Religious representation in after-revolution Cinema;Relation to Social Context and Mediated Religion

This paper has focused on how different aspects of religion including faithful, emotional, behavioral, knowledge and consequence have been represented in after-revolution Iranian Cinema. The relations of these aspects to social contexts and mediated cinema have been studying too. Therefore, the films which have closer characteristics to best definition of religious cinema have been selected; “Tobeh Nosuh” and “Ofogh” of 60s, “From Karkheh to Rhein” and “The color of paradise” of 70s, “So far-So close” and “Gold and Copper” of 80s and “Track 143” of 90s have been selected. The methodology of this paper is qualitative content analysis with Umberto Eco’s semiology. Eco’s codes including perceptive codes, codes of recognition, codes of transmission, tonal codes, iconic codes, iconographic codes, codes of taste and sensibility, rhetorical codes, stylistic codes and codes of the unconscious have been detected in different primary and secondary scenes of these films and different subject matters of religion have been extracted. Some of the results are: the main focused of studied films is on behavioral and knowledge aspects of religion, having deeper concepts in religious cinema in the years after 60s, alignment of studied films to religious process in society and being non-political the films of 80s against hegemony of politics on social structures of Iranians.