When the Doha Tribeca Film Festival kicked off on Thursday, the Persian Gulf, home to some of the most conservative Islamic sects in the Middle East, also became one of the world’s most crowded film festival circuits.
The Persian Gulf’s film industry, buoyed by windfall oil profits, has blossomed impressively over the last few years. Dubai held the region’s first festival in 2004, and Turkey hosts at least three international festivals per year. Even Saudi Arabia, where some extremist religious clerics have condemned film as the devil’s work, has two small festivals in Khobar and Jeddah.
“The Gulf is where it’s happening right now,” said Faisal Attrache, a fourth-year international developmental studies student and a film minor. “It’s kind of a Las Vegas of the Middle East.”
Doha’s inaugural festival featured a painstakingly chosen mix of Arabic and international films, including Jordanian drama “Captain Abu Raed,” the first feature film produced in the country in more than 50 years, and “Amelia,” the new Amelia Earhart biopic starring Hilary Swank.
Festival organizers tried to strike a balance between films that will draw international attention and local films. Of the 32 films shown at the festival, 12 were from the Middle East.
Doha Tribeca also represents a long-term partnership with the Qatar Museum Authority to support the growth of film as a cultural medium in Qatari society, which is a relatively new phenomenon in the region at large.
“If you asked me to name (a Middle Eastern film), I couldn’t,” said film enthusiast Phil DeSouza, a fourth-year psychobiology student. “I didn’t know it was so vibrant.”
Saree Makdisi, a professor of English literature and the author of the book, “Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation,” said the growth of the festival circuit is part of an ongoing trend of cultural liberalization.
“It’s not surprising that these areas are setting themselves up as the focal points of artistic expression for the Middle East,” Makdisi said. “They have the money for it now.”
Makdisi added that the Egyptian and Indian film industries number among the largest in the world.
Television is also taking hold, according to Attrache, who is also president of the United Arab Society at UCLA.
A Syrian native, Attrache said there is a Ramadan tradition in which family and friends cluster around televisions to watch a slate of dramas and historical shows that are produced specifically for the holy month.
“Film is not the first thing that usually comes up in regard to Arabs in the Middle East, but everyone looks forward to this all year,” Attrache said.
However, the film festivals and the attendant cultural underpinnings have been met with staunch resistance from some sects. The Jeddah film festival in Saudi Arabia was canceled abruptly after pressure from Saudi conservatives who felt some of the films being showcased violated religious taboo.
None of the new film festivals have chosen to show any Israeli films, except for Doha Tribeca’s screening of “A Serious Man,” which is not an Israeli film but has Jewish themes.
But Makdisi is opposed to the notion of a Middle East with arts that are dominated by conservative religious sects and said that this is simply a case in which the loudest voices in the society have obscured the true message.
“We tend to exaggerate the role of religion over there, but we have extremists just like that over here,” Makdisi said.
Makdisi cited the fact that Doha is also home to Al Jazeera, the only independent news network in the Middle East, as evidence of the region’s increasingly liberal attitude.
Al Jazeera has acquired a reputation for broadcasting dissenting controversial viewpoints, including tapes made by Osama Bin Laden and graphic images of violence. Although their coverage has inflamed both Western and Arabic governments, the news network streams uncensored into 22 Arab countries.
“Al Jazeera really embodies what free speech is all about,” Makdisi said.
Attrache said that filmmakers are looking to the future. “The movies that have been getting bigger have a universal message that you can plug into any race and religion,” Attrache said.
“Captain Abu Raed,” one of Attrache’s favorite films, tells the story of an airport janitor who befriends a young troublemaker after losing his wife and son. It’s about friendship, heroism and dreams ““ not war or Islam.
“The Gulf is … more conservative than the rest of the Arab world,” Attrache said. “But I think art will eventually prevail.”