Inside the Renaissance of Iranian Cinema

Iran had a rich tra­di­tion of film­mak­ing before the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1979, when the fun­da­men­tal­ists burned cin­e­mas and shut down pro­duc­tions. But, by the late 80s, the cler­ics warmed up to cin­e­ma again and a film­mak­ing renais­sance got under­way. Then, in 1997, the whole world took notice when Abbas Kiarosta­mi won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for Taste of Cher­ry. Nowa­days, Iran­ian films show up reg­u­lar­ly at film fes­ti­vals world­wide.

Get­ting inside the vibrant Iran­ian film scene has­n’t been ter­ri­bly easy, espe­cial­ly for Amer­i­cans. Blame that on pol­i­tics. But last year, the folks behind the Vice Guide to Film trav­eled to Tehran and put togeth­er a reportage on Iran­ian cin­e­ma past and present. It runs 23 min­utes and over­turns a few stereo­types along the way. Def­i­nite­ly worth a watch.

Note: Accord­ing to our Twit­ter friends, the film should be view­able around the world. We only encoun­tered one excep­tion — Cana­da. So we offer our apolo­gies in advance to Cana­di­an view­ers. You can find us on Twit­ter here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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