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Nonfiction Fiction: Documentaries on Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Hamid Naficy
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Extract

Iran has often been the subject of many nonfiction films and television programs produced by Western countries, particularly Britain and the United States. Although these films about Iran were made by a diverse group of private and governmental agencies, overall they have tended both to emphasize the supremacy of West over the ancient, backward East and to support the evolving policies and ideologies toward Iran held by the Western governments and their multi-national corporations.

Western audiences who viewed these films and programs as enployees of corporations, members of armed forces units, students in schools or the general public, must have experienced a certain self-congratulatory gratification with their own ideological and material conditions and a confidence in the policies espoused by their governments toward underdeveloped countries such as Iran. From the scant information available, it seems that the responses of the Iranian audiences (especially of those educated in the West and whose views of Iran, as we shall see later, partially coincided with those of Westerners) to these films were composed of a mixture of shame for their failure to modernize, and exasperation at being incorrectly or insufficiently represented.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 3-4 , Summer-Autumn 1979 , pp. 217 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1979

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References

Notes

1. For a critical history of fiction films by Iranian filmmakers, please see Naficy, Hamid, “Iranian Feature Film: A Brief Critical History,” Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Fall 1979).Google Scholar

2. The British Film Institute, National Film Archive Catalogue, Part I, Silent News Films (1895-1933) (London: British Film Institute, 1965), p. 11.Google Scholar

3. Ibid, p. 13.

4. Ettela'at, 27 Bahman 1310 (2/17/1932), p. 2.

5. Ettela'at, 4 Bahman 1309 (1/24/1931), p. 1.

6. Society for Applied Anthropology, Technical Assistance Program Series: Iran, Report No. 4--Recommendations for Making Films in Iran (New York, February 22, 1951)Google Scholar quoted in Issari, Mohammad Ali, “A Historical and Analytical Study of the Advent and Development of Cinema and Motion Picture Production in Iran (1900-1965)” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1979), p. 578.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 598.

8. All quotes from ibid., pp. 580, 581 and 588.

9. Heider, Karl, Ethnographic Film (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976); p. 25.Google Scholar

10. de Brigard, Emilie Rahman, “History of Ethnographic Film” (unpublished MA theses, Los Angeles: University of California, 1972), p. 53.Google Scholar

11. Sadoul, Georges, Dictionnaire des Films (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1975), p. 105.Google Scholar

12. In a telephone conversation in June 1979, Ernest Shoedsack, now blind and in ill-health, confirmed the duration of the trip to be 46 days.

13. From Films by AIOC (Anglo-Iranian Oil Company), p. 1, obtained through correspondence with the British Petroleum in December 1979.

14. Low, Rachael, Documentary and Educational Films of the 1930s (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979), p. 125.Google Scholar

15. Issari, p. 232.

16. Ibid., p. 244.

17. Naficy, Hamid, Documentary Film: Source and Substance (in Persian) (Tehran: Free University Press, 1978), Vol. two, p. 328.Google Scholar

18. From the film flyer distributed at the Third World Film Festival held at UCLA, April 1979.

19. Mehrdad Azarmi, “The Filming of ‘Crossroads of Civilization’,” American Cinematographer (June 1977), p. 644 and the Variety article.

20. Clive Irving, “The Making of an Odyssey,” American Cinematographer (June 1977), p. 636.

21. John Weisman, “Foreign Lobbyists: How They Try to Manipulate U.S. Television,” TV Guide (November 18, 1978), p. 7.

22. John Weisman, “Foreign Lobbyists and U.S. Television: Buying Goodwill--and More,” TV Guide (November 25, 1978), pp. 35-36.

23. Jay Levine, “MSU's Iran Film Triggers Sit-ins,” Detroit Free Press, June 5, 1977 and Steve Orr, “MSU Protests Ends Sit-in Quietly,” Detroit Free Press, June 6, 1977.

24. Ibid., Levine.