sam izadi

Since the very beginning of the emergence of western-style theater in Iran in the 19th century, the existence of this new art has been tied to censorship. The first theatrical activities in Iran before the occurrence of the constitutional revolution in the years 1905–1911 were limited to the publication of Iranian plays and the translation of foreign plays. Mirza Jafar Gharachedaghi, when translating the collection of plays by Mirza Fatali Akhundov (Akhundzadeh), the first Iranian playwright who wrote his works in Tbilisi and in Azeri Turkic, changed the names mentioned in these plays so that the anger of famous people whom the author had criticized would not cause trouble for the translator. With this, we can see that with the publication of the first Iranian modern play, censorship and self-censorship were also born in Iran, or at least became official. Since that date, i.e., since 1873 AD, various types of censorship, self-censorship, and, of course, avoiding censorship have existed in Iran in different forms, both officially and unofficially, and they did not completely disappear in any periods. From the first amateur Iranian theater troupes in the pre-constitutional era (1911) such as Farhang Theater and National Theater to troupes with a regular repertoire in the post-constitutional era such as Iran Comedy, Nakissa Theater and Barbod Theater, to the professional theater troupes and companies in the Pahlavi era (1925 to 1979) such as the Ferdowsi Theater, the National Art Troupe and Theater Workshop and even the huge number of so-called registered troupes after the Islamic Revolution (1979), all have been struggling with the phenomenon of censorship and of course self-censorship and on the other hand escaping from censorship, and many forms of theater censorship in Iran continue to oppress artists to this day. Since the first theater production in Iran, religious censorship has been the main form of censorship in Iranian theater, along with government censorship and, of course, self-censorship. After the Islamic Revolution and with the rise of religious clerics, these forms of censorship became more intense. During World War II and the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 and the establishment of the Communist Party of Iran (Tudeh), ideological censorship was added to other types of theater censorship in Iran, and official and unofficial parties still use different methods to censor competing ideologies. Numerous political and social events in Iran, including the constitutional revolution and the Islamic revolution, did not have a significant impact on increasing freedom of expression in Iran, and as a result, creative freedom and dealing with censorship became the main forms of artistic expression in Iran. Since the early years, theater troupes in Iran have used several strategies in their organizational and management structure to deal with and fight against censorship, such as performing theater secretly, recruiting members instead of selling tickets, or cyber performances in recent years. In this article, by examining the management of prominent theater troupes in Iran, we will recognize the strategies that these troupes used to counter censorship.

The term local genre may not be an established term for all people who study cinema and film critics, because genre is defined as a global category and is less attributed to a specific region or nation. However, this research considers it possible to use the term local genre with the following simple definition; local genres are subgenres or hybrid genres with features that are less common elsewhere. In many cases, by repeating some special features in works of a subgenre or hybrid genre in the films of a nation or region, and of course the presence of a significant number of works in that genre, these subgenres or hybrid genres will become local genres. For example, all local genres in Japanese cinema like Kaiju or Yakuza films are sub-genres or hybrid genres: Kaiju genre is a combination of features of two genres, science-fiction and horror, and Yakuza film is one of the sub-genres of crime genre.Studying a wide range of local genres including the Martial Arts in Hong Kong, Spaghetti Western in Italy, Masala in India, Heimatfilm in Germany, Anime in Japan and Filmfarsi in Iran, proves that despite the diversity of generic elements in local genres, there is a consistent trend in the development of these genres which seems to be an influence of the national or cultural identity of that genre's region. With the temporary salience of national identity with factors such as war, colonialism, cultural domination and other elements that emphasize the concepts of "self" and "other", filmmakers are drawn to  cultural heritage and are using it to represent a national identity in the content and structure of films, which in turn, has led to the formation of genres that have distinct characteristics compared to the dominant cinematic genres. The expression of national concerns in terms that can be understood by the general public has made these films extremely popular among audiences of that region, and over time, these genres have gained their audience inside and outside that particular geographical area, thus facilitating the development of a "national cinema".Filmmakers around the world can produce films that include their identity and culture by relying on the achievements of native genres inside and outside their country. The use of genre to express contemporary national concerns, along with examining the unique features of expression in classical literary and artistic works of each country, can play an important role in eliminating the common demarcation of popular and artistic cinema, and result in an increase in the social role of any particular genre.In this article, the main features of local genres and their differences are compared with the dominant genres of Hollywood cinema, reflecting upon the competitive nature of this genre in regards to  the dominance of Hollywood cinema. The role of national identity in the formation of this genre will be analyzed, and finally, the influence of classical arts on the content, structure, style and iconography of this genre will be further explained.

Despite the expansion of video media and virtual networks with the ability to share video, the poster is still one of the first and most important elements of a film that provides information about it to the audience. It is a poster that depicts the message and atmosphere of the movie in a fixed frame to attract the attention of the audience and invite them to watch the movie. Beyond the beauty and image of popular stars, the ideal poster offers thousands of things about the movie to the audience, because a picture more worthes than a thousand words. In fact, the small details of movie posters can easily convey important elements of the story, characters, genre and many other dramatic elements of the film to the audience and become the first narrative and dramatic element of the film. Searching for drama and narrative in two-dimensional arts such as posters is possible through different and intertextual readings. By knowing the concepts of narrative layers in Gerard Genet's theories of narratology, as well as familiarizing with the special features of cinematic narratives that have been proposed in the theories of people like Seymour Chatman, it is possible to examine the structure of drama in the narrative of a film and compare it with the narrative elements hidden in the corresponding poster. Establishing a connection between the two cinematic and visual texts and between the dramatic narrative in the film and the poster, a practical solution for creating dramatic and narrative posters has been offered. In this research, after introducing the drama and its components, the dramatic elements in selected posters of Iranian cinema have been analyzed based on the theories of narrative layers of Gerard Genet and Seymour Chatman's cinematic narrator. With the completion of this research, it became clear that by relying on the theory of narrative layers, narrative can be found in non-narrative and non-dramatic arts, and by referring to the theory of the cinematic narrator and knowing the tools of cinematic narration, it is possible to differentiate between the two mediums of film and Poster communicated and analyzed drama and story in these two media. In this method, the cinematic tools of the film convey the story and drama to us, and we reach the story from the cinematic discourse. Then, based on the story, the poster is studied to determine how the story and drama are displayed in the visual discourse of the poster. Based on the findings of this research, it can be stated that the drama in the posters of the 60s and 70s of Iranian cinema shows itself on three levels: on the first level, the genre and the theme of the movie are reflected in the poster. At the second level, the characters and the relationships between them are defined, and at the last level, the plot of the drama is conveyed to the audience through the depiction of the dramatic action.