Cinema Trust Saeed artist in the newspaper Etemad wrote: The intellectual or the intellectual audience or cinema is beyond the level of entertainment, seeking to receive philosophical concepts, aesthetic signs or social themes from a work of art. Such audiences often avoid surface readings and seek to discover hidden layers, implicit irony and implicit implications.
In his view, the film is not a consumer product, but a cultural and interpretive text that can carry important discourses about human society, history, politics, and human psyche.
Cinema in Iran, as one of the most important tools for representing social, cultural and aesthetic situations, has always been a pretext for dialogue between different segments of society, for a specific part of the audience, cinema is an arena for revelation and mental experience.
The group, with a careful and sensitive look, focuses on aspects of the film that remains hidden from a lot. In Iran, this precise view has led to the formation and strengthening of a branch of cinema that has a different payment from the common current stream, which is often known as “art cinema”, “semantic cinema” or “author cinema”.
One of the most important preferences for the intellectual audience is the interest in films called “Author Cinema”. In this type of cinema, the director as a style and thought, has a central role, and his artistic signature is evident in the form, context of narrative, visual language and film structure. The intellectual audience looks at such films as independent and creative texts that resist industrial and commercial structures, because these films are not merely narratives, but are thought -provoking. Intellectual audiences, especially in the cultural context of Iran, have always tended to carry on social criticism or reflect on the country’s historical-political situation.
Films in which issues such as censorship, class inequality, cultural repression, women’s position, identity crisis or structural corruption are attracted more than other genres. For example, films such as the Circle (Ja’far Panahi), the rare separation from Simin (Asghar Farhadi) or Cow (Mehrjui) are examples of these audiences as committed and conscious works.
This interest is rooted in the critical view of the intellectual world around it. Another interesting feature of the intellectual audience is formalism and the use of cinema as an independent media. For this group, the use of precise frames, reflective lighting, interpretable and unusual editing are signs of artistic creativity and cinematic maturity.
Films that use visual language as meaningful to these audiences have a high place. For example, in Kiarostami’s works, silence, uncertainty and long frames are not only aesthetic components, but also part of the film’s existential philosophy. The intellectual audience understands and admires these details. The intellectual audience departs from stereotypical and linear narratives. He seeks to structure, play with time and place, and break the common narrative formats.
Films that have open endings, away from the classic cause-of-the-genus structure and involve the audience in the interpretation process, are more attractive to this group. An example of cherry taste, despite the lack of a specific narrative line, calls the intellectual audience a mental and reflective experience in which the viewer itself becomes part of the text.
For the intellectual audience, the star’s starry and reputation are not valuable. What matters is the ability of the actor to create multilayer, complex and human characters. From this point of view, the use of non -players, theatrical actors, or anonymous figures who serve the whole work is more of a focus. However, the wheel of commercial cinema is mainly based on the stretch of popular faces. But for the intellectual, “reality representation” and “artistic presence” are more valuable than “star charm”. Films that have multiple semantic layers and metaphorical language are well in line with the taste of the intellectual audience.
The elite audience enjoys linguistic games, symbolism and intercontinental references and considers it a sign of the narrative intelligence and depth of the director’s thinking. Such films often have an indirect narrative language and convey their message through subcategories and irony. In other words, for these audiences, the good film is that what it does not say is more important than what it says. The intellectual audience is heavily influenced by global cinema experiences. He is familiar with the works of Bergman, Tarkovsky, Godard, Angelopolus or Hanke and unconsciously adjusts his taste with those traditions. Therefore, Iranian cinema will also be attractive to these audiences when it can be aligned with global aesthetics while loyal to ecosystemism.
The taste of the intellectual audience, unlike what is sometimes promoted in popular media, is not merely a kind of elitism. This taste is rooted in a profound demand for thinking, asking and understanding. Cinema for this group is a mirror that does not restore reality but rebuilds; It is an arena for revelation, not only watching. However, it should not be forgotten that this type of cinema is rhythmic because of a particular language, and its abstract tone cannot communicate with all audiences. But its value is precisely the difference: in emphasizing thinking and inviting interpretation.