By Xinhua
Baghdad : As the second movie festival ended here Saturday without interruption of violence, Iraqi cinematographic artists hoped that they could help cure the wounds of war with their works.
The movie festival which came in a violent time “represents a great defiance of the entire negative circumstances in the country, particularly in Baghdad,” Aziz Kareem, a well-known Iraqi artist, told Xinhua.
The 2007 movie festival screened 63 movies from around the world.
The movie “Abu Ghraib and Kilo-160″ by Iraqi director Jamal al-Nfas was awarded the silver prize on the day.
The documentary recorded a tragic story that 14 members of the Iraqi taekwondo team was kidnapped in May last year in western Iraq. The bodies of 13 of them were found one year later.
A French movie and a Egyptian movie carried the gold and bronze prizes respectively.
In spite of the improved security in Baghdad and strict check at the venue — the Palestine Hotel, a lot of foreign moviemakers were absent, making Nafs the only winner showing up at the awards ceremony.
The event aimed at catalyzing the Iraqi cinematographic artists to be more active through their participating in such international festivals,” Dr. Ammar Hadi al-A’arradi, chief of the movie festival’s committee to Xinhua.
“We hope that the Iraqi government would attach more importance to the movie industry, which is one of the cultural pillars in the society. Besides, the Iraqi artists are experienced in this field,” said A’arradi.
Speaking in the opening ceremony on Wednesday, he hoped the rare amusement event in the war-torn country would help the reconciliation efforts.
Iraq’s movie industry dates back to the 1940s and flourished in the 1970s and 1980s when the Iraqi people pack into cinemas.
The 1991 Gulf War and the economic sanctions that followed it wrecked the movie industry. And the chaos in the aftermath of the2003 U.S.-led invasion practically condemned it to a freezing point.
“Although there are skilled Iraqi artists, the industry is not in good shape because of a lack of finance, cameras and raw materials,” Adel Dawood, the head of the Cinema department in the Theater and Cinema office said in symposium on the sidelines of the movie festival.
Ali Hashim, a young artist, said the Iraqi moviemaker should be focused on the pains of the ordinary people so that the officials would learn and get to address the problems, hoping that the Iraqis would be able to put aside their differences and throw away hatred by watching such movies.
The first Iraq movie festival was held in 2005 in Baghdad. But the unstable security situation prevented the second from happening in the following year.