Saharalab.org Website Review

sahara lab is a moroccan educational and media ngo whose mission is to identify, encourage and train emerging film and media makers to tell. their own stories about morocco’s diverse, desert culture and its people from ouarzazate to dakhla, from guelmim to smara. after identifying interested and committed emerging film and media makers, sahara lab provides an immersive set of workshops to develop stories for screens that are accessible to audiences both within morocco and a larger international viewership. makers are encouraged to develop stories that engage audiences to explore further issues of identity and culture that celebrates a vibrant people. while these workshops are intensive and demanding, sahara lab’s methods lead to bringing inexperienced mediamakers. accepting people from differing backgrounds and skill levels, the workshops teach storytellers how to combine technical and aesthetic aspects of storytelling, beginning with the basics of converting ideas to moving images and sounds and moving through to a fully developed process of production and postproduction including providing production and producing expertise. sahara lab looks to extend methods and sources for distribution and exhibition from traditional screenings to working with scholars and moroccan cinema has remarkably distinguished itself, during the beginning of this century, in terms of film production quantity and quality. this distinction owes its success to the country’s policy supporting the national film production, dedicating a financial fund, headed by an independent committee, which is made up of intellectuals and film industry professionals. this policy yielded the production of more than a hundred short films, and about twenty-five feature films each year, for the last few years. these films are the fruit of a long-term dedicated work by a group of sahrawi film novices who, under the guidance of a group of die-hard film fanatics, have put all their soul and pas*ion into expressing their mythology, spirituality and identity, of which they are proud.