نشریه هنرهای زیبا - هنرهای نمایشی و موسیقی
پیاپی 79 (پاییز 1402)

In the dominant discourse of Iranian cinema studies, there is a contempt for pre-revolutionary popular movies, which are grouped in a genre called Film-Farsi, which are considered superficial and vulgar company assembly productions, and their power and capacity to influence the audience are usually reduced to their entertainment aspects. Thus, the other dimensions and capacities of these films have mostly been neglected. Yet, one cannot ignore the values and progressive faculties of a number of these movies, and the need to re-read them is felt regardless of the limitations created by the dominant derogatory approaches. The movie Nare Toofan (“Toofan’s Bellow”, 1969) directed by Samuel Khachikian, is considered one of these popular films that has received less attention in cinema studies.  However, this film can be considered as one of the first films representing the tensions and fears felt with the coming of modernity and its relevant manifestation, cinema technology, into the traditional Iranian society. Nare Toofan is the story of a fisherman named Toofan (meaning storm) who with his noble wife, Marjan (meaning jewl or pearl), has a peaceful life in a village. At the same time that they anticipate their first child to be born, a film crew arrives to make a movie. The female star of the movie, Sholeh (meaning fire), becomes interested in Toofan who shows no interest in return but she soon spreads her web of seductions. Sholeh first invites Toofan to be part of the film making, and then works her way to become in close proximity to him in the ensuing scenes. Sholeh is a seamless example of a modern seductress femme fatal, and her morals are in stark contrast to Marjan, as the embodiment of the traditional domestic female. Borrowing from Andreas Huyssen's discussion regarding the relationship between femininity and technology, the present study, tries to reread the link between the seductress female and cinema technology in the film Nare Toofan. Huyssen believes that in the modern era, with the appearance of the destructive aspects of technology, feminine characteristics were applied, and the idea of the identification of femininity and technology emerged. Huyssen considers this process as the result of projecting social fears from the destructive dimensions of technology. From this point of view, In Nare Toofan, the character of Sholeh, a modern actress, can be considered the embodiment of cinema technology who disrupts the village life, here a metaphor for traditional society, and causes the collapse and destruction of social order and family there. In the film, the fears and anxieties of the traditional Iranian society about the dangers of cinema technology and the immoral and debased values associated with it are linked with the male fear of the threats of the seductress woman and her abilities.  From this point of view, this film can be considered a paradoxical cinematic work that warns the audience about the threats and dangers of the cinema medium using reflexively the film itself.  Throughout the film, there are many references to the relationship between the flame and the snake. Keeping in mind the relationship between Eve and Satan in some religious circles, cinema technology is represented in this film as a devil-like enchanting woman who pulls the character of Toofan towards decline and decay; hence, the destruction of traditional values and life styles.

The concept of "power" has been an important subject for major political and social thinkers, and the cycle of "power transfer" has always been considered and investigated by authors. Also, since there are usually periods of transition and power changes in all societies, this subject has been significant for the playwrights. Generally, power transfer occurs through a variety of forms: “revolution”, “coup d’etat”, “elections” and “death of kings”. Nowadays, using the concept of power is a common theme in dramatic works, which is broadly applicable to Shakespeare's tragedies. In this essay, we attempt to use political and social concepts of power to analyze the events in Shakespeare's plays that have been formed around this notion. It is essential to know that power structures in theater have an exploratory and expository approach. In other words, the nature of dramaturgy and directing is review and decoding, whereas power structures are not interested in revealing the reality. Therefore, in confrontation between these two subjects, we encounter a fundamental paradox. In the present study, we investigated the elements of power in three tragedies of Shakespeare, namely King Lear, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar; and compare them with Bertrand Russell’s (1938) theory of “power” and the concept of “change of power”. In Russell's view, power is based on conservation law in physics and constantly changes from one form to another. He believes that a shift of power in many cases leads to changes in its type and essence. In The Power (2005), He categorized power based on forms such as “priestly power”, “kingly power”, and “naked power” which is an important categorization in our classification. Also, we use Michel Foucault’s theories to complete the explanations forsome of these concepts. After clarifying these theoretical considerations as the framework, we explore the effects of the political and social events related to the characters of the above-mentioned plays; to show how types of power have been displayed in Shakespeare’s plays, and how to use power as a dramatic element in dramaturgy and character analysis. According to the definitions provided by Russell of the forms of power, it is quite clear that Shakespeare dealt with all aspects of power and the contemporary dramaturgy of his plays has shown that the importance of power never disappears; only it changes from one form to another. In most cases, the dramaturge can change the time, place, and cultural identity of a text to an extent, that any performance of Shakespeare’s plays can be described as a translation. Thus, after analyzing the texts, we have chosen a film of contemporary performances of each play, and we have also presented the selected scenes in the form of a director's notebook plans. In conclusion, the results of this article show that familiarity with different forms of power can provide the director with various new suggestions in the field of directing and character relationship analysis.

This article examines the meaningful experience and perception of place among the technical characteristics of Yasujiro Ozu's cinema in "Tokyo Story" and works in the framework of Martin Heidegger's phenomenological approach due to the centrality of "meaningful experience of place." It is assumed that the meaningful experience of place in the technical characteristics of "Tokyo Story" is in accordance with the resulting components of Heidegger's phenomenological approach to place. As a result, the formation of this correspondence is raised as the research question. The current research is a qualitative type and is carried out by phenomenological method due to the importance of experiencing the place. Data have been collected based on reading books, observing the examined sample, and drawing a sketch of the understanding of the spatial relationships of the movie locations.The result indicates that in Ozu's mise-en-scene style, features such as repetition in the design of the graphic pattern of the backgrounds, repetition in the display of key locations, selecting nature in accordance with the mood of the characters, precision in the use of objects, uniform, and focused lighting, emphasizing the movement of the characters and creating spatial depth have caused the place to be defined based on Heidegger's phenomenological approach by fixing the place in the memory, evoking the imagination and allowing the characters to reflect on their position, perception in a broad environmental context concerning the elements and components of the surrounding environment. Furthermore, in mise-en-scene style, by expanding spatial connections between inside and outside, giving identity to places regarding social, cultural, and environmental contexts, defining limits, paying attention to the emotional aspect of the experience, perception of place in the context of daily life and human activities, direct experience of place, the variety of perceptual experience, and the possibility of interaction with others, the phenomenological approach to the place is adapted. In cinematographic features (low camera height and long take), considering the variety of perceptual experiences in viewing the place due to the low height of the camera, the perception of the place in the context of a comprehensive environment, the possibility of tactility experience, and fixing the location in the memory through the long take, the connection with the phenomenological components of the place is inferred. In the film editing style (shot-to-shot relationship by the establishing shots), by defining the place through the elements and details of the surrounding environment, man and his activities, the expansion of spatial communication between inside and outside, and the possibility of fixing and perpetuating the place in the memory, linking with the phenomenological discourse becomes obvious. Lastly, film sound (environmental sounds specific to each place and sounds outside the frame) with the possibility of perceiving the place in the auditory sensory experience, the experience of the place regarding the surrounding environment, the expansion of spatial communication between inside and outside, stimulating the imagination of the audience to visualize the spatial reference of the sound and the estimation of the size and scale of space, justifies the affinity with Heidegger's phenomenological approach to place.

The relationship between cinema and painting has long been considered a subject of interest. Pedro Almodóvar is a prominent and progressive filmmaker in new Spanish cinema. His movies are marked by a distinct style and an idiosyncratic aesthetic expression. Frequently, Almodóvar has acknowledged being influenced by various sources. Almodóvar should be counted among the filmmakers whose films have a strong connection to the art of painting. He is one of the directors whose works are fundamentally based on an aesthetic framework of painting. The use of paintings as part of the cinematic mise-en-scène and the recreation of famous paintings within the cinematographic frame are considered to be the primary relationships between Almodóvar's works and art. However, sometimes these connections transcend facile associations and require greater effort to sufficiently be comprehended.Almodóvar employs various techniques of reference for oeuvres from classical painters such as Diego Velázquez, and Titian; modern artists like Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Edward Hopper, and Picasso in addition to even the abstract painters like Piet Mondrian and Mark Rothko. This feature places him among the directors exhibiting a unique knowledge of painting in their films. The present research conducts a qualitative analysis of paintings in Almodóvar's films. This study aims to examine painting in Almodóvar's cinema by posing the question of how Pedro Almodóvar's films have been influenced by painting. This developmental research utilizes a descriptive-analytical, comparative methodology and a theoretical framing approach to study the modes of cinematic allusion based on Gérard Genette's intertextuality theory and Linda Hutcheon's theory of parody. Case studies include the prominent works of this filmmaker from the 1980s.The findings indicate that the cinematographic frames in Almodóvar's films have been transcribed from painting in various ways. In the first case, the relationship between the cinematic frames and the paintings is a simple intertextual allusion, whereby the filmmaker, inspired by a painting, recreates it in the cinematic frame, known as tableaux vivant. At times, these allusions transcend a simple association and take on a metaphorical quality, forging a particular connection with the world of the film's characters. In some cases, the intertextual relationship leads to a multilayered connection that generates a new texture of allusion and trans-contextualizing occurs, a concept derived from the theoretical dimensions of Linda Hutcheon's parody, which is perceived as a significant feature of modern art. In some instances, the relationship between Almodóvar's cinematic frames and paintings follows an ironic inversion, whereby a form of allusion and imitation is observed but with a repetition that contains differences, possibly employed for purposes such as critique or recreation. In some cases, Almodóvar uses the frame as a painter's canvas, employing cinematic techniques to create scenes reminiscent of abstract paintings.

Graham Harman, an American contemporary philosopher, is the founder of object-oriented ontology (OOO). In his 2016 book, Immaterialism, he offeres a theoretical framework for studying social phenomena using OOO. According to this theory, the traditional distinction between subject and object is eliminated in favor of a more realistic vision, in which everything from human beings to animals and artificial entities are 'objects' as far as they have similar stages of living: birth, maturity, decadence, and death. We tried to examine this theoretical framework in film studies by taking the film Dance with Me!, (2019, Persian: "Jahan, ba man beraghs!") as a study case. The methodology of this article is a description-analysis based on observations and library resources. In this paper, we try to sketch out how the film's protagonist, Jahan, as an object in his last stage of living, undertakes! actions and reactions to other objects (characters, animals, properties, etc.) to make sense of his life as a symbiosis.Immaterialism provides a framework to analyze things as they are, as well as their effects on other things. Unlike other theoretical frameworks used in film studies, such as Lacanian psychoanalysis, OOO’s main goal is that the critic does not need to find events, accidents, or actions in the films to apply prior knowledge to them. In other words, while other methodologies try to confirm their own limits by abstracting them from the narrative, immaterialism lets audiences see what is deliberately conveyed in the narrative, even if it does not contribute to or amount to the level of dialectical progress of the narration.Dance with Me!, unlike "art movies" that are produced for global or western audiences, is a film that targets local cinemagoers in Iran. Its director, Soroush Sehat (1965), has a long experience in script-writing, direction, and acting in Iranian TV and cinema. In this paper, we take the characters as objects that interact in order to create momentum in the narration. Jahan (a Persian name meaning 'world', dropped out of the film's English name), is regarded as a thing at its last stage of life that has some important interactions with other things, from his family and friends to his domestic animals and properties. But, as its name suggests, the film is not simply a biographical drama about someone dying but instead it is trying to portray an improvised cinematic dance.Dormant objects, which according to immaterialism are things present before any interaction with other things, are considered in this paper to have great importance. Instead of trying to prove something or confirm some psychoanalytic realities, here we simply try to address dormant things that may have or not have obvious effects on the plot or the protagonist's consciousness but make a difference, provoke curiosity, and provide a spot in which metaphor becomes possible. So, while we care about what happens and how the narration goes on, we also have an eye on what remains dormant and escapes from the normative restrictions of cinematic narration in Iran.

There is a duality between urban and rural Gilân. This research focuses on music that has been created in urban centers of Gilân. After the Constitutional Revolution in Iran, urbanization and modernization began in the province of Gilân and it sped up remarkably during the reign of Reza Pahlavi, from 1920s to 1940s. At this time, this new urbanized culture tried to introduce a modernized local identity and tradition. There were three  main influential elements that contributed to the formation of Gilak urbanized culture: a) Co-existence and migration of different ethnic groups in the city of  Rasht that introduced varied artistic forms to the existing culture; b) Efforts of intellectuals who tried to change the mindset of people against superstitions by performing moral theaters and music; c) Presentation of Iranian classical music by classical musicians from the capital in the area that introduced classical music to the Gilak people. These transformations caused the emergence of a modern urban culture, an amalgamation of urban transformation and preservation of the indigenous traditions in an effort to resist the influence of immigrant ethnic minority cultures. The first efforts for reclaiming and preserving the ethnic identity in the 1940s and the 1950s led to the birth of a hybrid and urbanized music. We call this period “the birth of the urban music of Gilân”. The musicians of this period tended to introduce a modernized indigenous music in competition with imported modernity, thus creating a kind of new exotic music which was unprecedented in the area. These efforts, consciously or unconsciously, caused the cultural border between the city and the countryside to become stronger and a new character to be created specifically in the urban settings. Although the music of the cities in Gilân originated in the rural tradition, it had changed so much that the final product could not be recognized as the original indigenous folk music. In the process of formation, this music has three influential factors that are recognized: a) development and growth of the middle class in cities that dreamed about modernity and pursued unprecedented desires; b) competition with foreign cultures such as Russian, Armenian, Georgian and Caucasian influences in order to introduce a modern local identity that could stand against cultural hegemony; c) and the role of the musicians of central Iran that prepared the first material of this music. Due to these cited factors, the music in urban Gilan accepted significant changes from different sources and re-shaped its music thus creating a new genre. The information of this research has been found by field research in addition to library resources such as books, articles, and notes available in various publication. Use of theoretical resources, especially non-Persian resources, have a key role in shaping the theoretical ideas of this project.