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Notes
1 Represented symbolically as A + B = A(B) or A + B = Z (ibid.), the formula allows for a great degree of variation and correspondingly diverse effects. To offer but some examples, in explicit comparison (epiphor), A is like B; juxtaposition (diaphor) can be expressed as A/B; metonymy (associated idea substituted) bases itself on Ab, so b; synecdoche (part replaces whole) entails A stands for (ABC). (50)
2 Whereas most of Whittock’s non-filmic examples of tropes from the metaphor family come from poetry, thereby suggesting that the literary form has lent itself particularly well to figurative meanings, the latter are not always emphasized in the various understandings of poetic film. Viktor Shklovsky (1988), for instance, describes poetry in film in terms of “geometricisation of devices”, which call attention to a given film’s style and away from the causal links among the profilmic events, that is, from narration. Both figurative meanings and emphasis on plot (syuzhet) are of pertinence for my own case study. Among Shklovsky’s examples of “geometricisation of devices” is the non-narrative cinema of Vertov. (177) His emphasis on rhythmic editing coupled with a rejection of storytelling corresponds to the poetic mode of documentary as described by Bill Nichols. (Citation2010: 162–166) But this influential taxonomy sees the reflective mode as separate from the other ones, obfuscating the possibility of their combining. Nichols identifies the essential features of the poetic mode in terms of its procedures, but focuses on the effect on the viewer when discussing the reflexive mode: “[it] calls attention to the assumptions and conventions that govern documentary filmmaking”. (31)
3 What Dabashi calls actual realism, with the cinema of Abbas Kiarostami as a key representative, corresponds closely to André Bazin’s understanding of the style. Dabashi descriptively defines virtual realism using the example of Mohsen Makhmalbaf: “In two or three visual strokes he exposes the most elemental forces of reality—its shapes, shades, colors, volumes, attitude (think of the vase of white geraniums sitting at the center of a niche in the middle of a passageway in A Moment of Innocence). I call this minimalist absolutism, this ascetic mysticism of visions through veils, his virtual realism.” (360). Parabolic realism, a term applied to Marziyeh Meshkini’s The Day I Became a Woman (Citation2000), is defined as “a kind of realism whose thematic parameters borrow from a factual documentation of truth-claims and reality narratives and yet sublimate them into fablelike representations.” (373)
4 As but one example of a prestigious festival that recently showcased Bakhshi’s work, the 2020 Berlinale included in its program the filmmaker’s Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness (Yalda, la nuit du pardon Citation2019).
5 Significantly for a film that explores the medium itself, King Mozaffar was among the Iranian secular modernists who helped a national cinema emerge, following a fascination with the technological wonder at a 1900 exposition in Paris. Cinema played an important role also in the life of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose favorite pastime was watching films in his palace. King Mohammad’s first wife, Empress Soraya, appeared after her divorce in a film co-directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (Three Faces of a Woman [I tre volti, Citation1965]), whereas the second wife, Empress Farah, influenced and supported the industry in accordance with the “ideological imperatives of the spectacle-driven Pahlavi state.” (441, 330)
6 The English-language literature on Mossadegh and the coup is too vast to allow for a satisfactory survey that can fit the space of a footnote. A good departure point is the relatively recent Patriot of Persia (De Bellaigue Citation2012) and the documentary American Coup (Ayella Citation2010).
7 Urban green space per capita greatly varies among the city’s districts. With less than five square meters per inhabitant, six of the 22 districts do not meet the international standard of a minimum of nine square meters of green open space per city dweller, whereas one of those six districts only has 1.8 meters of urban green space per capita. (Arjmand Citation2017, 31).
8 For a clear and concise discussion of Brecht’s relation to the Surrealist project, see White Citation2004: 283–284.
9 The point on censorship should not be overstated, however: since at least the late 1990s, when the then President Mohammad Khatami launched a series of far-reaching democratizing reforms, Iranian cinema has occasionally been able to accommodate politically transgressive content. Even though it was produced clandestinely during Jafar Panahi’s ban from filmmaking and smuggled out of the country in a cake, his This Is Not a Film (2011) is today officially celebrated, the poster for it adorning a central film in Tehran’s Cinema Museum. (Atwood 200)
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Notes on contributors
Nenad Jovanovic
Nenad Jovanovic is Associate Professor of Media at Wright State University, and the author of Brechtian Cinemas: Montage and Theatricality in Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Peter Watkins and Lars von Trier (SUNY Press, 2017).