Introduction

The introduction to Cinematic homelands contextualises women’s filmmaking in the Iranian diaspora. It situates research on Iranian diasporic women’s cinema at the intersection of three conceptual frameworks: feminist theories of women’s film authorship, Hamid Naficy’s concept of “accented” cinema, and Iranian transnational cinema. Furthermore, the chapter introduces the concepts of exile, diaspora and post-diaspora, and provides a brief history of the formation of Iranian diasporas, while also addressing the diversity of diasporic Iranian experiences and perspectives in an international context. This is important as the central distinction that Cinematic homelands explores is between exilic and second-generation diasporic women filmmakers, and a key transition from émigré dissident status to the establishment of large and thriving Iranian diasporic communities in the West. It proposes that Iranian diasporic women filmmakers offer a gendered reconfiguring of exilic and diasporic film aesthetics, revisiting issues of cultural in-betweenness and difference from a feminist perspective.