The Doha Tribeca Film Festival

Voluntary organization is one that relies on occasional or regular volunteers for its operations, and may or may not have paid staff. A volunteer organization is characterized by (1) autonomy from the State, (2) self-governance through a board of unpaid trustees, (3) membership that is neither inherited nor prescribed, (4) aid from philanthropy, (5) benefit for or service to non-members, and (6) not-for-profit orientation (Business dictionary.)

Recently in Qatar, one of the biggest volunteer event occurred, it is The Doha Tribeca Film Festival. The Festival aims to bring people from all walks of life, cultures and backgrounds together through the universal language of film, evolving and transforming each year, but the essence of it is to exchange culture, stories, and perspectives (DTFF.)
The five-day celebration (October 25-29) had more than 50 films from 35 countries screened before an expected audience intake of more than 50,000 people, showcasing a culturally diverse cross section of comedies, family-oriented films, epics, political biopics, thrillers and documentaries (DTFF.)

The Doha Tribeca Film Festival could not happen without the dedication and hard work of the volunteers. Volunteering is often the first step for people interested in pursuing or advancing a career in the film industry. These positions are unpaid but provided priceless experience to the volunteers. The Doha Tribeca Film Festival had 1,100 volunteers, which shows how important this event is. Every festival department’s volunteer needs vary in numbers and there is a place for every skill level and experience. The volunteers ranged from students to mid career professionals that are available to help. The were many departments, that volunteered worked in such as Box Office, Broadcast, Communications, Content & New Media, Education, Family Day, Festival Operations, Guest Relations, Guest Services, Hospitality, Industry Events, Marketing, Merchandising, Production, Special Projects, and Venues(DTFF.)








Sources:

http://www.dohafilminstitute.com/filmfestival/volunteer
http://www.sparknotes.com/sociology/society-and-culture/section5.rhtml
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/voluntary-organization.html

Doha Tribeca Film Festival

The third Doha Tribeca Film Festival finally began this October after a long highly anticipated wait by people living in Doha. The festival usually goes on for about five days and showcases films and holds various events for each day. The whole purpose of bringing the Tribeca fIlm Festival to Qatar is to introduce people to the film culture by cultural diffusion. The festival brings together directors and actors from both the western and middle-eastern parts of the world, allowing the people of Qatar to learn from both sides and potentially inspires them to make their own films. The introduction of Doha Tribeca Film Festival was to encourage its citizens to start their own projects while receiving support from Doha Film Institute. The films are screened in Katara and at the city center.

This year there were many films that were based in the Middle East but a lot of them had western actors as part of the cast. There has been a lot of criticism around these films, such as Black Gold, as people believe the Middle East is not being portrayed in the correct way and that the only reason some of the films had western actors was to secure its distribution in the western and European parts of the world.

A very recent incident that occurred a few days ago at the red carpet has stirred quite some controversy. The Egyptian actor Omar Sharif was caught on camera slapping a woman while he was posing for pictures on the red carpet.

He broke social norms when he did that and now he is receiving negative sanctions for his behavior, as they are many articles being written about the incident criticizing his actions. In the actual video taken, it is unclear whether the actor actually slapped the woman or not, but he did appear quite rude when he was talking to her as he basically called her stupid when he said, “put something in your brain” in Arabic. After he finished posing for his solo pictures he calls over the woman and takes a picture with her. The woman did not look the least bit annoyed or angry as she smiles and takes the picture with him with without causing a scene. Despite the fact there have been some negative occurrences at the festival, it still remains a vital medium to transfer film culture into the Arab world.

Cultural Diffusion in Branding??

Remember the crazy months of last year when everything and anything happened in Qatar? DTFF, Tennis Matches, TEDxDoha, Cultural Village and what not!! It was definitely crazy in terms of crowd pulling and outings and new places to go in Qatar! In that big world of all the buzz, glamor and happenings, I noticed a very tiny marketing strategy that I found very interesting.

I am a big time fan of Karak, which you all know is a special kind of milk tea and is undoubtedly one of the most popular hot beverages in town. I buy a cup of Karak everyday on my way to education city. The barista usually serves me in the usual plastic cups that has a little fragile handle which is practically useless. One day he served me Karak in a cup that was branded by DTFF, as shown in the picture below.

After I reached Education City, I went to buy a sandwich from Batteel, and guess what? The same DTFF cup there as well!! Then I thought to myself, Tribecca is definitely a New York company and now it is in Doha under Doha Film Institute. It was impossible to ignore their branding strategy during the film festival. From big banners on roads to the smallest things in life such as the Karak cup, they had captured them all.

It was interesting for me to see how a New York company was integrating with its' customers and mostly, taking materialistic culture to a whole new level. More than the event of DTFF, I was more interested in the way they branded and especially the small scale ones such as the Karak cup. For those few days, I felt I was in a different, diverse and very vibrant society. I experienced what we call in sociology, as trans-cultural diffusion. It was festive, vibrant, colorful, diverse and artful.

After reading Griswold’s Cultural Diamond perspective, I was able to relate the events of DTFF to the diamond shaped cultural diagram. In this diagram, the 'Producers' are the human resources of DTFF, the 'Receivers' are the viewers and customers or people all over th

e country in this case. The 'cultural object' varies from event to event, which in this case range

s from movies under open sky, to comedy shows and kids entertainment parties. Thus, the 'social world' here constitutes of a mix of all the above mentioned elements as a whole.

It will be interesting to see what Qatar adopts in the next 20 years with its advertising policies and what happens to cultural diffusion that we all are expecting with the opening of the World Cup.