Women in post-revolutionary iranian cinema: The representation of women in Bahram Beizai's films

When the social dynamics of Iran before and after the revolution are examined, the presence of a state of uncertainty at the national level draws attention and it is seen that this uncertainty is reflected in the cinema. The masculinity of view and the attitude of male-dominated ideology towards shaping the cinema leads to the presentation of women in a disadvantaged manner, and it is understood that the connection between public sphere and cinematic space is broken. Women characters who are under the influence of classical narrative in pre-revolutionary cinema struggle with the concept of exhibitionism and otherness; after the revolution, it is seen that the unrolled bodies were forced to veil this time and the concept of otherness was Islamized. As a result, in the cinema, a field where the symbolic of male-dominanced ideology is reproduced, a number of impasses are formed and it is revealed that a movement against women leads to identity problems. In the cinematic narrative of Bahram Beizai, the existance of criticism against to the normative attitudes of male-dominanced ideology and it is noteworthy that women characters are represented in a level that is independent of men and at the level of reality. As a result of the policies developed by the regimes before and after the revolution, Beizai, which cuts-off the idealized women from traditional context, allows women represent to herself by making women character unique, and in this context it is thought that Beizai is different from his contemporaries. In this study, due to the development of Beizai's cinematic narrative against to male-dominance ideology, two films of Beizai's in the post-revolutionary era (Ballad of Tara and Bashu, Little Stranger) are taken as a purposal sample and evaluated in the context of gender and inequalities through the use feminist critical discourse analysis. In addition, which supports the idea that Beizai's cinema has brought women characters to the fore in the perspective of mythic narrative and that they convey cinematic rules are developed by male-dominance ideology, it is revealed that the problem of misrepresentation of women in cinema is related to various social data. Keywords: Bahram Beizai, Male-dominance Ideology, Gender, Critical Discourse Analysis, Iranian Cinema.