International Conference on Hollywoodism

The International Conference on Hollywoodism, sometimes known as the Conference on Hollywoodism and Cinema, is a conference held on several occasions in the early 2010s and organized by the government of Iran. By its own description, it "host[s] filmmakers, scholars and activists from around the world to discuss different aspects of world cinema as they relate to human ideals on one hand and the realities of Hollywood on the other." In particular, the conference served to criticize the United States film industry's portrayals of Islam and Iran. It took place in Tehran in February each year, coincident to and within the framework of the Fajr International Film Festival.

Attendees to the conference have included Iranian analysts as well as foreign commentators of various sorts. The conference put out a call for papers and has promised monetary prizes to the top articles selected. Guests have been given copies of up to twenty films to watch as part of their attendance. Organizers have sometimes funded the travel expenses of those coming from abroad.

The inaugural conference was a two-day seminar held in 2011. It covered topics such as "Terrorism and Hollywood" and "Hollywood and Satanism".

The 2012 second conference brought 48 foreign guests, who engaged in discussion on "Hollywood and Holocaust", "Palestine on the Line of Fire", and "Darwinism and Liberalism". President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad opened the conference, honoring actor and attendee Sean Stone, a recent Muslim convert and the son of well-known filmmaker Oliver Stone. Other attendees included Webster Tarpley, an American conspiracy theorist. The Tehran Times reported that several speakers touched upon a purported "influence of the Zionist regime on Hollywood."

The 2013 edition of the conference included some 130 foreigners brought to Tehran by the government for four days of sessions with 1,000 expected attendees. Hamed Ghashghavi was the Secretary on International Affairs of the conference. He contacted and invited the controversial figures such as Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, Kenneth O'Keefe, Muhammad al-Asi; Imam Abdul Alim Musa, Merlin Miller, Holocaust deniers Mark Weber. Jim Fetzer and Kevin Barrett, Paul-Éric Blanrue, 9/11 conspiracy theorists Roberto Quaglia, Art Olivier and Thierry Meyssan, F. William Engdahl, William Rodriguez, and Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, the wife of Carlos the Jackal.

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