UAE documentary, Champ of the Camp, to screen at New York’s CBGB festival

It’s in the nature of cinema that once a film finishes its run in cinemas, people tend to assume it’s just gone away until the inevitable DVD release and move onto this week’s releases. Perhaps even more so for indie directors, whose films may get a limited theatrical release, inspire a few noble cinephiles, and then disappear into the annals of under-appreciated movie gems. Right?

Maybe not, judging by the latest news from the camp of Mahmoud Kaabour, director of 2013’s intimate study of the musical aspirations of Dubai’s labour camp population, Champ of the Camp.

The movie, you may recall, followed a group of Dubai labourers through an inter-camp singing competition, premiered to an oversubscribed Burj Park crowd during last December’s Dubai International Film Festival, became the first locally produced feature documentary to achieve a UAE cinema release the following month, picked up rave reviews from the likes of The Guardian and Vice, and then presumably went back into its box. Right?

Well, no, not quite. Among other things, the movie has, since its DIFF unveiling, had its European premiere in Munich, found its way onto OSN’s schedules locally and, most recently, screened at the New Taipei City Film Fest in Taiwan, among others. The latest news about the movie is perhaps the most exciting yet though, as The National can exclusively reveal it has now been selected to screen at New York City’s biggest festival, the CBGB Music and Film Festival.

The festival, for the uninitiated, is the phoenix-like resurgence of the seminal NY club of the same name that is widely-regarded as the birthplace of punk rock. The original club, founded in 1973, gave early opportunities to artists as globe-conquering or genre-defining as The Ramones, Patti Smith, Suicide, Television, and the list goes on.

Original article:

UAE documentary, Champ of the Camp, to screen at New York’s CBGB festival