Claire Cooley: “Salaam Mumbai, Salaam Tehran!” Collaboration between Iranian and Indian Cinemas

Dr. Claire Cooley is a postdoctoral fellow at Tufts University. Her research and teaching focus on film and media industries in the Global South, South-South media flows, Sound Studies, and Critical Infrastructure Studies. Her work has appeared in a range of publications including Film History, Jump Cut, and Spectator. Her current book project tells the interconnected history of cinema in the Middle East and South Asia from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s.

The fourth episode of Parse is an excerpt from a lecture given by Claire Cooley titled “Salam Mumbai, Salam Tehran: Pasts and Presents of Collaboration Between Indian and Iranian Cinemas”. In this lecture, Cooley explores exchanges between Iranian and Indian film industries through a focus on the 1965 hit Iranian film – Ganj e Qaroon directed by Siamak Yasemi. She traces the development of a national film industry in Iran to demonstrate that Film Farsi was born out of its sonic and material connections to the film industries in the Middle East and South Asia. Thus, she aims to expand Iranian cinema’s historiography beyond its national border to understand Iranian cinema’s intrinsic relationship with Indian cinema.