In addition to being organized by non-profit organizations, the Dominican Republic Global Film Festival is distinguished for its role in promoting the Dominican Republic as an excellent location to make and produce films, thus contributing to the country’s economic growth and competitiveness.

Mission

The Dominican Global Film Festival presents a selection of the best international, dramatic and documentary films to enrich the country’s film culture and to bring the seventh art to all sectors of Dominican society. The Festival contributes to raising awareness and understanding of global issues through stories about events and people that have left a mark on our lives. It uses film as a way to promote and encourage discussion about social issues, politics and economics.

Goals

• To enrich the film culture of the Dominican Republic.
• To show a wide variety of films that are generally not available to the Dominican public.
• To show films that connect with Dominican youth and at the same time expand their appreciation of film.
• To show films that entertain as well as improve our understanding of global issues.
• To reach out to people from various sectors and social classes to join together in seeing and discussing the films.
• To bring modern film culture to the schools of the Dominican Republic; to use film in the schools as a medium to understand global issues, to create proposals and solutions and to promote individual opportunities.
• To promote the Dominican Republic within the international film industry as a desirable and viable alternative for the industry.
• To use film to strengthen the economic development of the country.

Message of the president
WELCOME
The Dominican Global Film Festival is celebrating its sixth edition with a long list of achievements and protagonists. International and Dominican artists who have left their mark here as they passed through Santo Domingo and the other cities where the Festival was held are the best evidence of the quality that has been achieved at this film event, organized by the Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE).

After six years of sustained work, we can confirm that the objective of putting the Dominican Republic on the map of the region’s film festivals has been fulfilled. This contribution is of major importance because, as we have said and reaffirm on this ideal occasion, cinema can elevate the country and generate wealth, while at the same time, enabling us to reflect on issues that positively or negatively impact human beings in their various roles. Film enables us to travel to other worlds, learn about other cultures, see ourselves reflected in the lives of others and to learn that there are many ways to live and confront the permanent challenge of evolving as human beings.

While President of the Republic, we proposed the promulgation of the Film Law that would enable the promotion of the local film industry and attract international productions. As a think tank, FUNGLODE contributed by stimulating the debate about what, at the time, was a legislative project.  At the same time, through the Dominican Global Film Festival and the Global Media Arts Institute (GMAI), the project of attracting young talent and teaching them about making good movies continued.

Reaching the goal of seeing the Dominican Republic as a national and international film production center is still a major incentive of FUNGLODE’s work in various film areas, with the Dominican Global Film Festival as the flagship. With this focus, we would like to welcome everyone to this sixth edition of the Film Festival; we welcome its protagonists and invited guests to be part of this experience with the seventh art.

From November 14 to 21, Santo Domingo, Santiago, Nagua, Puerto Plata, Higüey and our neighboring city of Port au Prince will be turned into scenarios where were are all invited to join in.

I invite you to be spectators and, at the same time, actors in the forefront of this new cultural experience the Dominican Global Film Festival is offering us. Volunteers, invited artists, the public, producers and investors all have a unique opportunity to enjoy and contribute during the five days of activities that will go on while the Festival is in these cities.

Leonel Fernández
President
FUNGLODE

Mensaje of the Executive Director
The Fundacion Global Democracia y Desarrollo is proud and satisfied to present the new edition of the Dominican Republic Global Film Festival to the Dominican and Latin American public. We are offering this sixth cultural festival under a new modality: we are inviting all of you who view yourselves as lovers of the seventh art to join us at this event, created by FUNGLODE with hard work and dedication for the past 7 years, and to make this initiative your own.

Each year, more and more film fans anxiously await the Festival. Months prior, this burning question is asked by people from all sectors: “What movies is the FUNGLODE Festival bringing this year?” We are now proposing that this initiative not be attributed exclusively to FUNGLODE. Our intention is that all Dominicans become active participants in the Festival. From this moment on, the Dominican Global Film Festival will not just belong to FUNGLODE; the Festival is now the property of all film buffs and all those who work for and who cast their fate with the successful development of the film industry in the Dominican Republic. This is, my friends, “our Festival.”

As owners of the Dominican Global Film Festival, we will be totally involved in it, support it with the same enthusiasm as the past six years and will yearly make every effort to improve it. We intend to make this now symbolic cultural festival, the distinguished and emblematic film and audiovisual event in the Dominican Republic.

Welcome! We hope you enjoy your Festival.

Marco Herrera
Executive Director
FUNGLODE

This impetus with which we began has transcended the initiatives and, with invaluable support of friends and individuals concerned with the cultural, educational and artistic development of the Dominican Republic, we are moving forward with two projects we proudly call: the Global Media Arts Institute (IGM) and the Dominican Global Film Festival (FCGD).

The IGM is a multimedia educational center dedicated to young talent, training seasoned professionals and educating the public to better understand and appreciate the film arts that works hand-in-hand with the Film Festival. Many of the graduates are in key positions within the Festival. As such, we are confident that this education and training goes beyond knowledge and becomes a natural, tangible and transformative resource for young people and adults who decide to become professionals in the area of film and the audiovisuals arts and crafts.

The FCGD is a film event held every November since 2006 with its main location being the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. Film shows us how to live in a globalized world. The FCGD has the unique characteristic of taking place simultaneously throughout the country in Santiago, Puerto Plata, Nagua, Cap Cana and neighboring Haiti's capital Port au Prince.

The Making of a Film Festival
Organizing a film festival, as we do, is done with desire, enthusiasm, effort, dedication and teamwork; all these tools are essential to heat up and start the motors of the event.

Undertaking a festival like this is not an easy task and involves hard work that begins the moment one festival ends with the announcement date of the next festival. Organization requires constant logistics management, technical preparation, a firm communications system as well as endless marketing and public relations activities.

A festival is not held just to have one; festivals are held because there is an interest, an objective, goals, dedication, generosity, courage and work done by a group of young people who give their time, effort and motivation.

I will leave you here with the promise to continue working hard in an effort to improve and perfect
all that we do here, so that this Festival continues to be the best, the most important and the
highest quality event in the country, respected and recognized by everyone. It is the Dominican people and the entire film community around the world who are the true and honest protagonists of this unfinished film, always in motion toward the perfection and creation of our Film Festival.

We will not rest, as stated in our proud slogans, in our search for the best "Global Issues" to give them profound and real expression through "Personal Stories!" Thinking of the future today as we become the most important film event in the country!.

Omar de la Cruz
Director
Dominican Global Film Festival

Ellis Pérez
On three occasions since the 2009 event, I have had the opportunity to be associated with and participate in the Dominican Global Film Festival. I have watched it grow. Last year, at the fifth event, and with a sense of Dominican pride, I could appreciate how this film festival had reached the heights of a great international extravaganza, for its quality as well as the variety of the films, the star-quality of several of its international guests, and the strong professionalism of the workshops held during the event. At the various international festivals that I have been attending as the Dominican Film Commissioner, General of Cinema, most of which I have shared with Omar de la Cruz, Director of the Dominican Global Film Festival, I have noted how cinema professionals of different nationalities are already recognizing our festival as a benchmark in the Caribbean that increasingly needs to be placed on the agenda of the various professionals involved in filmmaking, such as producers, directors, directors of photography, location finders, distributors and marketers of international film products.

This year, the Festival’s sixth edition will be enriched with a recently announced contribution from the General Directorate of Cinema, of a cash prize of DR$200,000 for the best Dominican film. This first year we have symbolically selected a Dominican film that is already considered a classic, Un Pasaje de Ida (A One-way Ticket) directed by Agliberto Meléndez. Produced between 1986 and 1987, it premiered in theaters in 1988.

We have no doubt that the Dominican Global Film Festival will continue its upward path, thus contributing to a better positioning of the Dominican Republic on the calendar of international film festivals. This will promote the development of a native cinema, which has already greatly surpassed the levels of the productions made each year. Now, with the integrated actions of the veterans who have been making our films in recent decades, as well as the returning young graduates of internationally renowned schools in Cuba, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, California, New York and Europe, there is now an adequate amount of production as a result of our Film Law 108-10. With better financial instruments and better budgets, we can aspire to rent better equipment, better studio facilities, and hire expert technicians and the most qualified actors, in order to produce films with the level of quality that will allow us to have a decent and competitive presence in the most important festivals and showcases of global cinema.

With that said, we welcome and recognize the 6th Dominican Global Film Festival, with best wishes for the success we know it will have. And we invite all Dominican film lovers to attend the Festival’s presentations, to provide strong support for the films that are now and will continue to be produced in greater quantities with better quality in the Dominican Republic. See you at the movies.

Ellis Pérez
General Director
DGCINE

Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE), in the Dominican Republic, is a think tank with strategic initiatives that seek to lead to reflection, analysis and the debate of ideas. FUNGLODE formulates proposals through which the actors of Dominican society analyze global situations and suggest policies for the integration of the country in the global system. FUNGLODE promotes democratic governance, the rule of law, and sustainable development, based on the plurality of ideas that we extend to all areas of human knowledge. All our actions are inspired by a broad vision of integral growth.

Based on these parameters of global order, FUNGLODE maintains cooperation agreements with prestigious organizations throughout the Caribbean, South America, the United States, Africa, and Europe, involving a constant traffic of knowledge supplied by specialists from four continents. The results come to the beneficiaries in the form of scholarships, training and internship programs. These ties to hundreds of academic institutions worldwide contribute to the institutional strengthening of FUNGLODE.

For several years now, the Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE) has promoted the development of the film industry and audiovisual arts in general in the Dominican Republic. It is with this objective that the Global Media Arts Institute (IGM) and the Dominican Republic Global Film Festival (FCGD) were created.

One of the goals of the Dominican Republic Global Film Festival is to garner resources that will allow FUNGLODE to continue to develop the work plan laid out by the Global Media Arts Institute (IGM), with the vision of being a fundamental element in the development of the Dominican cinema and audiovisual industries with an excellent multimedia training and education center for young talent as well as for experienced professionals. Over the course of the year, IGM offers regular courses from beginner and intermediate to advanced levels. It also organizes cultural activities that promote a better understanding of cinema and the audiovisual arts through the use of film screenings, discussion panels, dissertations with actors and technicians, among other activities. IGM also sponsors students with scholarships to schools and universities around the world.

The mission of FUNGLODE is to contribute to the social, economic and democratic development of the Dominican Republic. At the same time, the Global Media Arts Institute and the Dominican Republic Global Film Festival seek to benefit young Dominicans, raising their consciousness, proposing solutions to pressing social problems and disseminating concepts of individual creativity and opportunity. The Institute and the Festival
also seek to promote the development of the Dominican film industry, pointing out the possibilities the country has to offer the international film industry and, through the development of this sector, to ultimately contribute to the economic growth of the nation.