Le Journal Du Dimanche: Marrakesh film festival on the frontpage of french weekly's first moroccan issue
Morocco, Economics, 9/30/2003

French weekly "Le Journal Du Dimanche" (JDD), which has just started a Moroccan edition, has dedicated its first issue published in Morocco to the Marrakesh film festival slated from October 3 through 9.

In a frontpage article entitled "Marrakesh celebrating all the cinemas," the JDD speaks of the highlights of the festival "a unique event of the kind at the desert gates." It also publishes an interview with French actress Nathalie Baye who is chairing this year's festival jury and who recounts her love for Morocco that she describes as "a land of hospitality and a country open onto the world." She also hopes that the event will be a constructive and lasting happening that will allow a maximum of encounters between movie-makers of the whole world and highlight a particular interest for the Moroccan motion picture.

The weekly also runs articles about Moroccan directors, like Faouzi Saidi who won with his "Mille Mois" (a thousand months) an award at the latest Cannes Festival in France.

Royal advisor, Andre Azoulay, who is one of the promoters of the festival stresses, in an interview with JDD, how the festival is an important tool to promote the Moroccan cinema and a chance for Moroccan directors to be viewed by other movie-makers from the world.

Azoulay, who expects that the Moroccan international cinema festival will be racing with the world's most renowned festivals, insists that the Marrakesh festival is not a caprice nor a furtive idea but was the fruit of a strategic approach with economic and artistic goals.

"It's a means to continue to draw attention on a country that has a long tradition of cinema-making since the Lumieres brothers," says Azoulay who recalls that the movies being shot in Morocco by US directors Oliver Stone (Alexander) and Ridley Scott bring to Morocco thousands of jobs for craftsmen, in addition to the fact that one third of these mega-productions (US$ 150 million each) is invested in the Kingdom.

Previous Stories:
  Marrakesh film festival eyes Cannes, Venice level   (9/17/2003)
  Over 70 movies to be screened at Marrakesh film festival   (8/28/2003)
  Oliver Stone's Alexander to be shot in Morocco   (7/12/2003)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search