JEDDAH, 12 November 2004 — “Congratulations on the first women’s only cinema theater now open at Al-Khayyat Center in Jeddah,” ran the text of an SMS an message received by people during the past few days and it created a buzz of excitement and anticipation.

“We thought “wow, finally!” and are planning to check it out,” said Abeer. Questions flew around a group of women about what kind of movies would be presented, what was the movie schedule, was it just for the Eid period and how much were the tickets?

Others were more doubtful, “I don’t think this can be true. Why haven’t we heard about it before? There has been some news circulating for a while that one of the new construction projects on the Corniche will include a movie theater, but this is news to me,” said May.

Arab News went to the Al-Khayyat shopping center to verify it first hand. And there they found a clothing store called Cinema, but that was it. Asking employees all around the mall thinking that perhaps the theater managers want to keep a low profile so as to not to attract unwanted attention, they all said there was no cinema theater.

“I haven’t heard of a cinema opening here or anywhere else. It would have been great but I don’t expect it will happen,” said one female shopper. The excitement died but the hope continues.

There was a successful experience two years ago of a movie theater at King Fahd Coastal City during the summer festival.

“It was a real theater with the big screen and sound, the seats and even the popcorn,” said Amal Ibrahim. It was directed mainly toward children and featured cartoons and animated movies such as the Disney blockbuster Finding Nemo.

“The adults were more excited about it than the children. While some of the children became restless in their seats, we sat there with big smiles on our faces,” said Amal. The tickets were SR10 and there were many repeat customers.

“It was a nice experience and convenient to take the children to watch a movie while we were already at the Coastal City enjoying our day. I don’t see what the problem is in having a cinema showing animations for children and their families,” said Reem.

No publicity was made before or during the summer festival about the theater except for the billboard sign indicating the place and a poster of the movie Finding Nemo at the Costal City itself. The theater holds around 300 to 400 viewers but only half the seats were occupied for each screening.

Nevertheless, it was a successful experience but unfortunately for some reason it was not repeated. “I do remember 30 or 40 years ago when there was a public cinema and some families had small private at-home theaters. I don’t know what happened that we cannot have a regulated movie theater in accordance with our traditions,” said Khadija.