A new dawn began for the Saudi Arabia’s creative industry when, on April 12 this year, models took to the runway in Saudi Arabia’s first-ever Arab Fashion Week. The event was one of the new entertainment opportunities opening in the ultra-conservative kingdom.
This was closely followed by the exhibition of Marvel’s superhero blockbuster, ‘Black Panther’, which opened the first movie theater in Saudi Arabia on April 18, ending the nearly four-decade ban on cinemas in the Arabian Kingdom.
To show its long yearning for creative businesses in an era where economies are diversifying from Oil, the country made its debut at the 71st Cannes Film Festival this year, hit the ground running with a plethora of coordinated activities which include panel discussions, roundtable conferences featuring both regional and international film figures, screening of short films, promoting various destinations in the Kingdom for movie locations, while also offering rebates for international movie productions and collaborations.
You may think that the lift in the ban of cinema culture in Saudi Arabia among other developments means freedom of expression and entertainment latitude for Saudis alone. That to me is just one way to look at the new order. Considering the influence the Arab Kingdom holds on Islamic nations and socio-cultural lives of a few Muslims who live holier than thou in a non-Islamic state like Nigeria, one can only imagine the multiplying effect that would, most definitely, evolve from the present situation.
On how film can aid development, Peter Hopkinson has this to say in a UNESCO paper published as far back as 1971:
“It can promote the circulation of knowledge both vertically across all social strata and horizontally across the length and breadth of countries which lack an infrastructure of transport and communications. This very elementary and fundamental spread of knowledge and information is the essential basis for any development effort. Bridge the gap between rural isolation and urban life, establish bonds of common outlook among the people of one nation and help them to see themselves as part of the world at large, the family of man. It can establish channels of communication essential to the workings of a modern political state, which requires decision-making by all the people. Vital in an age of mass participation in the process of government, the motion picture is pre-eminent in the area of mass communication. It can provide a stimulus to modernization, new ways of thinking and behavior. It arouses and stimulates curiosity about the unfamiliar, the distant, the new. Without curiosity in the first place, no one can learn anything.”
I recall that the Saudi Art Council, in collaboration with the American Film Showcase, brought together local and international experts on recently to share their thoughts and opinions about what needs to be done for the Kingdom’s cinema industry.
For a fact, there is nothing like absolute freedom, otherwise, our societies would be thrown into a state of anarchy. Thus, it was reasoned at the panel that there needs to be a law infrastructure for the cinema, so people can be directed appropriately.
Saudi Arabia started issuing licenses for cinema-operators in the Kingdom on March 1. And it is expected that by 2030, it would have opened 300 cinemas with 2,000 screens, building an industry it hopes will contribute more than SR90 billion ($24 billion) to the economy and create 30,000 permanent jobs.
This, unfortunately, is a blue print that is lacking in the Nigerian creative industry despite all the noise surrounding the exploits of Nollywood. I see a late comer like Saudi making the best of art and business in their creative industry. Not just that, I see Saudi being opened to international diplomacy like never before, just as its Arabian culture and tradition, which many take as religion, will break forth with more clarity and relieve fanatics of ominous slavery of the mind.
Again, let us take a cue from how an Iranian filmmaker, Jafar Panahi has embraced a film passion that tends to liberate his people from a conservative and less progressive trend, albeit painfully.
The radical film director, who had several years of conflict with the Iranian government over the content of his films, was arrested in March 2010 along with his wife, daughter, and 15 friends and later charged with propaganda against the Iranian government. Despite support from filmmakers, film organizations, and human rights organizations from around the world, in December 2010 Panahi was sentenced to a six-year jail sentence and a 20-year ban on directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media.
In 2000, Panahi made ‘The Circle’, his third feature which was a major departure from his first two works about children. That was when the problem started because the film was critical of the treatment of women under Iran’s Islamist regime.
According to Panahi, “I started my career making children’s films, and while doing that I had no problems with censors. As soon as I started making feature films, it all started and I had problems. In my first films, I worked with children and young people, but I began to think of the limitations facing these girls once they grow up.”
In 2006, he shot ‘Offside’. In the film, a group of young Iranian girls disguise themselves as boys to sneak into Azadi Stadium to watch the World Cup qualifying football playoff game between Iran and Bahrain. The film was partially shot during the actual game it depicts. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution women have been banned from attending football matches in Iran on grounds of rowdy and aggressive language, lewd behavior, and seeing men in shorts and short sleeve shirts. At one point Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had wanted to repeal the law but was overruled by the ulema.
According to Panahi, “I use the football game as a metaphor to show the discrimination against women on a larger scale. All my movies have that topic at their center. This is what I am trying to change in Iranian society.”
As the world yearn for a fair ground for men and women, it is imaginable the development awaiting Saudi Arabia with this new liberal order, especially a policy of inclusion in favour of the female gender, plus a new and gradual orientation that will most likely promote religious tolerance.
The duo will join other acts like South Africa’s Cassper Nyovest and Gqom evolutionists Distruction Boyz and Congolese star, Fally Ipupa in the category of the awards which will take place at Microsoft Theater, Los Angeles, California, United States on Sunday, June 24, 2018. Also included in the category are French performers Booba and Dadju and UK acts J Hus, Stefflon Don and Stormzy.