Hamid Dabashi (International Reception)

Cultural historian, commentator and academic, originally Iranian from the South-West, but has lived and worked in NYC for a long period. Has written several books about Iranian cinema in English.





Quotes:

• "I believe in a bifocal perspective in what is enduring in our cinema—a vertical and a horizontal perspective. Horizontally, our cinema is linked to a global conversation currently underway among all the major filmmakers around the world. Vertically, I believe Iranian cinema is, inevitably, deeply rooted in a cultural universe much older than the history of film as an art form." [M&M, 258]
• "It is in the global performance of our art that we as Iranians can begin to see ourselves—and as a result I consider this awkward resentment that some of our compatriots have developed for the success of Iranian cinema abroad—they consider these films domestically irrelevant— entirely misplaced. Of course a Kiarostami or Panahi film cannot attract half as many people as a melodrama with perhaps a little bit of localized feminism thrown in for good measure. But the success of Kiarostami or Makhmalbaf abroad does not mean they are domestically superfluous. Those who accuse them of irrelevance need to consider the following: Those who object to the global success of Iranian films and point to their domestic irrelevance have a rather limited conception of what they call "the West."" [M&M, 28]
• "What exactly is particular about Iranian cinema? Quite a number of things. It comes out of nowhere. It is simple. Its exoticism is accessible. It is aesthetically ascetic, minimalist in its narrative construction, to the point of pictorial nominalism. It has "the Third World" written all over it. It reveals an image of a culture and society sharply different from that portrayed by the European and the US media since the Islamic revolution. Iranian cinema confirms its European and American audience's belief in the technological superiority of their culture. Iranian filmmakers are not glamorous and their simplicity set against the extravaganza of places such as Cannes or Venice is particularly disarming. A cinematic culture nauseated by excessive violence and tasteless sex is soothed watching a Kiarostami or a Makhmalbaf film. Iranian cinema is at once avant-garde and simple to read. No obscure theory is required to decipher it, as it is in reading a Bergman or a Tarkovsky or a Godard. Iranian cinema, in effect, laughs in the face of complicated cinematic theories, defies them all, posits its own manner of seeing things, and yet it cannot be ignored. Iranian cinema is neither theorized nor does it need to be theorized in terms (at once local and global) inimical to the social production of its own specific aesthetics. Iranian cinema is its own theory." [M&M, 329]