Peter Scarlet, who stepped down as artistic director of the Tribeca Film Festival a little over a week after the announcement that Geoffrey Gilmore would be leaving the Sundance Film Festival to head Tribeca Enterprises, will assume executive director responsibilities at the two-year-old Middle East International Film Festival. Scarlet replaces Nashwa al-Ruwaini, who will join the board of the festival. In addition, Jon Fitzgerald, co-founder of Slamdance and a past artistic director of the AFI Fest, who was brought on as the original festival director in 2007, did not have his contract renewed by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, which funds the festival.
The Middle East, and the United Arab Emirates in particular, has been a hotbed of recent mediamaking activity. According to Variety, in addition to launching the Middle East International Film Festival, the Abu Dhabi-the capital city of the seven United Arab Emirates-launched a $1 billion production company, Imagenation, and developed co-funding deals with Participant Media, Hyde Park Productions and National Geographic Films. What's mpore, both Tribeca Enterprises and the Sundance Film Festival have been in talks to launch adjunct festivals in the Middle East-Tribece in Qatar, which will launch in November, and Sundance in Abu Dhabi, but plans have yet to be finalized there.