14 December 2005
DUBAI: Grosvenor House is a posh hotel housing several guests at the Second Dubai International Film Festival, which opened on Sunday and runs through Saturday, December 17. The hotel didn't exist when the festival was launched in December of 2004. It could be a metaphor for this festival, indeed for the city-state of Dubai itself, one of several that spring from the sand to knock you across the side of the head within hours of arriving here.
Like Dubai, whose skyline is dotted with oases of high-rise construction cranes, the DIFF - in festival shorthand - has grown.
Last year it featured 80 films of South Asian and international provenance as well as Middle Eastern cinema. The diversity of the program reflects the image of "Cultural Bridge" that Dubai cultivates and which the DIFF has chosen for its motto, laudable enough these days, when it seems many such bridges are being burned.
In 2005 the bridge theme has been elaborated with a program of 98 films, with new sections dedicated to European, East Asian and African cinema. The number of sections dedicated to films from the Arab world has also been expanded. The "Arabian Nights," "Arabian Shorts" and "Emerging Emiratis" sections are complemented by "Dubai Discoveries."
Programmed by veteran Iraqi film critic Ziad al-Khuzai, "Dubai Discoveries" has a self-consciously activist bent, setting out to provide a platform for young, nonmainstream Arab filmmakers while highlighting the challenges they face in finding money to get their films made.
So there is evidence that the substance of DIFF is thickening. An opening night visitor might be forgiven, though, for being distracted by the glitz.
The DIFF nerve center at the Madinat Jumeirah Arabian Resort was redolent with the stuff on Sunday. An 80-meter-long red carpet was laid in anticipation of the opening-night screening for Hany Abu Assad's "Paradise Now" - about how alienation drives a pair of young men to become suicide bombers - and the star-studded soiree that followed.
Organizers said they were expecting over 800 VIPs, whose numbers included luminaries like veteran actor Morgan Freeman - who adorned last year's DIFF and comes fresh from the 2005 Cairo Film Festival - Laurence Fishburne, Terence Stamp, Constantin Costa-Gavras and media mogul Sumner Redstone.
Then there were the great and the good from the Arab film industry. Led by iconic Egyptian comedian Adel Imam, who is being honored this year with his own retrospective, Cairo's representation was bolstered by Noor Sherif, Yousra, Hanan Turk, Mona Zaki and Hind Sabri, among others. A number of South Asian film personalities were also apparently in attendance.
"Apparently," because this constellation of stars was either cleverly disguised or had been spirited away to an even more exclusive remove. Their absence notwithstanding, the opening night soiree was opulent a la Dubai.
The venue was an island in the midst of the Madinat Jumeirah complex. A real island, accessible by bridge from the conference center, it is ringed by an artificial lagoon that runs through the complex and is plied on a regular basis by electric-powered abras that ferry guests around.
The nosh is varied but seafood was everywhere, draped decoratively on strategically placed walls of ice. Other less-utilitarian ice sculptures were deployed around the island to gradually melt for the guests' pleasure.
Sculptures of cameras, clap-boards and miscellaneous wildlife - Kamran, a Pakistani gentleman manning a saj oven and steaming dishes of seafood paella, was kept company by a dissolving giant seahorse - glistened in the 20-odd-degree temperatures like ads for global warming.
Ubiquitous ice sculpture is a reprise of last year's DIFF, when more than one guest observed that this ephemeral flourish was a particularly apt decoration for Dubai's first film festival.
Rumors emerged during the 2004 DIFF that the gross budget was somewhere in the range of $10 million, quite a bit for film festivals hereabouts. Though unconfirmed, they inspired questions about what was in store for 2005.
"What you figure the budget is this year?" you ask.
"I can't tell you," Sharif answers, "because I don't know."
Sharif is from ASDA'A, the international public relations firm whose staff play a prominent role in running this festival. A DIFF trench warrior, Sharif usually looks somewhat haggard but this evening he is resplendent in a tuxedo.
"Obviously the resources are bigger than last year," he continues. "We've twice the number of sponsors. We're screening more films, we've twice the guests." He gestures around him. "Then there's this."
Some time later, while interrogating an Italian DIFF employee, all hands suddenly cast their collective gaze skyward to a silver-clad woman dropping head-first from the sky.
She paused and struck a classic trapeze-babe pose for the spotlights crisscrossing the sky in time to the Arabic pop music the DJ was spinning. She spun a slow pirouette, and then the helium balloon she hung from bore her aloft.
Repositioning herself into a nose-dive posture, she veered abruptly back toward the handycams and mobile telephones that had been raised to capture the moment.
The balloon itself was tethered to a lagoon barge navigating its way through the dark waters surrounding the island. The trapeze artist's close encounter with the crowd was the work of a beefy man in a black T-shirt who, with mighty exertion, pulled the lame lady and her silver balloon back to the ground. Dubai, replete with metaphor.
