INTERVIEW INTERVIEW THE FILM MAKER AND THE FESTIVAL FADIAABBOUD,CO-DIRECTORARABFILMFESTIVAL In August, the Arab Film Festival Australia will return to Riverside for their 14th Edition before touring to Melbourne and Canberra. Getting bigger and better every year,AFFA is a highlight of the annual calendar at Riverside. Although the program hasn’t been announced yet, we found a bit more about the festival from the festival Co-Director Fadia Abboud. Fadia is also a film maker and passionate about the voice of women in film. What got you into film and television? It’s a very long, personal story – the short of it is I had a big change of direction in life and had a lot of downtime which I spent watching films on my own during the daytime in a cinema.Then I took up a Saturday course in filmmaking and went from there. How many films would you see a month? What kind of films do you like to watch? What is your favourite film and is it important to see film to be a better film maker? Sometimes lots, depends if its Arab Film Festival time then I see loads. Like everyone, I wish I had more time to watch more stuff. Because there is so much overload with choice I try and be very selective about what I watch. And If I’ve seen something amazing, I don’t want to dive into watching something else straight after – it’s important to give films time to sink in. I can watch all kinds of films, except horror, but I’m about to watch Get Out. I hear that has a good story (about racism) which I’m fascinated to see how they combine horror, comedy and a story. I find it hard to watch the blockbusters unless it’s something that touches on my childhood, like the last Ghostbusters with the female leads. My favourite film is Caramel by Lebanese Director Nadine Labaki – we screened it at AFFA in 2008. Before that it was another Lebanese film called West Beirut by Ziad Doueiri. Both these films showed me a side of our culture on screen that I hadn’t seen before that really moved me and made me want to be a filmmaker. To be a good filmmaker I think it’s important to have life experiences just as much as it is to watch films and learn from them. Your career has included you fulfilling many different roles in the film making world including writing, directing and editing. Do you like jumping around or would you prefer to focus on just one job? Or do you see them all as part of the same role as a film maker? Is it important to be flexible as a film maker? I think you have to be flexible these days, especially when you start off and are able to shoot and edit your own film - that makes it cheap and manageable! The less people you have to rely on the better. I edited all my early films and art pieces.Also I’ve found the proper story is created in the edit – you can turn it into a different film if you like. I love to have the ability to experiment with things in the edit but in saying that having an editor at that point when you’ve been so attached to the material is really important to give the story clarity. I also started writing my own work because they were the stories I wanted to tell – many first time filmmakers write and direct their own work, until you find the right collaborators. As a film maker there are many challenges to not only creating work but getting it distributed. What advice would you have for young people keen to pursue a career in the film industry? Find your people – filmmakers, editors, shooters, sound designers – find the creatives that you need and want to work with – they could be in your area, not everyone lives in the city. Also consider community projects that you can produce films in, video documentation of a project that you can be artistic – there are many other contexts for filmmaking that you can consider while you get the skills to produce your own stories. Where did the idea for an Arab film festival film come from? The Arab Film Festival has been around since 2001 – 50