A Critical-Comparative Reading of Morteza Avini’s Cinematic Thought in Relation to Postmodern Theories

This article examines the relationship between Morteza Avini’s cinematic thought and postmodern theories. Given postmodernism's emphasis on the plurality of meaning, *the predominance of representation, and the self-referentiality of the image, the study asks how Avini responds to these conditions—whether as an opponent, interpreter, or reconstructor—to assess the possibility of a truth-oriented religious cinema. Theoretically grounded in Lyotard’s notion of "acinema" and his logic of discontinuity and the pleasure principle, as well as Baudrillard’s accounts of simulation and seduction, the study adopts a descriptive-analytical and comparative-critical approach based on textual analysis. It reconstructs Avini’s thought through four axes: the nature of cinema, the artist, the audience, and technique. Findings indicate that Avini converges with certain postmodern diagnoses regarding the crisis of the image, the mechanisms of seduction, and the logic of consumption. However, he decisively departs from postmodernism epistemologically and anthropologically. Rather than conceding the impossibility of truth or the self-sufficiency of simulacra, he insists on the ethical orientation of art and the possibility of moving beyond the veil of technique toward a “cinema of truth.” Avini’s relation to postmodernism is thus critical and reconstructive: while acknowledging the diagnosed crisis, he opens an alternative horizon by proposing a vision where the image transcends mere representation to reveal a higher reality*, thereby rethinking the possibility of religious cinema.