Baghdad to host first film festival after 2 years

Baghdad will play host to an international film festival next month, the first major cinematic event in the war-ravaged capital in more than two years.

Films for the Baghdad International Film Festival will be submitted mainly from Egypt, Jordan and Iran. The event is being organised by the Association of Iraqi Filmmakers Without Borders and will run from December 16 to 19 at a venue still to be decided.

Egypt's High Institution for Cinema (HIC)'s television channels one and two, as well as some private production companies will be sending their productions to the Baghdad festival.

"The HIC will participate with 27 films, including nine feature films and eight cartoons," director Dr. Abdul Basit Salman, who is based in Egypt, told AFP.

"These films have an academic stamp and most of them deal with students' non-conventional thoughts and trends. They are mainly experimental short films produced by HIC students as graduation projects."

Director Salman added that the festival will be showing many Iraqi films in the DVD format while Egyptian film will be converted from the 35mm or 16mm standard.

He stated that the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN from 1990 to 2003 had kept the country isolated from technology and cinematic technical development.

"Most Iraqi cinemas screened films using data-show appliances, which is how the Baghdad film festival will show films."

Iraq's film industry dates back to the 1940s and was at its most popular in the 70s and 80s, when cinema-going became a weekly family outing. With this festival, filmmakers hope to once again revive this art form.

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