Canada Currency Exchange Ottawa

Canada Currency Exchange Ottawa

Canada Currency Exchange Ottawa

Posted on: December 21, 2011 - 1:23 am
by Admin

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) confirmed that it will screen the controversial animated film Persepolis. In doing so, the OIAF displayed greater intestinal fortitude than the Bangkok International Film Festival, which decided not to screen the film after being pressured by the Iranian government.

Persepolis will be one of three feature-length films playing at the festival, alongside South Korea's AAchi & SSipak (Bum-Jin Joe, director) and a Norwegian/British co-production of Free Jimmy (Christopher Nielson, director), a crime caper featuring a drug-addicted elephant.

Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi wrote and directed Persepolis, which was based on Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. The four-volume series detailed her experiences growing up under the oppressive imposed by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. That theocracy was imposed after Shi'ite Islamists overthrew Mohammed Rezah Shah Pahlavi's government in 1979.

Persepolis won the prestigious Jury Prize (shared with the Mexican live-action film Stellet Licht, directed by Carlos Reygadas) at the Cannes Film Festival last May.

The Iranian government immediately protested the win, claiming it was all part of a US-backed plot to destabilize the theocracy. Former Iranian foreign minister Dr. Ali Akbar Velayati claimed the black-and-white animated film was evidence that the United States was trying to "encourage forces opposed to the authorities in any way possible."

"Islamophobia in Western drama started in France, and producing and highlighting the anti-Iranian film Persepolis in Cannes falls in line with this Islamophobia," claimed Mehdi Kalhor, a cultural advisor to current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, when he heard about the win.