Film Forward is a new U.S. government program whereby the Sundance Institute, in collaboration with federal partners, pick 10 recent local and foreign films to screen around the world.

The Israel Film Festival is produced by IsraFest Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization created in 1982. The 25th Anniversary festival is presented in association with the Government of Israel, Consulate General of Israel in New York, Israel Film Fund, Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin demanded proposals for government backing of elitist art-house productions. He also backed an initiative by the Moscow actor Yevgeni Mironov for theatre clusters developed as public-private partnerships, with a sizable role of big business in them.

“Five million Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan have become a beacon of light for the 35 million Kurds who live in Turkey, Syria, and Iran. That beacon of light is keeping us awake at night and is filling our hearts with hope.”
-Kani Xulam, Director of the American-Kurdish Information Network

The Scottish organisers of an international cultural festival have been forced to abandon plans to stage events in Syria next month. Reel Festivals 2011 had planned part of its programme in Damascus as part of a trilateral cultural exchange between Scotland, Lebanon and Syria.

"Chinese film-makers are going to shoot a documentary about Baku, the soundtrack of which will be a Chinese song about Baku performed by [Azerbaijani singer] Rashid Behbudov," Valeriy Ruzin, president of the Eurasian Academy of Television and Radio and a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia, told a press conference in Baku.

But the biennial...has long been one of the oddities of the rapidly growing Middle Eastern art scene: a relatively freewheeling survey of recent work from around the region and around the world, underwritten by one of the most culturally ambitious but conservatively Islamic of the seven states that make up the United Arab Emirates.