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Opening night of Doha Tribeca Film Festival a success with screening of Amelia
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Panorama of Doha, Qatar and the Museum of Islamic Art, Home to the Doha Tribeca Film Festival
Photo: Abdulrahman & Amjira (Wiki Commons: Creative Commons License)
The first annual Doha Tribeca Film Festival opened last night with a gala screening of Amelia, Mira Nair’s biopic of Amelia Earhart which stars Hilary Swank, Richard Gere and Ewan MacGregor. The open-air event took place outside the Museum of Islamic Art in a truly festive atmosphere, where 3000 beach chairs provided a creative alternative to a standard cinema auditorium. The event was so popular that the festival ran out of seats! The Festival's virtual tour of opening night gives a sense of the energy of the event.
The festival runs from 29 October thru 1 November and offers a blend of Middle Eastern and Western films. Under the leadership of executive director Amanda Palmer, the focus on the festival is a celebration of the breadth of contemporary independent international film while highlighting Arab independent film and the building of a local community to promote filmmaking talent.
Certainly the Doha Tribeca Film Festival offers an intriguing program of 31 films from 23 countries. Feature films range from Thamer Al Zedi’s animated Assila to Anne Fontaine’s Coco Before Chanel while the documentaries range from Yousry Nasrallah’s look at women in Cairo in Scheherazade: Tell Me a Story (Ehky Ya Scheherazade) to Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. Two of the films in contention for the 2010 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah (Australia) and Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly (Iran), are also to be shown.
Festival collaboration brainchild of Sheikha Al-Mayassa and Jane Rosenthal of Tribeca
I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar (Photo: Getty Images)
It’s a truism that internships can be helpful in creating future opportunities. In this case, an internship by a Duke University graduate for the Tribeca Film Festival in New York laid the groundwork for the Doha Tribeca Festival, according to Brian Brooks of indieWire (29 Oct 09). It just happened that the intern was Sheikha Al Mayassa, daughter of the ruler of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani – and the person she worked for was Jane Rosenthal, one of the founders of Tribeca. So that connection became a collaboration between the Qatar Museums Authority (chaired by Sheikha Al Mayassa) and Tribeca Enterprises (headed by Jane Rosenthal, Craig Hatkoff and Robert DeNiro) to create the Doha Tribeca Film Festival.
The central venue is the I.M.Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art. The City Centre Cinema will host some screenings and additional open air screenings will be scattered about the city of Doha. The guest list is pretty high profile for an inaugural event, with Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Sir Ben Kingsley, and Elia Suleiman among those planning to attend.
Festival highlights education to build a community of filmmakers
The educational features of the Festival will include a variety of talks, panels, conversations and masterclasses with filmmakers and industy executives. Because the focus of the festival is developing a community supportive of filmmaking, according to Geoff Gilmore, Chief Creative Officer at Tribeca Enterprises, these opportunities are free of charge. Among the filmmakers taking part are Mira Nair (Amelia) and Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire).
Qatar is the red "ear" on the rhinocerous head of
the Arabian peninsula (Image: World Factbook)
Where in the world is Doha, Qatar?
Qatar (pronounced kut-TAHR) is one of the more progressive of the Persian Gulf states, ruled by the al-Thani family. It is also one of the wealthiest, having the second highest per capita income in the world for its population of 800,000 (CIA, World Factbook). At one time, Qatar was in negotiations to join with the other small emirates of the region in forming the United Arab Emirates, but they and Bahrain opted for independent statehood, entering the United Nations as a member states in September 1971.
The tiny emirate, which is about the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut, is the "ear" of the rhinocerous head of the Arabian peninsula. It sits as a peninsula in the southern Gulf off the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia. Most of its economy is based in oil and natural gas. Doha, as the capital city, is a vibrantly modern city with a population of about 400,000 (mostly expatriates). It is being positioned as a regional center for higher education, is home to the independent Al-Jazerra news service, and successfully hosted the 2006 Asian Games.
Doha is not, of course, the only city in the Gulf to have designs on the film industry. With film centers being developed in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and even in Ras al Khaimah (the northern-most emirate of the UAE) along with the high profile Middle East International Film Festival (Abu Dhabi) and the Dubai International Film Festival, one wonders how much capacity there is for film in the region. The decision of the organizers of the Doha Tribeca Film Festival to focus on more independent film may be just the ticket for its success.
Other world film articles that may interest you:
- Independent documentaries take center stage at Doha Tribeca Film Festival
- Doha Tribeca Film Festival 2009 showcases 10 independent feature documentaries
- 65 foreign language films accepted for Academy for 2010 Oscar consideration
- The making of the Red Hollywood film series: An international tale of how lost Soviet musicals came to America
- Russian film The Circus showcases Red Hollywood: 1936 Soviet-era musical mixes comedy, love & race politics
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