UCF, United Arab Emirates Students to Compare Films About Shopping Malls
by Chad Binette (407-823-6312, cbinette@mail.ucf.edu)

March 8, 2006 (ORLANDO) -- Four University of Central Florida students will show a short documentary they produced about who shops at The Mall at Millenia next week at a global women's leadership conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

The students from the UCF School of Film and Digital Media and the Art Department will discuss their film "The Search for The Mall at Millenia" about how that mall's architecture influences men's and women's decisions to shop there. The UCF students will be joined on a panel by four students from Dubai Women's College, who will present their companion film, "The Search for Ibn Battuta Mall."

The UCF students worked with School of Film and Digital Media professors Carroll Blue and Ula Stöckl. Under Stöckl's supervision this spring, the five UCF students made their five-minute DVD documentary about The Mall at Millenia.

Blue served as a U.S. Department of State CulturalConnect envoy last fall at Dubai Women's College and worked with students there on a 16-minute DVD documentary film about Ibn Battuta Mall. The two DVDs are the starting point for Dubai and UCF students to explore the global phenomenon of shopping.

Orlando and Dubai are both well-known international tourist destinations. The two malls share 13 of the same stores, including Starbucks, Betsey Johnson, The Body Shop and Godiva Chocolates.

UCF art student Carisa Melina Sumter; film students Alix Duggins, Leslie Erin Kitzinger and Laura López Bravo; and digital media student David Miller created The Mall at Millenia film. All of those students except for Miller will attend the Women as Global Leaders conference March 12 to 14 in the United Arab Emirates.

The conference features Cherie Booth, an attorney and the wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair; Queen Rania Al-Abdullah of Jordan; and Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland and a former United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

For more information on the conference, go to www.zu.ac.ae/leadership2006. For more information on the malls, go to www.mallatmillenia.com and www.ibnbattutamall.com.

For more information on the School of Film and Digital Media, go to www.sfdm.ucf.edu.

DATE POSTED
March 8, 2006

CONTACT
Clint Bowers
D.M. Division Head
407-823-6100
bowers@mail.ucf.edu

Steve Schlow
Film Division Head
407-823-0694
sschlow@mail.ucf.edu

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Film & Digital Media