A Saudi society without films

Driving through the desert night, Mohammad Al Khalif skids left and pulls up at an apartment with walls the colour of pink grapefruit.

Young men sit on a couch, revelling in the intricacy of Stanley Kubrick and chiding the sentimentality of Steven Spielberg.

A debate ensues over genius. The usual suspects are trotted out: Italian neo-realism, the French New Wave.

A Spielberg defender blurts: "You wouldn't even be here if it weren't for Spielberg. Look what he has done."

A brief pause. The air-conditioner in the apartment seems overworked. Pizza is ordered. Someone flicks a switch. Lights dim, the screen brightens.

A girl with wild hair descends stairs and slowly, layer by layer, disappears into a black abaya, headscarf and a veil. She seems a butterfly in reverse. She says nothing. A door opens and she steps outside, the same colour as the night.

The lights come up; Khalif and the men wait to hear a visitor's reaction. They are pensive, confident, ready to defend, hoping that their Sony Z-1 camera and editing tips downloaded from the internet have captured life in Saudi Arabia.

The pacing is erratic, the sound echoes, but Shadow is powerful, one of seven short films produced since 2008 by the Talashi Film Group, a collection of Saudi Arabian film buffs, including a former Ikea salesman, who met on the web several years ago and became vanguard filmmakers in a country where cinemas are forbidden.

Cruise the highways and boulevards of Riyadh and it all appears there in flash and neon: cool marble malls, Starbucks and plastic surgery clinics. But no cineplex.

Films made here are hustled out of the country to be shown in foreign theatres, even as Hollywood imports can be rented at video stores or seen on any number of the 500 or so satellite channels.

It has become a Saudi Arabian aficionado's rite of passage to fly to the UAE or Bahrain and gorge on films for a weekend.

Director Abdullah Al Eyaf distilled this forced wanderlust in Cinema 500 Km, which tracks a film lover's journey across borders into the darkness of a film house.

Films by Talashi range from light-hearted to searing. They are low-budget but they speak to a sense of personal isolation.

According to Local Time is a man's unsuccessful quest to buy gas and food as stores around him close for the call to prayer.

Sunrise/Sunset is the tale of a boy who is beaten at school, raped under an overpass and arrested by the religious police. I Don't Wanna is a playful, if biting, romp against conformity.

Abdulmohsin Al Mutairi wants his films to matter but wonders how. He sits at the end of the couch and speaks slowly, as if every word is a ticket to an interesting journey.

He leaves his job selling medical products and drives to this apartment of cables, DVDs and cigarette smoke.

In a city where cafés close early and officials from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice patrol endlessly, the flat is a refuge, a makeshift studio to talk until dawn about scripts, new projects and the narrative of his nation.

"Making films is really more comedy than tragedy for us. We're like Europe in the Middle Ages," he says. "Our society doesn't care about this kind of art. It cares about what happens outside in other Islamic countries. They'll give $200 million or $300 million to Afghanistan but they'll do nothing to improve the situation inside this country.

"There's poverty — just go out to these neighbourhoods — and what about women's rights?"

Filmmakers were optimistic in December when a Saudi comedy produced by a company owned by Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal opened for a limited engagement in a Riyadh cultural centre.

The film, Menahi, was shown before mixed audiences and sparked protests by fundamentalists who regard celluloid as fantasy, especially objectionable if men and women watch it side by side.

The controversy led Saudi Arabian authorities in June to cancel the annual Jeddah Film Festival — the country's only film gathering.

In 2006, Talal produced the kingdom's first feature film, Keif Al Hal, or "How's It Going?" Filmed in Dubai but set in Saudi Arabia, the comedy-drama examined a young woman's struggle for identity. Its Saudi Arabian co-star outraged clerics by appearing unveiled.

It was shown on TV and came out one year after Haifa Al Mansour, a woman and one of country's best-known directors, released Women Without Shadows, an internationally acclaimed documentary about the lives of women in the Gulf.

"Films are a symbol of the war between liberals and conservatives," says Aisha Al Kusayer, a TV and screen writer.

There is a question of how far to push.

"We showed Sunrise/Sunset in small, private screenings but we got in trouble for that and had to stop," Khalif says. "You have to be careful. Some of the guys worry. Most of us want to leave here. We know we can't have the careers we want if we stay."