QCFDC General Manager Abdulrahman Najdi
Doha: Qatari cinema is stepping steadily to put its name among the leading countries in the field of seventh art, thanks to a number of initiatives and development plans aimed at promoting it.
The beginning of film production in Qatar goes back to the fifties of the last century through the oil companies that filmed several films about life in the country.
General Manager of Qatar Cinema and Film Distribution Company (QCFDC), and Director and Film Critic Abdulrahman Najdi said that according to Tom Sherak, the former president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in the United States, cinema has emerged as the most attractive and expensive means of communication in the 20th century, as it can influence culture, politics, laws, and most importantly, it has the power to change the world and alter the course of history.
He pointed out that in 1960, British documentary director Rod Baxter made a documentary film in Doha, in which he describes the process of pearl diving, which was then one of the main ways of earning a living in the city of Doha. The film presented aspects of progress in oil production and aspects of development that have taken place in Qatar.
“In his book Documentary Cinema in the Arab World, the writer and director Samir Atallah quoted the French historian Georges Sadoul in his most famous book, The History of Cinema, as saying that this film can be considered the date of the birth of cinema in the State of Qatar, and it is an opinion agreed upon by most writers and historians of cinema in the world,” Najdi added.
General Manager of Qatar Cinema said that if we accept the popular opinion that the entry of cinema in the Gulf region was associated with the emergence of oil and the delegations of many foreign exploration companies to Qatar and presenting it to their workers, it is likely that we go back to the second half of the thirties of the last century; at that time the copies of films that were brought were limited to 16mm.
“Gradually, cinema began to impose its influence, and it was only natural for it to expand after the people of Qatar experienced it and found in it an unprecedented means of entertainment. At that time, some of the notables of the people began to bring special cinema projectors of 16 and 8mm in size to watch Egyptian and Indian films in their private councils before the end of the fifties era,” he added.
He stated that in the mid-1960s, film watching expanded to include other segments of the public in Qatar, adding that according to Ahmed Nasser Obaidan (one of the founders and former chairman of the board of directors of Qatar Cinema Company), a person named Beshara of Lebanese nationality who used to work for Sheikh Nasser bin Khaled was the first to take the initiative to bring film boxes from abroad in 1968. He owned a number of 16 and 8mm film projection machines that he moved around and rented to clubs.
At the end of the 60s of the last century, a number of eminent people in Qatar submitted a request to establish a public shareholding company for cinema under the supervision and control of the State. A meeting of a number of merchants was held in Doha Secondary School, and thus the Qatar Cinema Company was established, two cinemas were purchased as a start.
Najdi said: “We first started negotiating to buy Amir and Al Andalus cinemas, then we brought Iraqi engineers to design it, and the first chairman of its board of directors was H E Sheikh Jassim bin Khalid Al Thani, and this is how cinema began in Qatar."
The critic Abdulrahman Najdi explained the establishment of a media department in 1969 and the opening of Qatar TV in 1970, the establishment of the Qatari Ministry of Information in 1974, then the establishment of a documentary film unit affiliated with Qatar TV in 1981, which was supervised by the late director Ismail Khalid.
General Manager of Qatar Cinema pointed out that years passed and the cinema movement was almost stopped, especially in the period between the mid-1980s and the end of the 1990s, but with the beginning of the current millennium, cinema was strongly present following the return of a generation of Qatari youth studying the arts and sciences of cinema in America, Egypt and elsewhere.
In the same context, Najdi said it was expected that the last film of the Qatari director Khalifa Al Muraikhi, Clockwise, the first Qatari feature film produced by the Ministry of Culture, will be the starting point for a cinema industry that does not lack material and human resources, however, the reality is that this achievement did not open the door to an expected cinema industry, despite the welcome that the film found in the Qatari street.
