The Speech of ANASY Documentary Awards Director, Dhekra Ouali
The Second Session of ANASY Documentary Awards 2010
Participations from 40 Countries
Participants from All over the World in Abu Dhabi: the City of Light
The second session of ANASY Documentary Awards makes a strategic shift in quality and number of participations, and increases diversity in the topics they tackle. The wide international interest in participation in the various categories and contests of this edition include: the general category "Talk Doc", the children’s category "Child in Our Eyes", and the "Script Pitching" category.
Such wide participation has come as a result of the developing awareness of the importance of documentary filmmaking and the filmmaker's respect for their occupation and the international artistic standard. Accordingly, the highly competitive nature of the participations made it difficult for both the selection and judging committees.
One healthy development we observed in the second edition of ANASY Documentary Awards is the diversity of the tackled topics spanning all age ranges; children, teenagers, youth, men, and the elderly. The social issues included such topics as orphanages, homelessness, child employment, sterility, women employment, and the life of the elderly.
Further, environmental issues had their share of diverse participations tackling many topics such as water and air pollution, and recycling.
Health related topics were not absent. Cancer and cancer treatment, blindness and mental disorders were among the featured topics.
ANASY Documentary Awards obtained exclusive rights for many documentaries to be premiered during the official events of the contest.
All these achievements and many others which will follow the cinematic shows and the awards period are nothing but the fruit of the generous support and highly esteemed care given by HH Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research.
During this edition, we are most honored to host two deep-rooted international festivals. The first is the United Nation's Association Film Festival, UNAFF and their traveling festival, TFF, visiting the region and the Arab World for the first time and featuring the most important and latest documentaries. The other featured festival is Prix Jeunesse International; the long established German festival for children and youth television programs. The festival features short and medium documentaries and programs dedicated to children. take the highest pride in the students' participation in the "One Minute Doc" workshop, which bloomed into six short documentaries. In this workshop, Anasy, together with the twofour54 training academy, trained students motivated by enthusiasm and willingness to develop their skills.
The second edition of ANASY Documentary Awards hosted the realization of many partnerships and cooperation agreements with many socially active parties who believed in our vision, and eventual success, and exerted the efforts, cooperation and flexibility towards realizing our mutual objectives.
Therefore, we would like to convey our deepest gratitude to all who believed in ANASY Documentary Awards, and worked with us hand-in-hand on the basis of strategic constructive partnership.
Let me extend my gratitude to the media who were keen on offering advice prior to the professional press coverage, to the audience attending the events of this edition, and to all the members of ANASY Media Production family for their devotion and focus on our common objective.
The Festival's Finale
After the successful fruition of the second edition, God willing, we have many frontiers to cross and many bridges to extend on the international and Arabic scenes. By this, we aim at encouraging and spreading Arab and International documentaries and raising awareness of the importance and role of documentaries among young directors and the youth.
On the Arab scene, these prospects include the partnership established with the Arab Producers Association; a subsidiary of the Arab League, in the course of encouraging media and communication students to produce high caliber documentaries in cooperation with ANASY Documentary Awards.
On the international scene, ANASY Documentary Awards will feature the best Arabic Documentaries during the Sheffield International Documentary Festival in the UK next July.
In order to fulfill the promise embedded in our slogan "Documentaries for All", and after the end of the cinematic shows, touring shows will commence in every emirate in universities, cultural centers, the Dubai Press Club, and health, social and cultural organizations.
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