Emiratis to learn film-making in France

Five budding local filmmakers are jetting off to Paris for an intensive five-week course at a top school.

The students who will be attending the five-week course at La Femis School. From left, Shahad Al Shehhi, Bader Al Ketbi, Aiham Al Subaihi, Mohammad Suwaidan and Shaqra Al Hameli. Courtesy Image Nation

ABU DHABI // Five Emirati students will be flying to Paris this week for an intensive five-week course at a top film-making school in the French capital.

The students – from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah – will enrol in the Gulf Summer University Programme at La Femis School.

They were selected by Image Nation Abu Dhabi, the French embassy in Abu Dhabi and Total, the energy company.

The students are Bader Al Ketbi, Shahad Al Shehhi and Shaqra Al Hameli from Abu Dhabi; Aiham Al Subaihi from Sharjah; and Mohammed Suwaidan from Dubai.

“I have been lucky enough to study film in the United States and Australia, so to be given the opportunity to practise in the birthplace of cinema is really exciting,” said Mr Al Subaihi.

This is the school’s first course specially designed for Arabian Gulf students, according to Mohamed Bendjebbour, a regional audiovisual attache at the French embassy.

“This is both an educational and cultural experience for the students,” he said.

“So I encourage them to embrace Paris as much as possible. Get to know the city, check out the outdoor cinema and learn as much as they can.”

Michael Garin, the chief executive of Image Nation, said understanding the film-making process, the main focus of the course, was as important as film-making.

Image Nation is a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media, which publishes The National.

Mr Al Ketbi, 25, studied film, anthropology and sociology at Pace University in New York. After returning to the UAE, he began working in events management.

He said he hoped the course would provide more practical film-making experience because much of his studies had been theoretical.

The course requires participants to produce a film of five to six minutes in duration.

Mr Al Ketbi said he was looking forward to studying at one of the most prestigious schools in Europe and “just being exposed to a different way of looking at movies”.

He said he found French cinema exciting because “it just provides a different perspective to life than American or Egyptian or Bollywood cinema, which are the more commercial, standard movies”.

The story could be the same, he said, “but it’s the way you tell the story that will make a bigger difference”.

The youngster said he hoped to introduce new ways of storytelling to the UAE, where the film industry was still developing.

The course runs from Friday to September 12 and was open to Emiratis aged 21 to 30.