In this month’s Communicate special feature on the Arab world’s film production industry, we set out to examine trends in the region and speak to companies and people that are either typical of those trends or busy bucking them.
One thing is immediately apparent: The industry is booming. Companies are springing up all over the region, and much of the television and advertising work they handle is from the local market.
We look primarily at the two hubs of regional film production: Beirut and Dubai. But Cairo deserves an honorable mention, if only for its history.
From the 1930s, through Middle Eastern cinema’s melodramatic heyday of the 1950s to the 1980s, Cairo was the center of the industry. The city’s studios churned out up to 80 feature-length movies a year, and of the more-than 4,000 short and feature-length films produced in the Middle East over the last century, more than three quarters are Egyptian.
But in 2008, although Cairo is still host to the largest film festival in the region, its production industry has a reputation for turning out work that is cheap, but shows it.
CITY SLICKERS. The UAE is building on the success of its four-year-old Dubai International Film Festival with the launch of Dubai Studio City – a real estate project designed to make as many facilities as possible easily available to all who need them.
Beirut, while being less politically stable, less physically safe and less financially buoyant, is still where the talent lies. With universities turning out well-educated, creative and technically literate graduates keen to make it in the film industry, Lebanon remains the place to find expertise.
Extras are also more readily available in Lebanon. Arabs can be a shy bunch, says Carla Faissal, executive producer at Signature production house, whose casting agency has 5,000 actors on its books in Lebanon. “People in [the Gulf] region get very nervous when they see a camera, and they don’t want to perform,” she says.
Other parts of the Middle East are having a stab at breaking into the industry – Jordanian producer Amin Matalqa is sending his film, Captain Abu Raed, to the Sundance independent film festival in the US, and Abu Dhabi took the hot potato that was The Kingdom, with its allegations of Arab baiting, off Dubai’s hands. The emirate even provided a military helicopter for use in the chase scenes.
Among the regional cast of countries, though, Lebanon still gets the biggest trailer.
SHOOT ‘EM UP. Despite Lebanon’s reputation as one of the most unsafe places on earth, where bombings happen regularly and the threat of civil war looms persistently in the air, the filming of commercials, videos, movies and TV shows is thriving. According to Gabriel Chamoun, who owns The Gate, a film development company that he claims attracts 95 percent of all that’s shot in Lebanon, the production industry is steadily increasing by 10 to 15 percent every year.
It might do even better under quieter circumstances, of course, and the big money is elsewhere. Dubai remains the business hub of the Middle East, which is why more and more Lebanese companies, in both production and post-production, have offices there. But Lebanon is still the region’s creative center, and those who expected the Dubai production industry to benefit from Lebanon’s political rollercoaster might ask why.
TWO FOR THE MONEY. Many in the industry resent the fact that Dubai and Lebanon keep being compared. “We should complement one another,” says Chamoun.
Paul Sabbagh, Signature’s managing director, calls for regional unity. “There’s a big chunk of the international business that we can attract to the Middle East,” he says. “The question is: How? Once this is achieved, we can divide it between countries according to their specific benefits. Clients shooting an SUV commercial will go to Dubai for a desert landscape and to Lebanon for greenery.”
Others also have grand plans for growth. LCI Entertainment, the production arm of the American LCI Group, was established a year ago as part of a global plan. The company, based in Dubai, has offices in the US and France for music videos and post-production, and Beirut, where all production activities are based.
“We provide executive services and we have developed our own projects such as a TV series, movies, a music TV show, etc.,” says Wadih Safieddine, manager of the Beirut office. “The idea is to work on an international level.”
For instance, post-production for one of the five Haifa Wehbe music videos produced by LCI Entertainment in Lebanon was handled in the group’s state-of-the-art facilities in France. On the commercial side, Safieddine knows he can also count on Catevo, another part of the group based in Dubai and specializing in marketing and communication strategy.
While production companies are following the lead of the rest of the communications industry by opening offices and establishing presences in Dubai, they are not all in a rush to shift their headquarters to the UAE. With such an established talent pool in the Levant, it makes sense to leave a lot in place.
“One thing I believe,” says Signature’s Faissal, “is that with all these facilities in Beirut it is much less expensive to have [our main operation] there. I don’t believe the office in Dubai should be as big as Beirut. I don’t believe that for a production company to be successful in Dubai it has to have everything in Dubai. It is getting better, but Beirut is still the reference.”
OUT OF AFRICA. A strong Middle Eastern industry could help confront the real competitive threat from North African countries. Morocco and Egypt, where the film industry is traditionally big, are attracting not only many Western projects but regional ones too. “I’m impressed by the Egyptian production industry,” says Sabbagh. “They’re very united and they stick together against foreign newcomers. We should learn from them: They do their job very well, so we must do better. But we lack the vision.”
Signature has a Cairo office, and in April 2007, The Talkies also opened there, “in order to provide an alternative to Beirut,” says Chamoun. “We often give our clients quotations for both countries.” Despite prices that have been on the rise since Lebanon’s July 2006 war – when many projects were moved to Cairo – Egypt remains less expensive than Beirut.
“Egypt wields some kind of spontaneous protectionism,” says Ghada Oueidat, co-owner of post-production house The Post Office. “Prices are cheaper by a factor of three, and the pool of available actors is huge. The final result is not as good as in Lebanon but they know how to comply with the client’s requirements. So in the end, it’s basically a matter of what the client wants and what kind of consumers he targets.”
STAND BY ME. Sabbagh wants Middle Eastern production houses and agencies to create a business association, or at least a think tank, to define a common strategy. “We should get together and make smart investments, in studios for instance, just like they did in Egypt and Morocco,” he says. Prior to the 2006 July war – and along with six other major Lebanese production companies and Dani Richa, president of the International Advertising Association’s Lebanese chapter – Signature was preparing a promotion campaign for production in Lebanon, including a booklet, a stand at Dubai’s Media and Marketing Show, and various efforts in Europe. “But war was an immediate turn-off,” says Sabbagh, who still hopes for united commitment in the future.
Another turn-off is the need for organization within the country’s industry itself, prior to any regional thinking. “Until the industry is better organized, talking about the region is useless,” says Marc Hadife, head of production house City Films. “Basic rules such as the definition of minimum fees per day of work are not implemented. And where in the world can an Italian producer, for example, come and start filming without any authorization?
“In Lebanon he can, because competition is not regulated at all.”
Despite the influx of new companies and the continuing flow of work, then, the regional production industry still needs to resolve some serious issues if we’re ever to see the equivalent of Hollywood or Bollywood in the Arab world.
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