Enjoy ten recent Iranian films in eight weeks at Lopez Library as a student in the Skagit Valley Community College course, “Contemporary Iranian Cinema,” which begins the evening of October 7 with Lopez instructors Russel Barsh and Madrona Murphy.

The course opens with Under the Moonlight, a subtly critical examination of the meaning of faith in contemporary Islam by director Seyyed Reza Mir-Karimi that many reviewers have noted “pushes the envelope” of cinematic freedom in Iran.

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran’s most influential post-Revolutionary director, best known in the West for his 2001 film Kandahar, is represented in the course by two films: his autobiographical Moment of Innocence, which ponders his own violent participation as a student in the Iranian Revolution; and Gabbeh, a visually rich appreciation of tribal peoples in northern Iran. Also included is his daughter Samira Makhmalbaf’s treatment of the 9/11 tragedy through the eyes of Afghan refugee children. Mohsen and Samira have both received UNESCO’s Federico Fellini medal for their films.

The ambiguous and still evolving status of women in modern Iran is explored in Tahmineh Milani’s The Fifth Reaction, which the instructors describe as “a feminist car chase movie” set in Iran’s Gulf Coast; Offside, a quirky 2006 film by Jafar Pahani about Iranian girls trying to crash the gate at the 2006 World Cup soccer championship match in Tehran; and the surreal imagery of The Day I Became A Woman, the cinematic debut of Makhmalbaf’s wife Marzieh Meshkini.

Bahram Beizai’s Bashu examines the social toll of the Iran-Iraq war, as well as the ethnic fractures of rural Iran, while the documentary Our Times, by activist director Rakshan Bani-Etehad, documents the enthusiasm and disillusionment of young Iranians as they struggled for a greater role in national politics during the 2001 elections.

Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi, who recently achieved critical recognition in the West for his film about Kurdish refugee children, Turtles Can Fly, is represented by an earlier tragicomic work, Marooned in Iraq, populated by an endearingly bizarre family of Kurdish folk musicians.

You can still register for this course through Skagit Valley Community College’s San Juan Center, either in person or by mail. See www.skagit.edu (navigate to the San Juan Center page and choose “Apply & Register”) or call 378-3220. College credit is available, and seniors (60 and over) enjoy a discount on course fees.