Filmmaking and film cultures on the Arabian Peninsula

This chapter examines filmmaking and film cultures on the Arabian Peninsula for how they raise questions that are not always legible in prior scholarship that adopts frameworks for Middle East and North Africa cinema. Culturally, the Peninsula resists land-based concepts and is better described in terms of fluid bodies of water like the ones that surround and connect it to East Africa, North Africa, South Asia, and Southwest Asia. Film culture dates to the era of imperialism and oil concessions, but filmmaking had been sporadic until after the 2008 global financial crisis. Beyond the headline-making, film festivals were more modestly scaled initiatives to support young filmmakers outside the alleged commercial demands of the box office and state interests of soft power. This chapter thus focuses on short films for the issues they raise in an effort to expand thinking about filmmaking and film cultures in the Arab world rather than the more conventional Arab films from the Arab world.