Dr. Hamid Naficy Lecture - UCI (January 30, 2006)

Hamid Naficy is Nina J. Cullinan Professor of Art and Art History/Film and Media Studies, Department of Art History, Rice University, Houston. He has published extensively about theories of exile and displacement; exilic and diasporic cultures, films, and media; and Iranian, Middle Eastern, and Third World cinemas. His English language books are An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton University Press, 2001), Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place (edited, Routledge, 1999), The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Television in Los Angeles (University of Minnesota Press, 1993), Otherness and the Media: the Ethnography of the Imagined and the Imaged (co-edited, Harwood Academic, 1993), and Iran Media Index (Greenwood Press, 1984).

This lecture was based on the work of Dr. Naficy's latest book. First, he compared and contrasted Pahlavi Era and post-revolutionary cinema. He discussed the purification of Iranian movies and imposition of Islamic values. Second, he discussed the role of women behind and in front of the camera. He stated that women cinema in Iran is exclusively an art cinema and discussed the aesthetic of veiling. He focused on and talked about the work of Rakhshan Bani-Etemad. She has made a number of documentaries and films dealing with poverty, divorce and polygamy. He showed footage of her films to make his point.

The lecture was sponsored by the Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at UCI.