Shane Mohabier of Afrikan Connection Productions and Imruh Bakari of Savannah Films at Sithengi in 2003 during the launch of their African Tales, a series of short films project

The 7th ZIFF Festival of the Dhow Countries, to run June 25- July 4, 2004 in Zanzibar, will focus on Indian filmmaking and will screen more than one hundred films.

Competing for Best Feature Film, Best Short Film, Best Documentary, Best East African Production, and Best Environmental film, those judging the productions will be Canadian Cameron Bailey, French Philippe Jalladeau, Tanzanian Sauda Simba Kilumanga, Dutch national Heidi Lobato and Dr Khalid Abdul Rahim Al Zadjali from the Sultanate of Oman. Among the members of the SIGNIS Jury of the World Catholic Association for Communication, that is making its second appearance at ZIFF, will be Kenyan Mary Gitau Otuka. The festival will open with Maqbool, a film by Indian director Vishal Bhardwaj and will run a retrospective of films by Mira Nair, the renowned director of films like Mississippi Masala, Salaam Bombay, The Tale of the Kamasutra, and Monsoon Wedding. Nair, a founder of Maisha screenwriting initiative, will hold a master class on her work.

Indian films are expected to bring to the fore the high production values assciated with Bollywood and excite debate at the festival whose theme is “Exploring the Currents, Feeling the Winds”. Since the introduction of motion picture in Mumbai in 1896, says Dr Geetha Ganapathy-Dore of Paris 13 University, more than 27000 films in 52 languages had been made in India at the end of 2003. With 12000 cinema halls and 3.6 billion tickets sold with a worldwide revenue of US$1.3 billion (Hollywood's is US$51 billion) annually, Bollywood is a mega-billion dollar industry; its annual growth rate of 12.6% is more than double that of Hollywood's 5.6%!

The commercial success of Bollywood depends on a formulaic mix of romance, stereotypical good versus villainous character, song and dance sequences and a fair dose of violence. Cinema has become not just the national language of a country in which 18 official languages and 1653 dialects are spoken but also an instrument of national integration.

Other Master Classes will include Film editing with Nicolus Stampe (Germany), Film Music & Composition for Film with Tom Scott (USA) and Screenwriting for Television Soap Operas with Martin Mhando (Tanzania) and Femi Kayode (Nigeria). Maqbool, a tale of ambition, love, violence and death, is a Bollywood adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth transposed to the streets of modern Mumbai. Besides focusing on Bollywood, the 7th edition of the festival that brings together the Gulf States, the Indian sub-continent and the African continent and Indian Ocean islands through film, music, literature and the performing arts, will witness the launch of the East African Film Academy and the Literary Forum and Zanzibar Book Fair.

The Tanzania Literacy Decade will be inaugurated accompanied by other events focusing on publishing, identity and belonging for the African writer. UNESCO will present Africa Animated!, a pan-African initiative to kick-start animation production across Africa, at ZIFF. The seminar, to be continued in Nairobi after ZIFF, will focus on animation, drawing techniques, scriptwriting and storyboarding, and will seek to produce a film at the end of ZIFF. Experts from the Britain, Canada, Ghana, and the United States will facilitate it.

The East African Academy is a joint initiative of Denmark and East Africa with the objective of developing the skills and resources needed to enable filmmakers in the East African region to put their stories on the screen. Filmmakers from the Danish Dogme film movement will present and discuss their methodology and its relevance to the East African context. While Kenya's Baraka Films of Njeri Karago will lead several workshops among which will be screenwriting and story-telling, Compagnie Gaara of Opiyo Okach will conduct a contemporary African dance. Among the highlights of the Music and Performing Arts Programme will be top Palestinian musician Amal Markus, South African Bongo Maffin, Kenyans Necessary Noise, Egyptian Nubian Tambour of Egypt, Jean-Raymond Cudza of Mayyote and Smadj of Tunisia.

Uganda will be represented by the Kampala Taraab Club and Dynamic Adungu Cultural Troupe, thanks to Alliance Francaise in Kampala. Brazil@ZIFF, a musical response to the development of the South-South cultural and artistic linkages being forged with South America, particularly Brazil which has ties with Zanzibar through the Indian Ocean Slave Trade, is a musical recognition of the links between the Dhow Region and South America and brings together the festival theme of dialogue between cultures and histories.

Besides a two-day conference on East African Music, business has been scheduled as are Contemporary Dance and Steel pan workshops in order to raise the profile of the East African regional music industry. Exhibitors from the music recording, publishing, licensing, production, distribution, artist management, online retail and services, and governmental bodies are expected to participate. Music videos and music-related films will be screened between main film showings

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