Reading Response 1

1. The five areas in which art cinema generally distinguishes itself from Hollywood cinema are: art cinema would address issues of cinematic aesthetics and practices; display formal innovations; include social and psychological realism; affirm certain directors as auteur; disturb classic realist narrative codes and conventions, as well as temporal and spatial constructions.
2. Tay, I think suggests that Kiarostami’s reception in the West relates to these five areas by directly addressing cinema practices and aesthetics as well as question the notion of realism, through reflexivity. Kiarostami’s reflexivity is transparent as director in the foreground of some of his films.
3. Ayatollah Khomeini’s attitude toward the cinema he didn’t like the cinema that was brought to Iran from Europe, however he did like that “cinema is a modern invention that ought to be used for the sake of educating the people. It is the misuse of the cinema that we are opposed to.” Basically he liked the cinema as an education tool, not as a vehicle for leisure or enjoyment.
4. Two significant policy changes after the appointment of Mohammed Khatami as the head of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Orientation were: less taxes on Iranian films, the government reduced films from 15% to 5%.; loans were held at a lower interest rate for making and distributing; and censorship eased up making it easier for more Iranian films to be shown.
5. Domestic audiences for Iranian films rose from one million to 7.6 million in 1983, because of the Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran. This festival provided a significant promotion of Iranian film. Instead of the audiences going to see foreign films they went and saw their own films.
6. The significance of cutting the sound track during the school prayer in Homework to spare the audience of hearing the prayer again, in an non devout way.
7. The Locarno Festival was a turning point for Kiarostami’s career.
8. Frodon considers Kiarostami’s Prix Rossellinin and Prix Fellini awards to be paradoxical, one focus on constructed cinema, the other opposes that construction. (I think)
9. Some changes during the “moderate liberalization” of the Rafsanjani presidency after 1989, was the Hezbollah movement. This movement encourage film industry to illustrate social injustices and the ‘privileges and anachronisms of the former regime. They “encouraged Iranian directors to test the limits of state censorship.
10. According to Frodon, the Kiarostami retrospective at the 1995 Locarno Film Festival helped shape the reception of Kiarostami’s work in the West because it made some people who watched the film, spread the word of this director Kiarostami, in a positive light.
11. The excerpt of Homework was interesting. All the kids seemed afraid to tell what they were really thinking to adults. It is not surprising, the children’s comments though considering the way they are being raised, and the society they live in. The one boy however, who had trouble concentrating, and cried with out his buddy in the room; I feel maybe there was something more there going on other than he just could not concentrate. If a little kid is that scared to be in a room with a group of adults, it raises red flags. It was interesting to see the boys in the play yard, all lined up in perfect lines, but when shown on film when they thought no one was looking, they were just being boys by joking around with each other.