WHAT A JOY TO VISIT DAR AL-HEKMA WOMAN'S COLLEGE                                         

SCHOOL OF DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE IN JEDDAH ...

You may have become aware of this woman's college recently because

Dar Al-Hekma is the woman's college in Saudi Arabia where our Secretary of State

Hillary Clinton held a Town Hall Meeting a few weeks ago.  Dr. Salfeha Abdein

is the Vice-Dean in charge of Institutional Development at Dar Al-Hekma and 

is the person who slated the college as Secretary Clinton's site for her Town Hall 

meeting while in Saudi Arabia. And I understand why! Like Secretary Clinton, 

these are  a m a z i n g  women who run this university as brilliant scholars 

and thinkers in their own right; such as Dr. Abedin who earned her Ph.D. at 

Cambridge in Sociology. What a pleasure to meet Dr. Abedin and to have the 

privilege of spending time with her.

My positive impressions didn't stop with Dr. Abedin however! This invitation

to present my work and to teach Experimental Animation to the girls at

Dar Al-Hekma came from an impressive Chair of the Design Department,

Professor Dima Schneider. Professor Schneider came to Dar Al-Hekma from

the American University in Beruit, Lebanon five years ago where she had taught

for thirteen years and since taking the reins in Jeddah, she has led

the Department of Design into a School of Design that is internationally

accredited through the UK/London.  Yet another brilliant woman who's

background prior to Dar Al-Hekma was as a 3-D computer animation artist.

The faculty! A widely diverse and highly educated international faculty of artists,

graphic designers, and scholars from Poland, Lithuania, Portugal, America, and

Saudi Arabia. Do not misunderstand me here: not only highly educated, but

warm, inviting, humorous and supportive women who ROCK! 

And the girls: twenty-one lovely young women in their black abayas who

impressed me with their intelligence and authentic desire to be introduced to

the history of experimental animation and to the creative practice of

experimental animation outside the digital environment: in this case,

an 'analogue' art of experimenting with animation that leaves the marks of

the artist's hands on the drawn images. These girls are the brightest of

undergrads, not unlike my terrific students in America! While the cultural

differences are enormous between the two, the love of learning and taking

intellectual risks remains constant.

Are you beginning to get the sense of this now? Of how delighted I was

to find myself invited to present in this cultural environment?

Finally (until I return to share photos with you), I presented the IIACI Institute

alongside my paintings, drawings, scholarship, and film, PARIS IS A WOMAN,

the final evening of the TAWASUL II Conference. The two keynote speakers

presented: myself and Monsieur Phillipe Jalladeau, a French filmmaker and

Film Festival Director who was the first film scholar to bring a Middle Eastern

Film Program to Europe many years ago. Jalladeau was educated in France

and majored in Oceanography as an undergrad but found himself at Princeton

for his graduate work in film with a post-grad stint at Stanford Film Institute

where he produced award winning films world-wide. Every morning while there

I delighted in his company while eating the absolutely delicious breakfasts at

the Hotel Intercontinental ... yummy fresh figs, salmon, and hummus.

While I am not speaking here specifically about the challenges of a Kingdom

that prohibits women from driving or from going out in public without covering

themselves or for even going out in public alone, I was not unaware of those

prohibitions. I was given a lovely abaya to wear while there and I wore it in

respect for a culture I, as a Westerner, was visiting.  In this short visit to Saudi

Arabia, these prohibitions didn't deter from my sense of purpose towards

my academic colleagues and my students. IIACI and I were there to advance

the artist as a philosopher of creative intelligence, one whose necessity is to

access the intuitive and the intellectual simultaneously.

How longer visits to such a diverse international culture will challenge me

in the future remains to be seen, but I am quite clear on this visit:

an absolute delight!

Dr. Janeann Dill

IIACI: Institute Founder-Director