HAIG Lecture

Christa Noel Robbins, assistant professor of art and art history, will give a lecture on Oct 7th titled “Salaam, Cinema: International Modernism and the Iranian ‘New Wave’.” This talk looks at the films of popular Iranian directors, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Abbas Kiarostami. Through an examination of filmic “interpellation” in Makhmalbaf’s and Kiarostami’s films, Robbins will demonstrate that in refusing the typical machinery by which viewers are made to identify with filmic narratives, these post-Revolutionary Iranian directors achieve an anti-modernist statement that manages to oppose a cinematic apparatus identified predominantly with the West, in addition to creating an intimate reading culture grounded in Persian culture and the ideals of the Islamic Republic.