Three Arab women filmmakers win Farsi scholarship

DUBAI: A Palestinian woman who lives in the UAE is one of three recipients of an inaugural scholarship for Arab female filmmakers.
The Hani Farsi Graduate Scholarship Fund for Arab women filmmakers, which grants graduate scholarships for UCLA’s (University of California, Los Angeles), School of Theater, Film and Television’s master of fine arts in directing, announced the successful candidates at Cannes last week.
The announcement was made at the French film festival by Hani Farsi, chairman of the Mohamed S Farsi Foundation, Teri Schwartz, dean of UCLA TFT, and Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir, The National reported.
Although they declined to reveal the names of the successful candidates, they said the other two are a Syrian who lives in Qatar, and a Lebanese woman from Beirut. And that they will begin their four-year course in September.
The three recipients were chosen from 22 applicants - from UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, Oman, Iraq and Palestine - by a selection committee at UCLA.
The school accepts only 18 students a year and made it clear that the Arab scholarships would be awarded only if the applicants were among the 18 best that they received.
Schwartz says she was amazed by the standard of the three Arab women. She says the school took into consideration “academic record, interviews, personal statement, and we choose those that we feel can work in a collaborative environment”.
The idea for a scholarship began two years ago when Farsi and Schwartz met at Cannes.
“We wanted to come up with something that was unique,” says Farsi. “I want to reflect the world that we live in and allow Arab women the chance to do that, and that is why I created a fund for them.”