Cultural consumption of cinema audiences and non-audiences in Iran

The purpose of writing this article is to study the problems that Iranian cinema encounters in its relationship with the audience. In this article, first, in the part of reviewing the previous investigations, the reasons for decreasing the ratio of audience’s attendance to movie halls and watching Iranian movies are discussed. Then the theoretical foundations of the study is stablished based on concepts of the cultural consumption of audience, aiming to a better understanding of the audience and their needs in relation to cinema. This is followed by doing a secondary analysis on the data gathered previously through a survey named the National Survey on the Consumption of Cultural Goods; the third wave. The data of this report were re-analyzed in relation to the consumption of cinema and other means for viewing movies. The ratio of cinema audiences comparing to non-audiences is examined in this article. In addition, relationship of personal and social factors of audience with kind of their cinema consumption is analyzed. A comparison of first and second wave data of cultural consumption survey with the data gathered in the third wave is also presented. Moreover, the audience use of cinema is compared with their use of cinema’s competitors such as TV, foreign film and series. Finally, reasons of people for not going to the cinema are explained. The overall result is that cinema audiences are much smaller than non-audiences are, but most people who do not go to the cinema, watch movies in other ways using other available devices. In addition, the most important reason why these audiences do not go to the cinema in one sentence is that Iranian cinema does not meet the individual and social needs of the audience.