JEDDAH — The Dammam Literary Club with the cooperation of Saudi Society of Arts and Culture will hold an annual five-day Saudi film competition starting on May 20, club board member and poet Ahmad Al-Mulla said yesterday. The first such competition organized officially will also include five days of screenings of Gulf and Arab films in various genres.
A prize called “The Palm” will be awarded to the best short narrative and documentary. Special recognition will also be given to the best screenplay in hopes that this will help raise funds to send the script to production.
There have been smaller and more informal movie screenings in recent years, but this competition will mark the first time film critics from the region will be invited to participate. In 2006, the first public screening of films took place in Jeddah since movie theaters were banned in the Kingdom in the early ’80s following a surge of conservatism.
The privately sponsored event in 2006 was titled “The Jeddah Visual Shows Festival,” consciously avoiding the word “film” or “movie” in the title. This time, no such reservation is taking place, and the government rather than the private sector is officially underwriting the competition.
Earlier this month, answering a question by a member of the consultative Shoura Council, Culture and Information Minster Iyad Madani denied that his ministry had anything to do with any proposals to lift the current ban on movie theaters in the country. “The ministry has nothing to do with this and never discussed such a thing,” he said.
For the past two years, the Dammam Literary Club — one of a dozen government-sponsored literary clubs scattered across the Kingdom — has been hosting Sunday film screenings. The films are shown with men and women seated in different halls. “We received around 25 Saudi short movies so far,” said Al-Mulla. “Some has been screened and others are waiting in line.”
Al-Mulla said the motivation for the upcoming competition is to underscore the growth of locally-filmed independent productions.
“Someone has to initiate efforts to gather the movies that are being made now in the Kingdom by independent groups, which most of the time are not linked with each other,” he said. “This efforts need to be preserved, encouraged and taken care of.”
As of yet, Saudi filmmakers are getting more support abroad than at home. Locally produced films, such as last year’s “Keif Al Hal” or “Cinema 500 km” were featured at Gulf festivals while wholly ignored at home.
Award-winning director Abdullah Al-Eyaf, who is a member of the founding committee of the coming film competition, said that the main goal behind the competition is to bring new movies and fresh talents to the surface.
