Saturday, August 6, 2016

Iranian cinema through decades


When cinema came to Iran, it was considered as a scary magic like in other countries and nobody predicted that this can change art’s history forever. “Muzaffar-e-din-shah”, Iran’s king during Qajar era brought a cinematograph machine to Iran in his return from a journey to France, which was a simple and newly invented filming machine, invented by Lumier brothers in 1895. This souvenir caused Iran’s cinema to get started with silent and simple short films and to be continued with practical films and even sometimes unsuccessful ones until today’s improved movies in both technique and concept.

During the first years of film making in Iran, while some film makers were busy producing popular and inartistic movies, directors like Sohrab Shahidsales founded new wave of Iranian cinema by making films at the same level with great directors of European countries. His movies “still life” produced on 1978 and “a simple event” produced on 1973, are unforgettable artistic movies made those days. This method was continued by other ones like Abbas Kiarostami, a great artist who invented a new idea in cinema by his point of view to the world and humanity and also his recognizable techniques of film making. Some of his world famed films are “taste of cherry”, wining Cannes award on 1997, “Wind will carry us away” 1999 and “like someone inlove”2012.

 Reza kianian, a famous Iranian actor believes that Iranian film makers have always tried to be loyal to their own method of film making by showing cultural and social themes and have avoided copying Hollywood’s expensive movie projects.  For example, Ali Hatami the great director of “Kamal-ol-molk”1982, “mother”1989 or "disconsolateds”1991,  has made his films showing Persian life, history and emotions accompanied with Persian music and human feelings so that each frame in his movies looks like a piece of Persian painting and every dialogue is heard as a worthy Persian poem.

 In recent years new Iranian directors are continuing approaches of old ones and trying to promote Iran's cinema, usually with the same social and human based subjects. They are working in different branches of cinema, like documentaries, animations, short films and etc., and also competing in most of world film festivals every year. We can mention two of Asqar Farhadi movies, “The separation” wining Oscar award on 2011, and “The seller” wining two Cannes awards on 2015 as the great achievements of Iran’s cinema, in recent years.



"City of mice", a famous Iranian puppet movie.

                         

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