The Road Movie genre in the West movies and the Muslim East cinematography
The article analyzes specific features of the Road Movie genre in a historical perspective on the example of the Western countries film production and Iran national cinematography. To that end the authors focus on genre and semantic variety of classical movies, a «proto-road-movie» and the Road Movies of nowadays. A comparative approach to the study of the genre formula provides for revealing the nuances in the stylistic techniques of directors and defining the national features of the semantic core of the Road Movie genre in both the Western movies (created in Europe and the USA) and in the films of the East (Iranian New Wave). While maintaining a number of aesthetic features that are similar in Western and Eastern Road Movies, one can nevertheless observe a significant difference in the way of representing the concept of the Path (the Road) by directors from the West and from Muslim countries. The article gives a detailed analysis of the Road concept in the context of Islamic cinema. Studying the symbolic of the Path and the Travel in Muslim tradition the authors refer to the norms of Sharia, Sufism and to the mode of the life traditions of the Middle Ages and our days. Special attention is paid to the movies of a well-known Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Working before and after the Islamic Revolution (1978-1979) he was the one of the founders of the New Iranian cinema.