Oman festival gives Gulf film industry shot in the arm

Oman's first film festival has been a success in terms of the awareness it has generated about the Gulf's fledgling film industry. The discourses and the discussions held on the sidelines of the festival by international as well as Gulf directors seems to have galvanised GCC filmmakers to make more movies.

"Till recently, filmmaking in the Gulf has been an isolated process, there were pockets of activity and individuals had to rely on their own initiative to put together productions," Khalid Siddique, renowned Kuwaiti director told Gulf News. "We are now trying to bring them together under the umbrella of the Gulf Filmmakers' Association to give momentum to filmmaking in the region."

Bassam Al Thawaidi, a film director from Bahrain however feels its too late now for the Gulf to establish an industry here in terms of the amount of infrastructure needed. "We should now focus on making films as opposed to setting up an industry," he told Gulf News. "Setting up an industry takes time, expertise and huge investments."

"We need active governmental support to popularise cinema in the region – we need more film societies, movie halls and festivals to get people to view cinema positively. The low audience turnout keeps away private financiers from investing in our productions; film production is not a viable economic proposition even if the film is marketed to video and television centers. Gulf directors often end up producing movies themselves."

Cinema in most of the Gulf states till recently was just restricted to building movie halls, says Al Thawadi. In Saudi Arabia movies were banned till 1965 when King Faisal established a television network which aired religious programmes and censored Egyptian dramas. Qatar also has its share of cinema halls and uses its facilities to make short documentaries and sports clippings. "The English director Ron Baxter made the first colour documentary film in 1960 on Qatar," he said.

The Abu Dhabi Cultural Forum sponsors a number of individual initiatives in the UAE besides organising mini film festivals and publishing books on cinema. It seeks to rope in Gulf cinema specialists to utilise cinema production resources offered by the GCC's general secretariat.

Khalifa Shaheen spearheaded the movement in Bahrain; he produced a number of documentary films through his Falcon Cinefoto Establishment, a production outfit he opened in 1971. "There is a limit to what individual initiative can accomplish. Concerted group effort is needed to evolve this movement further," says Siddique.

"We need to get more films to be shot in the Gulf," argues Al Thawadi. "This way local talent can be encouraged to pick up the nuances of film making." Philippe Jalladeau, the French director of the Festival of 3 Continents in Nantes, who helped organise the Muscat film festival, told Gulf News, "The GCC producers suffer on account of lack of exposure to feature film making. They have no production infrastructure and no governmental agencies to fund their projects."

"Co-productions between GCC countries are the need of the hour," explains Jalladeau. "That's the only way to make film making viable in this region, to make up the critical audience mass needed. Every year one film should be made on an average for the screen as a collaborative effort. There are talented people here, they have to get over teething problems and co productions will go a long way to make the process smooth."

"We need to work backwards," analyses Al Thawadi. "We need governmental support not to make films but to organise film festivals to get more people involved in this business. People here love cinema, they want to see locally produced movies that address their concerns and problems. We should cater to that need."

"Cinematic activity should not be restricted to merely beaming movies, instead there is now a need to forge links between cinema clubs and the ministries of information," he says. The Muscat film festival has been hailed a step in the right direction and similar regional initiatives will hopefully happen again.

"The festival has been a success," Ibrahim Abdullah Al Qasmi, Director of the Muscat Festival Directorate told Gulf News. "We hope to do it again next year and look forward to enlarging our portfolio and screen more movies."