Filmfarsi as Counter-Memory

Abstract

In his contribution »Filmfarsi as Counter-Memory,« Pedram Partovi also deals with the return, or rather the hidden afterlife and survival, of a supposedly disappeared cultural heritage: the passing of actor Nasir Malik Muti’i in May 2018 spurred a debate among Iranians about filmfarsi (ʿPersian-filmʾ), the often-derogatory term that critics, industry people, and even fans have used in reference to the Pahlavi-era popular commercial cinema, and its place in ʿnational culture.ʾ The passing in the year 2000 of another banned filmfarsi legend, Muhammad ʿAli Fardin, had invited similar public reactions and similar criticisms of the state media and judiciary for their shameful treatment of a national ʿicon.ʾ Partovi’s contribution sheds new light on Iranians’ ʿfaulty,ʾ yet shifting, memories of the offcially demonized filmfarsi since the Islamic Revolution. He argues in his chapter that filmfarsi has functioned as a counter-memory, an absent presence in the minds of millions, that decades of imposed forgetting (or imposed memories) did not manage to extinguish, and as a counter-archive of images, sounds, icons, and motives »that has problematized official ideas of Iranian cinema and national culture both before and after the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9« (p. 189).