Counter-Memories in Iranian Cinema

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. Professor Ute Holl is Professor for Media Aesthetics at Basel University

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.

• Introduction - Matthias Wittmann and Ute Holl Part I: An Archaeology of Possible Futures1. The Incomplete: Film, Politics, and Remembering the Past - Tara Najd Ahmadi2. The Hidden Half, or the Temporal and Collective Politics of Counter-Memory - Sara Saljoughi 3. Counter-Investigations. On Matchboxes, Black Boxes and other Forgotten Futures - Chowra Makaremi and Emmanuel AlloaPart II: Material Matters – Memory, Accessibility, translation4. An Archaeology of Access: Materiality, Historiography, and Iranian Cinema - Blake Atwood5. Black Seals: Missive from Iran’s National Music - Negar Mottahedeh 6. Different Time, Different Space: Filmic Forms of Counter-Memory in Abbas Kiarostami's Koker Trilogy - Ute HollPart III: Interstices. Niches. Impure Memories7. Towards an Impure Memory. An Archaeology of Counter-Memories through Telescoping Lenses - Matthias Wittmann8. Seeking Love in the Interstices: Acousmatic Listening as Counter-Memory in Abbas Kiarostami’s Shirin (2008) - Michelle Langford9. Spiritual Counter-Memories of the War: Mohammad Ali Ahangar’s Recent Contributions to the Sīnemā-ye Defāʿ-ye Moqaddas - Viktor UllmannPart IV: Transgenerational Gaps and Transmissions10. Filmfarsi as Counter-memory - Pedram Partovi 11. A Shadow for Invisible Films. A Way to Break the Monopoly of Image Production in Iran - Shahram Mokri12. At the End of a Century (1996) - Bahram Beyzaie (translated by Amir Roshan)