Abstract
Our main goal in this paper is to analyze three movies by Bahman Farmanara, the Iranian filmmaker, and to examine their relationship to society in Iran. For this reason, and using Lucien Goldmann’s theory about great art and great artist, these three movies are analyzed from the sociology of cinema point of view. In order to study these movies, we have used two methods of internal and external criticism:; the former being based on technical semiotics and the latter conceived as an instrument for examining the relationship between movies and society. Studying the movies and examining each separately showed that these three movies have established a meaningful relationship with society in depicting the concept of death on the individual, class, and social levels. The movies represent ideas of those artists who have started their artistic career before the Revolution and have their own ethical and social ideas who have not been dissolved entirely in the current ideological system. In two of the movies, problems of two groups of people, artists and writers, along with their whishes and aspirations are explicitly presented and portrayed in the light of the concept of death. In these movies the problem of death is examined from an alternative viewpoint and not only is it not a hated concept, it is actually conceived as a factor which emancipates them from the undesirable society surrounding them. In the third movie social problems are portrayed in a way that is itself an expression of death, though this time on the level of society. The common aspect in these movies, however, is their hopeful vision towards rescue and freedom which is signified in the end of each story in relation to individuals, artists and the society in general.
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