Iranian cinema marks National Cinema Day with record week
Iranian cinema marked National Cinema Day on September 12 with its busiest week of the year, as theaters across the country drew more than 485,000 moviegoers while Cinema House unveiled plans to honor veteran filmmakers and revive its long-delayed awards.
The celebrations coincided with the 25th week of the Iranian year, when cinemas welcomed 485,712 viewers between September 5 and September 11, IRNA reported.
Box office receipts reached 531.66 billion rials during the week, which became the strongest period for cinema attendance since the start of the year. Discounted ticket prices on Friday also helped draw larger crowds to theaters.
The figures extended a five-week upward trend in cinema attendance. Weekly audiences rose from about 251,000 in mid-August to 328,000, 352,000 and then 399,000 before reaching the latest high.
Kourosh Cineplex topped the list of the country’s busiest cinema complexes with 23,205 visitors, followed by Iran Mall Cineplex with 19,668. Hadish Cineplex, Charsou Cineplex and Azadi Cineplex also ranked among the five most visited venues of the week.
Soroush Sehat’s ‘The Pool’ led the weekly film chart with 111,604 viewers, narrowly ahead of Kazem Daneshi’s ‘The Death Bath’, which attracted 111,470. Yousef Hatamikia’s ‘Escort’ came third with 103,518 admissions.
The celebrations continued on Saturday, September 12, when Cinema House held a press conference in Tehran to outline its National Cinema Week program.
Homayoun As’adian, CEO of Cinema House, said the week’s events would include a ceremony honoring a number of veteran artists. The organization will also name its library after filmmaker and playwright Bahram Beyzai, while a conference hall at its second building will be dedicated to filmmaker Nasser Taghvai.
Cinema House is also preparing to settle the status of its awards after a seven-year interruption.
Mohammad Mehdi Asgarpour, chairman of the organization’s board, said Cinema House was developing a mechanism that would allow filmmakers to review and vote on works produced during the past seven years.
“We want to determine once and for all” which films were regarded as the best during that period, he said.
The organization hopes to use online platforms to give its members wider access to films before holding the event later this year, bringing the long-delayed awards process to a close.