Political cinema in the Middle Eastern countries and women

Mass media tools use representations to enunciate certain patterns of thoughts, feelings and ideological constitutions. Cinema is one of the major means reflecting cultural, social and political issues by visual and audio aspirations. This study seeks political cinema conventions that are established on the enunciation of social and political realities while opposing dominant/mainstream filmmaking modes. This thesis also involves the influences of domination of mainstream cinema in relation to aesthetics, narrations and techniques on other forms of filmmaking including Political Middle Eastern Cinema in the category of Third World Cinema. This research is based on research of Iranian Cinema with its specific features in relation to gender construction. This thesis includes the representation of Iranian women who are restricted by political and social repressions after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 under the heading of Political Cinema in the Middle East and Women. There are numerous Iranian directors who have contributed to filmmaking with productions raising the issues of gender. This research analyses two films of Iranian filmmaker Tahmineh Milani. The findings permit a discourse analysis on Two Women/Do Zan (1998) and Unwanted Woman/Zane Ziyadi (2005), which reveal the way gender relations and gender hierarchy are reproduced under the repressions of society and the Islamic regime. The most important consequence of this study is that women and the representation of women are constrained with social and ideological implements for the sake of the maintenance of social order. The analyses of the films primarily prove that continuous repressions, the oscillations between modernity and tradition, patriarchal and religious values shape gender identities and women. Through this study, it is aimed to highlight the representation of the women identity shaped by their struggles against ideological, political and social implementations in the post revolutionary period.