TEHRAN -- Cartoonist Masud Shojaei-Tabatabai, secretary of the International Holocaust Cartoons Contest in Tehran, has been named the Islamic Revolution Artist of the Year.

Shojaei-Tabatabai was honored at the Andisheh Hall of the Art Bureau on Friday during the closing ceremony of the Week of Islamic Revolution Arts.

Filmmakers Ebrahim Hatamikia and Mohammad-Hossein Mahdavian, and authors Behnaz Zarrabizadeh and Hamid Hessam were the other nominees for the title this year.

Speaking at the ceremony, the Islamic Ideology Dissemination Organization (IIDO) Director, Hojjatoleslam Seyyed Mehdi Khamushi, said that there has been a deep relation between the art of revolution, and the art and artists of other countries.

“The lessons that the Islamic Revolution have given us have highly influenced the region and we can see how the revolution has attracted the hearts and how it shines in the region,” Khamushi said.

“We can see how the books on the Sacred Defense (the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war is known as Sacred Defense in Iran) have attracted the attention of readers. Islamic Revolution poetry is one of the best, while the Sacred Defense cinema is among the best of its kind,” he remarked.

He hoped that the art of revolution would make additional progress and would be promoted increasingly.

The Art Bureau organizes the Week of Islamic Revolution Arts every year to remember Morteza Avini, the acclaimed documentarian who was martyred by a landmine in 1993 when he was making a documentary in the former Iran-Iraq war zone in southwestern Iran.

Photo: Cartoonist Masud Shojaei-Tabatabai holds his award after being honored as the Islamic Revolution Artist of the Year at Tehran’s Andisheh Hall on April 14, 2017. (Mehr/Masud Saki)

RM/YAW