BIFF 2013 OPENING CEREMONY

Posted on October 7, 2013

The 5th Baghdad International Film Festival: October 6-10, 2013 OPENIN CEREMONY

 

The 5th Baghdad International Film Festival (BIFF) opened with a grand ceremony October 5 at the Palestine Hotel – bringing the world’s cinemas to the screen in the city once known as Dar Alsalam, City of Peace.

The BIFF opening ceremony featured a musical performance in traditional Iraqi dress by the Iraqi musical group “Dnizad”, followed by the screening of 14 films, mostly shorts. In attendance were diplomatic guests including the ambassadors to Iraq from Japan, the Netherlands and France, representatives from the United States Embassy to Iraq and the Indonesian Embassy to Iraq, the Deputy Ambassador of the Arab Republic of Egypt in Iraq, and the Iraqi Minister of Culture.

BIFF will screen more than 150 films, having received over 500 submissions from 50 countries.

101 films are being judged by an international jury in 6 official competitions: Long Fiction, Short Fiction, Documentaries, Human Image (films with a human rights focus), Arab Women Filmmakers (11 films by Iraqi and Arab women filmmakers) and New Horizons (35 young Iraqi filmmakers, students and semi-professionals exhibiting their short dramas and short documentaries). 1st and 2nd prizes will be awarded in each category.

This year there are also three BIFF guests of honor:

Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) is the BIFF Guest Program, screening 13 films from its competition. SIFF has been fostering a worldwide community of cinema since its founding in 1976.
Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival – France in Baghdad. BIFF will screen a selection of the festival’s award-winning short films.
“Why poverty?” A selection from 8 documentaries commissioned from award-winning filmmakers and 30 shorts from new and emerging talents dealing with issues surrounding poverty. The “Why poverty?” provocative films were shown around the world in November 2012 on more than 70 national broadcasters and are now available online to view for free.

On Monday, October 5, BIFF hosted its first panel discussion “The 3rd Eye: Reporting a Changing Arab World (Middle East and North Africa) with mediamakers Laura Silvia Battaglia and Angela Boskovitch. They discussed their style of reportage writing and documentary journalism that seeks to narrate the stories of this region from within, navigating the complicated public/private spheres. Laura Silvia Battaglia is a Milan-based journalist and documentarist with 20 years’ experience reporting from around the world and Angela Boskovitch is a Cairo-based writer, researcher and cultural curator. Monday’s second panel discussion with Canadian-Lebanese filmmaker Katia Jarjoua looks at Young Filmmakers in the ARTE Filmmaking Project in Baghdad, whose intrepid films are part of the BIFF program.

The festival also presents the annual Baghdad International Competition for Photography (BICP), works by photographers working around the world chosen in an international competition that focus on social issues, culture and the environment. As part of its obligation to be part of the larger Iraqi community, often excluded from the arts and culture, there will also be a BIFF Workshop for Iraqi Orphans featuring art and animation cinema.

BIFF runs from October 6-10.