Thursday, February 5, 2009

30 Years of Post-Revolutionary Cinema of Iran

This list is announced by the Iranian government. These are not necessarily the best works, although most of the best directors of Iranian cinema are included. I link to those MUST SEE/KNOW directors. For those who may not know, Iranian cinema is known as the Cinema of 90s. I put a star next to those iconic figures of this genre.

List released by ISNA):

1) Bashu, the Little Stranger (Bahram Baizai***)
2) The Tenants (Dariush Mehrjui***)
3) Blue Veil (Mrs. Rakhshan Bani Etemad***)
4) Smell of Camphor , Scent of Jasmin (Bahman Farman-Araa)
5) The Runner [classic] (Amir Naderi***)
6) Mother (Ali Hatami***)
7) Capitain Khorshid (Naser Taghvayee)
8) Naser-edin Shah the Actor of Cinema. (Mohsen Makhmalbaf***)
9) Under the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami***)
10) I am Taraneh, 15 (Rasul Sadr-Ameli***)
11) Kimia (Ahmad-Reza Darvish)
12) White Baloon (Jafar Panahi***)
13) Two Women (Mrs. Tahmine Milani**)
14) Leili's With Me (Kamal Tabrizi)
15) Stories of Majid: Shame (Kyumars Pour-Ahmad)
16) Need (Alireza Davoodi-Nejad)
17) To Be or Not to Be (Kyanoush Ayyari)
18) Lead (Mas'ood Kimiyaee)
19) From Karkhe to Rhain (Ebrahim Hatami-Kia)
20) The Stone-Lion (Masood Jafari Jozayee) [no clue ]
21) Under the Moonlight (Reza Mir-Karimi***, Oscar nominee)
22) The Survivor (Seyfollah Daad) [no clue ]
23) Birth of a Butterfly (Mojtaba Ra'yee) [no clue ]
24) The Boot (Mohamad-AliTalebi) [no clue]
25) A Time for Drunken Horses (Bahman Ghobadi)
26) Hur in Fire (Aziz-o-llah Hamid Nejad) [no clue ]
27) Sain Merry (Shahryar Bohrani) [no clue ]
28) Charshanbe Suri (Asghar Farhadi)
29) Journey to Chazabeh (Rasul Mola-gholi-pour)
30) Children of Heaven (Majid Majidi**, Oscar nominee)

Other important directors omitted from this list:
Cyrus Alvand
- Mrs. Manijeh Hekmat
- Ali Rafii (theater director, really)
- Mrs. Pouran Derakhshandeh
- Ms. Samira Makhmalbaf
- Behruz Afkhami
- Fereydun Jeyrani
- Khosro Sinaie
- Varuzh Karim-Masihi
- Mohamad Reza Honarmand

3 comments:

jmsjoin said...

We have you to thank for even knowing Iran has a film industry. The diversity is surprising because of the crap we are fed!

nunya said...

I'm curious about the dvd cover you posted. What's that movie about?

Naj said...

Jim,

Yes! And it's very diverse; you can find total crap in it; and you can also find universe-class masterpieces.

Nunya:
It's about the suffering of Golrokh (Mojdeh Samsayee, on the cover), a writer who risks her life and dignity to face the most menacing of men, in order to bail her husband out of his jail sentence. Yet at last, she realizes that she has been but the agent of her husband’s corruption. She holds the gin at him, but her humanity survives and surpasses the impulse of revenge as she walks away and back into her intellectual world of writing.

It's a political film noire!