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Don’t Say Dubai To The Dubai Girl: Just Say “See You Soon”
Every November and December, a handful of current and former Toronto International Film Festival employees make the trek to the United Arab Emirates to help run the Dubai International Film Festival. Its fourth year having wrapped up on Sunday, DIFF—like most everything else about Dubai—is an experiment in accelerated postmodernization, an attempt to create a world-class film festival (this year’s opening movie was Michael Clayton, with George Clooney in attendance) from scratch.
One of those imported Torontonians helping bring Dubai some of that good ol’ TIFFiciency is box office manager Dot Routledge, who has been keeping an entertaining blog of her experiences in the ballooning metropolis and posting photos to her Facebook account. One of those photos, above, caught our eye. Dot’s caption explains:
I love this ad. It’s hard to see but it shows footprints in a barren desert turning into footprints in a snowy wasteland. The ad is for Emirates Air and it’s about their new direct flights from Dubai to Toronto. I’m not sure who this is supposed to be making look good, and all I can say is “at least in a winter wasteland you can eat the snow.” Crazy.
Of course, air travel is so twentieth century. Sooner or later, the infinite wealth and ambition of the UAE will lead them to find a way to merge our cities once and for all.