Reorienting the Middle East: Film and Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean Meet | Alia Yunis

Kawalis | Cinema, Television & Theater from the Arab World

Discover cinema from the Gulf from its beginnings to the present day. Filmmaker Alia Yunis draws on her rich knowledge of the Arab Gulf’s cinema to give us a full picture of the scene's early days, its current state and what is anticipated for its future. Rejecting the widely held belief that "Arabic film comes from Egypt," Alia paints a picture of a rich regional scene of local storytelling. She constructs the Gulf as a fluid space with shared cultures, invites us to reconsider how we think about the materiality of film and shares her opinions on what comes next for cinema in the digital age. We get a sense of how cinema, film and its audiences are changing in the Gulf and what kinds of stories those audiences are hungry for. Alia also addresses a crucial question about the role of government sponsorship and funding in the kinds of cultural production we see coming out of the region. Finally, putting on a historical lens, we briefly tap into the origins of Gulf cinema during the colonial occupation and by oil companies.

This episode is one in a three-part series exploring cinema from the Gulf. Stay tuned for the two upcoming episodes in this sub-series of Kawalis!

Alia Yunis is a writer, journalist and filmmaker. She is also a visiting associate professor of film and heritage studies at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.

Connect with Alia 👉 https://www.instagram.com/alia__yunis/

Reorienting the Middle East: Film and Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean Meet, edited by Dale Hudson and Alia Yunis with contributions from a number of academics. Available via Indiana University Press 👉 https://iupress.org/9780253067579/reorienting-the-middle-east/