And no, I’m not talking about the bustling Souq Waqif on the eve of Ramadan!
Read MoreThe Qumra class of 2024, captured in the courtyard of the Museum of Islamic Art
The Qumra Diaries: Lessons from the Masters
From violence in cinema, to not watching films at all once you’ve made one, there were shocking and cool revelations at this year’s DFI industry meet, featuring filmmakers Jim Sheridan, Leos Carax and more.
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Jim Sheridan, Leos Carax, Claire Denis and more at Qumra for this year's DFI industry meet up
Plus Atom Egoyan fresh from the Berlinale and Academy Award nominated sound designer Martín Hernández, all to give Masterclasses while in Qatar.
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A still from ‘Mornings in Jenin’, a series project participating in this year’s Qumra event
The Doha Film Institute's Qumra 2021 goes global with its virtual edition
For film insiders the Qumra event — held once a year in Doha, Qatar and bringing together industry experts and filmmakers from all over the world — was always a highly anticipated time to put on our calendars. But in the age of pandemic, where we need all the inspiration we can get to simply continue onward, Qumra has become a lifeline.
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Katara Opera House on the opening night of Ajyal Film Festival in Doha, Qatar
Doha's Ajyal Film Festival Opening Night: We may be socially distanced but our cinematic hearts beat as one!
This year, the Doha Film Institute has managed to put together a hybrid online and in person (for Qatari residents only) version of its annual Ajyal Film Festival dedicated to young audience and there was even a red carpet last night and an opening ceremony. I’m sharing the video of the latter below.
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Fatma Al Remaihi, CEO of the Doha Film Institute, flanked by the managing team of the Ajyal Film Festival
Doha's Ajyal Film Festival aims to make educated audiences out of today's youth
I believe wholeheartedly that we are what we watch. It’s been my mission to find works of art on the big screen — and on the little one now through Netflix and the likes — that will make life better. I mean, we can all remember that moment, as children, walking out of a theater having watched our favorite character or cartoon on the big screen and feeling an extra bounce in our step. I still experience that these days, whenever I watch something really special. I walk out of the darkened theater into the light of day — as a film writer most of my viewings are done during the day — feeling like anything is possible.
So when the Doha Film Institute kicked off their Ajyal Film Festival in 2014, I went to Qatar to experience the wonder first hand. It was everything I hoped it would be, children and young adults as juries, films that although made for all ages, could really infuse younger minds with a message of peace and hope. You know, an idealist film writer’s dream come true.
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A still from ‘Femmetasia’ by Mouhssine El Badaoui
Five projects from this year's Qumra I simply cannot wait to watch
The yearly, five days long Qumra event in Qatar, held by the Doha Film Institute each March is that rare occasion for those of us who write about cinema to connect with the filmmakers, producers, film programmers, sales agents and festival directors who make the magic happen. Don’t misunderstand me now, I think film journalists and bloggers are equally to praise or blame for great movies being made. Our collective word, the reviews and interviews we manage to sell to publications or feature on our blogs, can create a movement that reverberates around the world. I know colleagues who pride themselves on making or breaking someone’s career. It’s not nice, but it is true. Take the case of Gianfranco Rosi’s ‘Below Sea Level’ and the infamous Variety review that ensured the film never made it to a cinema near you — a fact the filmmaker mentioned in his Masterclass at last year’s Qumra.
That said, in Doha there is a great energy created by the powers that be of the DFI, which allows journalists to relate to the film projects in such a personal way that it’s impossible thereafter to dislike it or even ignore it.
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A still from Hamida Issa’s ‘Places of the Soul’
The Qumra Diaries: Souq Waqif, "from desert to desert", Alice Rohrwacher and Kiyoshi Kurosawa
On my last day in Doha, I spend the afternoon wandering around the Souq Waqif which I learned from a local filmmaker, literally translates as “the stand up souk.” In the olden days, before Qatar turned into the international, cosmopolitan country it is today, the sea would come straight into the alleys of the souk so the merchants had to stand up and pick up their wares during the tides. Thus the name, and actually while I wandered around checking out the shops, having a shawl sewn from a traditional flower fabric by a local tailor while drinking a karak chai (cardamon infused milky tea) and eating a chapatti flat bread filled with zaatar, I felt like I was transported back to those early days of the pearl divers and their haunting songs of the sea.
Doha is special place. I’ll never get tired of saying it. And their annual Qumra event, organized by the Doha Film Institute is sheer cinematic magic. Qumra is a meeting place, a five-days long networking session, a place to pitch, secure financing and ensure a screening chance for film projects. But it is also an occasion to recharge our collective passion for the movies. For journalists, producers and of course filmmakers, the atmosphere at Qumra offers an almost electric energy, a jolt of renewed hope in the future of the 7th art.
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Eugenio Caballero talks with Richard Peña during Qumra
The Qumra Diaries: Eugenio Caballero and Pawel Pawlikowski share their filmmaking wisdom
When I look at the title of this piece, I feel overwhelmed myself. I mean, it would be pretty wonderful to just hear one of the these two men who are such Maestros in each of their professions give a Masterclass. But when you get them both, within 24 hours of each other, on a stage, talking to the equally wondrous Richard Peña, well, you have cinematic magic.
Or more precisely, what you have is the Doha Film Institute’s annual Qumra event.
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The Qumra Diaries: Discovering Agnès Varda in the land of cinema
It is obvious from the moment one steps on a Qatar Airways aircraft that cinema is important in Doha. I mean, just going through the entertainment system on my particular flight, I found ‘Rebecca’ by Hitchcock, Barry Jenkins’ hauntingly touching and all too true ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’, Paul Dano’s intimate portrayal of a family struggling to remain a single nucleus ‘Wildlife’ and even the 2019 Best Picture Oscar winner ‘Green Book’.
Qatar knows good cinema and nowhere is that better understood than in the welcoming arms of the Doha Film Institute.
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Hanaa Issa with filmmaker Elia Suleiman at a DFI event
"This is the environment where films flourish": Talking Qumra 2019 with Hanaa Issa in Berlin
Ever since its creation in 2010 on the peninsular country of Qatar, the Doha Film Institute has been revolutionizing cinema in the Region. The word “revolution” is never a sign of good things in the Arab world and yet at DFI, they should welcome the term when it comes to describing the work they’ve been doing almost singlehandedly to create and foster a healthy cinema culture in the Arab world. And beyond.
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The Qumra Diaries: The life lessons learned and great persons met, thanks to the Doha Film Institute
As of my very first steps at this year's Qumra, around the Souq Waqif, spent inside the Date Market fair and eating a bowl of fragrant Moroccan fava bean soup at a nearby restaurant, to my very last moments wandering inside the Hamad International Airport drinking an espresso with a fellow journalist, Doha gave me the very best she has to offer. And that's pretty darn sensational in a country that can count culture, fashion and heritage at the top of its list of priorities.
From the brand new, still partly in construction National Museum of Qatar rising out of the sands, and shaped like a Desert Rose, the crystallized rock that is formed when lighting hits the dunes, to the institution of the Museum of Islamic Art, where most of the Qumra events and masterclasses are held, to the leisurely, harass-free environment of the Souq itself, I felt like I was being coddled in a cocoon of culture and learning, one that would definitely remain with me for months to come.
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Gianfranco Rosi gave a Masterclass at this year's Qumra
The Qumra Diaries: Wisdom from the Masters with Tilda Swinton and Gianfranco Rosi
The greatness of Qumra, the annual industry event held by the Doha Film Institute to help connect, inspire and encourage filmmakers, lies in its diversity of activities. From the daily working breakfasts with some of the most well-respected festival directors and programmers, sales agents and producers to the Masterclasses with cinema greats, from its Qumra Talks to the networking sessions held each afternoon just around the corner from my hotel, there is a buzz of activity at any given moment and even a non-filmmaker like me can feel the excitement of great cinema in the making.
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Sofia Coppola (left) and Kirsten Dunst on the set of 'Marie Antoinette', photographed by Brigitte Lacombe
The Qumra Diaries: Brigitte Lacombe and the power of a photograph
I know that a Diaries series is meant to go chronologically, yet there are moments when the rules need to be broken.
For me, hearing master photographer and longtime Doha Film Institute collaborator Brigitte Lacombe talk about cinema and fashion from a photographic point of view was one such moment. I could not wait to get home and write about the pleasant afternoon I spent in her company -- along with a theater-full of attendees of this Qumra talk -- and her sister's, video photographer Marian Lacombe.
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Tilda Swinton and Cameron Bailey
The Qumra Diaries: Tilda Swinton, the Museum of Islamic Art and to Doha, with love
From the moment I boarded the Qatar Airways plane in Fiumicino, I realized I was being transported somewhere special. I also knew my journey, as both a film writer and a human being, would be a life changing one.
To begin with, the airline offers Karak chai -- a milky tea infused with cardamom or saffron to taste -- and a choice of films that included 'Murder on the Orient Express', the new version by Kenneth Branagh. Not what I would have gone to the movies to watch it but at 30 thousand feet, flying over lands and bodies of water I'll probably never set foot on or swim through, cup of fragrant tea in hand one's taste adjusts. And I even found myself crying through some of Branagh's Hercule Poirot moments.
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Elia Suleiman, photo courtesy of the Doha Film Institute
"If a director can come away from the event enchanted and inspired": Elia Suleiman and Hanaa Issa talk Qumra 2018
They say if you want to learn about something, go to the source.
For filmmakers in the Middle East, but also around the world, Elia Suleiman has long been the Oracle, the man with a knowledge to create momentous cinema, cinema that can change the world. Suleiman is the most brilliant source today of modern Arab cinema, the kind that breaks across borders and tears down the divide -- as his frequent trips to international film festivals and award ceremonies have proved.
So I thought, if it works for filmmakers, it could work for me. I shall ask Suleiman about Qumra myself, so I can unravel the mystery of this yearly event held in Qatar, under the auspices of the Doha Film Institute. I mean, the DFI has been very open and forthcoming about their week-long-mentorship-slash-industry-meet-and-greet-slash-film-connection event, but I still hadn't found a fascinating enough explanation of it in the media. One that would hold my attention and really explain the ins and out of Qumra.
Until I met Suleiman, DFI's Artistic Advisor and Hanaa Issa, Deputy Director of Qumra and Director of Strategy and Development at Doha Film Institute during Berlinale. One Sunday morning in Berlin, a leisurely breakfast talk later and now eagerly anticipating the start of Qumra in Doha, I finally understand.
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Tilda Swinton photographed by Brigitte Lacombe
Iconic Masters and golden projects featured at this year's Qumra in Doha
Qatar is the couture state of the Arab world. They watched and learned from the mistakes of all the other Gulf countries that were declared as states before them, and then Qatar set about to reinvent how we view culture, fashion, art and film. You can't watch an award ceremony these days without the presence for the Doha Film Institute in the credits of at least one of the films nominated, the Museum Authority of the peninsular state has assembled and created, and is set to unveil more beauty than my eyes can hold -- just a visit to the Islamic Art Museum will confirm my words -- and of course, the Emir's family owns some of the fashion world's most beloved brands.
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Valeria Golino and Alba Rohrwacher in Laura Bispuri's 'Daughter of Mine'
© Vivo film / Colorado Film / Match Factory Productions / Bord Cadre Films
The Berlinale Diaries: Elia Suleiman talks Qumra plus Laura Bispuri's 'Daughter of Mine'
From the fabulous women of 'Daughter of Mine' to a wondrous man, my early Sunday morning at Berlinale was spent in the company of Elia Suleiman, the Palestinian filmmaker extraordinaire and Artistic Advisor of the Doha Film Institute.
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