The Politics of Iranian and Palestinian Cinema: Expressing Dissent Through Creativity

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to challenge the common assumption that politics alone, as conventionally understood, are what governs societies. To put it differently, the goal is to argue that the cultural arena can also be political. The idea here is to look at how under certain political contexts, cinema becomes political, so obviously so that there is a “need” to censor it. Under such a constraining environment, cinema finds itself in need of finding its own language in order to counter this censorship. This marks the beginning of the creative process. Ultimately, this project makes the rather bold statement that cinema is not a simple entertainment, or else a propaganda tool, but can also be appropriated by the people, as a tool for resistance and opposition, through which dissident demands can be expressed in the face of hegemonic dominant powers using creativity and symbolism as the main processes.