Anyone with even a passing interest in independent cinema in the UAE knows the name Butheina Kazim. The Bahraini-Emirati entrepreneur is the founder of the first arthouse cinema in the region, Cinema Akil.
Originally a nomadic series of film nights across the country, since 2018 it has had a permanent home in a converted warehouse in Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue, as well as a much more recent outpost at the 25hours Hotel Dubai One Central.
Kazim is part of the fabric of the Dubai – a fact cemented by her guest editorship of the first Louis Vuitton guide dedicated to the city in 2023. “My city is Dubai. And my life is cinema,” she told The National at the time.
What is your favourite time of day and why?
Sunset – the OG Lord’s filter and harbinger of the dark.
What is your favourite restaurant anywhere in the world?
The cafe in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes.
When was the first time you realised your parents were human?
When I bled my mum with my pre-teen long nails and my dad cried at his mother’s deathbed.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Passport control officer at DXB airport.
Do you have any hidden talents?
I do an on-demand helium balloon voice singing Mohammed Abdu songs.
Your favourite book?
This is too agonising of a question. Though, I’ll never stop loving Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali.
What type of music can’t you stand?
Lazy use of onomatopoeia and unfinished lyrics.
What puts you in a bad mood?
Unsolicited advice.
What can you not live without?
Interesting people.
Dream dinner guests?
Stitch [from Lilo and Stitch], Gurgi [from The Black Cauldron], Batty [from Ferngully: The Last Rainforest] and all the Curious Oysters [from Alice in Wonderland].
Sitting on the sofa or out with friends?
Both in the same day, multiple times, at different times of day.
What smell takes you straight back to childhood?
Lily of the Valley and Mastik.
What food takes you back to childhood?
Cerelac and Rasgulla ... separately.
Which city do you love but would hate to live in?
I have two. Delhi and Amman.
Can you play a musical instrument?
No. Music was banned at our school after the principal became religiously conservative.
Have you ever been on a motorcycle?
Yes.
Any words to live by?
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live” - Joan Didion
Biggest pet peeve?
Nosiness.
Do you believe in aliens?
Yes, along with the djinns and warawaras.
What is your favourite Arabic word?
Ya’ni [editor’s note: hard to translate but used similarly to "like" in English]
The most niche thing you watch on YouTube?
Recently, how-to-videos on making organic pools in the English countryside by retired BBC videographer David Pagan Butler… and vintage Kuwaiti music videos.
How do you take your tea?
Fragrant, sweet, caffeinated.
What makes you cry?
Stagnancy, apathy, bad taste.
What do social algorithms think you’re interested in?
Chili oil, baby content and vinyls.
TikTok or Instagram?
TikTok is the city I love but can’t live in.
What is it about you that would surprise people?
My unrequited love of sardines.
When was the last time you did something for the first time?
This morning, I used a Dyson Airwrap.
500 People from Gaza enter France
115 Special programme for artists
25 Evacuation of injured and sick
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
360Vuz PROFILE
Date started: January 2017
Founder: Khaled Zaatarah
Based: Dubai and Los Angeles
Sector: Technology
Size: 21 employees
Funding: $7 million
Investors: Shorooq Partners, KBW Ventures, Vision Ventures, Hala Ventures, 500Startups, Plug and Play, Magnus Olsson, Samih Toukan, Jonathan Labin
Family reunited
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was born and raised in Tehran and studied English literature before working as a translator in the relief effort for the Japanese International Co-operation Agency in 2003.
She moved to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies before moving to the World Health Organisation as a communications officer.
She came to the UK in 2007 after securing a scholarship at London Metropolitan University to study a master's in communication management and met her future husband through mutual friends a month later.
The couple were married in August 2009 in Winchester and their daughter was born in June 2014.
She was held in her native country a year later.
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
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FIGHT CARD
Welterweight Mostafa Radi (PAL) v Tohir Zhuraev (TJK)
Catchweight 75kg Leandro Martins (BRA) v Anas Siraj Mounir (MAR)
Flyweight Corinne Laframboise (CAN) v Manon Fiorot (FRA)
Featherweight Ahmed Al Darmaki (UAE) v Bogdan Kirilenko (UZB)
Lightweight Izzedine Al Derabani (JOR) v Atabek Abdimitalipov (KYG)
Featherweight Yousef Al Housani (UAE) v Mohamed Arsharq Ali (SLA)
Catchweight 69kg Jung Han-gook (KOR) v Elias Boudegzdame (ALG)
Catchweight 71kg Usman Nurmagomedov (RUS) v Jerry Kvarnstrom (FIN)
Featherweight title Lee Do-gyeom (KOR) v Alexandru Chitoran (ROU)
Lightweight title Bruno Machado (BRA) v Mike Santiago (USA)
Ruwais timeline
1971 Abu Dhabi National Oil Company established
1980 Ruwais Housing Complex built, located 10 kilometres away from industrial plants
1982 120,000 bpd capacity Ruwais refinery complex officially inaugurated by the founder of the UAE Sheikh Zayed
1984 Second phase of Ruwais Housing Complex built. Today the 7,000-unit complex houses some 24,000 people.
1985 The refinery is expanded with the commissioning of a 27,000 b/d hydro cracker complex
2009 Plans announced to build $1.2 billion fertilizer plant in Ruwais, producing urea
2010 Adnoc awards $10bn contracts for expansion of Ruwais refinery, to double capacity from 415,000 bpd
2014 Ruwais 261-outlet shopping mall opens
2014 Production starts at newly expanded Ruwais refinery, providing jet fuel and diesel and allowing the UAE to be self-sufficient for petrol supplies
2014 Etihad Rail begins transportation of sulphur from Shah and Habshan to Ruwais for export
2017 Aldar Academies to operate Adnoc’s schools including in Ruwais from September. Eight schools operate in total within the housing complex.
2018 Adnoc announces plans to invest $3.1 billion on upgrading its Ruwais refinery
2018 NMC Healthcare selected to manage operations of Ruwais Hospital
2018 Adnoc announces new downstream strategy at event in Abu Dhabi on May 13
Source: The National
The biog
Hobbies: Writing and running
Favourite sport: beach volleyball
Favourite holiday destinations: Turkey and Puerto Rico
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
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What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
Director: Laxman Utekar
Cast: Vicky Kaushal, Akshaye Khanna, Diana Penty, Vineet Kumar Singh, Rashmika Mandanna
Rating: 1/5
