The Cinema of Rakhshan Bani-Etemad

Centre for Media and Film Studies at SOAS in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation.

Prof. Annabelle Sreberny and Dr Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad, Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS.

Rakshan Bani-Etemad is arguably Iran's most distinguished female director. She is a prolific feature filmmaker who also makes documentaries and writes scripts. Having cut her teeth on documentaries, she applied her sharp eye for realism to feature films. Beginning with Off-Limits (1986), she began a string of films which have not only been praised at international festivals outside Iran, but have also been remarkably popular with Iranian critics and audiences. She is the winner of numerous awards in Iran and internationally.

The conference will explore the films of Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and the broader impact of her work. We welcome papers that examine her entire corpus of work; that focus on specific genre or specific films; that involve comparative analysis; that explore the political dimensions of her work; that situate the work within a broader context of Iranian cinema and cultural production; that take feminist theory and film studies approaches seriously, etc.

All proposals (proposed length 300 words) should be submitted by 2 December 2007 to allow for efficient planning of the conference. Each person submitting a proposal must include his/her institutional affiliation and full contact details. Proposal should be submitted to the contact details shown in 'enquiries' below.

In celebration of Rakhshan Bani-Etemad's achievements, the Centre for Media and Film Studies at SOAS has also organised other programmes and events in collaboration with the Iran Heritage Foundation, the British Film Institute (BFI) and Insight. These include a retrospective of her complete works with the early documentaries, to be screened at the BFI in April 2008; an "in-conversation" event with a prominent personality from the film world and a director's master-class (an intensive workshop organised with Insight).