UCLA Film and Television Archives The 12th annual series of Iranian cinema continues strongly with numerous films showing at the James Bridges theater until Feb. 10.

By Azadeh Farahmand
Daily Bruin Contributor

So close to the heart of the Hollywood commercial machine and in spite of the fast-paced, extravagant and English-speaking cinema dominating the American movie theaters, the UCLA James Bridges Theater continues to offer alternative screenings with the 12th annual series of Iranian cinema.

The series, which is organized by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in collaboration with the UCLA Center for the Near Eastern Studies, began last Thursday with a screening of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s “Kandahar.” Screenings will continue today with a screening of Reza Mir-Karimi’s “Under the Moonlight” and will end on Feb. 10 with Iraj Karimi’s “Going By.”

The annual Iranian film series was launched back in 1990, when Hamid Naficy, then a UCLA Ph.D. student and now a Rice University professor of film and media studies, curated the first program. The 1990 UCLA festival marked the first showcase of the recent Iranian films in the United States.

“It was a huge success and it was controversial,” said Jonathan Freidlander, outreach director of the UCLA Center for the Near Eastern Studies. “It was the first window to Iran for many people, Americans, and especially the (Iranian) immigrant and the exile community here, who came in great numbers to this festival.”

The notable attendance and the increasing availability of films from Iran kept the annual series alive and going. “Year after year, Iranian film programs are among the Archive’s best-attended screenings,” said Cheng-Sim Lim, programmer at the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

The ongoing collaboration of CNES and the Archive in holding the Iranian film series have marked the infusion of cinema with cultural education and academic scholarship. Friedlander stressed the need for more inclusive programming to present, on a regular and cohesive basis, such showcases as Arab, Turkish or Middle Eastern diaspora films. He also linked the emerging scholarship on the Middle Eastern cinemas and cultures to the increased availability of films through academic institutions.

“When we started these programs (12) years ago there were just a handful of people … in graduate school finishing up their MFA or Ph.Ds,” Friedlander said. “But now we have a (group) of very fine film scholars ... who are looking at Middle Eastern cinema and are writing in mainstream journals.”

UCLA associate professor of English, Ali Behdad incorporates the current series in his course, “Western Representations of the Middle East.” He underscores the use of allegories and subversive techniques in Iranian films that address complex social and cultural issues. For Behdad, the sustained reliance on certain themes and stylistic choices in Iranian films pose a problem.

“I find the exoticist approach to the countryside, the poor and the child in Iranian cinema quite problematic,” Behdad said. “In many of these films … what we encounter is a new mode of ‘indigenous orientalism’ that packages the exotic other for Western intellectual consumption.”

The current Iranian film series at UCLA include themes and genres that actually thrive to move away from some of the clichéd exoticism that have become the trademarks of Iranian cinema in the West.

While children are still visible in these films, they play a less central role. “Under the Moonlight” follows a cleric-in-training in a crisis of faith, who, mediated by a homeless child-thief, comes to learn about a community of outcasts that live under a bridge in the urban outskirts of Tehran.

Dispensing with the slow pace and exotic landscapes that typify exported Iranian films, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad creates an intense drama of an urban working-class family in her “Under the Skin of the City.” The series also includes documentaries such as Bahman Kisrostami’s “Tabaki,” a 27-minute look into professional mourners in Iran. Bahman Moshar’s “My Name is Rocky” places a camera into a Tehran courtroom to record testimonials of run-away girls and young women about abuse, forced marriages and halted schooling.

“I think Iranian cinema is witnessing another infusion of new and exciting directorial talent,” Lim said. “I also see a greater willingness in Iranian films of the past two years to address social concerns directly, with less resorting to allegory or the casting of children.”

FILM: The 12th Annual Celebration of Iranian Cinema takes place in UCLA James Bridges Theater from Jan. 10 to Feb. 10. For the program schedule call 310-206-FILM or visit www.cinema.ucla.edu.