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Makhmalbaf at Large: The Making of a Rebel Filmmaker
The name of Mohsen Makhmalbaf is almost synonymous with the dramatic rise of Iranian cinema in the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, and over the last quarter of a century, his career as filmmaker and writer has reflected the tumultuous history of his homeland and the fate of its neighbours. Hamid Dabashi draws from his friendship with Makhmalbaf, as well as his direct involvement with Makhmalbaf's films and thought, to give us this deeply engaging book on the tumultuous life and spectacular career of a great filmmaker. This is also the account of Makhmalbaf's transformation, from committed Muslim revolutionary, who was jailed for his part in the revolution, into an artistic humanist of great energy and elegance. His films, including "The Peddler" and "The Time for Love", "Salaam Cinema", "Gabbeh", "Silence" and "Kandahar", confound conventional genres and are always surprising. They represent his own journey and take part in it, in ways that Dabashi explores with great insight. Makhmalbaf's cinematic career started in Iran and has since expanded into Turkey, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and into Europe.
Dabashi uncovers how, moving across boundaries, Makhmalbaf's creative genius can illuminate our contemporary world. And this book is in part the story of a friendship. As Mohsen Makhmalbaf writes in its 'Hamid Dabashi - this pious atheist friend of mine, the man who loves cinema and hates art, this political activist who abhors politics, this thinking, pondering, critical intellect...I have learned much from him. Perhaps he too, has learned from me. The times he and I have spent together have been occasions of discovery and illumination.'
Dabashi uncovers how, moving across boundaries, Makhmalbaf's creative genius can illuminate our contemporary world. And this book is in part the story of a friendship. As Mohsen Makhmalbaf writes in its 'Hamid Dabashi - this pious atheist friend of mine, the man who loves cinema and hates art, this political activist who abhors politics, this thinking, pondering, critical intellect...I have learned much from him. Perhaps he too, has learned from me. The times he and I have spent together have been occasions of discovery and illumination.'
- GenresFilm
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
34 people want to read
About the author
Hamid Dabashi
78 books208 followersBorn on 15 June 1951 into a working class family in the south-western city of Ahvaz in the Khuzestan province of Iran, Hamid Dabashi received his early education in his hometown and his college education in Tehran, before he moved to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in his field. He has taught and delivered lectures in many North and Latin American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.
He has written 20 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). A selected sample of his writing is co-edited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi, The World is my Home: A Hamid Dabashi Reader (Transaction 2010).
Hamid Dabashi is the Series Editor of Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World for Palgrave Macmillan. This series is putting forward a critical body of first rate scholarship on the literary and cultural production of the Islamic world from the vantage point of contemporary theoretical and hermeneutic perspectives, effectively bringing the study of Islamic literatures and cultures to the wider attention of scholars and students of world literatures and cultures without the prejudices and drawbacks of outmoded perspectives.
An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Danish, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.
In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Hamid Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He is also chiefly responsible for opening up the study of Persian literature and Iranian culture at Columbia University to students of comparative literature and society, breaking away from the confinements of European Orientalism and American Area Studies.
A committed teacher in the past three decades, Hamid Dabashi is also a public speaker around the globe, a current affairs essayist, and a staunch anti-war activist. He has two grown-up children, Kaveh and Pardis, who are both Columbia University graduates, and he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi, their daughter Chelgis and their son Golchin.
He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Max Weber’s theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time.
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in his field. He has taught and delivered lectures in many North and Latin American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University.
He has written 20 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, comparative literature, world cinema, and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). A selected sample of his writing is co-edited by Andrew Davison and Himadeep Muppidi, The World is my Home: A Hamid Dabashi Reader (Transaction 2010).
Hamid Dabashi is the Series Editor of Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World for Palgrave Macmillan. This series is putting forward a critical body of first rate scholarship on the literary and cultural production of the Islamic world from the vantage point of contemporary theoretical and hermeneutic perspectives, effectively bringing the study of Islamic literatures and cultures to the wider attention of scholars and students of world literatures and cultures without the prejudices and drawbacks of outmoded perspectives.
An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Danish, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.
In the context of his commitment to advancing trans-national art and independent world cinema, Hamid Dabashi is the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian Film Project, dedicated to preserving and safeguarding Palestinian Cinema. He is also chiefly responsible for opening up the study of Persian literature and Iranian culture at Columbia University to students of comparative literature and society, breaking away from the confinements of European Orientalism and American Area Studies.
A committed teacher in the past three decades, Hamid Dabashi is also a public speaker around the globe, a current affairs essayist, and a staunch anti-war activist. He has two grown-up children, Kaveh and Pardis, who are both Columbia University graduates, and he lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist, Golbarg Bashi, their daughter Chelgis and their son Golchin.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 14, 2013
The Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf is responsible for a number of impressive works of cinema. If you haven't seen A Moment of Innocence, The Cyclist or Silence, you are missing out on some potentially life-changing films. Being so captivated by Makhmalbaf's art and wanting to read about that bulk of his output still not available on DVD, I picked up Dabashi's Makhmalbaf at Large. Unfortunately, this book is not very helpful and may even prove unreadable to many.
The poor quality of this book is augured by the acknowledgements at the beginning, where Dabashi says that he was unable to produce a coherent manuscript and was happy to make contact with an editor he had heard good things about. But that editor could only do so much, apparently. Dabashi is constantly looking for a way to show the erudition gained in American academia, so figures like Heidegger and Said are name-dropped constantly regardless of their relevence to the films being discussed. Overwhelming sections of this book consist of Dabashi's musings on all kinds of issues other than Makhmalbaf's work.
Those familiar with Dabashi's career will have heard that he has, err, passionate views about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and indeed he finds ways to transition from Iranian cinema to strident claims that Israel is a mere colony of Europe, an illegitimate apartheid state. Then, after a brief claim that one of Makhmalbaf's early films was "cine-mysticism" (evidently a bad thing, but what exactly it is, is never made clear), he goes off on a long description and critique of Stanley Kubrick's last film Eyes Wide Shut and its relationship to 20th-century economic developments.
If you willing to subject yourself to some extremely frustrating, turgid and masturbatory prose, then you can glean a few interesting facts about Makhmalbaf's life and work from this book. I at least know something more about his first films and the depth of his allegiance to Khomeini's regime when he started out (later he became one of the most internationally prominent members of the opposition to the theocracy). However, we still await a decent English-language survey of the filmmaker.
I should note that Dabashi also compiled a series of interviews entited Conversations with Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and that is somewhat more successful.
The poor quality of this book is augured by the acknowledgements at the beginning, where Dabashi says that he was unable to produce a coherent manuscript and was happy to make contact with an editor he had heard good things about. But that editor could only do so much, apparently. Dabashi is constantly looking for a way to show the erudition gained in American academia, so figures like Heidegger and Said are name-dropped constantly regardless of their relevence to the films being discussed. Overwhelming sections of this book consist of Dabashi's musings on all kinds of issues other than Makhmalbaf's work.
Those familiar with Dabashi's career will have heard that he has, err, passionate views about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and indeed he finds ways to transition from Iranian cinema to strident claims that Israel is a mere colony of Europe, an illegitimate apartheid state. Then, after a brief claim that one of Makhmalbaf's early films was "cine-mysticism" (evidently a bad thing, but what exactly it is, is never made clear), he goes off on a long description and critique of Stanley Kubrick's last film Eyes Wide Shut and its relationship to 20th-century economic developments.
If you willing to subject yourself to some extremely frustrating, turgid and masturbatory prose, then you can glean a few interesting facts about Makhmalbaf's life and work from this book. I at least know something more about his first films and the depth of his allegiance to Khomeini's regime when he started out (later he became one of the most internationally prominent members of the opposition to the theocracy). However, we still await a decent English-language survey of the filmmaker.
I should note that Dabashi also compiled a series of interviews entited Conversations with Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and that is somewhat more successful.
Displaying 1 of 1 review