The Arts Edit | The National

Welcome to the latest edition of The Arts Edit, the weekly newsletter from The National's Abu Dhabi newsroom rounding up this week's most noteworthy arts and culture stories. IN FOCUS Abu Dhabi Art starts tomorrow at Manarat Al Saadiyat, showcasing work from more than 100 local, regional and international galleries. Running until Sunday, it is one of the highlights of the UAE’s arts calendar, featuring several fascinating sections and stand-out pieces this year. In the Collector's Forum, for instance, you can find a falcon-headed wooden sarcophagus from Egypt, which contains an original falcon nestled inside. The Farjam Collection, one of the most comprehensive collections of Islamic and contemporary Middle Eastern art, presents an exhibition called Arab Presences: Modern Art and Decolonisation, Paris 1908-1988. The show features nearly 50 artworks from names such as Fateh Moudarres, a Syrian painter and one of the leaders of the modern movement, Iraqi artist Mehdi Moutashar and Lebanese painter Bibi Zogbe. In addition, the Farjam Foundation will be sponsoring part of Abu Dhabi Art Talks, featuring numerous panel discussions with contemporary regional artists. This year’s event will also highlight some of the region’s many intricate links to the broader world. In the contemporary section, Silk Road: Drifting Identities highlights galleries and artists from Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Gateway exhibition, meanwhile, focuses on the connections between Latin America and the Arab world. Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial, meanwhile, opened on Friday. Running until April 30, the new event will feature performances and site-specific installations that transform Abu Dhabi and Al Ain into sprawling, open-air galleries. The National has put together a guide of the eight routes that are part of the event, including the locations of the visitors' hubs and the artists who will be showcasing work, which you can find here . Additionally, Al Ain Book Festival is running until Sunday, highlighting Emirati literature and featuring several compelling sessions. Abu Dhabi’s myriad contributions across cultures have been resonating around the world lately. This week on the National Geographic television channel, the documentary Beyond the Blue is showing on repeat. The film highlights three years of work by the National Aquarium in Abu Dhabi to rescue, rehabilitate and release turtles and other marine life. Faisal Salah met the aquarium’s general manager Paul Hamilton, who spoke about the film and the team's efforts, all while holding a small turtle. Read and watch here . We look forward to seeing you across the emirate all week and keep an eye out for our in-depth coverage of these events and more. When award-winning independent directors lead blockbuster films, they often lose their identity in the arduous process. For Barry Jenkins, Academy Award-winning director of Moonlight, Mufasa: The Lion King was not going to become one of those projects. Fighting tooth and nail to ensure it remained heartfelt and personal is the hardest thing he has had to do – and the most rewarding. “You'll feel when you see the film by the end, I won more than I lost, and that's really all you can hope for when you go into something this massive,” Jenkins tells The National . “It’s been a process. But over time, we've netted out in a place that feels very, very much a Barry Jenkins film.” There were times when Jenkins had to truly fight for his vision for the prequel to the 2019 hit, which is released on December 19 across the Middle East. And he had no better weapon than the original 1994 animated film, which he constantly brought up as an example of why going dark won’t alienate the audience. “There’s just something in the DNA of this story format," he says. "You can’t make The Lion King and not deal with real grief and real loss. Those are amazingly potent, deeply human emotions. “And anytime something began to feel too distant from that, I turned to the aftermath of the stampede scene in 1994 and said: ‘Look at what you did. People love this thing. And look at the depth of what you did. I want to do something similar – so just let me do what I do.'” Read more from our exclusive conversation here . The voices of children from Gaza and ancient Palestinian tales are part of a new one-woman show, which had its premiere in London on Friday. Performed by actress Sarah Agha and written by Elias Matar , two British Palestinians who live in London, A Grain Of Sand draws on real testimonials from Gaza and the magical world of Palestinian folktales to highlight the human cost of the Israel-Gaza war, now in its second year. Its premiere marked the launch of the London Palestine Film Festival – a two-week series of Palestinian films screened in cinemas across the city. The play tells the story of Renad, a little girl living in Gaza during the current war who searches for the phoenix – a mythical bird from Palestinian folktales – so that it can help her find her parents. She recounts the folktales that her grandmother taught her to get past the obstacles she encounters on the way, and to stay alive in her dangerous surroundings. Some of Renad’s words and stories are taken from the poems and testimonies of children in Gaza, written in the first six months of the war and published in a booklet called A Million Kites. The challenges she comes across are taken from real events that have taken place in Gaza, shared widely on social media. “Renad is talking from her point of view, but she's saying the real words of children,” Matar tells The National . “We want to remember everyone or every single child whose heart was broken, literally or mentally.” Amid the uncertainty of the conflict, he chose to channel many stories of real people in Gaza into one fictional character. “The metaphor is a great holder of pain,” he says. “When we use the metaphor, we're reminding people that every child in Gaza still has hopes to survive.” Find more here . DATES FOR YOUR DIARY · Wireless Music Festival at Etihad Park, Abu Dhabi – November 23 · The Streets at Coca-Cola Arena, Dubai – November 30 · Singin' in the Rain at Dubai Opera – November 30 to December 14 OTHER HIGHLIGHTS