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UCL Mellon Programme: Interdisciplinary Seminar 2009-2010
Seminar: 3 March 2010 (Chair: Dr Saeed Talajooy, more ... )

A screening and discussion of

Sara & A Doll’s House
(Dir. Dariush Mehrju’i, 1993)

Supported by
Iran Heritage foundation

Introudced by Dr Nacim Pak-Shiraz, SOAS Centre for Media and Film Studies, more ..., and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, more ..

Abstract: Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) is the writer’s most famous play. It is the earliest among Ibsen’s plays that George Bernard Shaw called discussion plays, simply because they end with a discussion rather than a resolution. It has been translated into more than fifty languages and has been recognized by the UNESCO as an influential cultural product. It has also been adapted for cinema and television by a number of directors. In 1973, at the wake of feminist activism, two film versions were released in the United States. Joseph Losey’s version reshapes the plot by beginning the film ab ovo rather than in medias res. It also offers a much angrier Helmer. Patrick Garland’s version is more faithful to the original with only minor changes to the plot. However, they both fail to create the same impact as the play created in the late 19 th century not because the time has changed and women have more rights, which is certainly true, but because they place the action in the past and do not attempt to recreate the narrative for a modern audience.

Darisuh Mehrju’i’s film, however, set the film in the bustling streets of contemporary Iran and offers a rich texture in which the fruit of women’s labour surrounds the action. As an intercultural adaptation, the film is extremely successful, not because it is faithful to Ibsen’s play, but because it has emulated to play the same cultural function.

Further Reading

• Rochelle Wright, ‘Darius Mehrju'i's Sara: A Doll House through an Iranian Lens’ at http://www.ibsensociety.liu.edu/conferencepapers/iraniandollhouse.pdf
• Julie Holledge and Joanne Tomkins, Women’s Intercultural Performance , ( London and New York: Routledge, 2000).

Biography: Dr Nacim Pak-Shiraz is a lecturer at The Institute of Ismaili Studies. She completed her PhD at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Her thesis is due to be published in 2010 under the title of Shi’i Islam in Iranian Cinema: Religion and Spirituality in Film. Dr Pak-Shiraz has directed and produced The Dream of Flight, a documentary film about Iranian asylum seekers in Turkey. She has also presented at numerous international conferences and authored a number of articles on Iranian cinema including:

"Filmic Discourses on the Role of the Clergy in Iran' in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, A Special Issue On Modern Iranian Intellectuals, Taylor & Francis, Ltd. (Dec 2007), also published in Ridgeon, Lloyd (ed), Iranian Intellectuals, 1997-2007, Routledge, 2008.

An entry on 'Cinema in the Islamic World' in Malise Ruthven with Azim Nanji, Historical Atlas of Islam, Harvard University Press, 2004

She will be speaking about the role of women in Iranian cinema, particularly in Dariush Mehrju’I’s films.

This page last modified 8 February, 2012 by [UCL Mellon Admin]