By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Back to the future: cultural crackdowns in Iran
A long survey of cultural bans in Iran by Mehdi Khalaji is up at Iran Press Service. Some notes on movie troubles: “After a period of some tolerance under former president Mohammad Khatami, Iran is now experiencing a cultural clampdown. President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nezhad is implementing the hardest of hardline ideological tendencies in the cultural arena, consistent with his belief that his administration should prepare the country for the reappearance of the hidden imam (who is now more than 1,000 years old). To this end, Ahmadi Nezhad has taken a host of provocative steps, believing that “freedom of speech [is] a way to destroy people’s religious beliefs…
Harandi’s background of attacks on liberal journalists and political activists strongly suggests that Ahmadi Nezhad wants to suppress cultural freedom and to limit the freedom of information… In its first session… the [The Supreme Cultural Revolution Council] adopted a circular banning all movies that “propagandize for schools like secularism, liberalism, nihilism, or feminism, and destroy the authentic cultures of religious societies and humiliate them”. The circular emphasizes that all movies that explicitly or implicitly deny the right of religion to govern, or that show secular regimes as superior to their religious counterparts, are forbidden. Many Iranian directors, like Bahram Bayza’i, experience delays lasting into years receiving permission to produce films, and many others, like Abbas Kiarostami, cannot show their work in Iran. Some Iranian filmmakers, like Mohsen Makhmalbaf, prefer to live abroad in order to pursue their art in freedom and safety.” [More of lessening at the link.]