Harbourfront centre will be hosting Tirgan, a new Iranian cultural festival from July 17 to 20.
The four day art festival will showcase a number of Persian world class artists in music, dance, theatre, film, visual arts, and literature, with over 50 performances.
“This is the biggest Iranian cultural show ever to exist outside of Iran,” Mehrdad Ariannejad,the CEO of the festival said.
Abbas Kiarostami, an internationally recognized contemporary cinema filmmaker, and Mohammad Reza Lotfi a world class composer and Setar player are among the 100+ artist participating in the festival.
According to Ariannejad, one of the major challenges in organizing the festival was obtaining Canadian visas for the artists. Out of 25 artists invited to the festival from Iran, only 7 received a visa on time and two received a visa sometimes after the last day of festival.
Tirgan festival is being organized by the Iranian Canadian Center for the Art and Culture.
A variety of food vendors under the taste of Iran, and a range of merchants exhibiting Iranian artifacts are also part of the festival.
“Toronto has growing Iranian community as well as people who have a Persian background from various central Asian Countries such as Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Republic of Azerbaijan. We don’t know a lot about Persian culture in the mainstream and it’s really important to have such festival to share the culture and history with Toronto,” Kerri MacDonald, Artistic Associate, Community and Education Programming at the Harbourfront Centre said.
The Iranian Canadian community in Toronto has a population of 121,505, according to the 2006 Statistics Canada Census.
“The Iranian community of Toronto needs this type of festival. We lack a community center to gather people together,” Manouchehr Bahramian, a member of Iranian community said. “We thank Harbourfront and the sponsors to allow the community to contribute to the cultural diversity of Toronto.”
The budget of the Tirgan festival is estimated at over $650,000. Despite the support of government grants, corporate sponsorships, fundraising events and donations the budget is not completely met yet.
“I do think that it is important to support events such as this. As an Iranian-Canadian, there are not many occasions that we can come together as a group and celebrate things that unite us as opposed to things that divide us,” said Mr. Javad Heydary from the law firm of Heydary Hamilton PC, who has donated the sum of $50,000.00 towards the festival.
More than 90 percent of performances-both outdoor and indoor- are free of charge. Some of the outdoor performances will be presented on the Toronto Star Stage.
The Tirgan festival comes after the success of the festival Under the Azure Dome which happened in the spring of 2006 at Harbourfront to celebrate the Norooz- Persian New Year.
According to Kerri MacDonald at Harbourfront, about 75000 Canadians and tourists including members of Iranian Community are expected to visit the festival, while the organizers estimate a crowd of more than 100,000.
