Cinema of the Middle East

Middle Eastern cinema collectively refers to the film industries of West Asia and part of North Africa.

By definition, it encompasses the film industries of Egypt, Iran, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

However, it was found that cinema was brought into most of the Arab countries by the beginning of the 20th century, particularly in Egypt in 1896, by Pathé Frères or the Lumière Brothers.

The historical component includes key events and trigger points which led to the inception or emergence of cinema in the Middle East.

One of the three films they created featured verses from the Muslim Qur'an vertically inverted which led it to being banned by government officials.

In 1926, the Lebanese Lama brothers came back from Argentina with their cameras and began creating Western-styled films in the deserts of Egypt.

Studio Misr did not dominate the industry, but was one of the big factors that launched Egyptian cinema (including their decision to move production from Alexandria to Cairo).

According to Ibrahim Farghali, an Egyptian journalist, "To me, the Egypt of today seems influenced by the '68 movement in its call for change, the surmounting of traditional values, and liberation from oppression, whether political, social, ethical, or religious".

The studio still made movies for the next 12 years, until it was sold to the Coca-Cola Company in 1966, who wanted to turn the land and buildings into a new factory.

When the First Gulf War began, film-making equipment and celluloids were banned from entering the country because of an international embargo put on Iraq.

[23][24] The history of Israeli cinema is so closely related to the history of the state of Israel itself since some of the wars and international conflicts that the country was inevitably drawn into by the war torn Middle East, inspired Israeli film directors and gave rise to the different periods of the nation's film industry.

[27] Between the end of World War II and the declaration of the Jewish state, Israeli films portrayed holocaust survivors and their journey to escape their tragic past of persecution, homelessness, and desolation to become true Israelis and fulfill their "duty" to claim the land, build settlements, and begin a new life.

After the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli conflict, these films were one way in which the new state forged a nationalist narrative and portrayed how the perfect Hebrew Israeli men should be[27][29] This branch of the Zionist Realism genre is called the Heroic-Nationalist Cinema.

The first one, the Bourekas films, named after a popular local pastry, were comedies and melodramas that depicted the inter-ethnic conflict between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews, which generally was resolved by means of the consummation of a mixed marriage.

[30] The ingenuity of Bourekas filmmakers was, on one hand, their ability to use comedy and sentimentalism as a way to avoid serious involvement with more problematic issues and, on the other, their effort to legitimize Mizrahim as part of the Jewish-Israeli society through the marriage plot.

This current was characterized by low production budget films with urban scenery, debutant actors or non-actors as protagonists, experimental cinematic techniques, open-ended plots, and unconventional narrative strategies.

[34] Another important aspect of this new cinematic wave was that it questioned the Israeli identity and it did so by altering the traditional characteristics of the protagonists; for instance, the former 'Sabra hero' of the Zionist Realism cinema was now presented as a physically impotent, mentally damaged, weak, or frustrated soldier.

The Commission fund is central to Jordan's contemporary film infrastructure and serves as a backdrop for Arab cinema as a whole through a grants program, support for local filmmakers and an established series of workshops.

Increasingly, Jordan has been capitalizing on its unique landscapes as ideal film location (especially Wadi Rum) and is now becoming a go to destination for Hollywood prestige pictures which around the world such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Martian, or even Star Wars: Rogue One.

[9] Two years after the Lumière Brothers publicly projected their first film in December 1885 (Paris, France), they began sending traveling representatives to tour different countries to show their movies.

[9] Eventually, Jordano Pidutti, who was Italian driver to a well-known Lebanese family (who was fluent in Arabic and spent several years in the country) directed the first-ever silent film in Lebanon – The Adventures of Elias Mabrouk (1929).

In the theaters, there was a law issued by the government in 1929 called The Moving Pictures Act, which censored films that contained immoral actions and behaviors that may in any way negatively impact the audience.

Because a great part of the Palestinian population is scattered around the world, and due to political turmoil in the country, Palestine does not have the necessary governmental or private support to sustain its own film industry and therefore the few Palestinian filmmakers heavily rely on regional and international institutions which they most of the time have access to because of their dual nationality.

[56] The exhibition landscape is competitively shared between worldwide exhibitors such as Novo, Vox and Gulf Media but also locally based theaters such as Landmark and Doha cinema (Souq Waqif).

Initially, Saudi Arabia did not refute the idea of movie theaters and allowed independent improvised cinemas which functioned outside of government oversight.

the exception being the IMAX system instated by Khalid in the city of Khobar which only displayed scientific and religious oriented content.

A potential explanation to why the religious scholars were not fans of cinema, according to Shafik, could be because film is seen as bringing inanimate objects to life, which was something that seemed to compete with the power of God.

[60] Furthermore, the film industry is receiving support from Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, owner of entertainment company Rotana, which some see as an encouraging sign for the reestablishment of cinema in Saudi Arabia.

[60] With the rise of digital and social network, pressure was mounting on Saudi Arabia in regards to the permissibility of cinemas as many were watching films online anyway.

In 2005, an improvised cinema in Riyadh was officially opened though limited to men and children only to prevent gender mixing in a public space.