RSSThe Dubai International Film Festival, known as DIFF in short, happened for the first time ever in 2004. Since the inception of the event, it has grown to the popularity of the most popular film festivals held across the globe. The DIFF kicked off with the theme of ‘Bridging Cultures, Meeting Minds’ and currently, the film festival is maintaining this theme. This theme has attracted and is still drawing many people around the place.
The mission of the Film Festival is something like this. “Celebrate excellence in cinema, using it as a medium to promote open dialogue between cultures and nations. To nurture and develop local and international talent, accelerating and fostering growth of the industry, while also providing an invaluable cultural benefit to the people of Dubai and the UAE.”
The event aims to develop cultural understanding by means of creative achievement in the movies, which have paved way for the incredible and marvellous growth of the number of participating movies and nations as well as the attendees at the festival.
The event which kicked off in 2004 had just 22,000 attendees, which grew to nearly 50,000 by 2008. The number of registrants also witnessed a tremendous growth from 750 in 2004 to 1800 plus in 2008.
The Dubai International Film Festival attracts journalists, reporters as well as other media people along with abundant film makers, actors, script writers and other people of the industry. While the number of media persons who attended the DIFF in its first edition was just 450, in 2008 the number had touched to an astounding 1165.
The number of nations that were present at the first edition of the DIFF were 27 while when the 5th edition of DIFF happened in 2008, the number had grown to 66.
The Dubai International Film Festival has definitely established a podium for the presentation and honouring the excellence in the field of cinema from nations across Africa and Asia. The film festival places more importance to budding, independent and outstanding talents from African and Asian nations while their programmes and competitions are being held, thereby providing a chance for them to showcase their talents.
The speakers at the Dubai International Film Festival is, in general, a perfect blend of people from science, media and cinema, who are in for a social change The insights they share with the attendees and participants definitely provide the latter with a new enlightening for the world of cinema.
The Dubai International Film Festival 2010
Six editions of the Dubai International Festival have completed successfully with each year bringing in more popularity for the event. 2010 marks the 7th edition of this film festival. The event has been slated to kick off on the 12th of December, 2010. The festival will take place for a week and the curtains for the event will fall on 19 December, 2010.
The 7th edition of the DIFF will be screening numerous movies from across varied platforms with more than a dozen of themes like Arabian Nights, Gulf Voices, Cinema for Children, Cinema of the World, Cinema of AsiaAfrica, Lifetime Achievement and Cinema from India.
Two of the most competitive programmes - Muhr Asia Africa Programmes as well as the Muhr Arab – will be featured at the Dubai International Film Festival 2010. These programmes offer prize money worth $575,000 in the fields of acting, cinematography, editing, scriptwriting as well as music. These awards are in addition to the awards presented by the jury of the DIFF.
DIFF 2010 is slated to be held in union with the Dubai Studio City. The other primary sponsors of the DIFF 2010 are the Dubai Pearl, the Dubai Duty Free, the Madinat Jumeirah and the Emirates Airline.
