ABU DHABI // The team behind the first Emirati-Indian film will be casting for lead roles this weekend in Dubai Media City.
The local film-maker Nayla al Khaja has announced that her new project would be Mallal, a short film about a young Emirati couple who travel to southern India on honeymoon. The young wife is bored - that is what Mallal means in Arabic - so she looks to the local community for inspiration. Her trip takes a dramatic turn on the last day.
"Our aim is to produce a top-notch visual masterpiece that will act as a calling card for our next project," said Ms al Khaja.
The film-maker decided to explore the relationship with the Gulf and South India because of the large number of expatriates from this region living in the UAE. She submitted the script to the Gulf Film Festival and in April was awarded first prize in the script writing competition for Emirati Short Films. After receiving funding and support from twofour54, the content creation zone in Abu Dhabi, Ms al Khaja travelled to Kerala to scout out locations. Her shoot there, beginning in August, will mark the first time an Emirati film director has filmed abroad in India.
Auditions for three lead roles - the Emirati couple and an adult Indian male - will be held Saturday from 9am until 6pm on Saturday. Apply to wafa@d-seven with headshot and contact details.
aseaman@thenational.ae
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
