Скачать или смотреть Amateur film festival celebrates 50th anniversary

(19 Aug 2014) A Tunisian film festival, billed as the "Cannes" of the amateur film-making industry, is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Enthusiasts are flocking to the coastal town of Kelibia for this year's event.

The audience cheers at the burning flames and what they represent - 50 years of championing amateur film makers.
Since 1964, an amateur film festival has been held in the quiet, Tunisian coastal town of Kelibia.
Alternating years, national and international amateur films have been shown here until coming together as one festival in 2009 and renamed the International Amateur Film Festival of Kelibia (FIFAK).
This year, the town has come alive with street performers and circus artists, to mark the start of the half-century celebrations.
More than 1,500 people are attending the event, organised by the Tunisian Federation of Amateur Filmmakers.
The festival is said to be one of the world's oldest amateur film festivals.
Without a dedicated film school in the 1960s, the festival became the only space to screen and discuss films in Tunisia, as well as helping to establish relationships between filmmakers and their audiences.
Many filmmakers credit the festival with training them - from the technical side to the more theoretical concept and message of film making - and some say it even helped kick-start their own careers.
"The festival is an open window to all the cinema experiences from around the world and it is the equivalent of the Cannes festival for amateurs," explains Habib Mestiri, a Tunisian filmmaker and documentary maker.
The opening night has also been paying tribute to one of Tunisia's own; French-Tunisian street artist Bilal Berreni, also known as "Zoo Project."
He has become well known as an artist who painted scenes from Tunisia's 2011 revolution, before being found dead in Detroit in July 2013.
His documentary "C'est assez bien d'�tre fou" or "It's good enough to be crazy", directed alongside the French filmmaker Antoine Page, is being screened.
Amongst those attending this year's event is Tunisia's Minister of Culture, Mourad Sakli.
For the organisers, the festival is special because it's not afraid to embrace all genres of film making.
Meryem Sardi is President of FIFAK and in charge of the festival programme.
"The fact that this festival believes in youth to give them the power to produce or to try to produce their view of things is one of the specificities that makes us love this festival as well," she says.
There's a strong national and international presence at the festival.
The programme is divided into two competitions - one for home grown film makers, and another for foreign film makers, from neighbouring Morocco, as well as France, Lebanon, Brazil, Russia and Spain.
It's a chance for them to meet and exchange ideas.
"My objective is to meet filmmakers like me from other countries who share the same concerns, the same problems and who have the same goals," explains Mohammed Oudghiri, a Moroccan amateur filmmaker.
For others, its identity as an amateur film festival is significant.
"It's a very important festival because it brings one of the most important things in cinema, which is the cinema of resistance, of liberty, after the amateur perspective, as a symbol of a cinema which is not bound by the commercial ties or the priorities of the market," says Julio Lamana, a Spanish amateur filmmaker.
Lamana is also on the jury for the international competition.
This year sees 62 films competing, with the winners being announced on the last day of the festival.
FIFAK runs until 23 August 2014.


Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...