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The colours of the desert through 18-minute film

Dubai - The web series is a set of nine two-minute long films

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How does one explain colour to a blind person? A new web series - entitled "Colours of Arabia" - seeks to find the answer to that question.
The web series is a set of nine two-minute long films, which revolve around a visually impaired 10-year old girl and her grandfather or 'Jiddoo', as they travel the deserts, wadis, creeks, and beaches of Arabia, including parts of the UAE.
Throughout the journey, the girl's grandfather connects heritage, culture and landscape of the countries of Arabia through verbal narration, feel, and touch.
In the first episode of the series - which is set in Salalah, Oman, during the Khareef season - the grandfather describes the colour red as "the heated colour of a blush". In the second episode, set in Fujairah, he describes the brownish hue of the Al Badiyah Mosque as "the colour of the earth that we all belong to."
The web series has been organised as a Corporate Social Responsibility initiative by Berger Paints, a company established in 1760 that now has a presence across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, the South Pacific and the Middle East.

"The UAE has earned a special place in the global tourism industry and we celebrate the vision, aspirations and achievement of the UAE and other countries with the 'Colours of Arabia' campaign," said Aseem Doshi, general-manager of Berger Paints Emirates.
"As GCC countries continue to upgrade their infrastructure to provide swifter access to people with disability, our CSR initiative could not have been at a better time, when the UN has declared 2016 as the year for travel for all-improving universal accessibility.
How did the idea take shape
Rajarshi Banerjee, Berger Paint's regional marketing head, said that the idea came about as company officials were discussing how best to describe the colours.
"One of the facets that we fight with daily is how we communicate colour to consumers," he said. "Colour continues to elude us in terms of what it means and being able to communicate that."
"Our whole team was sitting there and we were debating how we take this forward. Today everyone is talking about social media and online. But what happens if a consumer's screen is not tuned right, or you look at the colour in different lights?," he noted.
"Then somebody said 'what if the consumer cannot see colour' I remember a pin-drop silence after that."
Banerjee noted that the web series is designed to create a series of empathy, which is "a first step."
"Only after that can you talk of action. It's something that needs to be spoken of. To do this, we created 'Colours of Arabia'," he noted.
"The overall impression is that this part of the world is monochromatic desert.Arabia is about the desert, but it's also about the camel in the rain in Salalah during Khareef, it's about the oryx, it's about the Tree of Life in Bahrain, it's about beautiful wadis."
The web series will be available - one a week - on the Facebook, Instagram and Youtube pages of Berger Paints Arabia.
bernd@khaleejtimes.com