Sticking to the Script!

Jul 18, 2012

By Anealla Safdar, Digital Department, DFI

From 5 – 8 July a group of Qatar’s aspiring screen-writers, armed with draft versions of their scripts, attended the ‘Hezayah Workshop’.

Mentors Ziad Doueiri (West Beirut) and script analyst Christian Routh lavished their advice for over ten hours a day. With a copious coffee supply, they brainstormed, gave ideas and, most importantly, instilled them with confidence to finish their scripts by 17 November — the opening day of this year’s Doha Tribeca Film Festival.

‘Hezayah’ is a Doha Film Institute initiative by the organisation’s newly formed Gulf Development Unit.

“Although Gulf filmmaking has gradually grown in the past 10 years, Qatar is catching up to its neighbours when it comes to building home-grown talent” said Gulf Development Unit manager Mahdi Ali Ali. “I am confident that this development programme will further hone the skills of local talent.”

We went along to the workshop, had a chat with the teachers and found out what the students had learnt.

The mentors:

Ziad Doueiri:

“There are not enough screenwriters in the Gulf or Arab region; everybody wants to be a director.

The group of students in Qatar were open-minded to change. You can feel their minds spinning around to find a solution.

These projects are at a very early stage. But the students’ enthusiasm was terrific.

As mentors we feed on them too. They don’t only need us – we also need them.

In other labs I would confront filmmakers who were totally closed. Here it was not the case.”

Christian Routh:

“I find it very exciting to be part of a project that will hopefully lay the foundations for the emergence of a national film industry here.

We must be realistic about how long that process will take; developing films is not something that happens overnight.

We need to find the best stories that reflect the Arab culture but have an ability to find an audience outside this territory.

The participants’ stories reflect their own cultures. Being confronted with these new stories is refreshing coming
from western Europe.

There’s a desire to explore the region’s mythology. There’s also a sense of people wanting to be entertaining and not dull.

Christian Routh at the Hezayah Workshop

The students:

I thought I could just sit down and develop my characters – it’s not that easy. Dialogue is the hardest thing; you have to do it for multiple characters and with depth.

Nora Al Subai, 26, Senior Analyst (Qatar Petroleum)

Anne Peterson
As a foreigner living in Doha trying to write about something that takes place here, I received lots of advice to make things accurate. That was invaluable.

Anne Peterson, 31, Professor (Northwestern University in Qatar)

Carlo Yan
I’m going to work on my script’s structure. Previously it wasn’t in the right place.

Carlo Yan, 25, Assistant Producer (Qatar TV)

Mohammed Sulimain
I learnt how to attract a viewer to a scene. My favourite scenes are in Titanic – they are so luxurious.

Mohammed Sulimain, 23, Business owner

Noor Ahmed
As Ziad said even ‘if you have a film that visually looks great, your film will flop if it doesn’t have a good script.’

Noor Ahmed, 21, Mass Communications Student (Qatar University)

I changed my story and improved the plot. I’m going to work on this for three hours every day. The workshop has given me a motivational boost.

Ali Abdul, 27, Works in family business