ARTAFRICAART AFRICA: What is the Carthage Film Festival? Could you tell us a bit about its history
and elaborate on the festival’s objectives around independence and cultural expression?Ibrahim Letaief: The Carthage Film Festival was started in 1966 by the founder of the Tunis
Cinema Club, a platform which brings together students and cinema lovers. At the beginning,
the festival’s founders did not want to create a festival centred around prizes. After a while,
public interest began to grow. Now we receive roughly four hundred and fifty invited guests
and between one-hundred and fifty thousand to two-hundred thousand members of the public
over the course of the week. It has become a platform to promote and develop Arab and
African cinema in a competitive environment, but entry is also open to the broader cinematic
community. In general, the selected films tend to deal with political and social issues as their
core focus. Recently, there has been a significant development in the festival with the addition
of debates, discussions and Master Classes that run parallel to the film programme. All in all, it’s
a really great celebration of cinema that is very popular with the public. Historically, the festival
has taken place every two years. This year it was announced that the festival will become annual,
so there will be a session in 2016.The festival has a strong emphasis on democratisation. What is the significance of this
and how do you think these films are able to affect positive change?Cinema, in general, is meant to change attitudes and help people to free themselves. The
importance of images today is such that our festival is fully invested in this logic. Therefore, there
is no censorship in this Festival – even from before the revolution. There are great surprises in
the programme in terms of freedom of expression. They are all free films, made by free authors.
They speak of Africa, the Arab world, social issues that surround us, terrorism and the myriad
of other interests we have living in a world of constant flux.What role does the festival play as a platform for emerging and established filmmakers,
both inside and outside of Tunisia?Historically, the festival it has always been a means to call for African directors. Carthage is
above all a platform to expose original works of emerging African and Middle Eastern artists
internationally. We continue this idea with the inclusion of the new section of the festival, the
Compétition Officielle Premiere Ouevre, that awards debut films. Parallel to this we have an
additional section called Carthage Ciné Promesses, that looks at the work of film students from
across the globe. They are invited to Carthage with the hope that they will then go on to be seen
at other major festivals like Cannes, Berlin or Toronto.CARTHAGE FILM FESTIVAL / IN CONVERSATION WITH IBRAHIM LETAIEF 5/20
26th Edition of
the Carthage
Film Festival,
Tunisia. 2015.
Photograph:
Sven Christian.FEATURE / CARTHAGE FILM FESTIVAL