JEDDAH: What used to be called that “Jeddah Visual Shows Festival” has been renamed the more accurate “Jeddah Film Festival,” according to Director Mamdouh Salem, executive manager of the Ruwaad media company for audio and visual production, the organizers of the event.
The two-year-old festival, which takes place over four days beginning on Tuesday at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has been the only local venue to watch films publicly since movie theaters were shut down in the early 1980s.
“This year the Ministry of Culture and Information agreed to register and run the festival with the new title. The festival is progressing step by step as we planned from the beginning,” said Salem.
The changing of the title might seem like a trivial matter, but considering that movie theaters are banned in the Kingdom, organizers have been cautious about how the event is labeled.
This year’s film festival will include 68 films, mostly shorts, including Saudi works as well as Gulf films and international productions. The festival will also feature a series of workshops.
Al-Arabiya channel, the media sponsors of the event, is going to hold a workshop free of charge and open to the public by Al-Arabiya Director Fadi Ismail on developing a filmmaking budget.
Writer-director Robert Tutak, Manhattan Film Academy founder and president, will be offering workshops on script writing, directing, acting techniques and other film-related subjects.
The festival began in Jeddah in 2005 through the efforts of the private sector. It received cautious official encouragement as long as the content of the films adhered to cultural norms.
While Saudi Arabia had a modest number of movie theaters through the 1960s, the theaters began waning after a surge of conservatism beginning in the mid 70s. The last theaters were closed in the early 80s.
Recently, Jeddah malls have seen the installation of large digital screens with seating where family oriented films are to be shown on a regular basis. Many Jeddah cafes, predominantly in their men’s sections, have large televisions that sometimes show movies.
