Mon, Mar 2, 2009, 8:30 pm
Location:
Communications, Studio C
A remarkable and unexpected achievement of Iranian postrevolutionary cinema is the significant and signifying role of women both behind and in front of the camera. What is remarkable and unexpected in the reemergence of cinema is that more women directors of feature films came to the fore in a single decade after the revolution than in all the preceding eight decades of filmmaking combined. And this takes place in a patriarchal and Muslim society, which is ruled by an Islamic theocracy and ideology that are highly suspicious of the corruptive influence of cinema on women and of women on cinema. The lecture deals with the politics and poetics of veiling in films and their impact on representation of women.