BY LENA NAHLOUS
SYDNEY — The first Sydney Arab Film Festival will showcase international and local contemporary films, as well as experimental and documentary films. The festival will include classic Arab films loved and watched by Arabic-speaking audiences in Australia, contemporary short films made by Arab-Australians, documentary films about social and political issues and new films from the Middle East which have never been viewed in Australia.
The festival will be held at the Village Roxy Cinema, Parramatta, beginning Friday April 6 and running to Sunday April 8. Negotiations are underway for the festival to be screened in other states.
The festival is being presented by Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Information and Cultural Exchange, Fairfield Community Resource Centre and the Powerhouse Museum. It has been funded by Parramatta City Council, the NSW Film and Television Office, Village Roxy Cinema, Liverpool City Council and the NSW ministry for the arts.
Organisers hope that the festival will attract first-generation migrant Arabs who lack opportunities to watch films from their countries of origin in their first language, Arab Australians who lack exposure to films which reflect their experiences and other Australians interested in the issues explored by the films.
The goal of the festival is to reflect the diversity of the Arab Australian community. Despite the Arabic-speaking community's position as the largest ethnic community in NSW, there has been minimal self-representation through cinema and film. Yet, film and television persists in portraying negative stereotypes of Arabs and their culture.
The festival seeks to redress this by screening films that present Arab and Arab Australian experiences, produced by local and international Arab filmmakers.
The Australian produced films challenge the mainstream "sunburnt country" images of Australian life with "cutting edge" films that have an energy drawn from the experiences of two cultures. Last year, the Australia Council for the Arts released a report which found that Australian television and cinema continues to promote a monocultural image of Australian society. This film festival seeks to challenge this. The festival also seeks to challenge stereotypes of Arab culture in the Middle East.
The Sydney Arab Film Festival is being held in Sydney's western suburbs because that is where the majority of the city's Arabic-speaking people live. Well-known Parramatta-born and raised actor Doris Younane will launch the festival.
Among the local filmmakers whose work will appear in the festival are Paula Abood, Patrick Abboud, Anna Bazzi, Fadia Abboud, Claudia Chidiac, Maissa Alameddine, Marian Abboud, Mayza Hamdan and Joanna Saad. Films made in Tunisia, Morocco, Palestine, Lebanon, Algeria, Iraq, France and the United States will be part of the program.
For more information phone (02) 9683 2225 or email <ccd@pnc.com.au>.