Image and Word

The rapport between religion and film is not only historical but also ontological. The Abrahamic faiths specifically (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) and the audio-visual medium of cinema share a complex affiliation with reference to two of their foundational elements: image and word. Building on the constitutive kernels of the Abrahamic religion of Islam (image and word), this paper will locate and define its formal manifestations in cinema; in other words, the way in which the conception of image and word at Islam marks film form. This endeavor will be sustained by calling upon some distinctive film cases of the so-called New Iranian Cinema. In particular, Offside (2006) and This Is Not a Film (2011) by Jafar Panahi, and Close-up (1990) by Abbas Kiarostami, as well as other films, will be utilized for analysis in order to delineate the qualities of the claimed religious film form in question. These films are selected as they foreground and thus play out the dialectic of image and word, their absence and their presence.