Paul Moss

Despite the obvious focus on protest and politics, critics of Iran's government have often expressed their views through the arts, and particularly cinema.

Indeed, a feature film about dissidents there, It Was Just an Accident, has received two nominations for this year's Oscars.

But the history of Iranian cinema long precedes the country being an Islamic republic.

And a festival has just opened here in London, which is screening some of those earlier films.

The curator, Ehsan Hoshbakt, told us they feel particularly resonant at these uncertain times.

In the late 50s and early 60s, there was this international movement in cinema of renewing the language of film.

We are familiar with the examples from around the world, France, Japan, Czechoslovakia.

And I think the least known of these cinematic new waves was the Iranian new wave of the early 60s up to the time of the revolution.

The films were extremely bold.

They were pushing the language of the film to the extent that even films after the revolution couldn't match the same level of innovation and intensity as the films made in our period.

Stories about class repression, sexuality, freedom of expression.

And I think the most distinctive aspect of the Iranian New Wave is the use of language and poetry frequently.

1400 years of poetry, and also the use of allegory.

Today, I think some filmmakers totally reject that because they want something head on, because the cinema has now become perhaps more militant than what it was back in the 60s and 70s.

Still, the beauty of allegory, the timelessness that allegory gives you, because it's wrapped in many different layers of image and language.

These are the origins of a cinema of dissent.

of a cinema of rebellion.

And that's all from us for now.

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