After skipping 2 times (I even applied for being a volunteer for previous 2 years) because both were conducted at the same time with my Home Leave, finally I was able to attend Doha Tribeca Film Festival this year.
Attending 3 consecutive days, 27-29 (Thursday - Saturday, benefitting from recent half-day working day on Saturdays) October 2011, the event was better than expected. The fat budget, made the festival looked wow, with the setting and everything.
I watched a documentary film titled "Mama Africa" on my first night, just because I was interested with the concert by an African Diva named Angelique Kidjou. The movie was about the famous (though I never heard the name before) female singer named Miriam Makeba from South Africa. During Apartheid period, she was exiled in the US due to her appearance in a movie protesting government policy. She spoke at the United Nations requesting boikot to her country. I think she married to 3 men, from what I understood from the movie. I recognised couples of her songs (I didn't know the song and the singer before), including the most famous one was Pata Pata.
After the movie, before the main concert, there was an opening concert, by young African lady named Somi. I loved her song, voice and style. The songs were cool and somehow beautiful. After she sang 5 songs, finally the more famous and senior Grammy Award winner Angelique Kidjou performed. Her songs were more dynamic and powerful, though I prefered the previous singer. I had to leave the concert soon since I had bought the ticket for other movie, so I left my friends Koyama-san and Nagisa (with her 2 more friends, Chiho and Maiko). Later I heard from Koyama that after I left, the concert became much more fun. I guessed the Pata Pata was performed.
The next movie I watched was titled Almanya, Welcome to Germany. It was about a Turkish Immigrant with his family in Germany. It was warm and funny. About family ties, about Turkish and Germany cultures. My impression after watching the movie was Germany was such a good country, they treated the immigrants and their families well, not like Qatar. They were well paid that they could afford their family life in Germany. In Qatar, though they treated high level, especially western expats well, but what I saw, the treatment to low level expats from Asian not well. The salary of a lowest worker in a construction site or a cleaner was QAR 600 or less than USD 200 per month with almost no welfare and they got holiday only once every 2 years.
The next day, not part of the festival, I watched in City Center, a Bollywood super hero movie, titled Ra-One in 3D. I was excited about the movie because I think it was the first Indian super hero movie made in 3D. However, I was shocked when the movie started, knowing that there was no English subtitle, realizing that the audience were all Indian, except me! So all the time, I had to guess what was happening. Fortunately it was not too difficult to understand the movie, since it was an action super hero movie. Owh how I loved the glamorous, powerful dances and the songs in Bollywood movies.
I rushed taking the free shuttle from City Center to Katara, to watch the program short movies titled "Made in Qatar". I was looking forward to watch the performance of my friend Jay in a Filipino short movie titled I love You Ma'am. Surprised I saw my other Filipino friend Mark too. I also found my other friend Sam, in the volunteer extra movie. The movie was nice about love between Chinese Filipino teacher and his student. Two things I didn't like about the castings. One was the main actor, the hero was using teeth wire like Ugly Betty, which I considered very ugly. There was special purpose, I guess, for casting the actor with the wire for the hero, an Chinese Filipino teacher, except that to show that wearing teeth wire was popular amongst Filipino (as I saw in Qatar). The other was too many femininine actors they used as school teachers and staff. While the Filipino movie was OK, most of other Qatari shorts were not even worth to watch, especially the animated ones made by a Qatar-based university. Other down side was the English subtitle character was too small to read.
I rushed again after the Filipino movie finished, not waiting till all the shorts were displayed, to the documentary about comic fans at Comic Con, an comic conference held in San Diego few years ago. The film was chasing the stories of several different people related to comic, i.e. two new comic painters, one comic publisher, one costume designer, and one lover couple of comic fans.
On Saturday afternoon, using the half day working day, I went to Doha again. Failing getting the ticket for Lebanese movie "Where Do We Go Now?" by famous Lebanese Director Nadine Labaki, the director of other famous movie "Caramel", I decided to go to Villaggio to watch non-related-to the festival, a dancing movie titled "Footloose". The film was a remake from 80's popular movie titled the same. Oh how I loved the movie. The actor and the heroine were so cute and cool.
I rushed my driver to take me to Katara to watch Japanese Short Movies program. Arrived there 1 hour after the planned start time, I was able to watch 3 out of 7 short movies. That 3rd movie was about solar eclipse, a father and a son. The 4th movie was a very funny one, titled Sushi Japan. The next one was about Global Warming, titled "Sauna". And the last one was about Korean lovers in Enoshima. Much much worth to watch than the Qatari ones.
For the last movie, I planned to watch a movie called "Chinese Take Away", about a Chinese immigrant in Argentine, but I changed to the main closing movie titled "The Lady" about Burmese Nobel Price Winner, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, starred by Michelle Yeoh, directed by Luc Besson after I heard that there was a concert after the movie. Though the movie was moved for many people, I was not that moved, though I admitted that it was a good movie, and may won an Oscar. The show was late about 1 hour, then there were several speeches and award ceremony ("Comic Con" and "Where Do We Go Now?" won the prizes for documentary and narrative respectively), that I decided to give up the concert and went back to Ras Laffan.
I loved Qatar being able to hold such a good event, but I guess Qatar has to learn a lot to be on time to hold international events...
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| Angelique Kidjo, the concert after "Mama Africa" |
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| the Red Carpet |
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| events |
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| Nadine Labaki, the director of "Where Do We Go Now?" won the prize |
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| Luc Besson and Michelle Yeoh, the director and the actress of movie "The Lady" at closing movie |
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