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Photo: ABC
Although seemingly tailor-made for western audiences, LOST’s complex plot and apocalyptic overtones are being released commercially in Iran following soaring sales of pirated black-market DVDs.
Silver Screen, the country's leading home video distributor, will market the award-winning show's first three seasons after buying the broadcast rights and commissioning Iranian actors to dub it into Farsi. The dubbed shows have been submitted to the Department of Cinematic Affairs of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for a distribution license.
Statewide broadcaster IRIB is also in talks to air LOST on Iranian television. All programming must first be carefully censored to exclude "un-Islamic" scenes such as scantily clad women or male-female physical contact.
Iran's culture and Islamic guidance ministry governs what is shown and is expected to approve the idea following an outbreak of "LOST-mania" -- in which the series was downloaded from the internet and widely discussed on Iranian websites. Large numbers of Farsi-subtitled DVDs have also been illegally sold.
Granting broadcast and distribution rights would mark a policy reversal since officials previously criticized LOST and warned media outlets against publicizing it. Mohammad Hossein Saffar-Harandi (recently sacked as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's culture and Islamic guidance minister) condemned the show for displaying "Zionist concepts." Supporters countered that the program simply has "eastern" themes.
"The atmosphere of [LOST’s] story, due to our classic literature, is familiar to Iranian and eastern viewers," TV and cinema critic Saeed Ghotbizadeh told the Tehran-e Emrooz newspaper. "Because it has a religious theme, it is possible to broadcast 90% of it without censorship. But its brilliant and special characterization might be sacrificed in Persian dubbing – a lot will depend on how well it is dubbed."
LOST's international popularity has already spawned plans for an Iranian remake that would include plot revisions to match the Islamic way of life.
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