The Tunisian National Office for Tourism has teamed up with the country's own Star Wars fan club to stage its first Star Wars encounter in the country. Participating fan clubs from Europe will feature the parade in the capital and then film screenings and events in Tunisia's deep south, home of the sets from several Star Wars movies. by Paul Schemm and Bouazza Ben Bouazza
Imperial stormtroopers are set to march through Tunisia's capital as part of a new effort to attract tourists and burnish the image of this North African country.
Related
Their parade ground is downtown Tunis' stately, tree-lined Bourguiba Avenue, where young activists fought squads of riot police in 2011 during their Arab Spring revolution.
Wednesday's parade is not a case of the empire striking back against the poster child for Arab democracy in North Africa, however, but part of an innovative new campaign to bring tourists back to this sunny nation.
We did this campaign to take advantage of these sets which are unique in the world - the only sites from the movies remaining, said Zied Chargui, director of the National Office of Tunisian Tourism and one of the brains behind the new efforts to attract tourism that go beyond subway billboards in European capitals.
The campaign began with Tunisia's own video of recording artist Pharrell Williams' wildly popular Happy song, featuring Star Wars characters dancing around Tunisian tourist sites and the sand-covered desert movie sets.
The video has been viewed 1.7 million times since it was posted in March and was tweeted by Williams himself.
It created a global buzz which makes us very happy, said Chargui, saying the idea was to remind the world that Tunisia's has more attractions aside from beach resorts. We will try to keep working on this idea up until the release of the 2015 film, he said referring to the seventh episode of the franchise expected next year.
The original 1977 Star Wars was filmed in Tunisia, with protagonist Luke Skywalker's home planet borrowing its name of the nearby town of Tatouine. New sets were built for the 1999 Phantom Menace episode as well as its 2002 sequel but the new film will not be filming in Tunisia, apparently over concerns with stability. Some scenes are now being shot in Abu Dhabi.
After President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown in 2011, Tunisia was rocked by labor unrest, terrorist attacks and political assassinations, which devastated the key tourism sector.
In the past few months, there has been a return to stability, and a renewed effort to bring back tourists. Contributing 7 percent of GDP and employing 400,000 people, the sector is considered key to saving the country's battered economy.
Tourist numbers have been gradually rising since the industry nearly collapsed in 2011 but the 6.2 million arrivals in 2013 are still 9 percent less than 2010. The latest campaign seeks to publicize desert tourism and, of course the Star Wars sets.
It's our first convention and we will see if we can make it annual, said Abderrahman Ameur, the director of Tunisia's year-and-a-half-old Star Wars fan club who worked with the tourism office on the campaign. We met, we talked about what we could do and we did some brainstorming.
Folded into the campaign is an effort to save one of the sets which is slowly being engulfed by a roving sand dune. Started by a local tourism organization, the campaign includes a crowdsourcing website seeking to raise $188,000 to clear away the dune and restore the fictional settlement of Mos Espa from the 1999 film - near the Tunisian town of Tozeur.
Chargui, the head of the tourism office, said that the campaign is only the first in a series of new promotion plans coming from his office.
There are many young Tunisians with many ideas and when we finish with Star Wars, then you will see others, he said.
http://www.chieftain.com
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
12/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air seven Athletes Unlimited Softball...
12/06/2026
The United Football League will host its FAST Innovation Suite at the 2026 United Bowl presented by Credit One Bank on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. ET at Audi...
12/06/2026
PTZOptics and LayerJot will present live demonstrations at InfoComm 2026 showing how natural-language AI prompting, robotic camera control, and on-device comput...
12/06/2026
MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will exhibit at InfoComm 2026, featuring...
12/06/2026
Ateme has announced that Eurovision Services is using Ateme's software-based frame-rate conversion technology for international live event workflows. The de...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin and Simplestream have announced a partnership with Xperi to simplify the launch of OTT streaming services on TiVo OS smart TVs and devices. The collabo...
12/06/2026
Net Insight has announced that a multinational technology company is deploying a...
12/06/2026
MLB Players Inc., the business arm of the MLB Players Association, has announced a partnership with Athletes First to develop and sell brand partnerships across...
12/06/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D) and VuWall have announced the CommandKeyboard-Advanc...
12/06/2026
Comcast Smart Solutions announces a new smart technology deployment with Major L...
12/06/2026
Elevation Worship completed the initial leg of its Elevation Nights 2026 tour ...
12/06/2026
AJA Video Systems has announced KONA IP25 support for Colorfront Transkoder and ...
12/06/2026
Audinate Group Limited (ASX: AD8) will exhibit at InfoComm 2026 (Booth C7321, Ce...
12/06/2026
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has announced the appointment of Scott Adametz as Chief Technology Officer. The Pac-12 describes the hire as the first CTO appo...
12/06/2026
Grass Valley has announced AMPP Edge Live, a production system combining Grass Valley hardware, NVIDIA Blackwell GPU acceleration, and AMPP OS in a single platf...
12/06/2026
At one time a trailblazer with the launch of the Longhorn Network, the Universit...
12/06/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
12/06/2026
Chyron has announced PAINT 10.4, an update to its illustrated replay and sports ...
12/06/2026
SVP, Production Mark Gross: With the new schedule, with not having every Sunday night, it's given us an opportunity to take a step back and reimagine what ...
12/06/2026
For Televisa Technical Engineering Manager Roberto N nez Ibarra and the small team of 12 technicians and two production personnel at the IBC things are already ...
12/06/2026
Simple Steps to Better Acoustics - Taming The Small Room
Most of us mix in spare rooms and small spaces, where the acoustics fight us at every turn. At Gear...
12/06/2026
Latest addition expands vintage-inspired effects palette
Meris' Ottobit pedal range draws its inspiration from vintage gaming consoles, and the latest a...
12/06/2026
Soundbox-based chamber strings series expanded
Sonora Cinematic have just announced the launch of the second instalment in their Soundbox-based chamber stri...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
AJA Announces KONA IP25 Integration with Colorfront Software
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Collaboration enables uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 I/O ...
12/06/2026
URSA Cine 12K LF Used to Create Visuals for STUTS' K-Arena Concert
Brie Clayton June 12, 2026
0 Comments
Organic visuals projected on a giant scre...
12/06/2026
MTI FILM Acquires Mango New Edit, Expanding its Global Post-Production Services ...
12/06/2026
AI Point Tracking Speeds Up Complex VFX Tracks in Mocha Pro
Jessie Electa Petrov June 12, 2026
0 Comments
The 2026.5 release adds automatic point trac...
12/06/2026
Bitmovin, a provider of video streaming solutions, has partnered with Simplestream, a provider of OTT and broadcast solutions, and technology provider Xperi, to...
12/06/2026
Leostream Corporation, creator of the world-leading Leostream Remote Desktop Access Platform, today announced Jigsaw24, a leading B2B IT solutions provider wit...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/06/2026
How Aussie indie games and screen are levelling up with IP 11 June 2026
Ari Harrison, Pro Jank Footy
Head of Games Joey Egger and Ari Harrison of Umbrella sha...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils First-Look Images from Villaflor, Santiago Mitre's New Film
Entertainment
12 June 2026
GlobalArgentina
Link copied to ...
12/06/2026
Back to All News
Cross the Boundaries of the Real World into the Spirit Realm i...
12/06/2026
With John Daro, DI Colourist at Warner Bros. Water Tower Color Tuesday 23 June, 10am-1pm or 3-6pm
Restar Corporation
Tokyo
Register here
John Daro is the ...
12/06/2026
Meet The Grumpy Onion Ireland's newest online sensation, all he wants is to ...
12/06/2026
RT stays Up All Night with brand new daily 2026 FIFA World Cup Vodcast
Adding to the fun around 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament, RT has launched a brand new d...
12/06/2026
A fentanyl countermeasure that adapts to combat future black-market drugs Scripps Research scientists developed a vaccine that teaches the immune system to rapi...
11/06/2026
The immense size of the tourney and its Atlantic-spanning operation also disting...
11/06/2026
Nielsen has released a new soccer fandom consumer research report, The Fans Behind The Game: FIFA World Cup 2026 Edition, examining the soccer audience in the...
The Tunisian National Office for Tourism has teamed up with the country's own Star Wars fan club to stage its first Star Wars encounter in the country. Participating fan clubs from Europe will feature the parade in the capital and then film screenings and events in Tunisia's deep south, home of the sets from several Star Wars movies. by Paul Schemm and Bouazza Ben Bouazza
