Two memorandums of cooperation signed last week between Iran Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO) and Documentary and Experimental Film Center (DEFC) aim at promoting Iranian handicrafts, using cinema as the medium, Jamejam reported.
Referring to the memoranda as a good opportunity for promoting Iranian crafts, the assistant director of handicrafts and traditional art department at ICHHTO said the cooperation “will help revive lost traditional arts and handicrafts by introducing them to the younger generation and inspiring them to use traditional arts in their day to day lives, “even in designing their home and office interior.”
Expressing the desire to organize new film festivals for this purpose, Bahman Namvar said: “Cinema has the potential to reach out to the audience and influence their way of life; therefore we plan to adopt documentary and feature films as the medium for introducing Iranian art and culture to a vast audience from every strata of society.”
Good Platform
He pointed to ‘Cinema Vérité’, Iran International Documentary Film Festival organized by the DEFC, as a good platform for introducing traditional arts and handicrafts to the people of Iran as well as other countries, by producing documentary films in Persian and foreign languages.
In addition to the market created to foreign buyers of Iranian films by virtue of the festival, handicraft stalls will also be set up to promote their sales to the visitors, he said.
Describing handicrafts as an “integral part of Iranians’ social identity,” deputy research assistant of DEFC Alireza Ghasemkhani announced addition of a new section on handicrafts to the upcoming ‘Cinema Vérité’ festival for which more than 50 films will be competing.
The 8th edition of the festival will be held from November 30 to December 7 in Tehran.
