Pastoral Movies: A Dual Approach
Soudabeh Mojaveri
Reprinted from: Honar Nameh, University of Art, Tehran, No. 11, 2001 (A brief of the article)


Pastoral means shepherds, rustic, rural and ruralism. It connotes holding nature up as an ideal and a way of life in harmony with nature. It also means turning away from the city and urban civilization.

The city embodies civic society, man's superiority over nature, and the predominance of abstract models and concepts over nature.

The desire to live in harmony with nature away from the city has been with us since Virgil's Pastoral Songs, in ancient Rome. That was, perhaps, the first pastoral movement, representing a nostalgic return to the Golden Age of Hesiod.

Virgil's poetry was reminiscent of the Golden Age, and it created a place called "Arcadia"; but not the Arcadia of ancient Greece, located in Peloponesus. It was a place not on geographic maps, but an ideal place, the "Home of Song and Love".

Virgil created Arcadia, and it inspired not only the pastoral poetry of Europe, but also Handel's Galaeta and the paintings of Claud Lorain and Antonie Watteau. In movies, the Pastoral has had a twofold nature.