student ringleaders had not asked for permission
from Khomeini to seize the embassy, Khomeini nonetheless supported the embassy takeover after
hearing of its success.
While most of the female and African American hostages were released within the first months, the
remaining 52 hostages were held for 444 days. Subsequent attempts by the Jimmy Carter
administration to negotiate or rescue were unsuccessful. In January 1981 the hostages were set free
according to the Algiers declaration (brokered by the Algerian government between the United
States and Iran to resolve the Iran hostage crisis).
Iran-Iraq War
In September 1980, the Arab Nationalist and Sunni Muslim-dominated regime of Saddam Hussein in
neighbouring Iraq invaded Iran in an attempt to take advantage of revolutionary chaos and destroy
the revolution in its infancy. Iran was galvanized and Iranians rallied behind their new government
helping to stop and then reversing the Iraqi advance. On 22 September 1980 the Iraqi army invaded
Iran at Khuzestan, precipitating the Iran–Iraq War. By early 1982 Iran regained almost all the territory
lost to the invasion. Khomeini sought to export his Islamic revolution westward into Iraq, especially on
the majority Shi'a Arabs living in the country. The war then continued for six more years until 1988,
when Khomeini, in his words, ‘drank the cup of poison’ and accepted a truce mediated by the United
Nations. The total Iranian casualties of the war were estimated to be anywhere between 500,000 and
1,000,000.
Like the hostage crisis, the war served in part as an opportunity for the regime to strengthen Islamic
revolutionary ardour and revolutionary groups, such as the Revolutionary Guard and committees at
the expense of its remaining allies-turned-opponents, such as the MEK. While enormously costly and
destructive, the war rejuvenated the drive for national unity and Islamic revolution and inhibited
fractious debate and dispute in Iran.
Following the Iran–Iraq War President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his administration concentrated
on a pragmatic pro-business policy of rebuilding and strengthening the economy without making any
dramatic break with the ideology of the revolution. Rafsanjani served until 1997 when he was
succeeded by the moderate reformist Mohammad Khatami. During his two terms as president,
Khatami advocated freedom of expression, tolerance and civil society, constructive diplomatic
relations with other states including EU and Asian governments, and an economic policy that
supported free market and foreign investment. However, Khatami is widely regarded as having been
unsuccessful in achieving his goal of making Iran more free and democratic. In the 2005 presidential
elections, Iran made yet another change in political direction, when conservative populist candidate
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected over Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
A significant challenge to Ahmadinejad's political power, and the foundations of the Islamic Republic
itself occurred during the 2009 Iranian presidential election that was held on 12 June 2009, the tenth
presidential election to be held in the country. The Interior Ministry, announced incumbent president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election with 62.63% receiving 24.5 million votes, while MirHossein Mousavi had come in second place with 13.2 million votes 33,75%. The European Union and
several western countries expressed concern over alleged irregularities during the vote, and many
analysts and journalists from the United States and United Kingdom news media voiced doubts about
the authenticity of the results.
Mousavi issued a statement accusing the Interior Ministry, which was responsible for conducting the
election, of widespread election fraud and urged his supporters to engage in peaceful protests. He
also lodged an official appeal with the Guardian Council for new and more transparent elections.
Protests, in favour of Mousavi and against the alleged fraud, broke out in Tehran. Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the nation to unite behind Ahmadinejad, labeling his victory as a ‘divine
assessment’. Khamenei then announced there would be an investigation into vote-rigging claims. On
16 June, the Guardian Council announced it would recount 10% of the votes and concluded there
were no irregularities at all, dismissing all election complaints. However, Mousavi stated that a recount
would not be sufficient since he claimed 14 million unused ballots were missing, giving the Interior
Ministry an opportunity to manipulate the results. On 19 June, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei denounced the pro-Mousavi demonstrations as illegal, and protests the next day were met
with stiff resistance from government forces, with many reported deaths.
The political system of the Islamic Republic is based on the 1979 Constitution. Accordingly, it is the
duty of the Islamic government to furnish all citizens with equal and appropriate opportunities, to
provide them with work, and to satisfy their essential needs, so that the course of their progress may
be assured.
Taken from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran
Women in Iran
The Pahlavi Shahs were the rulers of Iran between 1925
and 1979 and they introduced many reforms concerning
women's rights. An example of an early reform introduced
by Reza Shah was the 'forced unveiling of women by a special decree
on 8 January 1936 which, as the name suggests,
involved the police force pulling the hijab away even from
religious women, by force.' Women's involvement in society
in general increased. Iranian women increasingly participated in
the economy, the education sector and in the workforce. Levels
of literacy were also improved. Examples of women's involvement:
women acquired high official positions, such as ministers, artists,
judges (the first woman judge was Shirin Ebadi, who recently won
a Nobel prize), scientists, athletes, etc. This improvement in the
position of women became so ingrained that the conservative
Islamic revolution could not completely undo it.
Iranian newspaper clip from 1968 reads: "A quarter
of Iran's Nuclear Energy scientists are women."
The picture shows some female Iranian PhDs
posing in front of Tehran's research reactor.
Under Reza Shah's successor Mohammad Reza Shah many more
female suffrage and
significant reforms were introduced. For example in 1963, the Shah granted
soon after women were elected to the Majlis (the parliament) and the upper house, and
appointed as judges and ministers in the cabinet.' In 1967 Iranian family law was also reformed
which improved the position of women in Iranian society. It was included in the civil code and was
designed to protect wives, children and female divorcees. The general thrust of the reforms was
to promote equality between men and women in society.
The Family Protection Laws of 1967 and 1973 required a husband to go to court to divorce rather
than simply proclaim the Triple talaq of "I divorce thee" three times, as stipulated by traditional
sharia law. It allowed a wife to initiate divorce and required the first wife's permission for a
husband to take a second wife. Child custody was left to new family protection courts rather than
automatically granted to the father. The minimum age at which a female could marry was raised
from 13 to 15 in 1967 and to 18 in 1975.
Under the Islamic Republic of Iran
Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution Iran became an Islamic
Republic. Under the 'Islamic' state, Iranian women lost many of
rights gained under the previous regime. One of the striking
features of the revolution was the large-scale participation of
women from traditional backgrounds in demonstrations leading
up to the overthrow of the monarchy. There is speculation that
the increased prominence of women in society under the Shah's
regime gave even conservative women the confidence to push
themselves to the forefront of demonstrations, despite one of
the goals of the revolution being to severely restrict women's
rights. Even after the revolution, large numbers of women
entered the civil service and higher education, and in 1996
fourteen women were elected to the Islamic Consultative
Assembly.
A group of Iranian women demonstrating against
enforced hijab that came with Islamic Republic,
1987
(http://www.fouman.com/history/Iran_Historical
_Photographs_Gallery.htm
As women's participation in education was so strong before the 1979 revolution, after establishing
many universities throughout Iran during the pre-revolution era, families continued to encourage
education for women even after the revolution. This has led to many female school and university
graduates being under-utilised. This is beginning to have an effect on Iranian society and was a
contributing factor to the anti-regime protests by Iranian youth. As of late 2006 nearly 70% of
Iran's science and engineering students were women. Furthermore according to UNESCO world
survey, Iran has the highest female to male ratio at primary level of enrolment in the world among
sovereign nations, with a girl to boy ratio of 1.22: 1.00.
Despite some participation in society, many major basic rights are
ignored. Wearing Islamic Hijab is mandatory for women and
disobeying can lead to undefined punishments such as jail, flogging
or brutal reactions by the authorities. Even Moral police harass
females in the street occasionally if they consider their Islamic cover
too colourful or incompatible with the pattern they deem right,
which is undefined, and under their discretion. Others oppressive
rules include woman's testimony in court is worth half a man's, and
women's right to inheritance is half of men's. Many other rules, laws
and regulations suppress women when it comes to basic rights.
Women have not been able to fight back against these strict laws
because such actions would be considered as challenges against
the basic framework of a religious government and can lead to a
radical changes in the system or loss of powers by ruling clerics.
Though, in some minor matters, women could reverse restrictions in
principle, it has proven difficult to change things back to where they
were in the 1960s and 1970s. Women's protests are one of the
most sensitive matters for the government as it is a challenge
against the framework of the ruling system. Women are generally
aware of the injustice but challenging the system has been very
difficult. Many women were arrested, jailed or banned from working
even after minor protests.
Women in Iran wearing full hijab
(http://www.undiplomatic.net/2009/06/15/iranan-aborted-green-revolution/
The Islamic regime has put many restrictions on women's dress and behaviour. Also all the laws
that were in favour of women prior to 1979 revolution were reversed. At the beginning of the
revolution, it was announced that women appearing on television would have to wear the hijab,
(also known as rousari). A couple of months later it was announced that women working in
government facilities and buildings would also be required to wear hijab, and a few months after
that all women had to wear the hijab in public. Separation of the sexes was also instituted so that
now, everything from "schoolrooms to ski slopes to public buses" is strictly segregated by gender.
Many mass demonstrations were heavily suppressed and women were attacked in the streets by
radical Islamists for not wearing Hijab.
Restrictions on women were more severe in the early days of the Islamic Republic. Females who
didn't cover all parts of their body, except hands and face, were subject to punishment of up to
seventy lashes or sixty days imprisonment. Women were encouraged to stay at home and not
seek a job until the Iran-Iraq War started and women's employment was needed.
Early in the revolution family law reverted to traditional Islamic status that had prevailed before
the Pahlavi dynasty (Qajar era). Men could again abandon wives by simple declaration, while
wives had no judicial recourse for divorce. Children of divorce went to the father and widowed
mothers could lose their children to the nearest male relative. Some of the harsher aspects of
these laws were later modified. There are also women in the Iranian police who deal with crimes
committed by women.
In 1997 women defied the ban on entering soccer stadiums in an act of protest against sex
segregation. During the so-called "soccer revolution" an estimated 5,000 women stormed the
gates of the national stadium to join 120,000 men in celebration of Iran's national football team
which had returned to the country after participating in the 1998 World Cup.
History of Iranian women's dress
Fadwa El Guindi, in her book on the history of the hijab, locates the origin of the Persian custom in
ancient Mesopotamia, where respectable women were veiled, and servants and prostitutes were
forbidden to do so. The veil marked class status, and this dress code was regulated by sumptuary
laws. This custom seems to have been adopted by the Persian Achaemenid rulers, who are said
by the Graeco-Roman historian Plutarch to have hidden their wives and concubines from the
public gaze. There is no pictorial evidence for the chador before Islamic times. Wolfgang Bruhn
and Max Tilke, in their 1941 A Pictorial History of Costume, do show a drawing, said to be copied
from an Achaemenid relief of the 5th century BCE, of a woman with her lower face hidden by a
long cloth wrapped around her head. This is evidence of veiling, but not of a chador.
It is likely that the custom of veiling continued through the Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanid
periods, though there is little in the way of pictorial evidence for this. Upper-class Greek and
Byzantine women were also secluded from the public gaze. El-Guindi believes that the Islamic
hijab is a continuation of this ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern custom. Muslim women
were to be veiled or secluded because it marked them as respectable.
It is not clear when the chador took the form in which it is currently known. European visitors of
the 18th and 19th centuries have left pictorial records of women wearing the chador and the long
white veil, but it is likely that the garment was worn long before that.
The 20th century Pahlavi ruler Reza Shah banned the chador in 1936, as incompatible with his
modernising ambitions. According to Mir-Hosseini as cited by El-Guindi, "the police were arresting
women who wore the veil and forcibly removing it." This policy outraged the Shi'a clerics, and
even many ordinary women, to whom "appearing in public without their cover was tantamount to
nakedness." However, she continues, "this move was welcomed by Westernized and upper-class
men and women, who saw it in liberal terms as a first step in granting women their rights."
Eventually rules of dress code were relaxed, and after Reza Shah's abdication in 1941 the
compulsory element in the policy of unveiling was abandoned, though the policy remained intact
throughout the Pahlavi era. According to Mir-Hosseini, 'between 1941 and 1979 wearing hejab
(hijab) was no longer an offence, but it was a real hindrance to climbing the social ladder, a badge
of backwardness and a marker of class. A headscarf, let alone the chador, prejudiced the chances
of advancement in work and society not only of working women but also of men, who were
increasingly expected to appear with their wives at social functions. Fashionable hotels and
restaurants refused to admit women with chador, schools and universities actively discouraged
the chador, although the headscarf was tolerated. It was common to see girls from traditional
families, who had to leave home with the chador, arriving at school without it and then putting it
on again on the way home'.
In 1980, the new government of Islamic Republic again intervened to dictate what women should
wear in public – this time, restoring the chador and hijab, but not the niqab (face veil). Roving
morality police enforced hijab upon often unwilling women. The code was enforced most strictly in
the years immediately following the revolution. With the cooling of revolutionary enthusiasm and
increasing popular disenchantment with the theocratic regime, the rules of hijab have been
eroded in numerous small ways.
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Iran)
Persian literature
Persian literature spans two-and-a-half millennia, though much of the pre-Islamic material has
been lost. Its sources have been within historical Persia including present-day Iran as well as
regions of Central Asia where the Persian language has historically been the national language. For
instance, Molana, one of Persia's best-loved poets, born in Balkh (in what is now Afghanistan),
wrote in Persian, and lived in Konya then the capital of the Seljuks. The Ghaznavids conquered
large territories in Central and South Asia and adopted Persian as their court language. There is
thus Persian literature from Iran, Afghanistan and other parts of Central Asia. Not all this literature
is written in Persian, as some consider works written by ethnic Persians in other languages, such
as Greek and Arabic, to be included.
Described as one of the great literatures of mankind, Persian literature has its roots in surviving
works of Middle Persian and Old Persian, the latter of which date back as far as 522 BCE (the
date of the earliest surviving Achaemenid inscription, the Behistun Inscription). The bulk of the
surviving Persian literature, however, comes from the times following the Islamic conquest of
Persia circa 650 CE. After the Abbasids came to power (750 CE), the Persians became the
scribes and bureaucrats of the Islamic empire and, increasingly, also its writers and poets. The
New Persian literature arose and flourished in Khorasan and Transoxiana because of political
reasons - the early Iranian dynasties such as Tahirids and Samanids were based in Khorasan.
Persians wrote both in Persian and Arabic; Persian predominated in later literary circles. Persian
poets such as Ferdowsi, Sa'di, Hafiz, Rumi and Omar Khayyam are well known in the world and
have influenced the literature of many countries.
Women and Persian literature
Over the past two centuries, women have played a prominent role in Persian literature.
Contemporary Iranian poets include Simin Behbahani, Forough Farrokhzad, Parvin Etesami. Simin
Behbahani has written passionate love poems as well as narrative poetry enriched by a motherly
affection for all humans. Behbahani is president of The Iranian Writers' Association and was
nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature in 1997.
Contemporary authors include Simin Daneshvar, Shahrnush Pârsipur, and Moniru Ravânipur.
Daneshvar's work spans pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary Iranian literature. Her first
collection of short stories, Âtash-e khâmush (Fire Quenched), was published in 1947. In 1984, she
published Savushun (Mourners of Siyâvash), a novel that reflected the Iranian experience of
modernity during the 20th century. Shahrnush Pârsipur became popular in the 1980s following the
publication of her short stories. Her 1990 novel, Zanân bedûn-e Mardân (Women Without Men),
addressed issues of sexuality and identity. It was banned by the Islamic Republic and later, in 2010
it was made as a feature film by Iriain artist Shrin Neshat. Moniru Ravânipur's work includes a
collection of short stories, Kanizu (The Female Slave), and her novel Ahl-e gharq (The People of
Gharq). Ravânipur is known for her focus on rituals, customs and traditions of coastal life
Poetry
So strong is the Persian aptitude for versifying everyday expressions that one can encounter
poetry in almost every classical work, whether from Persian literature, science, or metaphysics. In
short, the ability to write in verse form was a pre-requisite for any scholar. For example, almost
half of Avicenna's medical writings are in verse.
Works of the early era of Persian poetry are characterised by strong court patronage, an
extravagance of panegyrics, and what is known as ‫‘ ﻑﺍﺥﺭ ﺱﺏﮎ‬exalted in style’. The tradition of
royal patronage began perhaps under the Sassanid era and carried over through the Abbasid and
Samanid courts into every major Persian dynasty. The Qasida was perhaps the most famous form
of panegyric used, though quatrains such as those in Omar Khayyam's Ruba'iyyat are also widely
popular.
Khorasani style, whose followers mostly were associated with Greater Khorasan, is characterized
by its supercilious diction, dignified tone, and relatively literate language. The chief representatives
of this lyricism are Asjadi, Farrukhi Sistani, Unsuri, and Manuchehri. Panegyric masters such as
Rudaki were known for their love of nature, their verse abounding with evocative descriptions.
Through these courts and system of patronage emerged the epic style of poetry, with Ferdowsi's
Shahnama at the apex. By glorifying the Iranian historical past in heroic and elevated verses, he
and other notables such as Daqiqi and Asadi Tusi presented the ‘Ajam’ with a source of pride and
inspiration that has helped preserve a sense of identity for the Iranian peoples over the ages.
Ferdowsi set a model to be followed by a host of other poets later on.
The 13th century marks the ascendancy of lyric poetry with the consequent development of the
ghazal into a major verse form, as well as the rise of mystical and Sufi poetry. This style is often
called Araqi style, (western provinces of Iran were known as Araq-e-Ajam or Persian Iraq) and is
known by its emotional lyric qualities, rich meters, and the relative simplicity of its language.
Emotional romantic poetry was not something new however, as works such as Vis o Ramin by
Asad Gorgani, and Yusof o Zoleikha by Am'aq Bokharai exemplify. Poets such as Sana'i and Attar
(who ostensibly have inspired Rumi), Khaqani Shirvani, Anvari, and Nezami, were highly respected
ghazal writers. However, the elite of this school are Rumi, Sadi, and Hafez Shirazi.
Regarding the tradition of Persian love poetry during the Safavid era, Persian historian Ehsan
Yarshater notes, "As a rule, the beloved is not a woman, but a young man. In the early centuries of
Islam, the raids into Central Asia produced many young slaves. Slaves were also bought or
received as gifts. They were made to serve as pages at court or in the households of the affluent,
or as soldiers and bodyguards. Young men, slaves or not, also, served wine at banquets and
receptions, and the more gifted among them could play music and maintain a cultivated
conversation. It was love toward young pages, soldiers, or novices in trades and professions
which was the subject of lyrical introductions to panegyrics from the beginning of Persian poetry,
and of the ghazal."
In the didactic genre one can mention Sanai's Hadiqat-ul-Haqiqah (Garden of Truth) as well as
Nezami's Makhzan-ul-Asrār (Treasury of Secrets). Some of Attar's works also belong to this
genre, as do the major works of Rumi, although some tend to classify these in the lyrical type due
to their mystical and emotional qualities. In addition, some tend to group Naser Khosrow's works
in this style as well; however the true gem of this genre is Sadi's Bustan, a heavyweight of Persian
literature.
After the 15th century, the Indian style of Persian poetry (sometimes also called Isfahani or Safavi
styles) took over. This style has its roots in the Timurid era and produced the likes of Amir
Khosrow Dehlavi, and Bhai Nand Lal Goya.
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian literature)
Persian Cinema
The cinema of Iran (or Persian cinema) is a flourishing film industry with a long history. Many
popular commercial films are annually made in Iran, and Iranian art films win praise around the
world.
Film festivals that honor Iranian films are held annually around the globe. Along with China, Iran
has been lauded as one of the best exporters of cinema in the 1990s. Some critics now rank Iran
as the world's most important national cinema, artistically, with a significance that invites
comparison to Italian neorealism and similar movements in past decades. World-renowned
Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke and German filmmaker Werner Herzog, along with many film
critics from around the world, have praised Iranian cinema as one of the world's most important
artistic cinemas.
Early Persian cinema
Cinema was only five years old when it came to Persia at the beginning of the 20th century. The
first Persian filmmaker was Mirza Ebrahim Khan Akkas Bashi, the official photographer of
Muzaffar al-Din Shah, the Shah of Persia from 1896–1907. After a visit to Paris in July 1900,
Akkas Bashi obtained a camera and filmed the Shah's visit to Europe. He is said to have filmed the
Shah's private and religious ceremonies, but no copies of such films exist today. A few years after
Akkas Bashi started photography, Khan Baba Motazedi, another pioneer in Iranian motion picture
photography emerged. He shot a considerable amount of newsreel footage during the reign of
Qajar to the Pahlavi dynasty.
In 1904, Mirza Ebrahim Khan Sahhafbashi opened the first movie theatre in Tehran. After Mirza
Ebrahim Khan, several others like Russi Khan, Ardeshir Khan, and Ali Vakili tried to establish new
movie theatres in Tehran. Until the early 1930s, there were little more than 15 theatres in Tehran
and 11 in other provinces.
In 1925, an Armenian-Iranian cinematographer, Ovanes Ohanian, decided to establish the first film
school in Iran. Within five years he managed to run the first session of the school under the name
‘Parvareshgahe Artistiye cinema’ (The Cinema Artist Educational Centre).
1930s and 40s
In 1930 the first Iranian silent film was made by Professor Ovanes Ohanian called Haji Agha, later
in early 1932 he made his second film titled Abi Rubi. Later In 1932, Abdolhossein Sepanta made
the first Iranian sound film, entitled Lor Girl. Later, in 1935, he directed movies such as Ferdowsi
(the life story of the most celebrated epic poet of Iran), Shirin and Farhaad (a classic Iranian love
story), and Black Eyes (the story of Nader Shah's invasion of India). In 1937, he directed Laili and
Majnoon, an Eastern love story similar to the English story of Romeo and Juliet.
The present day Iranian film industry owes a lot of its progress to two industrious personalities,
Esmail Koushan and Farrokh Ghaffari. By establishing the first National Iranian Film Society in 1949
at the Iran Bastan Museum and organising the first Film Week during which English films were
exhibited. Ghaffari laid the foundation for alternative and non-commercial films in Iran.
Early Persian directors like Abdolhossein Sepanta and Esmail Koushan took advantage of the
richness of Persian literature and ancient Persian mythology. In their work, they emphasised
ethics and humanity
Pre-revolutionary cinema, 1950s-70s
The 1960s was a significant decade for Iranian cinema, with 25 commercial films produced
annually on average throughout the early ‘60s, increasing to 65 by the end of the decade. The
majority of production focused on melodrama and thrillers.
The movie that really boosted the economy of Iranian cinema and initiated a new genre was Ganje-Qarun (Croesus Treasure), made in 1965 by Siamak Yasami. Four years later Masud Kimiaie
made Kaiser. With Kaiser (Qeysar), Kimiaie depicted the ethics and morals of the romanticized
poor working class of the Ganj-e-Qarun genre through his main protagonist, the titular Qeysar.
But Kimiaie's film generated another genre in Iranian popular cinema: the tragic action drama.
With the screening of the films Kaiser and The Cow, directed by Masoud Kimiay and Darius
Mehrjui respectively in 1969, alternative films established their status in the film industry.
Attempts to organize a film festival that had begun in 1954 within the framework of the Golrizan
Festival, called for the boring of fruits with the Sepas Festival in 1969 and the endeavours of Ali
Mortazavi, which resulted in the formation of the Tehran World Festival in 1973.
Pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema produced notable movies such as:
•
•
•
•
•
The Bride of the Sea, by the late Arman (1965)
Siavash at Persepolis, by the late Ferreydun Rahnama (1967)
The Brick and The Mirror, by Ebrahim Golestan (1967)
The House of God, by Jalal Moghaddam (1966)
The Husband of Ahoo Khanom, by Davood Mollapour (1968)
Post-revolutionary cinema
Post-revolutionary Iranian cinema has been celebrated in many international forums and festivals
for its distinct style, themes, authors, idea of nationhood, and cultural references. Starting With
Viva... by Khosrow Sinai and followed by many excellent Iranian directors who emerged in the last
few decades, such as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi. Kiarostami, who some critics regard as
one of the few great directors in the history of cinema, planted Iran firmly on the map of world
cinema when he won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Taste of Cherry in 1997.
The continuous presence of Iranian films in prestigious international festivals such as Cannes, the
Venice Film Festival, and Berlin Film Festival attracted world attention to Iranian masterpieces, as
Iranian films have repeatedly been nominated for or won prestigious prizes at those festivals. In
2006, six Iranian films, with six different styles, represented Iranian cinema at the Berlin Film
Festival, and critics considered this a remarkable event in the history of Iranian cinema.
An important step was taken in 1998 when the Iranian government began to fund ethnic cinema.
Since then Iranian Kurdistan has seen the rise of numerous filmmakers. In particular the film
industry gained momentum in Iranian Kurdistan and the region has seen the emergence of
filmmakers such as Bahman Ghobadi, Ali-Reza Rezai, Khosret Ressoul and many other young
filmmakers.
Contemporary Iranian cinema
Today, the Iranian box office is dominated by commercial Iranian films. Foreign films are not
commonly shown in movie theatres as part of a ban on films originating from the West. But
heavily censored versions of classic and contemporary Hollywood productions are shown on state
television. Uncensored versions are easily available in black markets. Iranian art films are often not
screened officially, and are viewable via illegal DVDs, which are easily available. Nevertheless,
some of these acclaimed films were screened in Iran and had box office success. Examples
include Rassul Sadr Ameli's I’m Taraneh, 15, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad's Under the skin of the City,
Bahman Ghobadi's Marooned in Iraq and Manijeh Hekmat's Women's Prison.
(Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Iran)
Video art
Video art is a type of art, which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or
audio data. (It should not however be confused with television or experimental
cinema). Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely
practiced, giving rise to the widespread use of video installations.
Video art is named after the video tape, which was most commonly used in the form's
early years, but before that artists had already been working on film, and with changes
in technology Hard Disk, CD-ROM, DVD, and solid state are superseding the video tape
as the carrier. Despite obvious parallels and relationships, video art is not experimental
film.
One of the key differences between video art and theatrical cinema is that video art
does not necessarily rely on many of the conventions that define theatrical cinema.
Video art may not employ the use of actors, may contain no dialogue, and may have no
discernible narrative or plot, or adhere to any of the other conventions that generally
define motion pictures as entertainment. This distinction is important because it
delineates video art not only from cinema but also from the subcategories where those
definitions may become muddy (as in the case of avant garde cinema or short films).
Perhaps the simplest defining distinction in this respect would then be to say that
(perhaps) cinema's ultimate goal is to entertain, whereas video art's intentions are
more varied, be they to simply explore the boundaries of the medium itself (e.g., Peter
Campus, Double Vision ) or to rigorously attack the viewer's expectations of video as
shaped by conventional cinema (e.g., Joan Jonas, Organic Honey's Vertical Roll).
History of video art
Video art is often said to have begun when Nam June Paik used his new Sony Portapak
to shoot footage of Pope Paul VI's procession through New York City in the autumn of
1965. That same day, across town in a Greenwich Village cafe, Paik played the tapes
and video art was born. The French artist Fred Forest has also used a Sony Portapak
since 1967. This fact is sometimes disputed, however, because the first Sony Portapak,
the Videorover did not become commercially available until 1967 (Fred Forest does not
contradict this, saying it was provided to him by the manufacturers) and that Andy
Warhol is credited with showing underground video art mere weeks before Paik's papal
procession screening. Fred Forest does however stipulate on his website that in 1959
Wolf Vostell incorporated a television set into one of his works, Deutscher Ausblick
1959, which is part of the collection of the Berlinische Galerie possibly the first work of
art with television. In 1963 Vostell exhibited his art environment 6 TV de-coll/age at the
Smolin Gallery in New York. This work is part of the Museo Reina Sofia collection in
Madrid.
Prior to the introduction of the Sony Portapak, ‘moving image’ technology was only
available to the consumer (or the artist for that matter) by way of eight or sixteen
millimeter film, but did not provide the instant playback that video tape technologies
offered. Consequently, many artists found video more appealing than film, even more
so when the greater accessibility was coupled with technologies, which could edit or
modify the video image.
The two examples mentioned above both made use of ‘low tech tricks’ to produce
seminal video art works. Peter Campus' Double Vision combined the video signals from
two Sony Portapaks through an electronic mixer, resulting in a distorted and radically
dissonant image. Jonas' Organic Honey's Vertical Roll involved recording previously
recorded material as it was played back on a television — with the vertical hold setting
intentionally in error.
The first multi-channel video art (using several monitors or screens) was Wipe Cycle by
Ira Schneider and Frank Gillette. An installation of nine television screens, Wipe Cycle
for the first time combined live images of gallery visitors, found footage from
commercial television, and shots from pre-recorded tapes. The material was alternated
from one monitor to the next in an elaborate choreography.
At the San Jose State TV studios in 1970, Willoughby Sharp began the Videoviews
series of videotaped dialogues with artists. The Videoviews series consists of Sharps’
dialogues with Bruce Nauman (1970), Joseph Beuys (1972), Vito Acconci (1973), Chris
Burden (1973), Lowell Darling (1974), and Dennis Oppenheim (1974). Also in 1970, Sharp
curated Body Works, an exhibition of video works by Vito Acconci, Terry Fox, Richard
Serra, Keith Sonnier, Dennis Oppenheim and William Wegman which was presented at
Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco, California.
Video art today
Although it continues to be produced, it is represented by two varieties: single-channel
and installation. Single-channel works are much closer to the conventional idea of
television: a video is screened, projected or shown as a single image, Installation works
involve either an environment, several distinct pieces of video presented separately,
or any combination of video with traditional media such as sculpture. Installation video
is the most common form of video art today. Sometimes it is combined with other
media and is often subsumed by the greater whole of an installation or performance.
Contemporary contributions are being produced at the crossroads of other disciplines
such as installation, architecture, design, sculpture, electronic art, VJ (video
performance artist) and digital art or other documentative aspects of artistic practice.
The digital video ‘revolution’ of the 1990s has given wide access to sophisticated
editing and control technology, allowing many artists to work with video and to create
interactive installations based on video. Some examples of recent trends in video art
include entirely digitally rendered environments created with no camera and video that
responds to the movements of the viewer or other elements of the environment. The
internet has also been used to allow control of video in installations from remote
locations. Emerging in the 1970s, Bill Viola (USA) continues to one of the worlds most
celebrated video artists.
Key Terms
A coup d'état
Also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow is the sudden, illegal deposition of a government,
usually by a small group of the existing state establishment typically the military to replace the
deposed government with another body; either civil or military.
Abdication
Abdication is the act of renouncing and resigning from a formal office, especially from the
supreme office of state.
Autocratic
An autocracy is a form of government in which one person possesses unlimited power. An
autocrat is a person (such as a monarch) ruling with unlimited authority.
Ayatollah
Word meaning the Sign of God given to a high ranking Usuli Twelver Shī‘ah clerics. Those who
carry the title are experts in Islamic studies such as jurisprudence, ethics, and philosophy and
usually teach in Islamic seminaries. The next lower clerical rank is Hojatoleslam wal-muslemin.
Ayatollah is similar in rank to a Bishop or Cardinal in Christianity, and Chief Rabbi in Judaism.
Chador
A chādor or chādar is an outer garment or open cloak worn by many Iranian women in public
spaces; it is one possible way in which a Muslim woman may follow the Islamic dress code known
as ḥijāb. A chador is a full-length semicircle of fabric open down the front, which is thrown over
the head and held closed in front. It has no hand openings or closures but is held shut by the
hands or by wrapping the ends around the waist.
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home (i.e. city, state or country), while either being explicitly
refused permission to return and/or being threatened by prison or death upon return. It can be a
form of punishment.
Hijab
The word hijab (refers to both the head covering traditionally worn by Muslim women and modest
Muslim styles of dress in general. The Arabic word literally means curtain or cover. Most Islamic
legal systems define this type of modest dressing as covering everything except the face and
hands in public. According to Islamic scholarship, hijab is given the wider meaning of modesty,
privacy, and morality; the word for a headscarf or veil used in the Qur'an is khimār and not hijab.
Still another definition is metaphysical, where al-hijab refers to the veil, which separates man or
the world from God.
Industrialisation
The process of social and economic change that transforms a human group from a pre-industrial
society into an industrial one. It is a part of a wider modernisation process, where social change
and economic development are closely related with technological innovation, particularly with the
development of large-scale energy and metallurgy production. It is the extensive organisation of
an economy for the purpose of manufacturing.
Islamic republic
Islamic republic is the name given to several states in the Muslim world including the Islamic
Republics of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Mauritania. Pakistan adopted the title under the
constitution of 1956.
Khorasani style
The Khorasani style is a style in Iranian architecture history.
Littoral state
A state that has a coast.
Monarchy
Monarchy is a form of government in which all political power is passed down to an individual
(usually hereditary) known as a monarch (single ruler).
Persian
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is
widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Armenia,
Turkmanistan, Azerbaijan and Bahrain.
Shah
Shah is a Persian term for a king (leader) that has been adopted in many other languages. The
Shah of Iran is title for the former hereditary monarch of Iran.
SAVAK
The National Intelligence and Security Organisation was the domestic security and intelligence
service established by Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi by recommendation of the UK
Government and with the help of the United States' CIA and Israel's Mossad.
Sharia law
Sharia law is the sacred law of Islam. Most Muslims believe Sharia is derived from two primary
sources of Islamic law: the divine revelations set forth in the Qur'an, and the example set by the
Islamic Prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah.
The Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran
The Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran also called The Iranian Parliament or People's House, is
the national legislative body of Iran.