French cinema were a number of French female factory workers; ordinary people from working-class society. In the country of its origins, cinema was initially shown to public audiences. Producing cinematic shorts for the Lumières was about competition with the Americans for profitable ends. In order to make profit, they needed public audiences to consume their products. On the other hand, for Iranians, producing films was a frivolous majestic affair. In 1991, when Professor Shahryar Adl discovered the first Iranian actualités in the Golestan Palace, Iranian researchers were stunned by a body of films that captured life inside, and then gradually outside of the haram. All of the films that were found were shot on location and had a documentary sensibility. However, the filmic subjects were staged to “perform” in the 50-second short movies.
Among subjects that were filmed are women and children of the haram, the royal entertainers, clowns, and servants. Based on Mozaffar al-din shah’s memoir, there were also records of lions that were kept in captivity at Dushan Tappeh (a resort outside of Tehran), as well as the Ta’zieh (Shiite passion play) performances on the streets of Tehran. These short films were not screened for the public until 91 years later. In its limited royal setting, the original cinema was not considered a public good, and did not widely contribute to the cultural capital of the nation. Before 1991 and the discovery of the Qajar film archives at the Golestan Palace, Mozaffar al-din shah’s account of the recorded motion pictures inside and outside of the haram was received with skepticism.
In 1992, Mohsen Makhmalbaf made a fictive film, titled Once Upon a Time Cinema, based on the story of the initiation of filmmaking in Iran by Akkas Bashi. Makhmalbaf changed the setting to the reign of Nasser al-din shah of 19th century Iran (which was a more illustrious reign). He crafted a surrealist film about the Qajars’ infatuation with cinema and how they wanted to keep the power of filmmaking in an inner circle. The narrative concludes that when the true social power of cinema is unleashed by Akkas Bashi—who sadly awaits the execution of his death sentence—the court is blown away. In real life, outside of the filmic world, motion pictures found their way to reach out to public audiences in the same year. History demonstrates that the true aesthetic and artistic value of Iranian cinema is grounded in its public domain.
Take One (Again!): The Public Artistic Value of a Cross-Cultural Cinema
In the same year when the Qajar shah and his family were relishing being featured in their private motion pictures, the first public movie theater was established in another part of Iran. With 100 seats, Cinema Soleil (Sun) started showing films to the public in the city of Tabriz. Cinema Soleil was administered by Iranian-Armenians and Catholic missionaries. An Armenian individual, Alek Saginian, established the movie house and was actively involved in its management until 1916 when it was shut down, due to lack of available films to show.3
It is remarkable that 1900 marked the implementation of both public experience with cinema, and the private production and viewership of motion pictures in Iran. This is 6 years before Mozaffar al-din shah was forced to sign and officially approve the first constitutional law in the Middle East. By 1906, Iranians managed to establish a democratic constitutional monarchy, replacing the despotic monarchy. The new constitution divided the legislative, executive, and judicial sections of government, curbing the shah’s and the clerics’ authority. In the midst of an intellectually vibrant atmosphere, the first movie theater began to show films in Tehran in 1904 by Sahaf Bashi, an educated businessman, journalist, and entrepreneur who had traveled around the world a number of times. His movie house provided a short-lived experience to male Iranian filmgoers, mostly from the elite social stratum. Since Sahaf Bashi was an ardent constitutionalist, the anti-constitutional cleric, Sheikh Fazl-allah Nouri banned cinema and the movie house was shut down by the government within a month. Sahaf Bashi was subsequently sentenced to exile and left for Karbala in Iraq. Most of the films that were screened at Sahaf Bashi’s theater were slapstick comedies and fantastical productions of Pathé. In 1924, women entered public cinemas in Zoroastrians’ Cinema that was opened by Ali Vakili. The first movie that female audiences watched was an American film, starring the famous actress Ruth Roland (Omid 1996, 29).
The initial cinema circle in Iran was a dynamic cross-cultural and cross-national society. The first theater house owners included the Caucasian-Iranian George Ismailov, Amir Khan, possibly a Kurdish-Iranian, the Armenian-Iranian Artashes Patmagerian, nicknamed Ardeshir Khan, and Mahdi Ivanov (an Iranian-Russian-British individual known as Russi Khan). The multicultural environment of the cinema society is well-represented in their choice of films. Iranian filmgoers were exposed to Russian, European, American, (and later on, to Turkish, Egyptian, Indian, and Iranian) films and news reels. The multilingual film posters of the silent era are testimonies to the cross-national public aesthetic sensibility of Iranian cinema.
The Armenian-Iranian society, especially, had a significant impact in publicizing cinema in Iran. The first filmmaker outside of the royal court, who was interested in film tourism, was the Armenian-Caucasian George Ismailov. Ismailov made his own films as early as 1909. The first film school was established by another Armenian-Iranian, Ovanes Ohanian in 1930. Ohanian made the first two feature-length Iranian films, Abi and Rabi (1930) and Haji Aqa, the Movie Actor (1933). Zuma Ohanian (Ohanian’s daughter) and Asia Qostanian (also from Armenian origins), became the pioneer Iranian actresses inside Iran.
While Ohanian was making movies inside the country, a parallel drive, financed by the Indian Iranian Parsees—who had religious and national ties to the old faith of Zoroastrianism and Persia—started making Persian films in India. Abdol Hossein Sepanta, an Iranian Immigrant in India, and Ardeshir Irani, an Indian Parsee who owned the Imperial Company in Bombay, directed and produced Persian films in India. The Lor Girl (1933), the first Persian talkie by Sepanta and Irani, became an instant hit at Iranian movie houses. The Lor Girl was screened simultaneously with Haji Aqa, the Movie Actor. The latter was a silent film with subtitles in three languages (Persian, Russian, and French), while the former was a talkie. Iranian audiences were already exposed to sound films—the first movie with synchronized dialogue was an American Musical, The Jazz Singer (1927)—but The Lor Girl was the first film in which actors were speaking Persian. Iranian filmgoers were as thrilled to be “listening” to the film as they were to be watching it.
Since the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire (550 BC–330 BC), Persian had become the common language of oral and written communication among ethnic groups who inhabited the Persianate world. Persian- and non-Persian-oriented Empires such as the Persian Sassanids (224–651) and the Turkic Seljuqs (1035–1153) adopted the Persian language as the language of the Empire. Great poets and writers in the Persianate lands, whose mother tongues were not Persian, created their masterpieces in the Persian language. In the 1930s and with the production of the first sound film in Persian, the power of words proved to be a decisive factor in the popularity of cinema among the literate, illiterate, and semiliterate filmgoers. The silent film Haji Aqa failed at the box office, but The Lor Girl continued to be screened in Tehran and provincial theaters for months. It was an exceptional success for a movie, considering that movie houses used to change feature films twice a week (Omid 1996, 50–51; 70–71). Subsequently, Sepanta and Irani were encouraged to make Ferdowsi (1934), about the renowned Persian poet, and other Persian films, such as Shirin and Farhad (1934), Black Eyes (1936), and Leyli and Majnun (1937) by an Iranian film crew in India. Persian films that were made by the Imperial Company reflected elements of classical Persian culture, Iranian folklore and the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian ethos. Stylistically, they were influenced by Indian cinema.
In the next two decades, Iranian cinema continued to be nourished by a vibrant multi-national and cross-cultural environment that was created by Russian and western educated Iranians, along with the émigré communities originating from Russia, Armenia, and Europe. The thriving cross-national culture in cities such as Tehran, Tabriz, Mashhad, Shiraz, and Abadan was projected in the selection of movies that were shown in theatres all over the country. Just as in Hollywood cinema, the immigrant culture in Iran fortified the cinematic structure of the country.
