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Overview: The Ethiopian International Film Festival
Film festivals in Ethiopia are a recent phenomenon. In the 1980s, posters advertising film festivals were occasionally displayed at the Russian Pushkin Centre for Science and Culture, the German Goethe Cultural Center, and the Instituto Italiano de Cultura in Addis Ababa. The number of audience members who attended these European film festivals was, however, very minimal, as the tradition of organizing film festivals is not yet popular in Ethiopia.
With the beginning of film production in Ethiopia in the early 1990s, certain individuals attempted to organize festivals where very few local films participated for competition, though this was soon interrupted owing to lack of trust in the fairness of the jury. In 2003, the Abyssinian Film Organization was formed to run a film festival in collaboration with the Indian Embassy in Addis Ababa. Trophies for the award ceremony were made in India and brought to Ethiopia; but the programme was again aborted because of dissatisfaction among members of the jury with the remuneration offered.
In early 2004, organizers of the First Amakula Kampala International Film Festival came to Ethiopia to advise Yirgashewa Teshome, the Director of the Linkage Arts and Resource Center (LARC), on how to run a local festival with international flavour in Addis Ababa so that the best Ethiopian films would be encouraged to participate. As a result, the first Ethiopian film festival was held in the same year at the Imperial Hotel, where ten locally produced films competed and where Hermella, Kibrenek, and Gudifecha were the winners. Of these three, Hermella and Kibrenek were selected to represent Ethiopia at the First Amakula Kampala International Film Festival held in Uganda.1 The participation of the Director of L ARC at this international festival had created favourable conditions for him to acquire experience in organizing an international film festival and to develop a partnership with those who hosted annual international film festivals. This laid the cornerstone for the emergence of the Ethiopian International Film Festival in 2007 and enabled LARC to be the sole private enterprise to successfully organize six festivals consecutively on different themes in Addis Ababa.
The 6th Ethiopian International Film Festival
The 6th edition of the Ethiopian International Film Festival was held in Addis Ababa from...