The Circuit

Around every corner of the Emirates Palace there is someone desperate to help you.  In fact there are more people employed to help than people that need helping.  One could walk the vast, frigid, marble halls for twenty minutes and be helped over and over again. 

The Abu Dhabi government desperately wants to help.  At the film financing luncheon, the film commish even made it a part of his pitch.  Helicopters, planes, any production resource you can dream up - “We’ll don’t care.  We’ll do anything to get you to film here.”  And listening to him you couldn’t help by give in, but only a little.  Okay, we’ll be your prom date, but don’t get a room.

The thirty-minute, heavily touted “keynote conversation” by Harvey Weinstein was preceded by a music-driven montage of his films from Miramax to Weinstein Co. –  “Cinema Paradiso” to “The English Patient” to Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” remake.  (No Grindhouse clips, though.)  Harvey’s answer as to how this city could foster its own film culture was for the city to nurture its own filmmakers.  Follow the talent, just like he’s always done, he said. 

But Abu Dhabi is still working on finding its audience.  It’s impatient for it.  Tickets to many of the screenings are free.  Every day the local paper touts what’s going on.  Jon Fitzgerald has his own column, urging people to come with the day’s offering.  But people aren’t coming yet.  Jennifer Needleman’s smart and exciting doc on the explosion of an underground hip hop movement in Morocco, “I Love Hip Hop in Morocco,” screened to just above 20 people in the immense Palace auditorium (pictured above).  The Middle East short film showcase had fewer than ten people in it.  The army of festival volunteers pulled it all off without a hitch, but most of the time they shuffled around, looking for a task, peering around corners for someone to come.  Perhaps it’s still early yet.  As it gets deeper into the week maybe more will arrive, they said.  They hope so.  They just really want to help.