Description:
Reassesses the post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema from a new mnemo-political perspective.
Brief description: Dr Matthias Wittmann is a researcher on media (especially film), curator, and writer. He was Research Associate and Chief Assistant at the Seminar for Media Studies (University of Basel) and Visiting Professor in Vienna. He has just finished a book about the Octopus (Die Gesellschaft des Tentakels, 2021) and is currently writing a book on Martyrographies in Iranian Cinema.
Review Quotes: This collected volume is a vital cinematic intervention in master narratives of modern Iran from the 1960s to 2014. Based on the premise that films can work as a counterforce to official histories of institutions, societies, and politics, the book convincingly posits cinema as counter-history. Foregrounding the plurality of histories, memories, material culture, and audiovisual archives, the brilliant chapters in this volume boldly attest to how cinematic memoryscapes and afterimages make 'hidden history' visible and tangible. Scholars and students of Iranian cinema, media, and modern history interested in going beyond conventional understandings of film and history will appreciate this volume's theorizing of film as a site of counter-memory production.--Golbarg Rekabtalaei, Seton Hall University