With less than two months to the debut of Tropfest Arabia, Tropfest founder John Polson tells BroadcastPro Middle East about the film festival.Tropfest was first started in Australia by Polson 20 years ago and he pointed out that the film festival’s goals remain constant regardless of region. He stated: Our aim is the same everywhere […]
With less than two months to the debut of Tropfest Arabia, Tropfest founder John Polson tells BroadcastPro Middle East about the film festival.Tropfest was first started in Australia by Polson 20 years ago and he pointed out that the film festival’s goals remain constant regardless of region.
He stated: Our aim is the same everywhere and that is to empower people to tell stories. For way too long filmmaking was about money, you needed major resources to make a film and then the mobile came along and anyone could tell a story, and they did tell a story.”
Tropfest Arabia 2011 is scheduled to begin in Abu Dhabi on November 4 and is open to nationals of Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The event is supported by twofour54 Abu Dhabi.
Stated Polson: We have been working on it (Tropfest Arabia) for a while, it had been in discussion for a couple of years and now its official. The responses and comments on the Facebook page and Twitter have been great. In Australia, the festival has become very well established. Tropfest has done a great deal for Australian filmmakers and there are many success stories; many have begun with screening at Tropfest. It has become a ubiquitous part of the Australian film industry.
However, there have been some challenges while setting up the event in the region.
Its a challenge to start any event new, when we started(Tropfest in Australia) it was tough , no one had heard of us and it was difficult to set up meetings. The Middle East is the same, no one has heard of it, when you walk around Abu Dhabi or Dubai. The challenge for us is explaining the vision and platform and building something from scratch in a new territory.
The jury for the film festival has recently been announced and includes UAE filmmaker Nayla Al Khaja as well as Egyptian actor Ahmed Helmy.
Stated Polson: We had a lot of interesting discussions with our partner twofour54 about who are interesting people in the region, filmmakers or actors who have had success in their careers are exciting talent and offer varied perspectives from the region.”
Polson added that Tropfest Arabia will be a platform for expression and that he would be stunned if the recent developments in the Arab world do not have an effect on the content of the films. This is obviously a very interesting and important time, he stated.
