Cinema in Iran

1. Iranian cinema began long before 1997.
2. and has become an international phenomenal, a New Wave on par with the French movement of the 1950s and 60's, the German movement of the 60's and 70's and the Hong Kong movement of the u80's and 90's.
3. The directors behind the two groundbreaking films were Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Abbas Kiarostami.
4. Iranian filmgoers knew their names long before we did, of course, as evidenced by Kiarostami's extraodinary 1990 film Close-Up.
5. Kiarostami also made the discovery that government censors tended to more quickly approve stories about children, many other filmmakers would follow suit over the next 20 years.