Aestheticism of Framing and Deframing in Iranian Cinema 2001-2011

Framing is a very important subject in picture aestheticism. This contains a capacity which might be investigated through different approaches, and the film-makers have used this method to improve the visual aesthetics of their works. But, despite the importance of this subject, rare studies could be found along with their works based on the framing and its different dimensions inside Iranian cinema. This article is trying to investigate the framing aesthetics and its visual capacities through a descriptive-analytic approach. Therefore, at the first step, eight movies amongst the works produced from 2001 to 2011 in Iran, have been chosen as the statistical domain of the research: Killing Mad Dogs (Bahram Beizai, 2001); Bright Nights (Farzad Motamen, 2001); Gavkhooni (The River’s End) (Behrooz Afkhami, 2003); Green Fire (Mohammad Reza Aslani, 2007); Day and Night (Omid Bonakdar & Keyvan Ali-mohammadi, 2008); About Elly (Asghar Farhadi, 2008); A Walk in the fog (Bahram Tavakoli, 2009); A Seperation (Asghar Farhadi, 2010). In the beginning of the research, the concept of framing and its developing process are stated so that the artist’s approach towards framing becomes clear. In regard to this, we continue to discuss the painter’s approach towards the frames and then we’ll talk about the dominant approach throughout the renaissances. In this section, a transformation in the attitude towards frame edges is shown in the various works of the painters who shift their focus from the center of images to their edges. Then, on-screen pictures are referred to. That is, the analysis based on the pictures which are formed inside the frame edges and some scenes of the chosen movies are stated so that the discussion becomes clear. Deleuze’s ideas about the saturated and rarefaction images have been discussed. Then, several instances from the selected case studies are stated that explain how Iranian filmmakers make use of these ideas in their works. Next, those scenes are studied, although they are outside the limitations of the frame edges, they possess a strong impacting effect. In other words, the aim in this section is to focus on pictures which have gone further than the limitations specified by the frame. The theoretical focus of this part is based on Noel Burch’s thoughts on the off-screen space. We try to increase the practical aspects of the discussion by including several instances of the selected movies. In the end, a rare and unique approach in framing is introduced and its characters are analyzed so that the innovative approaches in Iranian Cinema towards framing are revealed. Then, the concept of deframing is investigated by focusing on Pascal Bonitzer’s theory. This is followed by a search within movies to point out the moments where Iranian filmmakers manage to alter the conventional viewpoint and move toward deframing. Therefore, we notice a great preference in the works of the 80’s like Killing Mad Dogs, About Elly, and A Seperation to configure their images within the frame edges. Whilst, Bright Nights and Gavkhooni (The River’s End) have reached further and made an effort to alter the conventional and routine meaning of framing.