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Home to nearly 30,000 refugees, Dakhla, named after the beautiful coastal city in Western Sahara, is a remote camp located 175 kilometers away from the nearest city, Tindouf. It has no paved roads and is entirely dependent on outside supplies of food and water. In the summer months, temperatures on the hammada desert plain regularly top 120 degrees. With sandstorms, little vegetation and no sources of food or water, it is little wonder that the area is known locally as ‘The Devil’s Garden’. And yet, incredibly, for a week each May, this desolate refugee camp plays host to the Sahara International Film Festival, a gala of outdoor cinema screenings, workshops and concerts attended by an array of internationally acclaimed actors and film-makers.
These refugees are of the Saharawi people, who were displaced when Spain retracted its hold on their former colony of Western Sahara, leaving Morocco to take military control. Morocco seized the lands and cause the Saharawi to move to 4 main Algerian refugee camps. Though the Saharawi have been given amnesty by international courts, the Moroccan government has had a heavy hand in leaving the refugees as they are. The Sahara Film Festival serves several purposes in improving the lives of the residents of the Dakhla refugee camps. The film festival brings attention to the plight of the refugees to an international arena. International filmmakers and celebrities such as Penelope Cruz and Pedro Almodovar attend the film festival regularly. Celebrities, filmmakers, and other international attendees experience the refugee life first hand as they stay within refugee homes, sharing their roof and food. The film festival has grown in notoriety throughout the years, such that direct flights have been added from Paris, London, and LA to Tindouf. But perhaps most importantly, the festival brings hope and joy to those who live there year-round.
The film festival hosts several events and workshops but the crowning event is the open air cinema, held at the very center courtyard of the refugee camp. The outdoor movie screenings are the primary venue for festival submissions. Tents surrounding the outdoor cinema are set up as well for workshops, training classes, and indoor screenings. Dakhla residents love to watch movies under the stars, and they hope that the film festival will help bring an end to their displacement.
In a recent issue of the Italian magazine, D la Repubblica delle Donne, Open Air Cinema’s inflatable movie screens were featured in a special African spread. Open Air Cinema’s past work bringing outdoor movies to refugee camps in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda caught the magazine’s eye. As mentioned in the article, Open Air Cinema’s inflatable screens will be used in Rwanda’s Outdoor Film Festival, “Hillywood”. In rural regions of Africa, where a whole village shares one old TV, movies and Public Service media are rare. Open Air Cinema traveled to Africa to bring film entertainment and also educational media to these rural areas. You can read the blog post about Open Air Cinema’s outdoor movies in Africa 
Dopo i pop up store, i pop up cinema. La compagnia americana Open Air Cinema fornisce tutto l’occorrente nella formula dei “CineBox”: uno schermo gonfiabile da dodici metri, generatori, proiettori digitali, lettori dvd, altoparlanti e custodie per il trasporto. “E dal momento che possono essere installati ovunque, perché non cominciare dalle zone più remote dell’Africa, con l’aiuto delle Ong, per unire l’intrattenimento all’informazione su temi come l’Aids o i diritti delle donne”, ha pensato il presidente Stuart Farmer. “Già usati nei campi profughi di Kenya, Tanzania e Uganda, gli schermi gonfiabili saranno installati a giugno a “Hillywood”, il festival di cinema itinerante del Ruanda (openaircinema.us).
