QATAR (Bloomberg) — Robert De Niro, Ben Kingsley, Danny Boyle and Mira Nair will be walking down a digitalised red carpet this week for the Middle Eastern version of New York's most famous cinematic event.

Qatar, the gas-rich Persian Gulf emirate whose population boasts the second-highest standard of living in the world behind Lichtenstein, is set to host its own Tribeca film festival in the capital Doha. It boasts the world's most advanced red carpet — a 70-metre (230-foot) LCD screen with constantly changing patterns.

The Qatari partnership of the festival, co-founded by De Niro, 66, was announced in November last year. The event comes as media companies are building stronger ties with the Persian Gulf states and studios at home curb investments.

Abu Dhabi Media Co. said on October 19 that it became a stakeholder, along with Sony Corp. and Vivendi's Universal Music Group, in VEVO, a music video service powered by YouTube. Participant Films, maker of "Syriana," set up a $250 million movie finance fund with Abu Dhabi Media Co. last year. Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. agreed to invest $500 million to develop films and video games in Abu Dhabi.

Qataris "know their worth in the region," Amanda Palmer, head of entertainment for Al Jazeera English and executive director of the film festival, said in an interview in Doha. "Hollywood and Americans know that value more than anybody. That's without PR strategists and marketing departments. They know that the Gulf and this region are the future in terms of film financing."

Sixty-one films, including the Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man," Ruba Nadda's "Cairo Time," Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story," and Iranian director Asghar Farhadi's "About Elly" will be screened over four days at venues throughout the city.

The 1969 Egyptian classic "The Mummy" is scheduled to be shown in the old Souq Waqif, amidst spice sellers and jewellers.

The festival will also offer conversations and masterclasses, including one taught by "Slumdog Millionaire" director Boyle.

In the buildup to the film festival, organisers have hosted two showings of one-minute films made by local artists at the W Hotel in Doha's West Bay. The short movies range from a humorous look at the Doha life of expatriate single women to a film touching on the subject of suicide.

Qatar's Emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani and his wife, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned have used revenue from the world's third-largest gas reserves to build Qatar into an international centre of culture, art and sport.

The country convinced six US universities including Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M and Georgetown to set up campuses in the emirate. Qatar has bid to host the Olympics and Soccer World Cup.

The partnership with Tribeca was motivated by the Emir's daughter Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who did an internship at Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal's office in 2006, said Geoff Gilmore, the chief creative officer at Tribeca Enterprises.

"The relationship with Mayassa to this festival isn't just one of celebrity and red carpets," Gilmore said in a telephone interview from New York. "It will really establish a film industry."

While few feature-length films have been made in Qatar, the government-supported Qatar Foundation said in July that it would support a film about the 13th-century Persian poet Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi.

Palmer declined to say how much was being spent on the festival. Three thousand seats will be set up outside the I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art for an outdoor screening of Nair's "Amelia," the Middle East premiere of the film about one of the world's most famous woman pilots, Amelia Earhart.

"We always said that we didn't want to be a celeb fest," Palmer said. "Everybody who is invited, we wanted them to be engaged in the festival in some way."