14th Cinema Verite int'l fest inaugurated

This week-long cinematic event is underway totally online and will be wrapped up on December 22, IRNA reports.

Directed by Mohammad Hamidi-Moqaddam, the Iranian festival has several sections, including the National, International, and Martyr Avini Prize, Entrepreneurship Documentary Competition, Corona Virus Special Section, Side Sections, and commemorations.

In the meantime, several expert workshops, master talks, as well as masterclasses, will be held in this international cinematic event.

The national competition section comprises short, mid-length, and feature-length documentaries.

The international section of this edition will be held in a non-competition format due to the spread of Coronavirus.

The international section of the festival also enjoys numerous non-competition sections such Special Displays, Mirror of a Festival, Portrait, Perspective of One Country Documentary Cinema, Chile Documentary Cinema, and Masters of 2020, as well as 13 Editions & 13 Films.

Due to the spread of Coronavirus, this edition of the festival will be held in online and remote format via utilizing the national platform in the country.

Mohammad Hamidi-Moqaddam sent a message to the event.

Documentary cinema is the common language of nations. This event is an opportunity to connect people together at a time when the pace of change is accelerating. With the help of documentaries, people gain a new understanding of the issues around them and use this knowledge to foster the situation, the message reads.

There is no part of life that is far detached from the eyes of documentary cinema. Wherever there is a need to search, transform, and change, documentary cinema is there. Documentaries have always been at the forefront of facing challenges and difficulties. They take risks in the path of truth-seeking and truth-telling. We see many manifestations of this risk and sense of responsibility in today's difficult situation and the epidemic of the Coronavirus, it added.

The intertwining of the Cinema Verite with the documentary cinema has caused the festival to go one step further in connection with this risk-taking and sense of responsibility. While many cultural and artistic events are held in an aura of stagnation and ambiguity, holding an online cinema festival provides an unparalleled opportunity. This festival is turning the challenge into an amazing opportunity to create a vast landscape that provides the opportunity to watch documentaries for a very wide range of audiences, it further noted.

Documentary cinema as one of the most cultural and progressive forms of cinema, in addition to having a large audience among different strata, also has the most educated spectrum. Cinema, which due to its nature is associated with various subtleties and capacities, and due to its multiplicity of genres, has a great potential for a path-breaking and fruitful presence in today's life, the message pointed out.

Iran's Cinema Organization's due attention to the documentary cinema in the path of expanding the scope of activities and deepening the original approaches, the enthusiastic presence of cinematographers in the field of production, and the necessity of consistent and fruitful activity, have all caused this range to be full of dynamism, it went on to note that.

Many thanks to all the documentarians, enthusiasts, and collaborators of the Center for the Development of Documentary and Experimental Cinema, who worked hard and patiently withstood the difficult conditions of the pandemic and spared no effort to hold the fourteenth festival properly, it added.