Last year Nayla Al Khaja directed a film. Now she's become the first national woman to direct a TV commercial.
Nayla Al Khaja is the first female UAE national to direct a TV advertisement. |
So, it is with regret that I must reveal that 27-year-old Nayla Al Khaja has achieved yet another ruddy first.
She is the first female UAE national to direct a TV advertisement. There, I said it.
She, however, is as thoroughly unperturbed by this as any of us. "Please don't do another Emirati woman becomes the first to do something," she says. And she means it. In this whole "firsts" business Nayla Al Khaja has serious form.
Unprecedented
Last year, she directed the film Unveiling Dubai, which was definitely the first something or other.
Furthermore, she just set up a media marketing company in Media City, which I believe also has some unprecedented aspect to it.
But this week, the fulcrum for her hurricane-like progress through the barriers of convention was an advert for Tanmia.
| Karl Jeffs/Gulf News Contrary to what an expat might expect, the cultural obstacles for a female film-maker are fairly surmountable. |
With her full entourage of cameramen, lighting-people and fixers the conference room at the Al Murooj Rotana feels as packed as Motley Crue's tour-bus.
"Silence on set," she says and conversation ceases forthwith — although not always, her platinum blonde production manager confides, without her authoritative tone raising the occasional traditionally-minded male eyebrow.
On the other side of the camera, a young national PR recruited through Tanmia, repeatedly strides over to the window making imaginary conversation into a mobile phone.
"Do some hand actions," says an assistant. "Schway, schway."
"I really believe in the client's mission," says Nayla. "It is a testimonial ad. What the people in it are saying is actually true. The nationals also speak my dialect, the local dialect of the UAE, not classical Arabic."
But beyond sharing Tanmia's objective of getting nationals into employment, she is involved also in the name of art.
"TV commercials generate income to get art done," she says. "I am looking to get enough money to do my own experimental art film."
Both sides of her film-making activity are run from a plush office in Media City's CNN building overlooking the boating lake. But don't think this is all because she has a rich dad (which, in fact, she does).
"It annoys me to death the idea that all nationals are rich," she says. "My dad earned his money and he is my inspiration, but I'd rather shut the company down than ask him for help. He did it by himself and I want to do it by myself."
So, for now, she is forging her way with a canny blend of an "intellectual baroque art-house" and unabashed commercialism.
"People said my film Unveiling Dubai was a PR exercise, but I don't think anyone would have sponsored a film about a cockroach." (an earlier work focussed on a woman obsessed with the household pest).
Contrary to what an expat might expect, the cultural obstacles for a female film-maker are fairly surmountable. "It depends on which emirate you are from and which part of the city you live in," she says.
In any case, such impediments are totally overshadowed by the practical ones. First on the list is the lack of a film office.
Nayla only cuts short a rant about the efficiency of the Toronto Film and Television office with the reflection that, since studying film in Canada, she has been winding everyone up by drawing these comparisons.
"But it's not difficult," she says. "I just went out and did it. It's only difficult because it is a new field and I have to find the solutions for everything. I will have to run with one leg, but I am paving the road for the next generation."
