Women and Documentary Film in Iran (1997-2020)

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on contemporary women’s documentary practices in Iran particularly covering a time frame between 1997 and 2020. It merges three main (inter)disciplinary areas of documentary film studies, women’s and gender studies, and Iranian studies in order to offer a closer and deeper look at Iranian women’s documentary practices in relation to both the larger context of Iranian society in terms of its gender politics and the broader field of transnational documentary in terms of its production and circulation practices. Grounded in in-depth interviews with leading Iranian women documentary filmmakers and producers, this study locates a “gendered turn” in contemporary Iranian documentary that depicts itself in both the infrastructures of the practice and the aesthetics and subjects of the documentaries themselves. Employing a transnational feminist film studies approach, this dissertation examines how contemporary women documentarians in Iran have engaged gender politics and socio-cultural and technological changes to produce a dynamic new range of documentary modes in regard to production, financing, distribution, and exhibition as well as forms and themes. By mapping out the politics and aesthetics of Iranian women’s documentary film practices in the past two decades, this study delineates how women documentarians have incorporated the unique possibilities offered by the documentary medium to perform their agency, subjectivity, and creativity, and how the medium of documentary itself has served as a much-needed document of, and advocate for, Iranian women’s issues.