By Shurouq Lashkri
On his first visit to Zayed University, Dubai campus, Abdulla AlKaabi, the young Emirati director famous for his recent short award-winning movie “The Philosopher”; shared his ideas about filmmaking and gave students advice on how to be professional directors.
He talked about his experience studying in France and discussed how he was lucky to have a friend who is a producer, who has helped him with his big and first project “The Philosopher”. Producer Cyril Deleye, who was present at the special gathering, has been the right hand of Mrs. AlKaabi as he helped him turn his idea for a movie into a reality.
When asked about the reason for choosing Paris to study filmmaking, he answered “not a lot of people know that it is (Paris) the best place for film”.
“You can study and read textbooks, but filmmaking is about being in the field” he said, expressing the importance of going to movie sets to see and understand how things work.
Mrs. AlKaabi carried on to talk about the difference between a director and a producer stating that “filmmaking is a craft”, a word he often used to describe filmmaking. He continued saying that filmmaking is “complex compared to TV shows”, and a director cannot work without a producer. He then was delighted to show the ZU students his movie which was about 17 minutes long.
After playing the movie, the two guests shared moments they had on the set and said it was hard trying to get Jean Reno, who plays the main character in the movie. It was even harder for the two trying to fit the movie into the actor’s busy schedule. It all happened by luck as Mrs. Reno found himself available for four days and decided to dedicate himself fully to the movie in these four days; for free!
Mr. AlKaabi faced other difficulties faced during the filming saying that it rained so many times as it was September in France. Another difficulty was that the shooting was done by a film camera, which is harder than a digital camera because of its heaviness and complexity of dealing with.
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| Emirati director Abdulla AlKaabi on the right and Producer Cyril Deleye on the left |
He talked about his experience studying in France and discussed how he was lucky to have a friend who is a producer, who has helped him with his big and first project “The Philosopher”. Producer Cyril Deleye, who was present at the special gathering, has been the right hand of Mrs. AlKaabi as he helped him turn his idea for a movie into a reality.
When asked about the reason for choosing Paris to study filmmaking, he answered “not a lot of people know that it is (Paris) the best place for film”.
“You can study and read textbooks, but filmmaking is about being in the field” he said, expressing the importance of going to movie sets to see and understand how things work.
Mrs. AlKaabi carried on to talk about the difference between a director and a producer stating that “filmmaking is a craft”, a word he often used to describe filmmaking. He continued saying that filmmaking is “complex compared to TV shows”, and a director cannot work without a producer. He then was delighted to show the ZU students his movie which was about 17 minutes long.
After playing the movie, the two guests shared moments they had on the set and said it was hard trying to get Jean Reno, who plays the main character in the movie. It was even harder for the two trying to fit the movie into the actor’s busy schedule. It all happened by luck as Mrs. Reno found himself available for four days and decided to dedicate himself fully to the movie in these four days; for free!
Mr. AlKaabi faced other difficulties faced during the filming saying that it rained so many times as it was September in France. Another difficulty was that the shooting was done by a film camera, which is harder than a digital camera because of its heaviness and complexity of dealing with.
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