In only four years the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) has taken on the Herculean task of establishing itself as a platform for Middle Eastern films to the Western world. And when there seems to be no limit to the amount of money the city will put into the fest (and itself: the tallest building in the world will soon be located in Dubai, its mall has the largest indoor amusement park and an indoor ski slope, and there’s the seven-star hotel, Burj Al Arab), it seems DIFF will only grow from here. But will the fest be a side note to the region’s abundance of wealth, exotic locale and gaudy architecture or become a legitimate contributor to the film community?
Unlike the Cairo, Marrakech (which ran at the same time this year as DIFF) and the one-year-old Abu Dhabi festivals in the Middle East, DIFF’s advantage is its deep pockets, which can tempt filmmakers with its over $300,000 in prize money for winners in the competition categories, very tempting for the extremely financially strapped Middle Eastern film community.
But DIFF this year (Dec. 9-16) also brought some of the best Western films to Emirati audiences who would never see these films as we do (UAE censorship laws make it impossible for any film with heavy violence or sexual content to be seen in its entirety, but those laws were lifted to films playing in the festival).
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,
Control,
Gone Baby Gone,
Bee Movie and
No Country For Old Men were some of the films screening during the seven day fest. Though I stayed clear of most of these as they were already released in the U.S., I couldn’t resist seeing a Coens film in another country, and it was interesting to see how a sold out audience in another region of the world took to
No Country; laughing or cringing at the same scenes audiences in America would.
Most of my time in theaters was watching what Eastern cinema had to offer. And for the most part I was pleased. My favorite film of the festival was one I learned I’d missed at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival,
Making Of (pictured above). Directed by Nouri Bouzid, and set in Tunisia during the fall of Baghdad to American forces, the film follows Bahta (Lotfi Abdelli), a slick-talking dancer, who is manipulated into a fundamentalist group. But Bouzid decides to begin discussions about the film’s subject matter before the final frame. In a clever move, scenes suddenly halt and the viewer is thruster behind the camera where director and actor begin heated discussions about the film’s message and the motivations of the Bahta character. Done with humor and respect to all cultures, Bouzid makes a thought-provoking film that’s one of the best I’ve seen about the war. And Abdelli (who won a best acting award at Tribeca) gives a tour-de-force performance. From China came Ning Cai’s
Season of the Horse. In the vein of fellow Mongolian filmmaker Byambasuren Davaa’s
Story of the Weeping Camel and
The Cave of the Yellow Dog, this simple story follows a family of nomads who can’t cope with the progression going on around them, specifically the family’s patriarch, Wurgen (Cai), a stubborn farmer who reluctantly sells his horse so his boy can go to school but learns that the horse was the final link to his ancestors and slowly drifts into a mid-life crisis. Lastly, there’s another simple story about a farmer that stuck with me, Amor Hakkar’s
The Yellow House. After learning that his son has been killed in the line of duty, the poor farmer must hop on his tractor and take
The Straight Story-like journey to retrieve his body. Beautifully shot, the final five minutes of the film are heart wrenching to watch.
But like many young festivals DIFF has growing pains. Some are out of their hands and will improve as the city blossoms while others are so elementary it was puzzling why it was occurring. One of the biggest head scratchers was why the festival didn’t announce the films it was showing before it started. The only press releases before the fest brought notice to the opening night film
Michael Clayton and even on their website they had no section that listed the films (thought it’s listed on the site now). Also, many screenings didn’t begin on time, especially the gala screenings that had red carpet arrivals. Another major problem is the progress of the city. Due to the huge amount of construction being done throughout Dubai, and little mass transit options, the three main roads in the city are constantly congested which made it difficult for many people to get from the Madinat Jumeirah, where the main box office and press conferences took place to the Emirates Mall where a majority of the films were screening. And for the press, a shuttle from the Habtoor Grand Resort, where many of us stayed, to the Madinat at times felt like an eternity (if the shuttle came at all). But the construction of monorail lines around Dubai should make things easier in a few years.
Talking to most filmmakers, press and industryites either located locally or abroad, most are fascinated by Dubai’s growth and believe the festival can become a great outlet for area filmmakers. Writer-producer Janet Dulin Jones, who was at the festival to network as her company Storyteller Films is planning to shoot a few films in Jordan, was taken by the stories she heard from filmmakers. “Many of them have had to leave their native lands due to war or other religious tensions,” she says via e-mail after the festival wrapped. “Yet they create, they are passionate and they want to bring their voices to the world.”
But with the fact that films are censored in the region and many Internet sites dealing with homosexuality, AIDS, or any other "taboo subject" are blocked, the region still has a long way to go before it can call itself progressive. There are signs of progress though. One short program in the fest called Emirati Voices highlighted the work of young student filmmakers from UAE that questioned everything from the war to the strict Muslim culture they were raised in. That the festival let these brave filmmakers express their feelings, beliefs and thoughts was inspiring as these people will hopefully be the foundation of a much stronger film community in the future.
Labels: Festivals
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/06/2008 11:01:00 PM
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