The
Baghdad International Film Festival, which runs all this week, is the latest
effort by Iraqis to use an improving but precarious security situation to break
their decades-long cultural isolation. The opening ceremony on Monday had all
the glitz of a major film premiere. A huge crowd, mostly young, massed along a
red carpet as ushers handed out glossy programs at the entrance to the national
theatre in the city centre. Inside, television news crews raced between
interviews, jostling particularly fiercely to interview Abdelaziz Belrhali, a
Moroccan who heads a festival of short films from across the Arab world in his
home country and who is the only international member of the film festival's
jury.
Culture,
in Iraq or elsewhere, is like the sea without a shore-it has no end, no
barriers, it cannot be stopped," he said. More than 150 films from 32
countries will be aired at venues across the capital over the course of the
eight days of the festival, the third of its kind since the US-led invasion of
2003. The previous edition lasted four days in December 2007, screening 63
films at the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad. The first film festival was
held in September 2005, screening 58 locally-made short films over six days at
the Mansour Melia hotel, also in the city centre.
Films
this year will be judged for awards in three categories-best drama, best short
film and best documentary, with two other prizes reserved for the best young
Iraqi director, and the best female Arab filmmaker. Despite Belrhali's
optimism, however, the film festival faced difficulties it was hampered by a
shortfall in funds and a lack of interest from the authorities, obstacles that
go some way towards explaining why the last film festival was held four years
ago. Taher Alwan, one of the festival's directors, said that he had worked for
months to put the week-long program together.
We
contacted all the senior officials in the government and told them about the
festival, but the response was very weak because no one believed we would
actually organize the festival," he said. Alwan also suggested he had been
made to pay to obtain authorization documents to hold the festival at all, a
sign of Iraq's pervasive graft.
Transparency
International ranks it among the four most corrupt countries in the world.
Alwan said that funding problems and question marks over Iraq's security were
why no festival had been held since 2007 but voiced hope that it would soon
become an annual fixture. Despite a sharp reduction in the number of attacks
since unrest peaked in 2006 and 2007, Iraq remains one of the world's most
violent countries.
I
believe this festival will stimulate cultural life in Iraq, and we will try to
restore the culture of cinema in Iraq," Alwan said. "As you know,
after 2003, everything was closed-the cinemas were closed, there was no cinema
activity, so Iraqis felt isolated from the world." Film-going, like most
other leisure pursuits, came to a virtual standstill in Baghdad in the years
following the invasion, as families chose to stay at home and many cinemas were
burned down during a brutal sectarian war. The Iraqi film industry dates back
to the 1940s and was at its most popular in the 1970s and 1980s, when going to
the cinema became a weekly family outing.
However
the 1991 Gulf war and the economic sanctions that followed saw cinemas go into
decline. The turmoil that followed the 2003 invasion saw many cinemas burned
down. Alwan added that by showing their work and meeting fellow filmmakers from
other countries, the festival would build confidence among young Iraqi
professionals and aspiring moviemakers.
Athraa,
a film student attending the first day of the festival and a member of the
generation Alwan is hoping to inspire, said she had come to "watch and
learn, especially regarding their use of sound and special
effects.""It is a great help for us," the 20-year-old said.
Alwan, who described himself as a screenwriter, documentary filmmaker and movie
critic, said he hoped the festival would mark a "turning point" for
Iraq's film industry."We have thousands and thousands of stories that are
very suitable for cinema, but where is the system of production?" he
asked.-AFP
This article was published in The Kuwait Times on 05/10/2011
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