Shining light on Arab cinema

The British Film Institute's Discover Arab Cinema programme is dedicated to the late Sheila Whitaker, the former director of the London Film Festival who promoted cinema from the Arab region in the UK and was heavily involved with the Dubai International Film Festival.

Ahd Kamel stars as Areej in her short film Sanctity, which follows the story of a pregnant Saudi widow. Kamel also worked alongside Peter Berg in The Kingdom. Photo courtesy of Gulf Film Festival

Discover Arab Cinema – fast proving to be the most exciting space to see Arab films in the world – was launched by the British Film Institute (BFI) on April 6 and runs until May 31. The programme features an eclectic mix of regional shorts and features, both classic and contemporary. It is a fitting tribute to Sheila Whitaker, who helped start the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) in 2004 as its director of international programming. Whitaker died, rather unexpectedly, in July last year at age 77, after suffering from motor neuron disease.

"Sheila was keen for the British Film Institute to show more films from the Arab region," says Discover Arab Cinema's programmer Mona Deeley, the director of the Zenith Foundation, a British-based not-for-profit company providing a platform for independent cultural production with a focus on the Middle East.

"Sheila is an important figure in the history of the BFI and was a great friend of Arab cinema. Her passing away came as a great shock and it was strange and saddening that she was no longer with us when Discover Arab Cinema launched after having been keen to see it happen."

Whitaker's 45-year career took her from London to the UAE. She began her career as a secretary before getting a job at the archive department at the BFI. In 1984, she was promoted to head of programming and, from 1987 to 1996, she headed the London Film Festival. In 1999, she edited the book, Life and Art: The New Iranian Cinema. As well as helping establish DIFF, she was also a founder of PalFest, the Palestinian Festival of Literature.

"Discover Arab Cinema is first and foremost about great films and the contribution of Arab cinema to world cinema. I selected films that I personally consider to be some of the most interesting and compelling. And after the DIFF published their survey of the top 100 Arab films, I saw that I was not alone to rate them in this way," Deeley says.

“The films are grouped together thematically or on the basis of country of focus, and each month the BFI shows four films on a particular theme.

"As far as I know, Discover Arab Cinema is unprecedented in the UK and elsewhere in its sustained and dedicated focus on Arab cinema."

In May, the programme looks at films from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE, with a particular focus on short films.

The Emirati director Khalid Al Mahmoud's Sabeel, about two boys who sell vegetables on the side of a road, will play alongside the Saudi short Sanctity, in which Ahd Kamel directs herself as a recently widowed pregnant woman who rents a room to a drug dealer.

Another film from Saudi Arabia is Shourouk/Ghouroub, a daring portrayal of a boy who has been sexually abused. There are also shorts from Kuwait being shown and the obligatory outing of the acclaimed 2012 film Wadjda.

Deeley's interest in short films has been augmented by her work on Alternative Cinema, a programme that is broadcast on BBC Arabic and is dedicated to showing the best short films from the Arab world.

“I have to select 85 shorts every year to show on the programme and have seen hundreds of shorts in the process,” she says. “I am now really fascinated by the genre.”

Deeley says there’s an increased commitment from the BFI to show Arab films. In fact, she reveals, there’s a new exciting showcase that will launch later this year: BBC Arabic TV’s Aan Korb film and documentary festival that will take place in London from October 31 to November 3. Aan Korb will focus on films created in the region since 2010. The closing date for entries is May 2.