Jury members at this year’s Cannes Film Festival do not have an enviable task, having to judge a strong competition stacked with some of the most prominent names working in film today. But cinephiles around the world do have reason to rejoice as they are facing the prospect of future theatrical releases for new films by the likes of Ang Lee, Pedro Almodóvar, Quentin Tarantino, Alain Resnais, Lars Von Trier, Jane Campion, Ken Loach, Michael Haneke and Gaspar Noé.

Judging from the official line-up for the 62nd edition at Cannes, which opened on Wednesday and runs until May 25, this is going to be a good year for film in general and for auteur cinema in particular, for it is the directors who reign over the French Riviera this week.

The festival is the oldest and most prestigious event of its kind in the world. It is also, arguably, the most international. Founded as Le Festival International de Cannes, it dropped the worldwide qualifier in 1947, although that year saw the screening of films from 16 different countries.

These days, Cannes is a credible barometer for registering the fluctuations of world cinema. However vexing the term has become, one can use Cannes to gauge the rise and fall of various regional and national cinemas. So, in addition to fielding a list of established and uncompromising directors, this year’s festival also includes a notably strong selection of films from Southeast Asia – China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines.

Almost entirely absent from the glitz and glamour, however, are films from the Arab world.

True, Elia Suleiman, the Palestinian director, is competing at Cannes for the first time in seven years. In 2002, his last feature, Divine Intervention, snagged both the Jury Prize and the Fipresci prize, awarded by the international federation of film critics. This year, his latest film, The Time That Remains – about four episodes in the life of Palestinian family who remained on their land from the creation of Israel in 1948 until the present day – is in the running for the Palm d’Or.

But before anyone considers Suleiman’s presence a triumph for Arab cinema, or even a mark of representation for the Arab world, consider the director’s comments in an interview published six years ago in Beirut: “I do not feel a particular affiliation with Arab cinema,” he said. “It has not influenced my approach to filmmaking, and this is not said in jest with provocation. Rather I have been influenced by Asian cinema, particularly cinema from Japan and Taiwan. I absorbed it like a sponge, ironically because it felt so Arab.”

The past five years have seen a smattering of Arab and Middle Eastern films at Cannes, most of them out of competition and relegated to the Directors’ Fortnight or the section entitled Un Certain Regard.

Last year, there was the Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir with Salt of This Seaand the Lebanese directing duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige. The year before, there was Nadine Labaki’s successful but insipid Caramel and Danielle Arbid’s less successful but far more challenging Un Homme Perdu.

But while Bollywood is booming and achieving international crossover appeal, and Southeast Asian cinema is nearly outstripping European art-house and American independent film in terms of critical acclaim and narrative innovation, Arab cinema remains in a serious state of stagnation.

Little has changed in the decade since John Malkovich, however obnoxiously, presided over the jury at the Cairo film festival and declared two-thirds of the largely Egyptian and Syrian films selected so terribly boring that he splayed himself out and slept on the screening room floor.

It would be too easy to conclude that the Cannes film festival is blind to Arab cinema or politically disposed to ignore it. And it would be wrong. Cinema in the Arab world is plagued with its own problems.

The first is censorship, which is exercised on every level of film production, from the writing of scripts to the screening in theatres. There is nothing more infuriating than going to a movie theatre in Beirut, for example, to find that the first 15 minutes of The Insider, where Al Pacino’s character pays a visit to a political leader who may or may not resemble a figure in the Hizbollah hierarchy, have been cut.

There is nothing more discouraging to future generations of producers and directors than seeing a Lebanese filmmaker such as the late Randa Chahal Sabbag fighting with a censorship board that wanted to cut 40 minutes from her feature Civilisées, which ended up being screened exactly once in Beirut; or seeing Danielle Arbid skip the local market entirely for Un Homme Perdu; or seeing Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige financing the local theatrical release of Je Veux Voir themselves when no Lebanese distributor was willing to pick up the bill; or hearing Ziad Doueiri complain that he has, to date, never received a penny from the official DVD sales of his feature film West Beyrouth, one of the highest grossing Arab films in years. And Beirut is one of the more tolerant cities in the region, a place with enough business savvy to make the film industry pay.

More glaring even than censorship is the fact that Arab cinema suffers from institutional and educational neglect. Only Egypt boasts a credible film industry, but it has been in steep decline since its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Only Morocco has made itself an appealing destination for location shoots and foreign productions. But while Maghrebi cinema is generally more advanced than elsewhere in the region, it still does not have real international presence – intriguingly, one of the best places to catch new Moroccan films is the Fespaco, the biannual pan-African film festival in Burkina Faso.

In many cases, national film bodies – where they exist – have become decrepit bureaucracies. No country has followed the French model of taxing cinema tickets and using the revenues to fund local productions. Rasha Salti, the film festival programmer and curator, once wrote of Syrian cinema: “Film production is almost entirely controlled by the state, resources are scarce, and the output is as humble as one or two films per year. Efforts at international and regional distribution for exhibition and dissemination at best are dismal and mostly non-existent, the local network of theatres … is gravely dysfunctional.”

Virtually all of the Arab films aired at Cannes have been co-produced by France, or Belgium, or the Netherlands, or Britain. None is made with local money; European co-productions often try to assuage some colonial guilt.

The Middle Eastern film industry would benefit by a more philanthropic approach by local investors. Ghassan Salhab, the Lebanese filmmaker, an auteur who should be up there with Suleiman, once described the education of would-be filmmakers in the region as catastrophic. The film scholar Lina Khatib likewise points out the dramatically poor quality of scriptwriting as a severe limitation on the potential of Arab cinema.

All the film festivals in the world – the new ones in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha; the old ones in Cairo, Damascus and Marrakesh – will do nothing to improve Arab cinema unless serious attention is paid to conditions in which filmmakers work.

Festivals, after all, do not address education standards, intellectual property rights, fair wages and labour rights guaranteed for film crews, sources of funding, or the freedom to realise the stories, images and sounds that occupy a filmmaker’s imagination.

This year’s Circle Conference at the Middle East International Film Festival is Abu Dhabi in October will at least attempt to correct that deficit by discussing the financing of filmmaking.

Festivals may book plane tickets and hotel rooms and restaurants. They may even brand cities and help them weather the credit crisis. But in terms of enduring cultural product, all of this is beside the point. Cannes’s reputation is built on years of great film, and unfortunately, few of the building blocks are coming from this part of the world.

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie is an arts writer for The National

Habre's 'Village' wins top prize

North America's largest annual nonfiction fest, confab and meet, which ended Sunday, handed out 10 awards and over $52,000.

El Habre's doc focuses on his uncle, Semaan El Habre, who is the only person living in Ain El Halazoun, in the mountains above Beirut. After being besieged by Christian and Druze militias during the 1975-1990 civil war, the village became a ghost town as the inhabitants moved away and the buildings were destroyed or fell into disrepair.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- When the 10th London Palestine Film Festival opens this week, Londoners will have greater access to films made in the Palestinian territories than many people living in the region.

Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir's first feature film, "Salt of This Sea," premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2008.

Today, there is only one movie theater operating in the West Bank. Gaza has none.

The "Al Kasaba" theater in Ramallah is the only formal film venue for a population of nearly 2.5 million in the West Bank. Due to travel restrictions it is virtually inaccessible to the one and one half million Palestinians residing in Gaza.

It is estimated that about 80 percent of Palestinian children have never been to a movie theater, according to a report in The Christian Science Monitor.

With this lack of distribution, and hardly any formal funding available, producing a film within the Palestinian territories is a tremendous challenge.

Against the odds, the region's filmmakers completed three feature films and an estimated eight shorts in 2008 -- more than ever before. Local directors are determined to tell their stories and have adapted to cope with the region's difficult circumstances.

Lack of cinematic infrastructure

One of the greatest obstacles filmmakers face is a lack of equipment and crews. According to industry experts, directors in the Palestinian territories have little hope of competing with international news media over the limited resources.

"Crews who can work for international news organizations at very high salaries don't want to work for independent film makers," says director and coordinator of the Shashat's Women's Film Festival, Alia Arasoughly.

"They don't want to rent their equipment out for a 10-hour shooting day, when they can rent it out for just two hours and triple the price to an international crew."

As a consequence of this, filmmakers are looking to local residents for production assistance.

Annemarie Jacir's first feature film,"Salt of This Sea," which premiered last year at Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of an American woman who travels to Israel to visit the land where her grandfather lived before Palestinians were ejected in 1948.

The film was shot with a crew consisting largely of novices assembled by the director, including a former ambulance driver, a jeweler and a radio DJ.

"There were always discussions with my producers, who preferred bringing more experienced professional people from Europe in, and I insisted that I'd rather have locals even if they're less experienced," Jacir told CNN.

"We're trying to build something in [the Palestinian territories], and when things got tough, because they believed in what we were doing, they stayed."

During the shoot Jacir's team also received unexpected support from members of the local community, who brought them food and drinks in between takes.

"We even had the entire Palestinian police force blocking traffic; going out of their way to help us," remembers Jacir.

Restricted Mobility

A further complication faced by Jacir and her colleagues is the limitation on movement and access in the Palestinian territories.

Since Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israeli authorities have imposed varying degrees of restriction on the movement of people in and out of the territories, according to human rights group, Amnesty International.

In 2007, the year in which Jacir shot the majority of her film, Amnesty reported 84 manned checkpoints and 465 unmanned blockades within the West Bank alone.

As a result of these security measures, which the Israelis say are necessary to secure their country from Palestinian attacks, the production of "Salt of This Sea," a movie with over 80 shooting locations was logistically very complex.

In order to shoot the road movie lawfully, Jacir and her crew had to apply for permission to leave Ramallah.

"Every single crew member was rejected. So, just purely getting through the checkpoints and the logistics of keeping a film crew together was an obstacle."

Obtaining shooting permission was equally problematic. Permits for various locations including Jaffa were refused repeatedly -- a hindrance which did not deter Jacir.

"In some cases we just filmed anyway. We put the actors in a real situation and we just did it guerrilla-style. That's how most Palestinian filmmakers are managing to do their work," she told CNN.

A bright future?

While drawbacks such as a lack of funding, a lack of resources, and restrictions of movement would dissuade directors in many other countries, members of the growing film community in the Palestinian territories are forging bonds over the difficulties.

While Arasoughly and Jacir agree that it would be going too far to speak of a "national cinema" at this stage, they look to the future with great optimism.

The novice crew members Jacir recruited to work on "Salt of This Sea" have continued to find work in filmmaking -- a fact Jacir believes indicates an industry is gradually starting to emerge.

"I think there's a wave coming -- a lot of new filmmakers, a lot of people making documentaries and more experimental films, working together," Jacir told CNN.

Arasoughly, whose Shashat festival will enter its fifth year this fall, is equally hopeful.

"The fact that we, under the harshest of conditions in the Arab world, have been able to hold an annual women's film festival, and that hundreds of students come to our screenings means that people want their worlds to be expanded," she said.

Disney expands into Middle East

Studio in talks to fund, produce 'Storytellers'

By ALI JAAFAR

Disney is in advanced negotiations with Lebanese helmer Chadi Zeneddine to finance and produce "The Last of the Storytellers."

The Mouse House's first feature in Arabic will mark the start of an expansion drive by Disney execs into the region.

Pic, which will also be produced by Rachel Gandin, will draw on the Arab world's rich folkloric traditions. "The Last of the Storytellers" should go into production by the end of 2009.

Disney has big plans for the Middle East. The Arab world has a population of some 300 million people, and with two-thirds under age 30, the market is a natural for family-friendly Disney fare. Disney expects to announce two more Arabic-language features in time for the fifth edition of the Dubai Film Festival, which unspools in December.

"There’s a lot of opportunity for us in the Middle East," said a Disney exec, who insisted on anonymity. "There’s a lot of room for growth for us. It’s the international territory that we’re most excited about expanding into."

Disney may be the first of the majors to announce its Middle Eastern plans, but the other studios are also seriously eyeing the region.

Read Full Article

The Evening Class: Michael Hawley's Preview of the Arab Film Festival

BEIRUT: Tripoli-born filmmaker Randa Chahal Sabag died in Paris on Monday after a years-long struggle with breast cancer. At a mere 55 years of age, Sabag's passing is nothing if not premature.

Like many filmmakers from Lebanon and the wider Middle East, where the film industry is either non-existent or financially proscribed, Sabag's is a small oeuvre. With a half-dozen international film festival prizes under her belt, it is also a critically significant one.

Sabag began her career with documentary film but she'd started to turn her attention to feature films by the 1990s, though she retained a documentary-maker's nose for contentious subject matter.

Her 1997 drama "Les Infideles" is a case in point. It tells a story of the relationship between a French diplomat and a former Islamist who agrees to turn over the names of his erstwhile colleagues if the French government will release an imprisoned friend. Made for French television, the movie dwells on the passionate attraction between the former militant and the (married) diplomat, and the ensuing seduction of one by the other. (...)

Her greatest commercial and critical success came in 2003 and the release of "The Kite," which was nominated for the Golden Lion at the 2003 Venice Film Festival and won three other prizes - the Grand Special Jury Prize, the Cinema for Peace Award and the Laterna Magica Prize.
Set in an anonymous Qunaytra-like South Lebanese village, the film recounts the story of an arranged marriage between Lamia, a 15-year-old Lebanese Druze girl, and her Israeli Druze cousin. The drama unfolds under the watchful eyes of a pair of Israeli Arab border guards, one of whom is played by Lebanese composer-actor-playwright Ziad Rahbani.

By Elaine Pasquini

Michel Shehadeh (Staff photo P. Pasquini.)

"I'm definitely going to put everything I can into this project," Michel Shehadeh told the Washington Report in a recent interview. "I want to make the Arab Film Festival not just an Arab-American cultural event, but an American cultural event and an integral part of the art and culture scene as seen through Arab lenses and eyes."

Sitting in the film festival's office in San Francisco's hip South Park district, the new AFF executive director spoke excitedly about his goals and ideas for the United States' oldest independent Arab film festival. "I want to institutionalize and stabilize the film festival in terms of revenue and financial resources and make it the focal point of Arab films," he explained. "It is our job to bring quality and award-winning films to American audiences, and we need more than the Arab-American community to attend. Our aim is to reach the general public."

Shehadeh served six years as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's western regional director, but the Palestinian from the West Bank town of Birzeit is perhaps best known for his 20-year persecution by the U.S. government which ended last year, when the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed all charges against him (see Jan./Feb. 2008 Washington Report, p. 45).

More than 100 films from Arab countries, as well as Europe, the United States and Canada, have been submitted for the 12th annual festival, which will run Oct. 16-31 in San Francisco, Berkeley, San Jose and Los Angeles. "This overwhelming response from so many countries contributes to the diversity of the festival," Shehadeh noted. "There is a renaissance in Arab filmmaking with the first independent Jordanian film, first Saudi and first Bahraini. People are becoming more interested in seeing films and stories coming from the Arab world made by Arabs in both the U.S. and Europe. It's happening and it is an exciting time for us."

Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Labels: Film Festivals, Lebanon

Labels: Film Festivals, Los Angeles

Also of interest, "In January, DreamWorks Animation announced a billion-dollar strategic alliance with Dubai-based real estate company Tatweer to develop a range of tourism and leisure projects. Universal, Paramount, Nickelodeon and Marvel have all planted their flags in the UAE in the past 12 months. In October, Warner Bros. inked its own multibillion-dollar, multimedia deal with Abu Dhabi-based company Al-Dar. In addition to the now-customary real estate aspects, it also included a $500 million production fund and a $500 million vidgame fund as well as coin for Arab-language features."

Read the full article in Variety here.

Labels: Film Festivals