"They realized it wasn't very effective to just show one person talking on the phone, " says Howard Besser, a cinema studies professor at New York University's Tisch School.

WSJ: "Disconnect": From Talkies to Texties

Studies like The Pub and the People (1943) and Weeping in the Cinema in 1950 (1995) are just two of the many studies based on Mass-Observation data.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Iranian cinema poses a particular problem to the government "because of its ability to show aspects of Iranian society to the outside world, and because of its popularity at home, " said Hamid Dabashi, a Columbia University professor of Iranian studies and an expert on Iran's cinema.

WSJ: Iranian Filmmakers Find No Separation Between Art, Politics