DIFF to launch encyclopedia of Arabic cinema

The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) has launched an online poll of the region’s most prominent film critics, writers, novelists, academics, and other cultural figures, who will collectively nominate the best 100 films of Arab cinema from its beginnings to the present day. The initiative was launched to mark the tenth anniversary of the festival.

The resulting 100 films will be documented in an Arabic-English cinematic encyclopedia, to be released during the festival’s 10th anniversary edition, which will take place December 6-14, 2013.

DIFF Chairman Abdulhamid Juma stressed the importance of the project, the first of its kind in the Arab world: “The encyclopedia project provides an exceptional opportunity to identify the glorious milestones in the history of Arab cinema as judged by today’s most prominent cultural commentators. Since DIFF’s inception, our core mandate has been to support and nurture Arabic cinema, and we yearly recognize its greatest practitioners with our Lifetime Achievement Awards programme. A poll of this nature is key in documenting, promoting and preserving the Arabic cinematic legacy, for Arabs and non-Arabs alike.”

More than 1000 cultural specialists, including a select handful of non-Arab experts in the area, will be invited to participate via a special voting system, whereby each will select the 10 most important feature or documentary films in the history of Arab cinema. The list of candidate films will include all Arab cinema productions in all Arab countries, as well as co-productions between Arab and foreign filmmakers, providing the subject matter relates to ‘Arab’ themes and the director is of Arab descent.

The Cinematic Encyclopedia will list the best 100 films, accompanied by scholarly and critical text from the Arab world’s most prominent critics, including historical data, information on the conditions of the productions, and background on the key creatives that made the films possible.