Doha: Qatar’s burgeoning urbanscape and the people who help in shaping it form the subject of this week’s featured short film presented by the Doha Film Institute (DFI).
Written and directed by Shaima Al Tamimi and Mariam Salim, the film ‘Voices from the Urbanscape’ depicts Doha as a rapidly growing 21st-century cosmopolitan city with a mission and pays tribute to the diverse communities who help build Qatar.
“Voices from the Urbanscape is a short experimental film in which you hear a melody that is made of sounds of construction and voices of people. While you’re riding with us in the car you’ll get to find yourself within those voices,” said Salim.
The story is uniquely shaped by voices of people from different nationalities and backgrounds who express their thoughts on Qatar’s fast-paced progress as seen in the rise of skyscrapers and massive infrastructure projects being carried out around the country in recent years.
The multicultural voices discuss diverse views from commenting on Doha’s meteoric growth to lamenting the loss of nature that goes with urbanisation to praising the beauty of the new buildings that give the city its distinct character. The film takes the audience in a journey around the country’s capital with the images and sounds of construction of various structures.
“The film speaks to us a lot with regard to people in Doha and how they feel growing up here and the city growing with them,” said Al Tamimi. She is a photographer and cultural explorer who captures stories ignited by culture, travel and human behaviour.
“I started my journey with photography. Whenever I go on street photography walks or travels, what I seem to enjoy the most is that photography always allows me to approach people. With street photography when you’re outdoors, things can happen spontaneously and you can’t necessarily control the situation almost similar to documentary filmmaking,” she said. “ I didn’t necessarily make the film with ‘I want to be a filmmaker’ in mind. It was just I have a story I want to tell and let me see what will come out of that,” she added.
The film has been screened in various film festivals such as at the 2017 Ajyal Film Festival and at the Cannes Film Festival and Sarajevo Film Festival in 2018, among others.
“Three years ago, it was screened in one of the open spaces in Ajyal. Towards the end some family was clapping, and that changed my whole perspective of filmmaking and gave me another reason to just keep going — exploring and telling stories in different ways,” said Salim whose passion for film started at a young age and who recently participated in the production of a few short films.
Voices from the Urbanscape was uploaded on Thursday on DFI’s YouTube channel as part of the second season of the Institute’s Short Film of the Week initiative. Launched in April, the initiative brings the very best of DFI-supported films for film enthusiasts to enjoy in the comfort of their own homes. The initiative aims at encouraging people to stay home amid COVID-19 pandemic, while lending support to Qatari films and Arab cinema.
