Iran’s Reel Spectre

Cinematic Story of a Nation

Proshot Kalami

 

254 pp, 6 x 9 inches 0

ISBN : 9780857421104

Rs  595.00 (PB)
$35.00 (PB)
£22.50 (PB)

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Iran’s Reel Spectre: Cinematic Story of a Nation makes an original intervention in understanding the complexities of what the world now acknowledges as Iranian Cinema, from the aesthetic and intellectual movements of the early twentieth century to elements that have contributed to its contemporary representation in the context of ‘global culture’. It allows the reader to understand the workings of Iran’s post-Revolution history as well as the influence of its ancient artistic heritage and of Islam. This ground-breaking volume by Proshot Kalami analyzes how Islamic Iran projects itself through its ‘exportable’ cinema and how the West ‘receives’ it, and, crucially, challenges the standard notion of ‘national cinema’ by problematizing the tired and overused term while exploring the presence of Iranian cinema within the international market and the international cinema discourse surrounding it. With the in-depth empirical data it provides on production rates, bureaucratic regulations, distribution facts and figures, and film reviews published in Iranian film periodicals, this volume allows the international reader to examine, for the first time, Iranian cinema from within the cultural context that produces it. Iran’s Reel Spectre is thus an original and fresh contribution to the body of critical literature available on Iranian art and culture at large. Poet, painter, documentary filmmaker and live-performance videographer, Proshot Kalami is currently a fellow at Freie Universität Berlin. She received her PhD in comparative literature, cinema and critical theory from University of California, Davis. She has taught at Universities of California in Berkeley, Davis and Santa Cruz, and later at Loughborough University, UK.

Proshot Kalami

 

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