Rethinking the ‘New’ in New Iranian Cinema

The “New Wave” of Iranian cinema witnessed in the 1960s alongside other global movements, with films such as Forugh Farrokhzad’s poetic documentary Khāneh Siyāh Ast (The House is Black, 1962) or Dariush Mehrjui’s symbolic drama Gāv (The Cow, 1969), among others. This was directly paralleled by the “committed literature” movement that began in early 1950s. This sense of commitment was not confined to the literary realm, but also affected the independent cinema of the 1960s and the Iranian intelligentsia in general. And their continuation is what created the backbone of Iranian cinema after the revolution. In the 1990s the decade in which Iranian cinema began its grand global appearance with notable works by directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Bahram Beizai and Majid Majidi is when the term ‘New Iranian Cinema’ began circulating in academic spheres. The Iranian style of filmmaking, with its long takes, long shots, and minimal editing, offering a sense of “realism,” remained for years the formal definition of New Iranian cinema. In this paper I would like to go back and decolonise this definition and help understand the breadth of Iranian cinema since 1990s and highlight some key contributors that are often kept out of the limelight