Bridal Veil Outdoor Film Festival Benefits the Rwanda Cinema Center

For several years, organizations such as FilmAid and the Rwanda Cinema Center have used inflatable screens and mobile outdoor cinema equipment from Open Air Cinema to screen films in villages and refugee camps in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. The Bridal Veil Film Festival in Provo, Utah is a three-weekend charitable event at the base of Bridal Veil Falls designed to raise money for the Rwanda Cinema Center.

The 2008 festival runs September 12--28 on a 50-foot screen with seating for 500, screening films from nine countries at 8 p.m. nightly: Life is Beautiful (Italy), Amélie (France), Dreams (Japan), Children of Heaven (Iran), Cinema Paradiso (Italy), Chariots of Fire (England), Grizzly Man (USA), Wings of Desire (Germany), Wardance (Uganda), 2001: A Space Odyssey (USA), and City of God (Brazil). Admission: $8 donation. Bring blankets and warm layers.

The Rwanda Cinema Center was founded in 2002 by Eric Kabera, who survived the 1994 genocide and created the film 100 Days to raise global awareness of the tragedy. In 2005, Monica Horan Rosenthal of Everybody Loves Raymond donated an Open Air Cinema screen system, enabling Kabera to launch the Hillywood Film Festival -- a traveling outdoor festival now in its fourth year bringing Rwandan and international films to villages across the country. In June 2008, Open Air Cinema donated a projector and screen system and entered a partnership to help the festival expand to Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Burundi.