More English films needed to enhance status of the Dubai film festival
Posted on 13 December 2010 with no comments from readers
Last night the seventh annual Dubai International Film Festival kicked off with a red carpet viewing of The King’s Speech, a British drama starring the famous English actor Colin Firth who also attended the event.
There was also a free public screening on the Jumeirah Beach in the open air for the first time, only marred by the hopelessly amateur local TV coverage of the red carpet arrivals before the main feature in which the presenters hogged the limelight. The arriving guests were largely ignored and either filmed too far out or only with their legs visible. For a film festival such poor camera work was ironic, to be charitable.
Professional make-over?
However, the whole DIFF could do with a rethink and a professional make-over. Used correctly such film festivals can be great attractions and focus the spotlight on a city. Think of Cannes in France and you think immediately of the film festival.
Why not the same for Dubai? But then Dubai would have to stop pretending to be the heart of Arabian culture and redefine itself as a global, multicultural city. That should not be difficult for it is the reality of modern Dubai.
English speaking city
Most people in Dubai speak English, and it is the second language for the minority that do not. To foist Arabic on the film festival as the main language is ridiculous. Dubai’s main asset as a cultural centre is as an English language speaking city in the Middle East, and that is what will bring in a global audience.
This is surely what Dubai wants as it struggles to fill its hotels. Besides it is a truth that non-English speaking film directors hate to admit, but most of the world’s best and most popular films are in English. If you do not give them prominence at a film festival it is always going to be in the second or third division.
So why not make the DIFF a mainly English language event with a strong showing for Arabic films? Leave Arabic to cities like Doha and Abu Dhabi that are less international. The chances are that this would attract more, and not less attention for the local genre by casting the net for the DIFF audience much wider.
