The one thing a great festival feeds on is publicity and yet several times photographers from the world media have been stopped from taking photographs during performances. There appears to be no logic to this decision as on some nights it does not seem to be a problem. The professional photographers are not using flash and require proximity to the stage. They are also less disturbing to the audience than the TV cameramen who duck and weave across the area with impunity. As the photographer from a major French newspaper said, “These security guards maybe doing their job, but we need to do ours and the festival organizers must address this issue now, not during some post festival post-mortem. How hard would it be top simply set aside an area for photographers as is done at other festivals.”
If the attention of security was directed to curtailing the use of flash photography and mobile phones by the invited VIPs they would do the festival a big favour. But stopping stills photographers in an arbitrary manner is counterproductive.
This morning The View feom Fez spoke with the very friendly festival director general, Faouzi Skali, and he promised to look into the problem.
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