Echoes of the Persian Heritage, Rhythms of Modernity: Life-Worlds in Flux : A Critical Exploration of Inter/Transmedial Configurations from Golestan to Beyzaie

Abstract

This dissertation examines intermedial and transmedial storytelling in Iranian New Wave cinema, focusing on how selected films, both adapted and non adapted, mediate cultural narratives through medium-specific aesthetics to construct hybrid cultural identities and narrative worlds. Case studies include but not limited to the film adaptations, like Dariush Mehrjui’s <i>The Postman</i> 1972, based on Büchner’s <i>Woyzeck</i>, alongside original films such as Bahram Beyzaie’s <i>The Crow</i> 1977. Situating Iranian New Wave cinema within a a broader cultural framework while reading it through intermedial and transmedial concepts and configurations, drawing on Mieke Bal’s “travelling concepts,” Homi Bhabha’s notion of “Third Space”, and Werner Wolf’s inter/transmedial theory, this study analyzes film’s mise-en-scène, editing, and cinematography to trace how narrative elements and cultural signifiers circulate and transform across cultural and inter/transmedial dynamics. For example, <i>The Postman </i> explicitly critiques Iran’s rapid top-down modernization and its inevitable consequences, particularly the conflict between emerging modern structures and traditional life-worlds. In <i>The Crow</i>, Beyzaie portrays a modernizing Tehran through the story of a female protagonist who struggles to assert her rejected individuality. By revealing how 1960s–70s Iranian New Wave cinema both reflects and shapes a culturally hybrid society, this dissertation contributes to the discussions around film studies, cultural studies, narratology, and adaptation theory by offering an interdisciplinary model linking narrative form, media, and socio-cultural context.