Looking at cinema with cinema: Reflexivity in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema

Since its beginning cinema has practically served not only as a means of entertainment, but also as a way of expression, a mirror of facts, a branch of art and an instrument of propaganda. During all these practical services, cinema has mostly considered an event, a person, a problem, a crisis, a love affair, or a separation as its object. However in some cases, cinema also succeeded to turn the camera to itself, that is, to the subject. In other words, the subject matter of cinema happened to be the cinema and a reflexive strategy has been practiced. This study has aimed to determine how these reflexive techniques have been applied to the post-revolutionary Iranian cinema that chose as its subject matter the cinema and the film-making processes, or that turned to the nature of the cinema. The study rose from the idea that these reflexive films can provide information about the Iranian cinema sector and the pressure, censorship and restrictions imposed on the cinema. Another idea that suggested making this research is to find out how the reflexive films in Iranian cinema applied the reflexive techniques depending on the conservative, critical and anti-illusionistic attitudes that have been mentioned in the previous studies. In order to serve this aim, it is given information about the Iranian cinema both before and after the revolution and then it has been concentrated on the views concerning reflexivity in the cinema. Moving from these views it is attempted to put forward a new approach that consists of a conservative, critical and anti-illusionistic reflexivity. Finally, it is analyzed the reflexive techniques that were based on discourse and form and applied in the films chosen from the post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. After the results of this analysis, it is manifested the general information on the Iranian cinema sector given in the films considered in the study and tried to interpret the reflexive attitudes of the films by taking into account the techniques based on discourse and form. Keywords: reflexivity, metacinema, self-reflexivity, metafiction, Iranian cinema