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Features

New Iranian TV Fights the Good Fight in Iraq and Syria

April 3, 2018
Shima Shahrabi
7 min read
New Iranian TV Fights the Good Fight in Iraq and Syria

His motorbike advertises “no blood, no pain circumcision” and he performs the procedure on young boys in the village. He is made up to look like Donald Trump – indeed they call him “Uncle Trump”. During the circumcision ceremony, guests shout “Death to America!” while the song “America, America!” is played.

In a scene on a plane they talk about Trump’s immigration ban and curse him. In another scene they nickname a teenager “Trump’s wife” because he has colored his hair blond. Then they talk about the havoc brought to Middle Eastern countries by ISIS. Another scene is about a marriage proposal for a girl of 14.

These scenes belong to the popular TV series Capital (“Paytakht”), season 5, that was aired by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) corporation on the occasion of Norooz, the Iranian new year which fell on March 21. In the past four seasons the series was a situation comedy about the life of a simple village family, interwoven with references to issues of the day such as the environment and unemployment.

Season 5, however, has started differently. The episodes conspicuously promote the views of the Iranian government and of the regime’s hardliners on political and social issues. The shift has something to do with the show’s new sponsor: the Owj Arts and Media Organization.

Nowadays you can find the name Owj on many major cultural and artistic projects, from posters and music albums by the award-winning singer and actor Parviz Parastui, to producing high-budget films and, now, Capital 5.

Show Me the Money

“Many directors and TV producers love to have Owj as their producer,” a media source tells IranWire, “and this is only natural because it pays higher wages and pays them sooner than IRIB. IRIB is now a nearly bankrupt organization riddled with debt, owing money to many producers, but when Owj is involved you do not have to worry about the money.”

Owj Arts and Media has also been linked to many controversial projects. Owj first made the news in late 2013 when, on the eve of the opening of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West, anti-American billboards sprang up across Tehran. The billboards were commissioned by Owj and depicted scenes that cast doubt on the sincerity and honesty of the American side in the negotiations. For example, in one them the Americans kept a diplomatic and pleasant face while pointing a gun at the Iranian side from under the negotiating table. In another, the American side had a bag full of arms and a ferocious and dirty dog by the table.

But only when the Tehran Municipality’s Beautification Organization denied any knowledge of the billboards did Owj surface. The executive director of the organization is a thirty-something young man by the name of Ehsan Mohammad-Hassani. At the time of the anti-American billboards, there were many reports that Owj is actually an affiliate of the Revolutionary Guards, although Mohammad-Hassani claimed that it is an NGO and the Guards’ public relations team denied the rumors. What is known for certain, however, is that Mohammad-Hassani is also linked to two IRGC-related institutions: he is the president of the Resistance House of Culture and the artistic director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Sacred Resistance’s Artifacts and Values.

The “Sacred Resistance” is the term used by the Islamic Republic to refer to the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and the “values” associated with it include “resistance”, “Jihad” and “martyrdom”.

Underground Singer Onboard

Then, in 2017, came the publication of a music video by Amir Tataloo, formerly an underground singer who could not get a permit to publish his albums and had been arrested twice for distributing “banned” music. But this time Tataloo was standing on the deck of the Iranian navy warship Damavand singing a song called “Nuclear Energy.” From the warship, he sang the song’s controversial lyrics — “An armed Persian Gulf is our absolute right!”  and “Nuclear energy is our absolute right!”—with backup singers properly attired in Iranian Navy uniforms. Some hardline media praised the song.

In the video’s credits, thanks were given to the navy of the Islamic Republic. A navy commander later said that the permit for shooting the video was issued to Owj and Amir Tataloo, whose real name is Amir Hossein Maghsoudlou. “When they asked us for the permit they used the name Amir Hossein Maghsoudlou,” he said, “and I had not seen his work before.”

Who runs Owj that they can so easily take Amir Tataloo on board a navy warship and mount billboards in Tehran under cover of darkness? Owj’s official website [Persian link] offers no answers. But in 2014 General Ramezan Sharif, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Public Relations Office, indirectly answered the question. “From the very beginning,” he said, “the Owj organization announced that its activities are directed towards the revolution, the Sacred Defense and the Islamic awakening, and all three are closely bound to the activities of the Revolutionary Guards. Needless to say, such activities cannot succeed without the close support of institutions such as the Revolutionary Guards and the armed forces.”

“Through its activities,” he said, “this organization has succeeded in getting more support from the Revolutionary Guards.”

At the time, Ehsan Mohammad-Hassani stayed silent to preserve the fiction of Owj being an NGO, but in February 2018, at the closing ceremonies for a festival called the Cinema of the Revolution, he dropped all pretenses and said that “I am proud to take money for our productions from the Guards and not from the embassies [of the countries] that support ISIS.”

“The Guards are very powerful but they hardly make an impact on the general population,” a political scientist who lives in Iran told IranWire. “In fact they have failed to establish connections with the middle class and young people through media outlets such as Fars News Agency and the newspaper Vatan-e Emrouz. Owj is expected to fill this void.”

The political scientist believes that Owj chooses projects it knows have a certain niche. For example, he says, “Amir Tataloo has his own fans and movies by the filmmaker Ebrahim Hatamikia sell well. He [Mohammad-Hassani] spends his money on these projects to promote his own ideas.”

“They do not exactly say ‘use such and such a dialogue’,” says a person who has worked on a film project produced by Owj. “Instead, they bring up a general idea. For example, they say bring up the subject of ISIS or [the Iranian-led fighters in Syria] next to the main story. Of course, sometimes they do suggest subjects like a film about assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists. Then they call Ebrahim Hatamikia and give him the project.”

But There’s More to Life than Just Money

According to the source, it is not only the money that convinces filmmakers and TV showrunners to work with Owj. “When you work with Owj,” he says, “there are fewer redlines and your work is not censored and mutilated. Your film is screened at the best times and there is no question of being banned. There are fewer taboos even for TV series. For example, this Capital series talks about issues that no other series talk about. And it has a lot of jokes. The series dared to show a Persian-speaking woman without a hijab. These, along with the money, are tempting for film directors like Cyrus Moghaddam or Ebrahim Hatamikia.”

Up to now, Ebrahim Hatamikia has made two movies produced by Owj. The first was the 2016 Bodyguard, with references to the assassination of nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012. The second, the 2018 Damascus Time, about the fight against ISIS in Syria, was shown at this year’s Fajr Film Festival in Tehran and reportedly made Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif weep.

“I must really praise the Owj Organization who are the true unknown soldiers of the Hidden Imam [the Shia messiah],” said Hatamikia at the closing ceremonies of the festival in February. In the Islamic Republic’s parlance, the term “unknown soldiers of the Hidden Imam” is applied to Iran’s security forces. The “About Us” page of Owj’s website [Persian link]  makes no mention of who runs the company or where its budget comes from but it announces that “we consider ourselves the obedient soldiers of Article 110 of the constitution, meaning the Exalted Vicegerent of the Hidden Imam.” In other words, they are they are the obedient soldiers of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

 

More on the activities of Owj Arts and Media Organization:

The Ayatollah’s Favorite Pop Star, July 2017

Iranian TV Show Hosts Convicted Terrorist With a Smile, February 2017

Iran’s Cartoon Goons: Behind the Scenes of the Holocaust Cartoons Exhibition, January 2017

The Holocaust Cartoons and Zarif’s Lies, April 2016

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