Lights! Camera! Middlesex!
The MDX Studios is the Film department’s beloved creation that has showcased numerous talents filled with passion and exuberance. The very talented students of MDX set their best foot forward in many short film competitions in and outside of the university.
During the Youth Festival, the students proved themselves by presenting charismatic films and leaving the viewers stunned by their creations. A total of five films were screened at the Youth Festival that channelled the horror genre as the theme. The ones that captivated the audience and filled the room with fright and gloom were as follows:
- ‘Beyond the Shores’ – Pierre Ghaly
- ‘Illusion’ – Farhan Firoz
- ‘The Vase’ – Yaser Khan
- ‘Paranoid’ – Jawid Rafiei
- ‘Cost of Revenge’ – Alen Chalich and Abdallah Alomari
Moreover, a few students from the film department excelled by getting officially selected out of a batch of 3,000 film entries in competitions hosted outside the university. These festivals include the White Oryx International Film Festival (WOIS) organised by Manipal University Dubai and the popular SIKKA Art Fair Dubai, a great platform to help GCC based artists to grow and showcase their original and captivating work.
Amongst the many students, the ones selected from the film department are as follows:
- ‘Cost of Revenge’ – Alen Chalich and Abdallah Alomari
- ‘Eva’ – Ehab Smadi
- ‘An Artistic Muse’/ ‘Home Sweet Home’ – Parveen Kamal
- ‘A Real Shocker’/ ‘A Killer Service’ – Philip Meyer
Alen Chalich, a passionate film student who’s driven by challenges, successfully presented her film ‘Cost of Revenge’ and was assisted by her friend and classmate Abdallah Alomari . Her film was nominated for ‘Best UAE Student Short’ award in the White Oryx Film Festival. Alen further states – “It was a great experience. Seeing my film on the big screen gave me so much joy and reminded me why I love what I do.” Second year student Ehab Smadi also shared his experience about submitting his film ‘Eva’ to WOIS Festival by saying – “The experience was definitely interesting as I got to see pure reactions to my film that did not involve any grading, but pure criticism from an audience.”
Furthermore, Philip Meyer, second year film student presented ‘Gallows Humor: A Real Shocker’ at the SIKKA Art Fairand received a thrilling reaction from the audience. Philip says – “When the films were selected to be screened it felt like the Oscars for me as it somehow gave me a heightened sense of achievement. It was the proof of all my hard work that went into the film which paid off. Seeing that on big screen was the best feeling in the world.”
The students also represented MDX Studios by showcasing their incomparable films in Dubai International Film Festival’s (DIFF) ‘48-hour film festival’ category. The students were challenged to create a film within 48 hours including, pre-production, production, and post-production.
DIFF 2017 – Red Carpet: Cast and Crew of ‘Showdown in Oblivion’ (Image Source: mdxevents) 
DIFF 2017 – Red Carpet: First graduate batch of Film (Winners for their film ‘Re-fuse’) (Image Source: mdxevents)
The students, Philip Meyer (the director), Sarvenaz Besarati, Ehab Smadi, Kino Fukuda, Waleed Hmidan, Xianyan Tang, Diana Abu Sara, and Kajol Sagar met these challenges successfully by getting nominated and winning a category at the festival for their film ‘A Showdown in Oblivion’. Waleed Hmidan, Executive Producer of the film, says – “It is worth noting that we managed to create a film with the most difficult genre out of the bunch – the ‘western’ genre. It was a difficult task to overcome but we have finally done it and I am proud of what we accomplished at the given time.”
