Underground: The Secret Life of Videocassettes in Iran

Blake Atwood

Softcover | 15.24 x 1.55 x 23.01 cm | 320 pp

MIT Press | 2021 | 9780262542845

In 1983, the Iranian government banned the personal use of home video technology. In Underground, Blake Atwood recounts how in response to the ban, technology enthusiasts, cinephiles, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens forged an illegal but complex underground system for video distribution.

Atwood draws on archival sources including trade publications, newspapers, memoirs, films, and laws, but at the heart of the book lies a corpus of oral history interviews conducted with participants in the underground. He argues that videocassettes helped to institutionalise the broader underground within the Islamic Republic.