At the first conference of ‘Children, Cinema, HIV’ held last week at the House of Cinema hall, a fund was constituted for distributing donations and grants to child patients.
Co-organized by Iranian Documentary Filmmakers Association (IRDFA), House of Cinema, Public Relations Society of Iran (PRSIR) and EHSA Charity NGO, the conference mainly addressed screenwriters, film directors and producers to pay more attention to children suffering from HIV, ISNA reported.
The event was attended by Gholamreza Kazemi, head of policy making council at PRSIR, conference secretaries Mona Zahed, Minoo Mohrez, Tahereh Bahrami and Farzad Tohidi and renowned cineastes Abbas Kiarostami, Pouran Derakhshandeh, Mahtab Keramati and Seyyed Reza Mirkarimi, besides a number of social specialists and HIV-prevention activists.
Mirkarimi commending the organizers’ social responsibility towards needy children said: “Cinema-related organizations should understand social issues and be concerned about doing their fair share to help solve social problems.”
NGOs are like a society’s “white blood cells” helping cure the damaged (needy) sections of the population. If a society lacks philanthropy, it is ill.
Director of IRDFA, Ard Zand, said social awareness about HIV should be raised.”The major part of social harm is rooted in ignorance.
Providing information on different issues is one of the important duties of the mass media, including cinema.”
A documentary film by Kiarostami, ‘ABC Africa’, concerning AIDS in the African continent, was screened along with several video clips. Local music group ‘Mah Pishouni’ gave a three-piece performance.
According to official figures, currently more than 28,000 people have been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in the country. Of the total registered cases, 89.3% are men and 10.7% are women and among them 45.7% are in the age group 25-34. There are 1000 children under age 14 living with HIV.
Alongside the increase in the number of women living with HIV and those infected by mother to child transmission, the number of children under 5 years with HIV is also increasing.
