The relationship between the film festival circuit and cinema from/in the Middle East has seldom been studied. Bill Nichols developed his study of reception patterns at film festivals and the “discovery” of new cinemas using the example of Iranian cinema (Nichols 1994, section 1.1; Nichols 1994, section 8). Jeffrey Ruoff has described the Carthage Film Festival as a festival focused on the promotion of Arab (and African) film (Ruoff 2008, section 6.3). Azadeh Farahmand (2002, 2006) has presented a very detailed analysis. Farahmand takes the increasing attention paid to Iranian cinema since the 1990s as a starting point to examine how socio-economic factors and institutional politics, especially those facilitated through international film festivals, contribute to the production and elevation of films and national cinema. Key issues she touches on are the problem of censorship, (inter)national financing of film productions through the film festival circuit, and political negotiations via cultural exchange (Farahmand 2002).
Along with franchising prestigious universities and museums from Europe and America in the last few years, several film festivals have been established in the Middle East as part of a larger cultural shift in the project to transform the oil region into a big cultural player. Next to older events like the Haifa IFF (25 in 2009) in Israel, Cairo IFF (33 in 2009) in Egypt, and the Fajr International Film Festival (2009 in its 27th edition) in Tehran, Iran, several new festivals have been established in recent years: for instance in 2000 the Marrakesh IFF was started with support from King Mohammed, and more recently several well-funded festivals in the emirates: the Dubai IFF, started in 2004, established itself as a platform for Arab cinema and added the Dubai Film Market in 2008; in 2007 the Middle Eastern International Film Festival (MEIFF) was launched in Abu Dhabi; in 2009 the Doha Tribeca Film Festival opened in Qatar (cf. Jaafar 2009). There is obviously research needed for these new players on the festival circuit regarding their relationships to other festivals and their impact on the regional and world film (festival) industry.
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(Last updated: 18. April 2024)