The Reporter (Addis Ababa)
Abiy Solomon
7 July 2007
Addis Ababa — The Ethiopian director of photography, Abrham Haile, received an award of 10,000 euros from the Hubalt Bals Fund, founded after a Dutch filmmaker who had a dream that the future International Cinema hub would be Africa.
The award was granted to Abrham with his proposal submitted to the Hubalt Bals, which is a project plan to establish Blue Nile Film Academy in Ethiopia.
"Our selection committee has read the project of Mr. Abraham Haile with much enthusiasm and we sincerely hope that this support will contribute to the realization of the project," said the statement of Hubert Bals. Abraham's project is one of the 31 applications selected out of 330.
His project has an objective of promoting the Ethiopian film industry that lacks formal filmmaking education by training young aficionados of cinema.
"In the current filmmaking trend in Ethiopia, there is talking of much ado and practically nothing tangible could happen," said Abraham. "The current trend in our filmmaking has often a justification that it has a very short age. However, if there is no formal education, all our endeavors would be in vain, though we strive for thousands of years. It's not time that basically counts, but education."
Abraham told The Reporter that he has plans to teach 25 to 30 students annually who have an enthusiasm and promissing skills.
A press statement of the Royal Netherlands Embassy said that the objectives of Abraham Haile's film academy are to provide high quality filmmaking training, thus contributing to fill the gap of knowledge in the Ethiopian Film Industry. The school also wants to enable filmmakers to effectively use film as an investment to express and communicate the Ethiopian culture, history and day-to-day life for the Ethiopian and International audience.
Abraham Haile had started Blue Nile Television programme on ETV-2 channel that achieved a wide interest from the TV audience. However, the programme couldn't keep on because of the disagreement between him and Ethiopian Television.
"We couldn't agree basically because of a matter of censorship. They sensor our production in accordance with the editor's interest, religion and background, not with objective standards. The disagreement reached its climax when they banned my interview on the allegation that it contained a criticism against ETV," he complained.
Abraham Haile graduated from The Netherlands Film and Television Academy. He was the cinematographer of the 28 minute, Amharic movie, "The Father" produced by M-net studio. He said that because the film was produced by M-net many thought that the cinematographer is a foreigner, for it had a western movie standard and look.
He Won Special Jury Award at Venice Film Festival in 2006 with his last movie, Dry Season, and Fespaco Best Cinematographer in 2007. He also won The Lions Award in Rotterdam the same year.
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