JEDDAH, 19 June 2007 -- Organizers of the first annual Saudi film festival, The Jeddah Visual Shows Festival that took place last July, are currently making final preparations for this year's festival to be held over the summer.

The organizer of the event, Mamdouh Salem, director and executive manager of the Ruwaad Media Company, said that dates have not been finalized yet. "More details are going to be announced in coming days," he said.

Over 30 short movies are going to be screened this year. Sixteen movies were shown at last year's festival. Along with Saudi and Gulf movies, the festival is also going to show Russian films with English subtitles.

Organizers said they are trying to learn from past mistakes. Last year the festival took place over a month and only showed movies during the weekends. "This year the festival is going to run for four days," said Salem, adding that he made the decision after looking at the format of film festivals held in other Gulf and Arab states.

"Most of these festivals last only for a week to ten days and so we thought four organized days are better than a month," he said.

Speaking about the location of the festival, Salem said, "We were unlucky in not being able to find a well-equipped place last year. So, this year the show is going to take place at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry's auditorium. It's a better location."

Visitors to the festival last year complained about the modestly equipped hall at the Jeddah Science and Technology Center on the Corniche. They said that the sound was often unclear, especially during the showing of the award winning Saudi movie "Cinema 500 Kilometers" by Saudi Director Abdullah Al-Ayyaf. Salem said that movies would begin during the afternoon and run until late at night. He added that cinematic seminars and sessions would be held in the mornings.

Last year, when asked about the reason for the ambiguous and misleading title, Salem said, "We can't say that we have Saudi cinema. These films are mainly experiments by amateurs, who want to express themselves through movies."

Speaking about this issue with the Arab News this year, he said, "We took a license last year to show movies under this name and so we are building on it. We can't change it now."

For the second year running, single men will not be able to attend the event, which is only open to families. Highlights of this year's festival also include a competition.

In the past year, the Kingdom has seen the production of several short Saudi films, which have been shown at Literary Clubs in Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah and at The Saudi Society of Arts and Culture in Riyadh.

Dammam's Literary Club has uniquely established a film club that shows award-winning movies to men and women in separate halls.

All of the showings are attended by a small literary audience and none have stirred opposition except once when the crowd objected to the showing of an Iranian movie called "At Five in the Afternoon."

This movie was replaced by an American documentary called " March of the Penguins."

Movie theaters have been banned in the Kingdom for over 20 years. In recent times, the film festival and literary clubs are the only public venues in which Saudis and expatriates can watch films. However, these venues do not attract vast numbers since they only show certain independently-made short movies.

By Ebtihal Mubarak

© Arab News 2007