Qatar will have a taste of Manhattan on Thursday at the opening of the emirate’s first major cinema event, the Doha Tribeca Film Festival – featuring Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Ben Kingsley.
The brand new festival kicks off with the first Middle East showing of “Amelia, directed by Indian Mira Nair and telling the story of the aviation pioneer Amelia Erhart.
One partner in the project is New York’s Tribeca Film Festival, named after a neighborhood of Manhattan and founded by De Niro in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York in 2001 in a bid to reinvigorate the cultural life in the area.
The Qatari government is the other partner and Doha festival spokeswoman Tammi Rosen stresses: “It is not Tribeca festival replicating itself in Doha.
“We bring experience but we have a full team in Doha. The local culture is embedded in the festival, she said.
The opening will take place in an open theater which can accommodate 3,000 people, built especially for the festival on the man-made island housing the Islamic museum of Doha that was designed by the American-Chinese Ieoh Ming Pei, the architect of the Pyramid of the Louvre museum.
Danny Boyle, Patricia Clarkson and Egyptian actress Yousra are among celebrities who will parade on a digital red carpet, replacing the traditional woven walkway into film festivals.
All films shown during the four-day gala will be projected on outdoor screens, either on the beach or in the reconstructed old souk of Doha, where Shadi Abdel Salam’s classic Egyptian 1969-movie “The Mummy will be aired.
Eleven films from the Middle East are among the 31 pictures selected for the festival.
The jury will award two top two prizes worth $50,000 each, with one going to the best international film and another to the best Middle East film.
Animation film “Assila by Iraqi Thamer Al-Zaidi is among films having their worldwide first showing in Doha.
Oliver Stone’s documentary “South of the Border, a bio-pic of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is showing for the first time in the region.
A recent surge is the number of regional cinema events means that some entries have already been shown at other Gulf events.
“The Son of Babylon by Iraqi director Mohammed Al-Daradji, a road movie about a mother searching for her vanished son, was initially presented in the Abu Dhabi film festival in October.
Abu Dhabi wrapped up the third edition of its movie extravaganza on Oct. 17 while Dubai will open the sixth edition of its international film festival on Dec. 10.
The Gulf galas, feeding on the vast resources of their oil-rich countries, are eclipsing older Arab film events, such as those of Cairo and Damascus, which are coming up soon.
“What makes Tribeca different is our focus on the local audience – a long term investment in building a film industry, underlined Rosen, noting that workshops have been set up to support emerging film makers.
