http://www.tehrantimes.com/NCms/2007.asp?code=224898
ews code:SPH - 16_MMS20.txt News date: Sunday, August 15,
2010
www.tehrantimes.com
Iran's late-night Ramadan screenings spark outrage among clerics
Tehran Times Art Desk
Tehran -- Clerics have raised objections to the Azan to Azan project, a program
for screening films in large Iranian cities until late at night during the
month of Ramadan.
The project was initiated by movie theater owners in Tehran last year after
they obtained approval from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
The program was established to lessen the loss of box office receipts during
the month, which is the slow season for Iranian cinema.
Providing a powerful lineup for this year, the ministry has extended the
project to Ahvaz, Rasht, and several other cities, with movie theaters
scheduled to run the project's films from 3 pm to 3 past midnight.
"Is there any control on cinemas that encourage people to watch films during
Ramadan instead of praying and supplicating?" Mashhad Friday prayer leader
Seyyed Ahmad Alamolhoda said on Friday.
He asked city officials to put a halt to the project and added, "They have
created entertainment to prevent people from contemplating about God and the
Quran."
The Khorramabad Friday prayer leader described Azan to Azan as "an anti-mosque"
project.
"We have exerted our utmost efforts to draw people into mosques during the
month of Ramadan while another organization is trying to draw people into movie
houses," Seyyed Ahmad Miremadi said on Friday.
Movie theaters owned by the Art Bureau, an affiliate of the Islamic Ideology
Dissemination Organization, declined to participate in the project, which
screens acclaimed Iranian films produced over the past three decades.
Culture Ministry Supervision and Evaluation Office (SEO) Director Alireza
Sajjadpur said that he was not in agreement with the project.
This year's Azan to Azan began after cinema owners requested a resumption of
the project, he added.
According to cinema owners, the screenings were warmly welcomed during Ramadan
last year.
"On one night during last year's program, over 40 members of a single family,
including grandmothers and grandfathers, all of them together attended a
screening of a film," Tehran's Mellat Cinema Complex director Amir-Hossein
Alamolhoda told the Persian service of ISNA on Saturday.
Despite the enthusiasm of theater owners, other religious figures are expected
to join with opponents of the Azan to Azan project in the upcoming days.
Over the past decade, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) has also
prepared a lineup of special TV series for Ramadan.
Last year, a number of clerics criticized IRIB for screening the TV series.
They said they believed that the broadcasts kept people at home, preventing
them from attending religious programs in mosques.
Four serials ranging from comedy to melodrama also have been prepared for
broadcast on IRIB's various channels during this year's Ramadan.
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