Abstract
Iranian children’s cinema demonstrates that the concept of childhood and adolescence has been constructed and reconstructed significantly in conjunction with the drastic sociopolitical changes of contemporary Iranian society in the past five decades. This cultural history is the story of tensions between modernity and tradition. Children and childhood are considered as symbols of modernity, yet children seem to be the major victims of modernizing forces. In one decade, they are represented as little adults, while in another, they cry for understanding and tolerance. Iranian children’s cinema portrays young people as agents on a humanist quest for self-identity and freedom, and at the same time, depict children as the voices of change, rebellion, and resilience.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ariès, Philippe. 1962. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Translated by Robert Baldick. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Bazalgette, Cary, and David Buckingham, eds. 1995. In Front of the Children: Screen Entertainment and Young Audiences. London: British Film Institute.
Dadras, Ali. 2005. “History of Iranian Children’s Cinema.” Quarterly of Farabi Cinema Foundation 4 (14): 15–46 (Persian).
Hosseini-Shakib, Fatemeh. 2012. “The Image of Children.” In Dictionary of World Cinema, edited by Parviz Jahed. Bristol: Intellect Ltd.
Khosravi, Shahram. 2008. Young and Defiant in Tehran. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Mofid, Bijan. 1968. “The City of Tales.” http://yaghoubee.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/shahreghesse.pdf (Persian).
Naficy, Hamid. 2011. A Social History of Iranian Cinema: The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978. Vol. 2. Durham: Duke University Press.
———. 2012. A Social History of Iranian Cinema: The Globalizing Era, 1984–2010. Vol. 4. Durham: Duke University Press.
Nedai, Jamileh. 2011. “An Introduction to the Life of Bijan Mofid.” https://jami2025.blogspot.com/2011/01/blog-post.html (Persian).
Sadr, Hamid Reza. 2006. Iranian Cinema: A Political History. London: I.B. Tauris.
Stavrou, Ekaterina. 2015. “Determining the Cultural Identity of a Child through Folk Literature.” American Journal of Educational Research 3 (4): 527–34.
Stearns, Peter N. (2005) 2017. Childhood in World History. London and New York: Routledge.
Tehrani, Mehrnaz. 2000. “The Role of Children in Iranian Cinema.” Quarterly of Farabi Cinema Foundation 10 (1): 119–26 (Persian).
White, Jerry. 2002. “Children, Narrative and Third Cinema in Iran and Syria.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 11 (1): 78–97.
Wojcik-Andrews, Ian. 2000. Children’s Films: History, Ideology, Pedagogy, Theory. London and New York: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nojoumian, A.A. (2019). Constructing Childhood in Modern Iranian Children’s Cinema: A Cultural History. In: Hermansson, C., Zepernick, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Children's Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17620-4_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-17619-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-17620-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)