> The Asian Age
>
> 21 October 2005
>
> Iran bans films deemed feminist & pro-America
>
> - By Siavosh Ghazi
>
> Tehran: Iran's Islamic regime has slapped a ban on foreign films
> deemed to be "feminist", "secular" or pro-American, with hardline
> President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also pushing his vision of a Quranic
> society.
>
> A ruling by the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, a watchdog
> headed by Mr Ahmadinejad, bans "the distribution and screening of
> foreign films which promote secular, feminist, liberal or nihilist
> ideas and degrade oriental culture." Also forbidden are movies that
> feature "violence, narcotics consumption and propaganda for the
> world oppression," a term reserved for arch-enemy the US, the
> Shargh newspaper said on Thursday. The report said the directive
> has been widely circulated, especially within the ministry of
> culture and Islamic guidance and state television and radio.
>
> "The Iranian people have a mission to create, on this sacred
> Iranian ground, an ideal society founded on the Quran,"
> MrAhmadinejad was also quoted as telling a local gathering titled,
> "Servants of the Quran." He promised his government, less than
> three months into its four-year mandate, would "favour the spread
> of a Quranic culture."
>
> Under Mr Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessor Mohammad Khatami, a
> mild-mannered cleric and a lover of all things cultural, Iran had
> partially opened its doors to certain Western films. (AFP)
Banishing Hollywood films while building more cinemas?
<blockquote>The Art Bureau of the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization, in a collaborative effort with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, plans to build 80 cinemas throughout Iran by March 2007.
“This policy has been drafted based on the Art Bureau’s new orientation toward development and in order to boost Iranian cinema’s status,” the director of the Public Relations Office of the bureau told the Persian service of IRNA.
("Art Bureau to Build 80 Small Movie Theaters," Mehr News Agency, <http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=236226>, 1 Oct. 2005)</blockqutoe>
I take it that this is a covert attempt to protect the home market from imports and promote Iranian movie production. Now, Iranians are sadly deprived of opportunities to watch Hollywood movies full of gratuitous nudity and violence and forced instead to watch only socially aware, politically engaged, and aesthetically sophisticated films made by such Iranian feminists as Rakhshan Bani-Etemad (cf. <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/bani-o03.shtml>).
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org> * Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/mahmoud- ahmadinejads-face.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/2005/07/chvez- congratulates-ahmadinejad.html>; <http://montages.blogspot.com/ 2005/06/iranian-working-class-rejects.html>