Staging Iranian Cinema at the Berlinale

Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with the representation of Iranian films and filmmakers at the Berlinale during the Dieter Kosslick’s tenure as festival director (2001–2019). Since this representation unfolded not only on the silver screen, but especially on the various stages of the festival, from the red carpet to the press conference to the awards ceremony, my analysis is dedicated to the performative dimension of the phenomenon. Given the methodological approach of theater studies that enhances my background in Islamic Studies, I consequently examine the staging of Iranian cinema at the Berlinale.

To comprehend the genealogy of these festival stages and work out a regarding methodological framework, I initially address the phenomenon of late 19th century world exhibitions, from which the film festival format evolved in the 1930s. Here, crucial elements of cultural representation at urban mass events were established, from the form of the national competition crowned by the host to the exhibition of the non-West and the exotic at separate colonial exhibitions. Since the performances of the Berlinale take place in the scenery of Berlin, a look into the recent history and the character of the city is also necessary. Taking cue from Martina Löw’s proposal to examine cities in terms of their specific “inherent logic,” my dissertation subsequently addresses the trope of the divided city. Soon after the war, West Berlin was framed as a beacon of liberalism through spectacularly staged efforts like the Berlin Airlift of 1948/49. The origin of the Berlinale, which in 1951 was founded as a “Schaufenster der Freien Welt” (Showcase of the Free World), is to be understood in this context, too. In later years, the Berlinale established itself as an explicitly political festival and a “bridge between East and West,” which in the 1980s started an effort to showcase East German and the wider East Bloc cinema.

Many of these representational traditions and visual tropes, the genealogy of which I trace in the first half of my work, impacted the staging of Iranian films and filmmakers at the Berlinale from 2006 onwards. Iranian cinema’s wave of success at international film festivals had already ebbed down in the late 1990s, but under the new festival director Dieter Kosslick, the Berlinale began to invite films from the Islamic Republic extensively in the 2000s to offer its stages to the filmmakers, which were framed as restricted and repressed. The paradigms of censorship, repression, and rebellion, which impacted the presentation and reading of these films from the beginning, were seamlessly embedded into the brand of the “political festival” as well as into Kosslick’s understanding of the political as a spectacular counterweight to entertainment and glamour.

The most emblematic case of the festival’s branding as a platform for the cinematic rebellion of Iranian filmmakers is Jafar Panahi, with whom the last two chapters of my dissertation are concerned. After the director was convicted to a 20-year occupational ban and a prohibition to travel to foreign film festivals in 2010, he emerged as the poster boy of political cinema at the Berlinale. In 2011, the festival invited him into the international jury and dedicated large parts of its 61st edition to the absent and allegedly imprisoned filmmaker. Two years later, this performance evolved onto the silver screen, when his film Pardeh (Closed Curtain) was shown in the festival competition. While this cinematic therapy session presented Panahi as a depressive and restricted filmmaker, he returned in good sprits in 2015. In his film Taxi, he can be seen as a witty rebel who is back behind the driving wheel and in control of his creative process, breaking his chains with the help of the Berlinale live in front of the audiences.

Given the myth of the suffering and isolated city of Berlin, which after 1945 with international support regained its status as a global metropolis, Panahi’s three-part stage play of the absent jury member to the silenced filmmaker who finally celebrates his comeback live in front of a global audience on the stage of the Berlinale thus turned out to be extremely suitable for the festival, which accordingly crowned him with the Golden Bear in 2015. Following an analysis of his staging in Berlin as well as his films Pardeh and Taxi, I conclude that the performances of Iranian films and filmmakers at the Berlinale are far more telling of the character and the needs of the festival (and its host city) than about the actual state of Iranian cinema.