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"Words cannot describe my feelings about his films."
Akira Kurosawa
"We are living in the age of Kiarostami, but don't yet know it."
Werner Herzog
"Kiarostami represents the highest level of artistry in the cinema."
Martin Scorsese
THE ABOVE EXTRAVAGANT PRAISE for the films of Abbas Kiarostami can serve as a fertile point of departure for examining the tensions between, on one hand, the culture of censorship in the Islamic Republic of Iran and on the otiier the emergence of an artistically daring and internationally celebrated generation of Iranian filmmakers. Abbas Kiarostami's international reputation as a major contemporary filmmaker and artist is borne out through numerous Kiarostami film festivals and Kiarostami conferences held in North America and Europe over the past six years, including recent high profile exhibitions of his films, photography, video installations and poetry at MOMA in New York and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Critical attention on Kiarostami's work has been further heightened by the lifetime achievement awards he has been receiving at major film festivals including festivals in Asia, Africa and the Arab world.
This review essay examines a theme that remains inadequately explored in critical commentary on Kiarostami, namely, the politics of Muslim identity played out or framed in his films. I am arguing that this relative silence, even resistance, to discussing Kiarostami and Islam is shaped by the larger politics of identity framing the context of:
a) Kiarostami's description of his own directorial methods (i.e. artistic self-definition context);
b) Kiarostami's negotiation of censorship challenges inside Iran (i.e. production context); and
c) Kiarostami's reception outside Iran (i.e. reception context).
In the spirit of an agent provocateur I argue that in all three contexts (artistic self-definition, production, and reception contexts) Islam functions as the proverbial elephant in the room. By virtue of being an Iranian Muslim filmmaker working in Iran today, Kiarostami's work serves as a productive case study for analyzing types of burdens associated with defining and representing contemporary Muslim identities. More importantly, Kiarostami's response to these burdens opens up new ways of thinking about the politics of Muslim identity, both inside Muslim societies and in relation to the West.
ARTISTIC SELF-DEFINITION CONTEXT
Inserting questions about representations of Islam into a discussion of Kiarostami's films can arguably...