DHAHRAN, 24 March 2006 — Saudi Arabia is by any standard an amazing country, and its people are among the friendliest. This is my third visit, and hopefully, not the last. If I may be permitted an observation, the country is unique in that it is lacking in one particular and has a plenitude in another: There are no cinemas, but shopping malls are proliferating.
Given the dearth of outlets for entertainment, I was surprised and delighted to read a news item in Arab News about Saudis striving to bring their country into the “celluloid world.” I wasn’t even aware that seven Saudi films were participating in a film festival in Abu Dhabi besides a timely and telling documentary titled “Cinema 500 km,” depicting a Saudi youth traveling this distance to Bahrain to satiate his appetite for a cinematic experience. These are seeds germinating in a rich soil.
I cannot but wonder how King Abdul Aziz, who consolidated and founded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, would have reacted to this “marvel of the century, wonder of the world” as cinema has been described? Scholar James Perry, writing about King Abdul Aziz as “A Man for Our Century” in Aramco World magazine, describes how the great warrior understood and welcomed products of Western technology — importing a fleet of automobiles, ordering the creation of an extensive information network to extend his “eyes and ears” across the country, and explaining the value of the telephone to several skeptics by inviting them to listen to recitations from the Qur’an being read down the telephone line! Presumably, he would have been greatly interested in this new technological advance to provide easy entertainment to his beloved people.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah is known not only as a benevolent ruler but as having taken the lead to break down trade barriers between Saudi Arabia and the four Asian countries of India, Pakistan, Malaysia and China. Cinema, like cricket, is breaking down barriers between India and Pakistan. It has brought the peoples of the two countries closer together on the path to peace.
Cinema has also improved trade relations between India and Pakistan. Indian directors are planning to shoot films in Pakistan and Pakistan directors in India. Cinema has been a substantial money-earner in India, contributing millions of rupees to the national exchequer by way of entertainment tax and related taxes.
I am aware that in Saudi homes, people watch Hindi films on their videos. But this, according to me, is seeing cinema at second-hand. The magic of the original is missing — the darkened auditorium, the confined, combined concentration, the hushed experience shared and multiplied. They may be technologically perfect, but videos and DVDs are only a substitute for the real thing.
Cinema is the only form of entertainment for the vast masses of India, the cheapest and the most easily accessible. The power of this medium of communication and its tremendous reach need to be regulated, not controlled, never controlled. In India, under the studio system in the pre-World War II era, cinema knew its golden age — wholesome, healthy films, socially conscious too, which the entire family could watch together. But when the studio system died in the postwar years, much that was good in Indian cinema died with it too. Today a few established filmmakers, amid a pack of fly-by-night producers, hold high the Indian cinema flag.
This degeneration must not be allowed to happen in Saudi Arabia. Saudi filmmakers need to be regulated as all filmmakers are from Hollywood to Tokyo. The finest example of regulation I have come across is in the French cinema. Its supreme statutory body, the Centre National de la Cinématographie, effectively deals with painfully familiar problems — entry of adventurers into the fold; films started without the prospects of completion; black money deals; unprofessional conduct; closure of studios, cinemas, and laboratories; unequal competition between big and small filmmakers and the inability of the latter to get a fair chance at the box office. The main point is that despite all the powers enjoyed by the Centre National, it has not hampered artistic and cinematic creativity. In fact, since 1947 when it started functioning, there has been a renaissance in French cinema.
India, with more films to its credit than most countries, could be of enormous help to the Saudi film industry. The Film and Television Institute in Pune, near Bombay, provides training in film direction, acting, cinematography, sound recording, and editing by experts in each department. It has boarding and lodging facilities for students from all over the world. Attached to this institute is the National Film Archive with a huge stock of film classics from all the cinematically advanced countries, to provide training in film appreciation. There is also the government-run Films Division in Bombay, which has produced several thousand documentaries on Indian culture and art. Saudi filmmakers could make good use of these existing facilities. Film exchanges could follow student exchanges between the two countries.
For some time past I have been noticing a breeze — I wouldn’t call it “wind” yet — of change gently blowing through the Kingdom: Open discussion on a controversial book, Rajaa Al-Sanea’s novel, “The Girls of Riyadh,” at the National Dialogue Forum, the Saudi Telecom Company’s plan to launch third generation mobile services in several cities of the Kingdom, jobs for women in shops selling women’s goods, and so on. This has encouraged me to pen this article with a view to encouraging thinking and discussion on the subject of Saudi cinema.
“Lights! Sound! Action!” are the magic words that can open up a new era, providing Saudis with their long-lacking entertainment. This is going to impose a huge responsibility on Saudi filmmakers — first, to adopt a regulatory system most suitable from among the existing ones, and second, to create a cinema that reflects Saudi traditions, Saudi ways of life, and Saudi values.
(The writer is a former editor of the Indian film publications Filmfare and Screen, and a former chairman of the Film Finance Corporation of India and the National Film Development Corporation of India. His book, “Counting My Blessings,” was published last year by Penguin India. He is currently on a visit to the Eastern Province.)