Female filmmakers generate 40% of DIFF?s content

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Female filmmakers generate 40% of DIFF s content --

Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:19

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Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) programmers have announced that 40% of the films in the festival s Arab programming segments were directed by women. As a result, this makes the region one of the most advanced for female filmmakers in the world.

Masoud Amralla Al Ali, the festival s artistic director, said that there were no initiatives at DIFF promoting filmmaking by women and that the festival had focused on promoting the best cinema in emerging markets.

He explained, It is well known that around the world the directing side of the film industry is male-dominated, which is evident in the fact that Kathryn Bigelow was the first female director to win an Oscar in 2010, one hundred years after moving pictures were invented.

The criteria for our awards and funding programmes are innovative stories, solid budgets, and a high level of technical acumen. Gender doesn t come into it. Although we are situated in a part of the world that is stereotyped as the most patriarchal, we seem to be generating a lot more films by women here than in the West.

Worldwide, Arab female directors have been highly visible in recent years because of breakout success stories such as Lebanese director Nadine Labaki s Where Do We Go Now, the highest-grossing Arab film ever, and Saudi director Haifaa Al-Mansour s Wadjda. Al Mansour s film is Saudi s first entry for the Foreign Language Oscar and the country s first feature by a female director.

Al-Mansour had to direct from inside a trailer to keep hidden in keeping with Saudi religious laws. The unusual conditions of the production of the micro- budget film with a universal story resulted in international attention.

At DIFF, the Palestinian creative documentary My Love Awaits Me by the Sea by Mais Darwazah, explores love and belonging, while Sara Ishaq s The Mulberry House exposes the changing dynamics in her relationship with her father in the patriarchal Yemeni society.

The increasing number of women behind the lens means an altered take on life in the region from a female perspective.

A number of female filmmakers at DIFF are presenting their second or third features. Cherine Dabis and Najwa Najjar both won prizes for their first entries, Amreeka and Pomegranates and Myrrh respectively, and their second offerings are embarking on the same successful international runs as their debuts did.

Compiled with input from more than 475 of the region s major film critics, writers, novelists, academics and other arts professionals, Cinema of Passion, also includes a film directed by a woman, namely The Silences of the Palace by Tunisian Moufida Tlatli. Produced in 1994, this was the first film to be directed by an Arab woman.

Visit www.dubaifilmfest.com for more information on films at DIFF.

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