What will we see at this year’s MEIFF?
We’re not just about narrative films and feature films, we’re showing a lot of documentaries; we even have a programme for silent films accompanied by live music. We want to give people a broad demonstration of all the things movies can be. For the public, there will also be masterclasses that address film composers and how to compose a score and what effect it has. As well as this, we have a small retrospective of recent Turkish films. These filmmakers have been doing a lot of good work recently and they are not funded by Europe or made in the model of Hollywood. I think they can offer a good template for local filmmakers here.
What do festivals like this achieve?
It’s not about businessmen going to a convention, exchanging cards. It is about experiencing a culture, learning more about it and experiencing what is going on here. When Dubai started its film festival, people from other parts of the world, including myself, said: ‘Well, they’re not making films there, so why?’ Well, that’s changed now. I think the exchange that goes on encourages filmmakers or would-be filmmakers in the area because they get a chance to see the work of directors who are coming here from elsewhere. And those coming to the country get a chance to see that there are filmmakers here.
So you see it as a cultural exchange?
I believe that a film festival is primarily for the people in the town that it is held in as much as for the people who come to attend it. It’s probably as true here as anywhere else that expats hang out with expats. There appears to be not many places here where Emiratis and people from other parts of the world are in contact with each other. I think a film festival offers a marvellous opportunity for that. Even if expats are interested in the local culture, this part of the world is never reflected on film screens here.
Do you think there is a problem with the content of the cinemas here?
A major reason to have a film festival is that what is on offer at the mall is exclusively Hollywood and Bollywood product – heavily censored. You’re living in the Middle East and yet you have no chance to see films from the Middle East. I think that there is a real gap there and it is one which the festival addresses. A chance to see films from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and all over the region is a fabulous opportunity and the public will also have a chance to meet the filmmakers from those regions and ask them questions. I’m a big believer in cinema providing a community.
Many Hollywood producers will come to the festival, but do you think Abu Dhabi can realistically become the Hollywood of the Middle East?
There is a recognition that Hollywood movies are great, we go to see them, and so on. But I don’t think that is a model for filmmaking in this part of the world. I think filmmakers here have stories to tell. The Middle East is where storytelling began as a craft: Sherezade didn’t come from Hollywood, she came from here.
Why have these stories yet to materialise on screen, then?
It’s hard to say. One of our goals is that there is still not in place here what we would have in, say, India or America or other parts of the world: a ‘film culture’. I don’t think people are taught about the history of cinema at high school or around the universities; there haven’t been courses in media literacy. I think movies are thought of as just things you see at a mall where you turn off your mind and watch a Hollywood shoot-em-up. That’s part of what cinema is, but another part is to provide a universal language whereby no matter where we’re from we can find out what we have in common with people who are a different colour, dress differently or live in different circumstances to how we do. We learn in a film we are all not that different after all.
