Saeed Abutaleb

TEHRAN, April 28--A lawmaker from Tehran Saeed Abutaleb has called for launching national satellite to enable Iran to broadcast to a larger audience in other countries.
The Persian newsletter Bonniefilm quoted Abutaleb as saying at an open session of the parliament that Iran does not have access to the world public and the satellite will help Iran declare its views firsthand to the international community.
He pointed out that at present, access of Western media to the Iranian public is one thousand against one compared with Iranian media’s availability to the audience in other countries due to not having satellite.
He said that Iran has currently hired satellite of US Company to broadcast programs and this is not reliable because they create problem whenever they want citing the example of the disruption of broadcasts by Sahar 2 TV channel sometime ago.
“If we possess a satellite, broadcasting national programs will be available at low cost and will help us communicate with the people of the region. It will also help us emerge as a regional power.“
He further said that research center of parliament has concluded that Iran should not waste time in launching a satellite into orbit because such a delay may be detrimental to national interests.
Abutaleb, who is a member of the Majlis Cultural Commission, criticized the government’s cultural program announced so far. “At one time they say satellite TV programs are prohibited while at other times they say that satellite programs are allowed. I’m saying both of such statements are wrong and satellite programs should neither be prohibited nor freely accessible.
“They should be filtered by IRIB and be provided to the public in the form of cable TV networks,“ he concluded.

TEHRAN, April 28--An exhibit called ’Glory of Iran’ will open at Metropolitan Museum of Tokyo on August 1 and will also be held in four Japanese cities for one year.
The Persian daily Aftab said that experts from Iran National Museum and the Japanese daily Asahi recently held discussions during which they worked out the details of the event and decided on its timing and venue.
Soichi Yuki Yushi, deputy head of Tokyo Metropolitan Arts Museum who had come to Tehran along with several Japanese filmmakers, reporters and museum owners, said that the exhibit ’Glory of Iran’ will be held in Tokyo for two months and then will be organized in other Japanese cities.
He estimated that some 5,000 visitors are expected to visit the exhibit every day. “Several new Iranian films will also be screened at the exhibit on ’Glory of Iran’ in Japan.“
Yuki Yushi said that Japan has planned to hold exhibits from the Middle East countries given their rich history and culture. He recalled that two exhibits from Egypt and Turkey were held in Japan in the past year.
He regretted that necessary steps have not been taken to introduce the history and culture of Iran in Japan in the past 30 years and the Japanese people only became acquainted with Iranian culture through feature films which were screened in Japan and welcomed by the Japanese moviegoers.
Takashi Matsuura, an official of Tokyo-based Asahi daily, which is sponsoring the exhibit ’Glory of Iran’, said that the daily sponsored the exhibit as it wanted to help promote Iranian culture and encourage the Japanese people to visit Iran and become acquainted with Iranian civilization and culture.
Matsuura said that the press or film are not enough to learn about the culture of other nations and this is only possible by visiting different countries.
He said that Japanese media have undertaken a publicity campaign for the exhibit of ’Glory of Iran’ since January 15.

Safeguarding cultural ties, fair distribution of facilities and containing migration are among the objectives of the project.

TEHRAN, April 28--Management and Planning Organization has earmarked a sum of 1,008 billion rials for establishing 13 regional museums which will showcase the traditions, archaeology and environmental features of those particular regions.
Announcing this, director general of Iran’s Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization’s (ICHTO) museums, Masoud Nosrati told CHN that Hegmataneh Museum, Tabriz Carpet Museum, Khuzestan Regional Museum, North Regional Museum, Tribesmen Eco-museum, Kavir Museum, Esfahan Museum, Fars Museum, Persian Gulf Museum, Khorasan Museum, Azarbaijan Museum, Jiroft Museum and the development of Iran National Museum are among the projects which will be implemented with the fund in the next four years.
The plan submitted by ICHTO also included Pasargad, Bandar Abbas, Lorestan Admiralty-metals, Zahedan and Kermanshah museums, but the MPO excluded them from the list of projects it approved for commissioning regional museums.
According to Nosrati, experts selected the museums keeping in mind the location’s cultural indices and without paying attention to geographical considerations.
Nosrati further said that as per the bylaw published for commissioning museums, Azarbaijan Museum, Fars Museum, Khorasan Museum, Esfahan Museum, Kavir Museum, North Regional Museum, Khuzestan Museum will feature the indices of the West and East Azarbaijans as well as Ardebil provinces, Fars and Kohgilouieh and Boyer Ahmad provinces, the entire Khorasan, Esfahan, Qom and Central provinces, Kerman and Yazd provinces, Mazandaran, Gilan and Golestan provinces and Chahar Mahal-Bakhtiari, Khuzestan and Ilam provinces respectively.
Safeguarding cultural ties, fair distribution of facilities and containing migration, forging cultural interaction among the tribes of a region and instilling cultural values in the lives of current and coming generations are among the objectives of the project, he concluded.

TEHRAN, April 28--The Fifth International Film Festival of Tribeca opened in New York with the participation of seven films from Iran on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
The films: ’Works Are Working’ by Mani Haghighi in the contest section of the feature films, ’Dawn’ by Hamid Rahmanian in the section of new discoveries, ’President Mir Qanbar’ by Mohammad Shirvani in the section of prominent works of other festivals, ’Inside and Outside’ by Zohreh Shayesteh in the section of short documentary films will take part in the event. ’Puppet Show’ by Maryam Khakipour and ’Once upon Time in Morocco’ by Seifollah Samadian will be screened on the sidelines section of the festival.
The other Iranian films which will be screened in the festival are: ’Roads’, a short film by Abbas Kiarostami, ’Satan 9/11’ and ’Metal Heart’. The Tribeca Film Festival which is held in Manhattan, New York was founded by the renowned film star Robert de Niro.
Meanwhile the Persian daily Hamshahri reported that the Iranian film ’Poet of Garbage’ by Mohammad Ahmadi won the award of prominent film of the sixth ’Railroad Film Festival’ in Toronto, Canada. The film was selected from 18 films which were screened in the contest section of the event.
Toronto Film Festival was held from April 18-24. The Iranian film was earlier screened in Pusan, South Korea, Independent Asian Films, Chicago and Museum of Arts of Boston, US.
Another Iranian film by Jamil Rostami will be screened at the Czech Republic’s Zlin Film Festival for children and young adults on May 28-June 3. The film has been screened in Iranian cinema halls.

TEHRAN, April 28--Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Bahman Qobadi has said that the failure to admit any of the Iranian films forwarded to Cannes Film Festival has nothing to do with political issues.
Speaking to ISNA, he said that this year a large number of strong European films were participating in the event and there was stiff competition among them.
“The festival’s capacity for admitting films was 18-20, which is low in proportion to the number of films vying for the event,“ he said.
Commenting on the proposals to boycott other sections of the festival, he also said, “In my opinion, this will be detrimental to the Iranian cinema industry.
“If we consider the festivals as the only way to enter the international scene, we may face the problems in taking the path,“ he said.
Qobadi pointed out that Japan, Korea, Germany and other countries had also submitted entries to the festival. For example, Germany had forwarded 20 films but none of them were accepted. “Therefore we cannot generalize and say that the festival has turned down Japanese cinema,“ he observed.
Rejection of Iranian films in Cannes Festival has nothing to do with political issues, he said, adding that rather it pertains to style of filmmaking in Iran which changed the attitude of the festivals towards the style of Iranian cinema.
On his film ’Nive Mong’, Qobadi said that he had submitted it to the main competition of the festival but it was only admitted to the other sections. “I did not accept that because I wanted my film nominated to the contest,“ he concluded.

NEW YORK, April 28--Paintings by Picasso and van Gogh, whose works have set world price records, lead the annual spring art sales at New York auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s starting next Tuesday, said Reuters.
The highlight of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern-art sale--expected to generate overall sales of $142 million to $197.7 million--is Picasso’s ’Dora Maar with Cat’, a vibrant 1941 oil depicting the artist’s mistress and muse seated in a chair with a small cat perched on the back.
At Christie’s, van Gogh’s 1890 portrait of a French cafe owner in Arles, ’L’Arlesienne, Madame Ginoux’, an homage to van Gogh’s troubled friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin, could well soar beyond its $50 million presale estimate. That is the same estimate attached to the Picasso.
The total presale estimate for the Christie’s auction is $144 million to $197 million.
Two years ago Picasso’s ’Boy with a Pipe’ sold for $104,168,000, smashing the auction record for a single work of $82.5 million that had stood since the 1990 sale of van Gogh’s ’Portrait of Dr. Gachet’.
But while the top lots of the semiannual sales fall in the Impressionist and modern arenas, art-world eyes will be trained on the increasingly hot contemporary art market.
Last fall Sotheby’s broke the record for any postwar work at auction when it sold David Smith’s sculpture ’Cubi XXVIII’ for $23.8 million, beating a mark set only a day earlier at Christie’s that had broken a 16-year-old record.
“We’re seeing ever-increasing strength from season to season,“ said Marc Porter, president of Christie’s Americas. He said the pool of buyers was growing.
David Norman, Sotheby’s co-chair of Impressionist and modern art, agreed. “There’s so much discretionary money out there, and also a high percentage of new buyers,“ he said.