Encyclopedia of Islam

cinema

  

145  J

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1994, Tunisia), and Palestinian Elia Suleiman, 

whose film Divine Intervention won the Grand 

Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.

Although Arab cinema, as elsewhere, is pre-

dominantly secular in outlook, Islamic subjects 

and themes often do occur in dramas and films 

on historical topics. Dramatic films usually affirm 

social virtues such as marital fidelity, respect for 

the 

Family

, charity, making an honest living, and 

defending the weak, while they also condemn 

immorality and criminal behavior. They include 

scenes of people at 

prayer

, reciting the q

Uran

,

visiting 

mosqUe

s or shrines, and celebrating reli-

gious holidays. Moreover, a number of films 

have addressed hot-button socioreligious issues 

such as polygamy and divorce, criticizing aspects 

of Islamic family law as practiced in countries 

such as Egypt. Since the 1990s, Islamic radical-

ism has been critically examined in films such as 

Nader Galal’s The Terrorist (Egypt, 1994) and Atef 

Hetata’s  Closed Doors (Egypt, 1999). Historical 

films have dealt with topics such as the c

rUsades

(Youssef Chahine’s Al-Nasir Salah al-Din, 1963) 

and the lives of famous Muslims, such as r

abia

 

al

-

a

daWiyya

 (Egypt, 1955) and i

bn

  r

Ushd

 (Youssef 

Chahine’s Destiny, Egypt, 1997).

IrANIAN CINEMA

The advent of cinema in Iran can be traced to the 

beginning of the 20th century with the inaugura-

tion of the first movie house in 1907. It was in 

the 1930s that cinema became a more serious 

enterprise with the establishment of the first 

film studio and the release of movies such as The 

Brother’s Revenge, Abi and Rabi, and the Lor Girl.

During this time, cinema aimed at entertaining 

city dwellers and concerned itself with topics 

such as the migration of villagers into the city and 

the transformation of traditional ethics into bour-

geois values. For instance, Rapacious, released in 

1934, was about a peasant who left his wife for 

a city woman. This decade witnessed the first 

Persian-language sound newsreel with Prime Min-

ister Muhammad Ali Furughi (1887–1942) and 

m

UstaFa

  k

amal

  a

tatUrk

 (1881–1938). Another 

significant production in the 1930s was an adapta-

tion from Ferdawsi’s national epic the Shahnamah,

“The Book of the Kings,” which has traditionally 

fostered national pride among Iranians. It is safe 

to say that the birth of Iranian cinema is insepara-

ble from the advent of modernity and its cultural 

manifestations in Iranian society.

In the next decades, Iranian cinema devel-

oped into a primarily commercial industry with 

a limited “art film” cinema that operated in its 

shadows. A favorite theme for this commercial 

cinema was Iranian patriarchal attitudes toward 

life, tradition, and gender. This was expressed in 

the genre film jaheli, a genre that was initiated by 

Ismail Kushan. In these films, the character of the 

working class or petit bourgeoisie was explored 

and celebrated. The male protagonist provided a 

caricature of the medieval practice of chivalry, in 

which honor was based on the chastity of a man’s 

female relatives (sister, daughter, female cousins, 

etc). This theme dominated Iranian cinema of the 

1960s. Another important theme at this time was 

the relationship between Iranians and Westerners.