Research Guru / Moderator
Posted:
Mar 27, 2008, 4:19 PM
|
|
Lebanon quickly reverses its ban on "Persepolis"
|
|
|
Just a day after a ban on "Persepolis" was announced, Lebanese authorities Thursday reversed their decision to black out the Oscar-winning French animated film.
"We have given the green light for Persepolis," the English-language Daily Star quoted an official from Lebanon's censorship bureau as saying. She spoke on condition of anonymity, but did not elaborate.
There had been accusations that the censorship of the film, the co-winner of a jury award last year at Cannes, was intended as a sop to Iran and local Shiite clerics.
Lebanese culture minister Tarek Mitri said that he saw no reason why Persepolis should be banned, and that he had urged the country's interior ministry to reverse its decision.
General Wafiq Jizzini, head of the interior ministry's general security department -- which administers censorship in Lebanon -- told the French news service AFP on Wednesday that he had decided to ban Persepolis after Shiite officials expressed concern that its content offended Muslims and Iran. The department has been in charge of the country's censorship since the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990.
"The office that handles censorship matters informed me in their report that the film attacks Islam and the Iranian regime, and this could spark tension with Iran," Jizzini said Wednesday.
"I can go back on my decision. I respect freedom of expression, but given the current political crisis in Lebanon, this is not the time to add fuel to the fire."
Jizzini could not be reached Thursday for an explanation of why he had reversed himself.
The general security department said Thursday that the interior ministry had "decided to authorize the film's distribution in Lebanon." It denied that "personal, political or confessional motivations" were related to the original banning.
Bassam Eid, production manager at Circuit Empire, the firm that was to distribute Persepolis in Lebanon, called the ban ridiculous, especially because pirated copies of the film were widely available, even in Beirut's mostly Shiite southern suburbs.
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a leading member of the multi-party coalition dominating the Lebanese cabinet, said he was stunned by "this cultural faux pas that allows a security service to evaluate artistic and cultural works."
Directed by Iranian-French emigre Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, and based on Satrapi's comic strips, Persepolis was screened in Iran last month, even though the country banned it in February 2007. The film is not expected to receive a general release in the Islamic state.
Some officials claimed that Jizzini's decision to ban the film arose from his alleged close ties with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
"It is clear that... General Wafiq Jizzini is close to Hezbollah and he doesn't want to allow such a movie, which he believes gives an image of Iran as being worse off than it was before the Shah," one official told AFP on Wednesday.
-------------------------
"Oh boy." -- Allan Sherman
|
|
|
|
