submit no film in retaliation for the video that denigrates the Prophet Mohammad.
Culture Minister Moham-mad Hossaini said the anti-Islamic film “was made in America and the Oscars are held there and so far no official stance by the nation which made this film has been taken. But the objectionable film wasn’t made by the United States, but by a group of Egyptian Copt immigrants. And President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had condemned the movie as offensive long before Hossaini complained they had been silent.
Hossaini said, “I am officially announcing that in reaction to the intolerable insult to the Great Prophet of Islam we will refrain from taking part in this year’s Oscars and we ask other Islamic nations to show their protest like this.”
The Iran Times went to press the day after Hossaini made his announcement. In that brief period, no other country had reacted to his proposed boycott one way or the other.
Hossaini’s announcement seemed to suggest he was punishing the United States by his boycott, but his real purpose may have been to forward the Iranian policy of trying to link the United States to the making of the film. Hossaini continued the regime practice of asserting that the United States had refused to criticize the film when the opposite is true. Most Iranian media continue to report that the film was made by a Jewish group, although it has been more than a week since an Egyptian-born Copt living in California was revealed as the principal figure behind the film.
While not officially the target of the culture minister’s action, the real impact will be on the director and others behind the Iranian movie that will not now be submitted for an Oscar.
Director Reza Mirkarimi’s comedy “A Cube of Sugar” was picked Monday by an Iranian panel for the 2013 Oscar foreign-language film submission.
Hours later, Javad Sha-maqdari, head of the government-controlled cinema agency within the Culture Ministry, said Iran should “avoid” the Hollywood Oscar festival.
A few hours after that, Culture Minister Hossaini stepped in and issued his edict.
The Iranian nominating committee, which works under the cinema agency, picked “Ye Habbeh Ghand,” or “A Cube of Sugar” — a film about a family wedding turning into a funeral when a relative of the groom dies — to submit for best foreign language film to the US Motion Picture Academy of the Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars.
Shamaqdari said the Oscars should be boycotted until the organizers denounced the anti-Islam film entitled “Innocence of Muslims.” Interestingly, Hossaini did not ask for any action by the United States or the academy.
Shamaqdari has in the past been known for his calls to “deprive” Western film festivals of movies made by the Iranian cinema industry.
The film has prompted outrage among Muslims around the world. At least 51 people, including the US ambassador to Libya, have been killed in violence linked to protests over the film, which also has renewed debate over freedom of expression in the US and in Europe.
In February, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi won the Oscar for best foreign film for his movie, “A Separation” — the first Oscar ever won by an Iranian in Iran, although several expatriates have won Oscars.
Tehran officialdom welcomed that Oscar, especially as Farhadi beat an Israeli film and three others in the foreign language category, describing it as a conquest for Iranian culture and a blow for Israel’s perceived outsized influence in America.
But some Iranian hard-liners muttered criticisms of the film for exposing troubles in Iranian society through the story of a collapsing marriage. Farhadi said the film showed a problem that bedevils families in every society.
“A Cube of Sugar” has been screened at several national and international film festivals, including the 2011 Montreal International Film Festival, the 2011 Busan International film festival in South Korea and the 2012 Cines Del Sur Film Festival in Spain.
The Academy Award for best foreign language film is annually given to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the US with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.
The 2013 Oscar nominations are scheduled to be announced on January 10. The Academy Awards ceremony will be held February 24.
