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Doha, Qatar; December 3, 2015: The third Ajyal Youth Film Festival, presented by the Doha Film Institute, will highlight the power of music and film to conserve the environment and make the world a better place to live in.

Today (Thursday, December 3, 2015), the festival will host the screening of Landfill Harmonic (USA; 2015), directed by Brad Allgood and Graham Townsley at 7.30 PM at Katara SONY Cinema Under the Stars, followed by a concert by members of the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura. Entry is free to the public.

The Recycled Orchestra has a fascinating story, with all its instruments produced using materials found in the vast expanse of a landfill in the small town of Cateura, which is the dumping yard of some 1,500 tonnes of garbage daily from the Paraguayan capital city of Asuncion.

Families in the town sort through the trash collecting recyclable materials to sell. The young people had few viable options for living besides working in the dump, and the cycle of poverty appeared endless until a small gesture changed their lives.

Favio Chavez, who came to work in Cateura, began to offer music lessons but it was a formidable task as buying even a violin would cost more than a house. A brainwave hit him, and he joined with a local carpenter to produce musical instruments from recycled materials.

The Recycled Orchestra has today gained international acclaim and has performed onstage with the likes of Megadeth and Metallica. Allgood, an award-winning filmmaker, and Townsley, an anthropologist and documentary maker, joined hands to make Landfill Harmonic, a film that tracks the astounding rise of this community youth orchestra.

The event also marks the start of the Ajyal Family Weekend activities, offering an array of delightful and creative activities for parents, children and people of all ages. Apart from the Recycled Orchestra, activities include nine-year-old Norwegian YouTube sensation Angelina Jordan singing jazz standards on Dec. 4 and 5, and the Festival Tout-Petits Cinema presenting a cine-concert of live music to accompany four short animated films on Dec. 4.

For more information on the movie timings and the Ajyal Youth Film Festival, log onto www.dohafilminstitute.com.