Dubai will host a global summit on the future of the film industry later this year, an event that aims to predict what advances we’ll be seeing on screens in the next two decades.
The Cinematic Innovation Summit, which bills itself as the first of its kind, will take place on December 8 and 9 in conjunction with the Dubai International Film Festival (Diff) 2012.
The event is a collaboration of ideas, funding and planning by the Centre for New Cinema (CNC), Diff — now preparing its ninth edition — and French-based business information company Nasebe.
The summit will welcome a maximum of 250 industry experts to discuss advances in the film sector, discussing artificial intelligence, game-style interactivity, animation and special effects. Top of the agenda during two-day conference will be a discussion on advances in cinematic technology in the next 10-20 years. The event is billed as the ultimate lead up to Dubai’s already successful annual film festival.
Around 18 speakers from Hollywood and the technical sector are expected to attend, including Lauren Shuler Donner, producer of the X-Men film franchise, Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith, Dean DeBlois, writer and director of Oscar-nominated How To Train Your Dragon and Lilo & Stitch, and actor Stephen Lang, best known for his role as Avatar’s Col Miles Quaritch.
The brainchild of John Davis, president of CNC, the summit came together in a matter of months thanks to the interest from Diff.
“Dubai is the ideal location for such a summit,” said Davis at a press conference in Dubai on Monday. “It’s the future. Both by way of thinking and actual progression. You just have to look at the cranes, the buildings, the technology. There was no better place to hold a summit where we are trying to see 10-20 years down the line. The team at Diff are the reason it’s Dubai over Abu Dhabi. They were quick to support our vision and quickly became a part of it.”
Diff chairman Abdul Hamid Juma said the summit was an exciting development for the emirate as well as the region. “It’s a summit which will offer a sneak preview into an industry we all love. It will bring the future technology of filmmaking out of the laboratory and into our lives. There is a natural benefit for filmmakers in the region as the information, discussion, resources and expertise will be in our country when they discuss these things. They will naturally filter down to businesses, students and the people at the heart of filmmaking right here.”
Details on how to attend will be made available in August, and Davis hinted tickets would cost a “substantial amount”. Details will released at cinematicinnovationsummit.com.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, Diff announced that a new $100,000 (Dh367,200) prize, the Filmmaker Award, is now open for entries. For established and upcoming directors from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, the award is funded by luxury Swiss watch maker IWC Schaffhausen, who teamed up with Diff last year for the One Night to Change Lives, a black-tie charity event which raised more than $1 million for aid agency Oxfam and UAE-based Dubai Cares.
In order to enter, directors must be citizens of a Gulf nation; producers can be of any nationality. Entries can be submitted until August 31.
The ninth edition of the Dubai International Film Festival takes place from December 9-16.
