Homework: Film Production and Cultural Exchange at Kanoon, (Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults), 1965-1989

Abstract:
Kanoon, or the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, was founded in the mid-1960s as one of sev- eral governmental organizations established to grow Iran’s cultural production. This presentation considers how technocratic national development agendas resulted in a flourishing of modernist and experimen- tal cinema at Kanoon. I examine animated, non-fiction, and fiction films, including a selection of early films by Abbas Kiarosta- mi. This paper demonstrates that Kanoon films, which were for or about children, laid the formal groundwork for Iran’s well-doc- umented humanist film tradition. However, these films simultaneously advanced an elitist state’s ideologies of modernity.

Bio:

Simran Bhalla is a Postdoc- toral Fellow in Cinema and Media Studies at the Uni- versity of Southern Califor- nia. She received her PhD in Screen Cultures from North- western University in 2021. Her research interests in- clude state-sponsored and institutional films from India and Iran, global modernisms, and architecture and design in postcolonial film and tele- vision. She has published in Iran Namag and the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and curated film series on Arab,
Indian, and Iranian cinemas.