Cinematic Homelands: The Cultural and Gendered Imaginaries

This book maps an emerging cycle of films made by Iranian diasporic women filmmakers and produced outside of Iran, focusing on five significant examples: Shirin Neshat’s Women Without Men (2009), Sepideh Farsi’s Red Rose (2014), Maryam Keshavarz’s Circumstance (2011), Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) and Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behaviour (2014). These films speak to the emergence of feminist concerns surrounding gender relations, female subjectivity and sexuality in diasporic filmmaking. The book intends to show how the body of recent Iranian diasporic women’s films demonstrates a substantial shift within the existing exilic and diasporic paradigm, requiring analysis of intersectional relations between ethnicity, culture, nationality, gender and sexuality. Attending closely to the vibrant feminist film culture generated by Iranian women in the diaspora, this book aims to interrogate the diversity of women’s filmmaking practices and their role in shaping new representations of female subjectivity and the diasporic condition.