Cinema Rex Fire - Books and References

Books and References

Dillip Hiro, author of Iran Under the Ayatollahs, said that anti-Shah groups were not likely to have caused the fire, since the Cinema Rex was located in a working-class neighborhood and showed the film Gavaznha ("The Deer"); Hiro added that Gavaznha "passed the censors with considerable difficulty." Hiro also said that the deliberate closure of the cinema doors and the local fire station's efforts, which Hiro described as "tepid," strengthened the public belief that the Shah had the cinema burned.

According to Roy Mottahedeh, author of The Mantle of the Prophet, "thousands of Iranians who had felt neutral and had until now thought that the struggle was only between the shah and supporters of religiously conservative mullahs felt that the government might put their own lives on the block to save itself. Suddenly, for hundreds of thousands, the movement was their own business."

According to Daniel L. Byman, "The movies were an affront to God, encouraging vice and Western-style decadence. So in August 1978, four Shiite revolutionaries locked the doors of the Cinema Rex in the Iranian city of Abadan and set the theater on fire…" (see Byman).

Finally, Islamists opposed cinema for ideological or doctrinal reasons. While Shia Muslims (unlike some strict Sunni Muslims) do not forbid pictures, many strict Shia believe any motion pictures "with music, dance or any other un-Islamic portrayal is haram to view." Ever since motion pictures were first introduced into Iran at the turn of the 20th century, the clerical establishment saw the medium as not only a threat to moral righteousness, but also a direct attack on their position as authority figures. The depiction of women without proper religious attire and other blasphemous content furthered anti-Western sentiment, solidifying an ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality that in part continues to maintain clerical dominance over Iranian society.

As the event took place during the revolutionary period, it was quite difficult to make out who the perpetrator(s) was (were), making ill-conceived accusations rather prevalent. Many elements of the revolutionary bloc laid blame on Mohammad Reza Shah, the now deposed monarch of Iran, and SAVAK (Sazeman-e Ettelaat va Amniyat-e Keshvar), the country’s domestic security and intelligence service. Although sufficient evidence was never brought forth to facilitate such claims, the labeling would have far-reaching implications on the subsequent direction of the revolutionary movement. The circumstances in which the fire was set did not aid in the shah’s pleas of innocence either. The timing and the location of the incident (an impoverished district of Abadan) did not coincide with preceding patterns of protestation, which raised the level of suspicion. It was also believed that the shah specifically targeted Cinema Rex for the sole purpose of killing political dissidents who had gathered to watch a controversial anti-government film called Gavaznha (The Deer) starring well-known actor Behrouz Vossoughi.

Another highly unlikely rumour suggested that the shah intentionally blamed the incident on Islamist militants in an attempt to discredit and potentially dislodge them from their growing influence within the undefined hierarchy of the revolutionary forces.