In this piece Irit Neidhardt explores ideas and movements behind the notion of alternative Arab cinemas.

Alternative cinemas, so the initial assumption goes, show alternative films. Yet, by what standard might these cinemas and films be considered alternative? Who defines the political, cultural, social, economic and aesthetic norms and functions that they should fulfill? How are alternative cinemas and international politics related?

When cinema was invented in 1896, the Arab region was still colonized. The first screenings in the French and British colonies in North Africa took place a few months after the first public film screening in France. In Ottoman West Asia, cinemas were introduced after the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 and expanded during World War I, mainly to entertain the German troops fighting as part of the Ottoman army. The British built separate cinemas for the colonizing and the colonized populations in Egypt, whereas in French-colonized Algeria, movie theaters were open to all. This was until the French colonial police noted that the Arab and the Amazigh populations saw newsreels about anticolonial uprisings in other French colonies as an inspiration for their own liberation struggle. Only then were the cinemas in Algeria segregated and the news censored. 

Based on such experiences, Arab cinema production started as a nationalist and anticolonial project. Egypt had been formally independent since 1922. On 10 November 1927, its leading newspaper Al-Ahram wrote about the function of films:

There is a simple and extremely effective means of propaganda. The foreigners will pounce on it and even pay for it. And the audience will trust in what is shown to them. This propaganda, that will do the greatest service to the nation, will shorten the distance between us and Europe and silence the European doubters – this propaganda is in the cinema.

In 1956, the year of Tunisian independence, a memorandum titled “The Conquest of the Tunisian Cinema” was published, which defined non-commercial, or alternative, films as inspired by the country’s history, morals, social problems and nature, summarizing: “while retaining its national character, this kind of film is most suitable for international distribution”. The memorandum additionally stresses the importance of producing purely commercial films for the home market, as in other countries. In 1949, the Federation of Cinema-Clubs was founded in Tunisia as a tool for emancipation and has been operating since the country’s independence as a public network, which today comprises 29 member clubs nation-wide.

Arab and European alternative, or non-commercial, films of the Cold War era, or the period after liberation, had in common that they functioned as mirrors to their societies, as tools to shape the nations’ self-image, and as the states’ representatives abroad. In the Arab republics and Morocco (the other monarchies started producing films for cinemas in the mid-2000s) as in Europe, the funding of cinema production during this period was public. While the films had a similar function, they looked different. Although they were inspired by Western and Eastern European alternative and political films, the reference points for the Arab cinemas of the new nation-states were Arab culture and history, which, for example, shaped the methods of narration. The manifestos “For an Imperfect Cinema” (Julio García Espinosa, Cuba, 1969), “Towards a Third Cinema: Notes and Experiences for the Development of a Cinema of Liberation in the Third World” (Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, Argentina, 1969) as well as “Towards a Poor Theatre” (Jerzy Grotowski, Poland 1965) served at times as inspiration for the films’ production. 

In the wake of the Arab defeat in the June war with Israel in 1967, a new generation of filmmakers began to question the nationalistic anticolonial cinema and introduced the character of the anti-hero, the lost and wounded individual, to the Arab screen. By the 1980s, cinema clubs existed in most Arab countries; in the three Maghreb states and in Bahrain, for instance they were state-run, and are with the exception of Algeria, still in operation today. In Syria, the cinema club was hosted by the Goethe Institute, and in Kuwait by public TV. The Sudan Film Club in Omdurman celebrated its 50^th anniversary in 2018. Like all cinema clubs, the Arab associations have been showing local, regional and international alternative cinemas and curating special programs accompanied by carefully edited catalogs. The older program booklets can be found in the libraries of the still-existing film clubs, in second-hand bookshops as well as in the collections of the rather newly founded cinémathèques. 

With the end of the Cold War both Arab and European alternative cinemas changed. In line with the unification of Western and Eastern European states, European alternative cinemas, which continued to receive public support, now functioned as an instrument for shaping the new European Union’s self-image, thus becoming increasingly transnational, multicultural and integrative towards its minorities and diasporas. In Arab states, at the same time, wars, occupations, state bankruptcy following the collapse of the Socialist Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, and an increase of religious conservatism limited film production and caused the shutdown or actual destruction of cinemas. In Algeria, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen and Palestine, public film screenings temporarily came to a complete halt. With the proclamation of the New World Order in March 1991, officially intended to bring peace for the Middle East, US President Bush de facto declared Islam as the new antagonist of the West. Both the USA and the newly restructured EU thereupon initiated programs of democracy promotion in the Arab World, in which the arts became an important tool. These programs were expanded following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. In addition, the EU and its Mediterranean neighbors had agreed upon economic cooperation on the condition of the democratization of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean partners – a project paid for almost entirely by the EU – with the audiovisual sector as this Euromed co-operation’s flagship. In these democracy promotion projects lay the foundations for the current differentiation of Arab alternative cinemas. 

The increasing number of Arab alternative films that have reached international festivals and European screens in the past nearly two decades are almost invariably co-productions with France and/or Germany, sometimes with the Nordic or Benelux countries, and the directors usually live in Europe. The filmmakers mainly seek European funding because they are European nationals and because the conditions are yet better than in Arab countries. Political opposition plays a lesser role, although some films, especially in the period of the Arab spring, depended on European support. Most Arab projects have no chance in Europe. Since the mid-2000s, an increasing number of movies have received seed financing from Arab funds, most of which are public and were founded in response to Western democracy promotion projects. The new Arab funding schemes, which represent cooperation with and resistance to the West at the same time, helped more Arab filmmakers to access European monies – also those holding European passports – and led to the creation of a relatively comprehensive cinema infrastructure in Arab countries. In the future, Arab co-production with Europe is likely to be more of a political decision rather than a financial and technological necessity. 

A similar development of differentiation has taken place in the past few years with regard to alternative cinemas and cine-clubs. It is rare that more than one arthouse cinema or equivalent film institution per country receives funding through the European networks built in the framework of the various democracy promotion programs. These institutions usually also serve as hosts for European film weeks, the long-term implementation of which was part of the Euromed Audiovisual cooperation. In addition to the art houses and film clubs mentioned above, a number of grassroots initiatives have begun to present films during the past 15 years. They show pictures in pubs, living rooms, cultural centers, multiplexes or on mobile screens. The programming partly resembles the arthouse cinemas, additionally rather local films that do not fulfill aesthetic or narrative demands of the international market, yet reflect society are shown and discussed. These alternative initiatives often oppose their government and European cooperation for political or social reasons and often reject the aesthetic norms set by the international alternative cinema scene. Their number is constantly growing as is, to a lesser degree, the number of commercial screens in most Arab states. 

Given the shift of international political and economic power-relations and the changing alliances with regard to cultural exchange – thus given a future in which European cultural institutions will most probably not be important junctions of transnational arts anymore – which spaces will remain open and which spaces will close? Who will define what transnational alternative cinema is? Why, for whom and how will transnational alternative cinemas continue to be relevant?

Irit Neidhardt runs mec film, an international distribution and sales company for films by Arab directors. She is co-producer of several award winning Arab feature documentaries and has also worked  as curator and author in the field of Arab Cinemas. In her writings, she focuses on questions of co-operation between the Arab World and Europe. www.iritneidhardt.de