A Travelling Festival of IFTVC Students' Films in Iraq
As we said previously, we were hoping to mount a travelling festival of our students' films in the autumn/winter of 2010 in Iraq. In the event, it took longer than we anticipated to raise the funding, but now we are able to go ahead.
With generous support from the Heinrich Boell Foundation, the Goethe Institute Iraq, HIVOS and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture, we will be holding our film festival in April/May 2011.
For further information, please visit our special festival website www.dffiq.com
Student Films Win Awards at Imperial War Museum Festival
6 of our students' films were submitted to the annual film festival at the Imperial War Museum in London and we were delighted when Ahmed Jabbar's film, DR NABIL, won the Audience Award and Emad Ali's A CANDLE FOR THE SHABANDAR CAFE won first prize. It was impossible to get visas in time for the 2 directors to come to London to receive their prizes and so they were accepted on their behalf by Maysoon, one of the founders of the school.
Films made in collaboration with Goethe Institute - Iraq
Following on the success of the collaboration between the 2 founders of the school with the Goethe Institute in Khartoum on their one-off documentary film course in winter/spring of 2010, the Goethe Institute in Erbil approached the school to see if something similar could be done in Iraq. This time the aim was for participants to make a series of short documentary films on the theme of human rights in Iraq, as part of the German Institute of Human Rights 'Human Rights Matter' project.
BAGHDAD FILM SCHOOL, the documentary film which Dutch director, Shuchen Tan, made about the school, was completed in early summer, 2010 and broadcast on VPRO in the Netherlands and subsequently has been shown at the Dubai International Film Festival and at a Human Rights film festival in Prague. The film is a sympathetic, thoughtful portrayal of the school and of the personal lives and aspirations of its students. They were asked by Shuchen to make video diaries, and these were included in the final film.
