JEDDAH, 19 January 2007 — An atmosphere of tension dominated the Riyadh Literary Club’s meeting earlier this week, according to Saudi filmmaker Mohammed Bazeid, who was moderating a seminar that included a viewing of two Saudi short films. “We were anticipating a riot erupting from nowhere,” he said. “But none of that happened and we enjoyed our movie evening without disturbance.”
On the minds of the people who attended the Tuesday weekly meeting of film buffs and bookworms in Riyadh was an incident that occurred during a similar event at the headquarters of the Eastern Province Literary Club on Sunday. The Dammam-based club had planned a viewing of the film “At Five in the Afternoon” by renowned Iranian Director Samira Makhmalbaf. The film was nominated for the prestigious Golden Palm award at Cannes in 2003.
Before that viewing, rumors emerged that the club was not going to show an Iranian film, but rather perform an Iranian play and host a question-and-answer session with an Iranian director. To add insult to injury, the rumor claimed that the Iranian director would be a woman.
“An angry crowd showed up at the club and asked officials not to run the movie,” said club board member and poet Ahmad Al-Mulla. “They had no clue what the movie was about.”
“At Five in the Afternoon” is a film that takes place in Afghanistan two years after the US invasion following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The central theme of the film asks the question of whether democracy can ever be fostered under a climate of military intervention.
Because of the demand from the angry crowd of hard-liners the club decided at the last minute to show a different film: “March of the Penguins,” a Hollywood-produced documentary about flightless Antarctic birds.
Al-Mulla insists the Iranian movie will eventually be shown. “We just postponed it until the coast is clear,” he said, calling the incident a big misunderstanding. “How can anyone judge the movie before watching it in the first place?”
Disruptions like what occurred in Dammam on Sunday seem to occur with regularity, which is why organizers of Tuesday’s film viewing in Riyadh were a bit on edge, expecting the worst.
In November, an angry mob in Riyadh disrupted the showing of a Saudi play “A Moderate Without Moderation,” which condemned both the extreme adoption of Western liberal tradition as well as Islamic extremist ideologies.
The play was being shown at the auditorium of Yamama College, a private higher education institution. During the third showing, a group of hard-liners jumped on stage and began destroying the set. A fight erupted between the hard-liners and other men who had come to watch the play. Police were called in to end the fighting. Some playgoers said they were stuck in the auditorium until 1 a.m. as police investigated the incident.
It is partly due to eruptions like these that literary clubs in the Kingdom make sure their actions are endorsed, or at least explicitly tolerated, by the Ministry of Culture and Information, which must approve books and films that enter the Kingdom. Furthermore, in an attempt to avoid any such confrontations, the local film clubs are careful to segregate men and women attendees in separate rooms during the viewing.
Al-Mulla said that some official establishments (he didn’t say which ones) have contacted the Eastern Province Literary Club and questioned them about the incident regarding the Iranian film. However, he says, the ministry had given some autonomy to these clubs. “We have shown many award-winning movies from America and Japan,” said Al-Mulla. “We’ve shown Saudi movies as well.”
Deputy Minister of Culture Abdul Aziz Al-Subayyil was quoted as saying in an interview with Arab News last year that the Ministry of Culture and Information would not object to a literary club or a public library displaying movies that have “a meaningful message.” As part of a “cultural makeover,” the ministry is trying to reinvigorate the country’s dozen literary clubs, which are viewed by younger Saudis as stodgy and antiquated, filled with aging bureaucrats and cultural policemen.
The Internet has changed the environment for up-and-coming writers, who can form their own communities with the help of the web. Because of this, the ministry has made efforts to replace old blood with new and to loosen the leash on cultural activities. In a country where movie theaters have been banned for over 20 years, these literary clubs have in recent times become the only public venue where Saudis and expatriates can watch films.
Last August, the Fiction Group at the Riyadh Literary Club organized a roundtable on “The Relationship Between Novel and Cinema” and invited a host of Saudi directors and cinema critics to talk about their own perspective about the subject. The Fiction Group members decided to not only talk about movies but opted to show two short Saudi movies — “Taxi” and “The Last Piece.”
Al-Mulla said that the Eastern Province club would keep on the Sunday movie night tradition despite the incident earlier this week.
The Ministry of Culture and Information may have given the clubs the green light to do what it takes to empower the literary cultural scene, however there doesn’t seem to be any protections when some hard-liners decide to institute their own bans, by force if necessary.
“It is clear that cultural reform in Saudi Arabia will be always on the edge and may go many steps backward unless there are certain rules and regulations for everyone to abide by,” said a famous Saudi writer who did not want to be named.
