Organizers of the Red Sea International Film Festival (RSIFF) are giving the chance to five Saudi female directors to work on a unique new movie project entitled ‘Untitled Omnibus Feature.’
The movie which is produced and funded by the RSIFF is expected to be the breakthrough for the aspiring directors Hind Alfahhad, Jowaher Alamri, Noor Alameer, Sara Mesfer, and Fatima Al-Banawi, proving once again that the film festival is working as a platform to support young Saudi filmmakers.
The project is a huge platform for Saudi women in the movie industry and will debut at the inaugural festival in March 2020. To make things even more interesting, award-winning Palestinian filmmaker Suha Arraf is screenwriting supervisor on the portmanteau film.
The five uprising directors Hind Alfahhad, Jowaher Alamri, Noor Alameer, Sara Mesfer and Fatima Al-Banawi will work individually on creating short films which will then be combined into an omnibus documentary feature.
“This project provides powerful first-person accounts of contemporary life in Saudi, from Saudi women, at a time of fascinating change,” festival director Mahmoud Sabbagh said.
“We believe in film’s capacity to advance diversity and integration. Supporting innovative new works is central to this mission. There is no better way to work toward this than by creating opportunities for Saudi filmmakers to tell their own stories.” He added.
The long-awaited global event Expo 2020 Dubai was set to kick start six months from now, but due to the current unfortunate events, organizers of the event are currently looking into postponing the event till next year.
While everyone involved in #Expo2020 Dubai remains firmly committed, many countries have been significantly impacted by COVID-19 and they have expressed a need to postpone Expo’s opening by one year, to enable them to overcome this challenge. pic.twitter.com/8xgk5D0UJl
— expo2020dubai (@expo2020dubai) March 30, 2020
In a conference call that brought together members of the event’s steering committee, which comprises local government officials and foreign country representatives, all agreed that a delay is indeed needed and that the Paris-based based Bureau International des Expositions, or BIE, should study this option. The BIE awards the global event and its member states will have the final say regarding the matter.
We support the proposal to explore a one-year postponement at today’s Steering Committee meeting. We will follow due processes with Expo’s governing body, @BIEParis, on making the decision to delay, which requires a two-thirds majority vote from the BIE General Assembly. pic.twitter.com/76Lz3CcbkD
— expo2020dubai (@expo2020dubai) March 30, 2020
“The World’s Greatest Show” was expected to witness the arrival of around 11 million overseas visitors who were eager to come and enjoy the event’s unique medley culture, business, trade, and technology featuring pavilions from 192 countries.
“The global situation is fast moving, and remains unpredictable,” the event’s managing director, Reem Al Hashemi, said in a statement issued on state news agency WAM.
For years now, organizers and officials have regarded the showcase exhibition as the perfect boost for Dubai’s economy and billions of dollars have already been spent on marketing, building hotels and facilities for the global event.
The long-awaited art event ‘Art Dubai‘ has decided to go virtual instead of having to cancel or postpone due to the coronavius outbreak and we’re just lucky to have the opportunity to tour the exhibition from the safety of our homes.
The elevated unique experience has become available online on the 25th of March and is still ongoing, over the past days, Art Dubai has succeeded in garnering 53,520 unique page views on its website and 60,000 views on Facebook.
Art Dubai’s 2020 digital programme offers an online catalog and an online performance programme curated by Marina Fokidis. Commissioner of Global Art Forum, ShumonBasar, who said in a statement, “Reality has shifted suddenly. Physical gatherings aren’t possible. So the Global Art Forum needed an emergency format. So, I thought, why not do a special broadcast edition of the Forum that addresses the new stories emerging from this moment of global narrative collapse? And do this collectively, with a group of brilliant thinkers, all of whom have something nourishing and provoking to say.”
UAE galleries including Ayyam Gallery, Carbon 12, Custot Gallery, Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Leila Heller Gallery and Meem Gallery will all be participating in Art Dubai online this year.
We love how art survived all of this and made magnificent art works by artists including, Frank Stella, Mohamed Melehi and Hamra Abbas available to us all from the comfort of our sofas!
Purchase inquiries were made online as well, and you can now check the amazing artwork through this link.
After Art Dubai was cancelled, the country’s government decided to reach into its own coffers to buy some of the art itself. https://t.co/TqOdAKfVSG pic.twitter.com/52hG1Raz1J
— Artnet (@artnet) March 29, 2020
King Salman will chair today’s virtual summit which will bring together leaders of the most powerful countries, the summit organized by Saudi Arabia’s G20 will tackle the accelerating coronavirus crisis.
King Salman leads the #G20 leaders into #COVID19 discussions with the aim to combat the pandemic and ensure global economic stability, for all.#G20VirtualSummit
— G20 Saudi Arabia (@g20org) March 24, 2020
The virtual summit will see the participation of the G20 group, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Jordan, Spain, Switzerland, and Singapore’s heads of state will also take part, this summit is one of the long-anticipated events and has gone virtual in light of the coronavirus outbreak.
The World Health Organization, the UN, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank will all take part as well as other development organizations.
King Salman will open the two-hour digital forum in Riyadh, and then the world’s great capitals will take turn in discussions, in an attempt to face the virus that imposes a global challenge and is a threat to the health and well-being of all nationals.
“Saudi Arabia has a real opportunity to rise to the occasion and reassure global energy and financial markets when the world faces serious economic uncertainty.” Michael Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said on Wednesday.
The summit is the first of its kind to grant global leaders the opportunity to discuss and collaborate on the enormous challenges imposed by COVID-19. Hopefully, the G20 virtual summit will set a policy among those leaders, in addition to a collective response and concerted action.
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