Cinematic Modernity: Cosmopolitan Imaginaries in Twentieth Century Iran
[Thesis]
Golbarg Rekabtalaei
Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad
University of Toronto (Canada)
2015
251
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-339-36888-7
Ph.D.
Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto (Canada)
2015
Cinematic Modernity explores the 'genesis amnesia' that informs the conventional scholarly accounts of Iranian cinema history. Critiquing a 'homogeneous historical time,' this dissertation investigates cinematic temporality autonomous from (and in relation to) political and social temporalities in modern Iran. Grounding the emergence of cinema in Iran within a previously neglected cosmopolitan urban social formation, it demonstrates how the intermingling of diverse Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, French and British communities in interwar Tehran, facilitated the formation of a cosmopolitan cinematic culture in the early twentieth century. In the 1930s, such globally-informed and aspiring citizens took part in the making of a cinema that was simultaneously cosmopolitan and Persian-national, i.e. cosmo-national.
Middle Eastern Studies; Film studies
Social sciences;Communication and the arts;Cinema;Cosmopolitan;Iran;Temporality