A film festival for Iraqis filmakers in Milan
by manuela scebba
I want to expose to your attention this event: a film festival for Iraqis will take place in Milan (Italy) on 11-14 October. Since i live in Damascus i met many iraqis refuges. Many of them are journalists and film-makers, we started with some film-projection and we realized: Why don't show in Italy these movies?
The stimulus for Offline: Baghdad emerged from the firsthand accounts of Iraqi filmmakers, journalists and fixers of the physical and emotional fragmentation of their homeland and their compelling need to communicate the reality of life on the ground in today’s Iraq.
The daunting testimony of the risks that they face while filming and reporting in Iraq and the risks they pledge to continue to face cemented a strong commitment to project their voices to outside audiences. Equally, the accounts of these individuals coupled with the fact that they face kidnapping, threats and death in the line of their work made it clear that the testimony of these individuals must be told and told in the first person.
One of the key goals of Offline: Baghdad is contribute funds raised to the Italian NGO, Emergency’s work in Iraq as well as to The Committee to Protect Journalists towards a fund specifically earmarked for Iraqi journalists, fixers, translators and documentary filmmakers in crisis.
Iraqi filmmakers, journalists and performing artists will be invited to Milan, focusing on their work, the risks they face, and their eyewitness accounts of the reality of living and working in today’s Iraq. These are not stories from the Green Zone – the center of the heavily protected international community– they are the missing words and images on Iraq today as told directly by Iraqis themselves. The programming of Offline: Baghdad will also include the Italian début of the acclaimed dance performance(s) of “The Crying of My Mother,” and “Bald Headed.”
Currently, Offline: Baghdad is working in partnership with the Italian NGO, Emergency, The Crimes of War Project, and The Committee to Protect Journalists as well as soliciting the involvement of Open Society Institute (OSI), Witness, Locarno Film Festival (Open Doors), The Berlinale Co-Production Market, Internazionale, Al Mada Publishing, The Iraq Film Company, Independent Film and TV College – Baghdad, il Manifesto, The International Federation of Journalists, and The Rory Peck Trust and other potential sponsors and partners.
"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
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September 01, 2007 19:53 GMT |
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