Experience of Urbanscape Essence in International Award Winning Iranian Movies

Abstract

Interdisciplinary subjects have always had a remarkable contribution in developing urban design concepts and theories. Among these contexts, cinema as a medium which broadcasts features of our cities and urban environments can have a significant role, but this instructional field is neglected among Iranian scholars. Thus, to fulfill this gap, it is essential to clarify the interrelations of cities and cinema in Iran. Iranian cinema, particularly after the revolution, received so many international awards in festivals. These prominent works have various urban sequences that can be a valuable source for urban designers and city policymakers. Consequently, the civic movies from these impressive works are selected and studied by the use of qualitative methods and content analysis. These analyses have been conducted in two distinctive sections. First, the repetition of cities, Urbanscape, and city aspects which were implied by Kevin Lynch had been inspected. Second, the role of cities and urbanscapes analyzed by the adoption of Carmona's dimensions. This paper indicates that Tehran has had the most presence in the movies, while few films have been captured in some coastal cities and some pictured in places with a special traditional architecture such as Bandar Lengeh. Within the city aspects, paths and districts have the most repetition while landmarks and nodes have the least depiction. It is conceded that the portrayed physical attributes of cities can be categorized into three parts which cover old and traditional environments, new and modern environments and outskirt suburban areas. Furthermore, from the social-perceptual point of view, Tehran because of its urban and civic issues is generally related with disorders and negative meanings, while other cities because of their nostalgic and traditional urban style are more respected within the society. According to the researches, urban facades and visual aspects in Tehran are usually not acceptable, while coastal environments and traditional designs sound more appropriate. As mentioned, the captured environments of Iranian cities are narrowed to some particular areas, which expresses the insufficient number of picturesque settings in urban environments. Therefore, this study can also perform as a tool for evaluating the enrichment of Iranian urban spaces.