The Omnipresent Gaze: Exploring Surveillance in Amir Naderi's Goodbye Friend (1971).

The article "The Omnipresent Gaze: Exploring Surveillance in Amir Naderi's Goodbye Friend (1971)" delves into the concept of surveillance in modern societies, particularly under authoritarian regimes like the Pahlavi state in Iran. The film, a notable example of Iranian New Wave cinema, portrays the pervasive fear of being under constant surveillance through its visual expression and cinematic techniques. It explores the dichotomy between individuals evading detection within the urban crowd and the surveillance entities' relentless efforts to identify them. The film cleverly blurs the lines between narrative storytelling and surveillance, using the camera as both a narrative tool and a surveillance device, reflecting the era's sense of ubiquitous surveillance and societal suffocation. [Extracted from the article]