02 March,2009 10:21 AM IST | | Agencies
Au00a0top aide to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a visiting Hollywood delegation here yesterday that Hollywood should apologise to Iran for "insults and accusations against the Iranian nation".
"Representatives of Iran's film industry should only have an official meeting with representatives of the Academy and Hollywood if they apologise for the insults and accusations against the Iranian nation during the past 30 years," said Javad Shamghadri, Ahmadinejad's advisor on the arts.
He singled out the 1991 Sally Field thriller Not Without My Daughter, about an American woman who marries an Iranian and then tries to flee Iran with their child, and the comic-book-inspired action flick 300 as "two clear examples of total lies".
"How can we sit and have a sincere meeting with American film makers while they they humiliate and insult the Iranian people and the great revolution of this nation?" asked Shamghadri.
"The Iranian nation and its revolution has repeatedly and undeservedly been attacked by Hollywood movies," he said.
"The film The Wrestler is the latest among them," he said of the film for which Mickey Rourke received an Oscar nomination this year.
The Wrestler features a character known as The Ayatollah, played by Ernest Miller, who takes on Rourke's Randy 'The Ram' Robinson.
"We know that even right now there are other films being made with the aim of insulting and accusing the great nation of Iran and its rich culture."
The Hollywood delegation is supposed to meet with Iranian filmmakers and hold a news conference on March 7.
