From Origami to learning how to eat with chopsticks, children attending the ‘World and I' festival became fascinated by foreign cultures. “I made a crane, look!” said an existed 9-year-old Nawar Al-Kaoud, after sitting at the Origami Japanese corner. “She taught me how to fold the paper to make a bird.” The Origami, Japanese art of folding paper, was a hit not only among the children but also the adults. The five-day festival held at the King Fahd Cultural Center was the first children's festival in the Kingdom organized by the Ministry of Culture and Information and the King Abdul Aziz Public Library. “The aim of the festival is to introduce children to the world around them and the world outside,” said Hind Khaleefah, head organizer. “We have two foreign embassies participating, the Japanese and the German embassies.” If the aim of the festival was to get children excited and curious about other cultures it worked. Children and even adults were seen waiting in line to make an Origami box while others even asked the Japanese representatives to write their children's names in Japanese on a piece of paper. Some 13 German cartoonist's art works were displayed at the festival. Sybille Hein, Nadic Budde and Ayel Scheffler were just three of the famous artists displayed. A Japanese motion picture with English subtitles and an Iranian feature film with Arabic subtitles were among the films presented to the children during the festival. “It was weird watching the Japanese movie, but I still understood the story,” said 12-year-old Jamilah Ghanim. “The purpose of the movie was to introduce the children to other cultures and languages and the story is universal,” said Khaleefah. __
