JEDDAH, 13 July 2006 — Saudi Arabia’s first film festival kicked off yesterday at the Jeddah Science and Technology Center in a media-only event of around 50 people consisting of both men and women.
“The First Visual Show Festival”, which is running for four weeks, began yesterday to an audience of movie scriptwriters, directors, actors, film producers and anyone else related to the movie industry. Organizers have arranged an interesting lineup of rare and unique films including action movies, dramas, narrative movies, human-interest films, comedies and cartoons.
In his opening speech, the deputy manager of the Jeddah Science and Technology Center, Muhammad Salam, said, “We are expecting the entire festival to be a huge success. Many people have called and expressed their enthusiasm. We hope to show full-length movies, documentaries and even short movies.”
Salam stressed that all movies conform to Saudi traditions and culture. “The films are considerate of the values and traditions of Saudi Arabia. This is an impressively unique and rare collection of movies that we didn’t know about before and carries a meaningful cultural message different to the nonsense that we see on satellite TV,” he said.
Four films — Sida, Taxi, The Last Piece and The Lost Dream — were shown yesterday. The festival will run for the next four weeks on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
Organizers hope to show five movies on every Wednesday and Thursday and six movies on Fridays. All movies will be shown with English subtitles.
Prior to screening his film, Muhammad Bazaid, the Saudi director of “The Last Piece”, dedicated his black and white silent movie to the slapstick-comedy-legend Charlie Chaplin. Bazaid mentioned how he admired Chaplin’s style of filmmaking and that this was his first ever movie. The Last Piece was filmed in Alkhobar in the Eastern Province.
Bazaid’s film has already been shown in an Arabic film festival in Holland and also in the UAE Film Festival where the Saudi director received an appreciation award.
Organizers mentioned that the first-ever Saudi female movie director — Haifa Al-Mansour, who also acted in the film Taxi — was invited to the event but was unable to attend. Haifa is appearing in a film festival on July 22 to be held in Paris.
Salam said the center hopes to make the festival an annual event but are not sure whether it should be held in the summer. “We are going through a testing process to see when the best time would be. We might change it to another time of the year,” he said.
Organizers say that holding the festival each year would be a real test to see what the outcome of the future of Saudi cinema.
The film festival is open to families only. Salam said special arrangements would possibly be made for singles.
