The ceremony opened with...a speech by Engineer Latif, one of Afghanistan’s most prominent filmmakers. He detailed the long journey Afghan film has made: literally from nothing to the burgeoning cultural institution it is now. He drew thunderous applause from the crowd when he said that no one could say Afghanistan does not have a real film industry because they are only making documentaries and short films. As he put it, “It may seem small, but it is theirs, and it is a beginning.”Given the amazing art outsiders have made about Afghanistan (Tony Kusher's Homebody/Kabul still flattens me every time I read it), I'll be really interested to see if Afghanistan's filmmakers start to be able to make features soon, and if so, what kinds of subjects they decide to make movies about.
Other favorite moments came when the awards for Best Child Actor and Best Male Actor were given out, both for roles in I Want a Horse, Not a Wife. The little boy who won said “For the whole movie I was asking for a horse, and now I have one!” (The award statue is a rearing horse.)
Afghanistan and The Arts
One of the things I like a lot about the State Department's DipNote blog, which I read for my day job, is that the authors do a pretty good job writing up the arts as they encounter them in diplomatic work. I thought today's post on the 4th Kabul International Documentary and Short Film Festival was particularly poignant. Beverley Mather-Marcus wrote: