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Introduction to Afghan cinema
At the start of the 20th century Afghanistan’s ruling elite had access to early cinema from Europe, as well as imports from India. The autocracy that followed independence in 1919 did not cultivate a national cinema and all forms of cultural production were subject to strict censorship. The country’s proximity and strong cultural links with Pakistan (and through to India) ensured that Hindi cinema predominated through the 1940s and 1950s, and the earliest Afghan feature film, Pakistani co-production, Eshq wa Dosti/Love and Friendship (Reshid Latif), was made as late as 1951. A number of documentaries and newsreels were made between 1950 and 1967, but it was not until the construction of the government-funded Afghan Film studios in Kabul in 1965 that a local film industry began to emerge. Production companies, including Nazir Film and Ariana Film, employed mainly Russian-trained filmmakers such as Khaleq A’lil, Rafiq Yahyaee, and Wali Latifi. Manand-e oqab/Like an Eagle (Khayr Zada, 1964), the three-part episode film, Rozgaran/Once Upon a Time (1968), and Mujasemeha Mekhandad/The Statues Are Laughing (Toryali Shafaq, 1976) are among the significant films made during this period. Under Soviet occupation (1979–89) film production was quickly centralized and geared towards production of propaganda, including Farar/Escape (1984) and Sabur-e sarbaz/Saboor, the Soldier (1985), both directed by renowned Afghan director ‘Engineer’ Latif Ahmadi. The ascendancy of the Taliban between 1996 and 2001 resulted in the outlawing of public film exhibition and the destruction of over 2,500 titles seized from the National Film Archive in Kabul (see film archive). During this period many filmmakers fled the country and very few films were made, though Uruj/Ascension (Noor Hashem Abir, 1995) is worthy of note. One estimate has it that no more than forty Afghan films were produced between 1951 and 2004 (most of them in the dominant language of Dari), and compared to its larger neighbours film production in Afghanistan is marginal and small-scale. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Afghanistan, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 17 Mar. 2021
In the library's collections/Searching the online catalog
- motion pictures afghanistanCall number range PN 1995.9 .A35 on Baker Stacks Level 4.
Selected book title(s)
Afghanistan in the cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780252035272In this timely critical introduction to the representation of Afghanistan in film, Mark Graham examines the often surprising combination of propaganda and poetry in films made in Hollywood and the East. Through the lenses of postcolonial theory and historical reassessment, Graham analyzes what these films say about Afghanistan, Islam, and the West and argues that they are integral tools for forming discourse on Afghanistan, a means for understanding and avoiding past mistakes, and symbols of the country's shaky but promising future. ...
Imagining Afghanistan: global fiction and film of the 9/11 wars by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781557538468Imagining Afghanistan examines how Afghanistan has been imagined in literary and visual texts that were published after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion—the era that propelled Afghanistan into the center of global media visibility. Through an analysis of fiction, graphic novels, memoirs, drama, and film, the book demonstrates that writing and screening “Afghanistan” has become a conduit for understanding our shared post-9/11 condition.
Selected movie titles
Find more Afghan films in the library's collections.
The breadwinner by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #21269Parvana is an eleven-year-old girl growing up under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. When her father is wrongfully arrested, Parvana cuts off her hair and dresses like a boy in order to support her family. Working alongside her friend Shauzia, Parvana discovers a new world of freedom, and danger. With undaunted courage, Parvana draws strength from the fantastical stories she invents, as she embarks on a quest to find her father and reunite her family.
The kite runner by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #6571ISBN: 9781415738542In a divided country on the verge of war, two childhood friends, Amir and Hassan, are about to be torn apart forever. It's a glorious afternoon in Kabul and the skies are bursting with the exhilarating joy of a kite-fighting tournament. But in the aftermath of the day's victory, one boy's fearful act of betrayal will mark their lives forever and set in motion an epic quest for redemption. Now, after twenty years of living in America, Amir returns to a perilous Afghanistan under the Taliban's iron-fisted rule to face the secrets that still haunt him and take one last daring chance to set things right.
Ni le ciel ni la terre = Neither heaven nor earth by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #21401ISBN: 9781501934780Afghanistan 2014. As the withdrawal of troops approaches, Captain Antares Bonassieu and his squad have been assigned a surveillance mission in a remote valley of Wakhan, on the border of Pakistan. Despite Antares and his men's determination, control of the secluded valley will slowly fall out of their hands. One dark night, soldiers begin to mysteriously disappear in the valley.
Osama by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #1772ISBN: 9780792860914Chronicles the true story of a young girl in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan who must disguise herself as a boy to save her family from starvation. The first feature film made in Afghanistan in the post-Taliban era.
Safar-i Qandahār = Kandahar by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #3791ISBN: 9781567303100Nafas, an Afghan-born Canadian journalist, returns to her homeland in a desperate attempt to reach her sister, who, overcome with grief after being injured by a landmine and her despair over the Taliban's oppression of women, has vowed that she will commit suicide at the time of the next solar eclipse, only three days away.
Internet resource(s)
- Afghan Film ProjectThe Afghan Film Project is a non-profit foundation formed to tell uniquely Afghan stories while building the capacity of Afghanistan's film industry. The mission of the Afghan Film Project is to provide the resources, experience, and opportunity to produce narrative and documentary films that tell Afghan stories, while training Afghan producers, directors and crews (grips, electrics, cinematographers, etc.) for highly skilled film jobs that build domestic capacity.
- When did Afghan Cinema Begin? from Ajam Media Collective
On August 27th, 1970, The Kabul Times, a governmental English-language newspaper, published a front-page story titled “First Afghan Film Feature Premiered in Kabul Nandarey”. The film in question, called Rozgārān (The Times), was actually one showing in which three films with separate casts and crews were projected. ...
Keeping up with Film Studies journal literature
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