ULAB hosts fifth Dhaka International Mobile Film Festival

University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) hosted the Dhaka International Mobile Film Festival for the fifth time recently. The two-day festival was arranged under the banner of CinemaScope, which is an organisation created by the students of Media Studies and Journalism of ULAB, which started in 2015. It is the pioneer of the mobile film festival which is internationally recognised since 2017. This year, about 95 films, made by mobile cameras, were submitted from around 34 countries including Bangladesh. The films were submitted in three categories.  The screening category was open for all,  the competition category was for university students only and the one minute film category was for students of Grades I-XII.  There were two awards given to the winners: Cinemascope Best Film award and ULAB Young Film Maker award. After two days of screening, the prizes were announced on the concluding day.  Iran won the best film award in competition category. Saleh Kashefi from Iran was announced as the winner for A Pair of Horns On A Female Homo Sapiens, a film about an acid victim and her challenging life. The winner for the one minute category was Lucas Dernelius from Sweden. Lucas's magic trick film 'Handsfree' won over the audience. The screenings were previewed at the permanent campus of ULAB at their auditorium. The chief guest of the festival was renowned filmmaker Matin Rahman. The jury board members were filmmaker Proshoon Rahman, cinematographer Rashed Zaman and film critic Bidhan Rebeiro. The winners were awarded with $300 in the competition category and $100 in the one-minute category along with the award and certificate. The CEO of CinemaScope Fabliha Nawar and festival director Asif Uddin received the awards on behalf of the two winners who could not attend the programme.  Mohammad Shazzad Hossain, assistant professor at ULAB and advisor for the DIMFF spoke at the event about their plans to arrange year-long mobile film workshops to encourage students and the need for funds for this festival. The festival director Asif Uddid also spoke about arranging more campaigns on mobile filmmaking. As for now, CinemaScope and the university are funding the festival. Submission for the 2020 session is going to start from April 1, 2019. The details will be available in the official website and Facebook page of ULAB. International participants can find more information from Film Free Way.