Doha Rolls Out the Red Carpet with Tribeca Film Festival

August 31, 2009

On Monday, a representative of Qatar’s Doha Tribeca Film Festival said the Gulf state hopes to create a film hub for regional artists that will include education initiatives and community involvement, reports Reuters. Qatar is looking to become a cultural capital of the Gulf region, and establishing an annual film festival might assist it in doing just that.

The Doha Tribeca Film Festival, the first ever in Qatar, will begin October 29th and will feature approximately 10 Middle Eastern films and 30 films in total. Amanda Palmer, Executive Director of the festival, says that the film festival will not be like other competition-based festivals held in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, which are modeled after Cannes, but will instead be more “community minded.”

“We want to create a hub where filmmakers can stay,” says Palmer. Palmer is aware of the many talented, budding filmmakers in the region and wants to give them a space to learn new methods and engage with the community. “There are also existing filmmakers so we need to give them a higher level of engagement and education, workshops, scrip-writing developments, producer-investor networking and distribution,” she said. And Qatar will be the type of place that could welcome such a project.

Saudi Arabia, a Gulf state bordering Qatar, attempted to hold its own film festival back in July but it was cancelled per the instructions of the interior ministry. Although the Jeddah Film Festival had taken place 3 years in a row, pressure from conservative clerics finally took a toll on the event. They believed that foreign films might showcase immoral behavior and some went as far as to say that films are inconsistent with Islam.

In the less conservative Qatar, The Doha Tribeca Film Festival seems to be welcomed with open arms thus far. It will be a great venue for local and regional artists to showcase their films in the midst of foreign company. Middle Eastern filmmakers often have a hard time reaching an international audience, but Qatar is on the track of helping to rocket them to the world.

Photo: KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images