Genre cinema is primarily a way to categorise films, to signal to audiences what they are about to watch and what they should expect. In this talk, we turn to two well-known and well-loved genres – horror and war films – to explore the dichotomy of pain and pleasure. In their own unique ways, both genres rely on the body (often in pain) as way to incite and evoke various responses, including that of pleasure.

We’ll dive into Iranian genre films here, those made in the country and those beyond its borders, to explore the ways in which the binary of pain and pleasure can be used to read Iranian genre films. More importantly, we’ll consider where this reading leads us.