Iranian Cinema: 123 Years of History
Featuring a discussion by:
Dr. Golbarg Rekabtalaei
Historian, Author, Associate Professor, Departmetn of History, Seton Hall University
Dr. Golbarg Rekabtalaei is a historian of modern Iran, and the Middle East at large. Her research focuses on the formation of a cosmopolitan modernity in twentieth century Iran through cultural exchanges and cinematic relations between Iran and the world. She is interested in the relationship between cinema and modernity, cosmopolitanism, urbanization, nationalism, and revolutions. She pays particular attention to the role of cinema, in concrete form and onscreen, in facilitating urban cosmopolitan imaginations and hybrid subjectivities. Rekabtalaei’s book, Iranian Cosmopolitanism: A Cinematic History, was published in Cambridge University Press’s Global Middle East book series in 2019.
Rekabtalaei teaches undergraduate courses on the history of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as World History. She is also the Co-Director of the Middle Eastern and North African Studies Program at Seton Hall University.
Ehsan Khoshbakht
Filmmaker, Film Curator, Writer, and Critic
Ehsan Khoshbakht is an Iranian documentary filmmaker, film curator, and architect. He co-directs Il Cinema Ritrovato, an annual festival in Bologna dedicated to film history and film restoration. His documentary Filmfarsi (2019)played throughout festivals. His book Conversations with Filmmakers Series, a collection of interviews with Asghar Farhadi, was published by the University of Mississippi Press in 2021.
Dr. Pedram Partovi
Historian, Author, Associate Professor, Department of History, American History
Pedram Partovi is a historian of the medieval and modern Muslim world. His current research focuses on the mass media as a vehicle for popular “civil religion” in modern Iran. In studying how Iranians have re-worked older courtly and devotional practices to inform modern ideas of the nation, he challenges standard, “top down” accounts of recent Iranian history as an irreconcilable struggle between the forces of radical Islam and secular nationalism. He previously held a visiting professor position in the Center for Global Islamic Studies at Lehigh University. Partovi has published articles in a number of journals including Visual Anthropology Review, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Iranian Studies, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Partovi received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 2010.