The Doha Film Institute (DFI) is creating a new festival in the spring, devoted to finding and supporting filmmakers on their first and second films. Making an announcement at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is showing four films made with the DFI?s assistance, the DFI chief executive Abdulaziz Al Khater said the Qumra Doha Film Festival, scheduled to run from March 19 to 26, 2014, will focus on emerging directors from around the world. "Our mission is to develop filmmaking in Qatar and the Middle East," he said. "By expanding it to the world, our hope is to create a place for emerging filmmakers - it doesn?t matter where they come from - to bring a multitude of cultures and backgrounds together to embrace and focus on the same kind of activity. The idea is to inspire creativity. It?s really about the artistic quality of the films and nothing else."
The DFI has appointed three programme advisers, Paolo Bertolin (Asia Pacific), Violeta Bava (Central America, South America and the Caribbean) and Cary Rajinder Sawhney (the subcontinent), to augment its team seeking out films and filmmakers for the first edition of the competition that is open to first- and second-time directors.
* David D'Arcy
artslife@thenational.ae
