Home
ERBIL, Nov. 29 (AKnews) - “It wasn’t in the job description to enable the people of Kurdistan to eat popcorn and watch movies,” quipped British Consul-General Chris Bowers in his speech opening the first annual British Film Festival in Kurdistan.
However for three days this is just what he has managed to do. Along with festival co-directors London-based film financier Phil Hunt and Kurdistan Regional Government U.K. representative Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Bowers has brought silver screen magic to Erbil.
Cinema screens are absent from Kurdistan Region’s capital, for now. The founders’ hope their festival will seed an indigenous movie industry, allowing a creative industry to blossom in the country.
Barham Salih, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister, pledged his support for next year’s film festival and for establishing infrastructures to nurture Kurdish movies and moviemakers.
In his speech at the closing of the festival Hunt revealed his grand scheme for the future. He has devised a program to build a sustainable film industry in the city. “At its base is training,” he said. Hence the workshops organized by London’s National Film and Television School, he added, which have been running concomitantly to the screenings at the festival.
This chimed with the rationale behind calling the intensely moving film Son of Babylon an “Iraqi-British production”. The movie was shot in Iraq and written, directed and starred Iraqis. However the director Mohammed al-Daraji and producer Isabelle Stead could not find financing in Iraq and had to turn to the U.K. for their funding.
To found a film industry means building it from the ground up, al-Daraji told AKnews. “You need good promotion and distribution, funding and post-production to be in place,” he said. He confirmed film festivals like the BFFK are a good start.
The necessity for such an industry in Kurdistan and in Iraq as a whole was succinctly explained in the gorgeous The First Movie, the festival’s closer. The film’s auteur Mark Cousins, in a letter to a boy in Kurdish village of Goptapa, says: “You live in Iraq. Few places need re-describing more than that.”
For too long Kurds have had their stories told to them by foreigners, Rahman told AKnews. This will be the opportunity for them to tell their own stories. “We have told our stories verbally in the past so you can see how cinema would fit in with that.”
The organizers of the Festival hope to build on the start the BFFK has made. Hunt announced he will return to London and begin working on a business plan to present to the KRG.
Top of the list is a film fund to finance Kurds to make movies. Hunt continued: “Beyond that are studios, distribution and cinemas…I will be putting forward ideas [to the KRG] including quotas so cinemas and TV stations in Kurdistan have to show a certain number of Kurdish productions.”
The hope is, said Hunt, to export Kurdish cinema to the world and then bring foreign companies in to Kurdistan to set and shoot their films in the Region.
By Jack Serle
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
However for three days this is just what he has managed to do. Along with festival co-directors London-based film financier Phil Hunt and Kurdistan Regional Government U.K. representative Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Bowers has brought silver screen magic to Erbil.
Cinema screens are absent from Kurdistan Region’s capital, for now. The founders’ hope their festival will seed an indigenous movie industry, allowing a creative industry to blossom in the country.
Barham Salih, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister, pledged his support for next year’s film festival and for establishing infrastructures to nurture Kurdish movies and moviemakers.
In his speech at the closing of the festival Hunt revealed his grand scheme for the future. He has devised a program to build a sustainable film industry in the city. “At its base is training,” he said. Hence the workshops organized by London’s National Film and Television School, he added, which have been running concomitantly to the screenings at the festival.
This chimed with the rationale behind calling the intensely moving film Son of Babylon an “Iraqi-British production”. The movie was shot in Iraq and written, directed and starred Iraqis. However the director Mohammed al-Daraji and producer Isabelle Stead could not find financing in Iraq and had to turn to the U.K. for their funding.
To found a film industry means building it from the ground up, al-Daraji told AKnews. “You need good promotion and distribution, funding and post-production to be in place,” he said. He confirmed film festivals like the BFFK are a good start.
The necessity for such an industry in Kurdistan and in Iraq as a whole was succinctly explained in the gorgeous The First Movie, the festival’s closer. The film’s auteur Mark Cousins, in a letter to a boy in Kurdish village of Goptapa, says: “You live in Iraq. Few places need re-describing more than that.”
For too long Kurds have had their stories told to them by foreigners, Rahman told AKnews. This will be the opportunity for them to tell their own stories. “We have told our stories verbally in the past so you can see how cinema would fit in with that.”
The organizers of the Festival hope to build on the start the BFFK has made. Hunt announced he will return to London and begin working on a business plan to present to the KRG.
Top of the list is a film fund to finance Kurds to make movies. Hunt continued: “Beyond that are studios, distribution and cinemas…I will be putting forward ideas [to the KRG] including quotas so cinemas and TV stations in Kurdistan have to show a certain number of Kurdish productions.”
The hope is, said Hunt, to export Kurdish cinema to the world and then bring foreign companies in to Kurdistan to set and shoot their films in the Region.
By Jack Serle
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
