Steps are afoot to establish and develop film industry in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region, Mamdouh Salem, Director General of Jeddah Film Festival and noted Rawad Media filmmaker, said here on Sunday. “During the Jeddah film festival 2009 we will announce the slogan ‘we made film industry around the Gulf' with an aim to establish the local cultural cinema and to support cinema in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf,” said Mamdouh. The main aim of this film festival is to present local and Gulf cultural cinemas. “We will show Saudi and Gulf movies which wholly respect our culture and traditions” he said. “We want to test the talents of our youths in this field through this film festival and to encourage the creative talent of our youth so that they can compete on international level,” said Mamdouh. “This time the presentation of Jeddah film festival will be an experiment on the basis of the Gulf film festival and will continue to build a bridge between the cinematic experience of Gulf, other Arab countries and to compete internationally,” he said. Mamdouh also said all the events of the festival will help establish movie industry to serve Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries. The official festival will have the following competitions to participate – long feature film competition, documentary, contest for the three short films, feature animation and advertising contest in culture and trade. “Another competition was announced at a press conference earlier, an award from the local magazine to the author of screenwriting and film directing,” he recalled. The scenario of the feature film competition deals with the issues of Arabs and Gulf societies. A new logo for the festival has also been announced with the addition of the figure (4) in the middle of the eye in reference to the role of the festival which started its journey in 2006. Mamdouh Salem recently toured the USA and Britain in order to deal with a number of academic specialists in the field of film industry and to hold training workshops on filmmaking. “We felt the need for the director and academic specialists and international experts to establish the foundations of scientific media,” he said. “We are working on the rehabilitation of a generation of young directors to serve our country, Gulf and Islamic societies by highlighting the Arab cultural, traditional and Islamic civilization,” he said.
