TEHRAN -- Well-known Indonesian cartoonist Didie SW won the first prize of the Car Section at Iran’s First Car International Web Cartoon Contest.

In addition, Dálcio Machado from Brazil and Iranian cartoonist Mohammad-Amin Aqaii received the second and third prizes of this section respectively.
Angel Boligan from Mexico, Giox and Matteo Bertelli from Italy, Pasar Sherko from Iraq and Mehdi Azizi from Iran also received honorary plaques in this section.
Mehdi Azizi from Iran and Bulgaria cartoonist Valery Aleksandrov won the first and second awards of the Future Car, another section of the contest. No work deserved the third prize. Meanwhile, Igor Vartchenko from Cyprus, Martin Honeysett from Britain, Sandro Mello from Brazil and Mahmud Azadnia from Iran received honorary plaques.
The winners were announced during a ceremony at Tehran’s Olympic Hotel on Tuesday.
The contest, which aimed to highlight automobile and its impact on daily life, was cosponsored by Iran’s Cartoon House and SAIPA, the second largest Iranian auto manufacturer.
World cartoonists were invited to the competition through an announcement published in Iranian websites in December 2008.
“Almost 1200 cartoonists from 67 countries applied and 767 works were selected by the board of selection. The final winners were also selected out of the participants by Iranian and foreign jury members,” contest secretary Abbas Qazizadeh said.
The jury members were Erdogan Karayel from Turkey, Leng Mu from China, and Marcio Leite from Brazil along with Iranian cartoonists Hamid Bahrami, Bahram Azimi, and Shahrokh Heidari.
Mehrdad Bazrpash, SAIPA managing director, the presidential advisor for press affairs Ali-Akbar Javanfekr and a group of artists and cartoonists attended the award presentation ceremony.
The ceremony began with the short speech by Bazrpash saying, “Cartoon is an everlasting pictorial art which needs no explanation.”
Jury member Erdogan Karayel also regarded the festival best means to bring the culture of different nations closer to each other and stressed that Iran’s art of cartoon is praised in the world, “I saw various types of cartoons among the Iranian works which I hoped they belonged to me, and I congratulate Iranians for having a cartoonist like Kambiz Derambakhsh among them.”
Afterwards, the awards which comprised of cash prize, honorary plaque and a trophy resembling a steering wheel were handed to the winners in each section.
A selection of the cartoons is currently on display in an exhibition at the Olympic Hotel, which is located in the northwest of Tehran, near Chitgar Park.
Photo: Work by Indonesian cartoonist Didie SW won the first prize of the Car Section at Iran’s First Car International Web Cartoon Contest.