and immaturity, the middle-aged seminarian represents the absolutism that comes with gaining a limited understanding of life, and the old man represents the enlightenment of a wise man who has given up everything to attain the liberation associated with nothingness. The driver’s travelling on the dusty roads, far from crowds of people, and his encounters with the three people resemble a mystic’s quest in finding the Truth, embodied in Attar’s Conference of Birds as the Seven Domains of Love (Haft Shahr-e Eshq). The last domain, according to Attar is pure destitution/Faghr and annihilation, or nirvana/Fanaa. When the mystic loses everything, he attains enlightenment. The driver travels from one destination/manzel to the next in order to gain this state of enlightenment. The ending of the narrative does not make it clear whether the driver commits suicide or not, but what the spectator sees in the last two sequences still gives the viewer a sense of liberation and relief. First, the driver takes his last companion to the garden, where he works. The slow-moving camera patiently displays trees, flowers, and birds, dancing under a beam of sunlight. Metaphorically, the driver is eventually enlightened. The next sequence shows the man in a pitch dark grave. His silhouette is cast by the lightning of a thunderstorm. It may or may not be the end of his life. The film does not bother to clarify this point. The last sequence, shot with a handheld camera, shows the driver reaching for a cigarette. He is accompanied by the film crew, and Kiarostami himself shows up. Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five version of “St. James Infirmary” plays. The camera pans horizontally to show an abundance of greenery. Kiarostami cuts the scene. The soldiers, the green scenery, and the cheerful music pronounce a fresh start to life. A rejuvenated hope is born.
In The Wind Will Carry Us, death is represented as a magnificent, emancipatory experience in a village whose residents live a long life, but celebrate death as an inevitable part of life. The film bears the title of a poem by Forough Farrokhzad. In this poem, Farrokhzad eloquently talks about the transitory state of being, which passes like a breeze of darkness. Inspired by the poem, the movie shows the presence of death in everyday activities. The lead character, Behzad, initially fears death, but eventually becomes at ease with it and views it as another stage of life. His trip to the village is initiated in order to film the funeral procession of an old lady. The funeral is meant to be an exotic and spectacular event, worth making an ethnographical documentary about. In the end, his journey turns into a spiritual quest to contemplate life and death and to seize the moment, as the local doctor advised Behzad, by reciting the following poem by Khayyam:
They say paradise is pleasant with houries (beautiful women) I say wine (earthly pleasure) is more pleasant Take the present to the promise A drum sounds pleasing from afar
The uncertain approach that is seen in Kiarostami’s movie is also represented in Farhadi’s About Elly. About Elly raises the spectators’ hope for finding answers to the mysteries surrounding the character of Elly, her relations with other characters, and the reasons behind her disappearance. The search for Elly in the film is metaphorically significant. All humans have a forgotten part of themselves. They only search for it when they realize that it is lost. It is only in the state of loss that people start to appreciate what’s not there and find a thirst and desire to regain it. About Elly celebrates hope for heech in showing the proximity of life and death, certainty and indeterminacy, love and hatred, free will and determinism.
Kiarostami’s last film, 24 Frames (2017) is the ultimate celebration of hope for heech. It consists of a painting and 23 frames of photos (taken by the director) that come to life through the art of animation. Most of the frames portray nature, birds, a herd of sheep, two lions, trees, snow, rain, and so forth. Nothing substantial happens in each frame. The key moment in each frame would be a bird flying away, or the sound of gunfire scaring away animals. The frames are fragmented as there is no grand narrative connecting the frames together. 24 Frames glamorizes nothingness on many different levels: narrative-wise, it is a non-narrative movie. From a cinematic perspective, it is not considered cinema, for it is a combination of photography, animation, and painting. With the exception of two frames, the main figures are animals (not humans), recalling the classical stories of One Thousand and One Nights and Kelileh and Denmeh (or Pancha Tantra) in which, animals become main characters. In terms of cinematography, it is minimalist and subtle. There is also no dialogue in the film. Nor is there a sense of time in the film. 24 Frames is a meditative and poetic film that celebrates the immediate moment by showing mundane moments of (natural) life. In fact, 24 Frames is a compilation of shorts, and the closest film to Akkas Bashi’s early short films that captured the moving pictures of some moments in people’s lives.
In all of the films that were discussed in this section, hope for heech turns out to be emancipatory, both on the narrative level and for the spectators. In most of these films, there is no happy ending, sometimes no ending at all. The hope for nothing eventually ends in nothingness, opening a venue in the spectators’ minds to conclude their own narrative.
The public aesthetic and artistic value of Iranian cinema is indebted to the intrinsic cultural values of Iranian culture, which in turn has been influenced by the cross-cultural and global aesthetic and artistic currents. The public artistic value of Iranian cinema as the dominant form of cultural expression made it a new pedestal for collective cultural activities among filmmakers and filmgoers. Iranian cinema outside of the political borders of the country has public value for the Persian, Baluchi, Urdu, Pashtun, Turkish, Turkmen, Arabic, Kurdish, and Lurish speaking communities in the Near and Middle East since it represents a shared cultural proximity in terms of linguistic, religious, and cultural ties.
Iranian cinema diversified the global aesthetic and artistic value of films. In the past 40 years, it has brought visibility to a culture and a nation that were otherwise undermined due to political isolation. The aesthetics of the curved sarv/cypress made it possible for an independent and auteur-based cinema to flourish under a totalitarian political system. While the majority of Iranian films did not adopt the Third Cinema aesthetics, the filmmakers’ hope for heech/nothingness led to a more liberated art form and a liberating and transcendental cinematic experience for the spectators.6
Notes
1 1 The notion of cinema as cultural capital is extensively studied in Austin (2016).
2 2 Nasser al-din shah was an ardent painter, poet, photographer and fiction writer.
3 3 There are different accounts regarding the establishment of the first public cinema in Iran. Some sources indicated that missionaries opened the first cinema in Tabriz, others credited Alek Saginian as the founder of the cinema. What is consistent in both narratives is that Alek Saginian was actively involved in the administration of the cinema in Tabriz from the beginning until the end. To see the different accounts, refer to Omid (1996, p. 100); Armenians in Iranian Cinema (2004, p. 12); Naficy (2011, p. 27); and Yasamin Molana’s “History of Cinema in Tabriz” in mehrnews.com (published in 22 Shahrivar, 1393 Solar Hijri Calendar). https://www.mehrnews.com/news/2369174/آن-سوی-تاریخ-تا-این-روزهای-سینما-در-تبریز-سینما-سولی-خورشیدی.
4 4 All the poems in this article are quoted from ganjoor.net (accessed October and November 2020).
5 5 The notion of Heech has influenced modern Iranian art. Parviz Tanavoli is a sculptor and painter who is famous for his heech designs. He indicated that: “my nothingness
