By Anand Holla
Apart from a sea of films, the much-awaited Ajyal Youth Film Festival of the Doha Film Institute (DFI) will dip into the fabulous world of video games and pop culture. This year, the Ajyal team has again teamed up with AnimeQTR to host a cosplay competition for all the anime fans of Qatar. For those who want more, there’s the Ajyal Superhero Film Hunt as well.
Split into two competition categories – video game costumes and an open costume categories – the cosplay competition will be held at Katara on December 4 from 3pm to 5:30pm. Anyone who will be in Doha at the time of the competition is eligible to apply and participate in the competition.
“The deadline for receiving applications is November 30 and all applications must be received before the end of that day. We might open registration (but are not obliged) prior to or on the day of the event in the case of someone dropping out at the last minute or if participant slots otherwise become available,” the DFI says, adding that you must register online at the earliest as the total number of participants that they can allow is 40.
As for guidelines on costumes, the Ajyal team points out at the outset that the film festival is a family-friendly event (PG-13). “Please respect the local culture. Offensive language of any kind is not allowed – no racial or sexual epithets; no profanity, etc. Be clever, not crass! If you think your costume or presentation might be too risqué or offensive, it probably is,” the team says.
For the superhero film hunt, you can dress up as your favourite superhero – even an imaginary one would do – and join the gang on November 14 at Katara “to hunt for Ajyal 2015 films.” Face painting will be available at the registration hub.
“Each superhero will be given nine clues on a game storyboard that will help them find items all around Katara relating to nine films,” the Ajyal team says, “All superheroes have 45 minutes to fly around Katara to help us find items from each of the nine films. To rescue the festival films, superheroes take photos showing their registration numbers and the items found, then upload the picture on Instagram using the hashtag #ajyal15.” And if you don’t use Instagram, the team will provide guidelines on how you can participate.
Once the superheroes have identified all the missing films, they return to the registration hub, pick up their printed photos and enter them on their game storyboards. “The first superhero to submit a full storyboard wins the game and will be named our AJYAL SUPERHERO, so try your hardest, because the winner gets a really great prize!” the team says. The winner of the game will be announced the same day.
Dressing up in full-fledged comic book-inspired costumes has been happening long before the annual Comic-Con propelled it into the mainstream. However, it was reporter and manga publisher Takahashi Nobuyuki who first used the term ‘cosplay’ after attending Worldcon in Los Angeles in 1984, and encouraged his Japanese readers to partake.
Through the 1990s, cosplaying skyrocketed in Japan and by the turn of the millennium, it even hosted the first World Cosplay Summit featuring four countries in 2003. Meanwhile, Qatar had its first brush with Cosplay in 2012 when local group AnimeQTR held a cosplay event at the Virginia Commonwealth University.
File photos from the cosplay competition at the 2013 edition of the festival.
