The American Overseas Research Center in Tunis hosted an open house on Thursday, October 7, for the American visitors to the 20th Biennale of the Carthage Film Festival, which took place in Tunis October 1-9, 2004. The Carthage Film Festival, which features films from the Maghreb, the Middle East, and Africa, attracted two American cinephiles whose interests in Tunisian film brought them to the Centre d'Etudes Maghrebines a Tunis, or CEMAT. Among the guests were American Ambassador William Hudson; Philippa Day, Tunis production manager for Sindbad Productions; and Hichem Ben Khamsa, organizer of the opening and closing ceremonies of Carthage 2004. American visitors to the Carthage Festival were Katherine Paras, from the Harvard Law School Alumni Center and organizer of the March 2004 Tunisian Film Festival at Harvard¹s Film Study Center; and Jeff Ruoff, assistant professor of film studies at Dartmouth and author of An American Family; A Televised Life.