What the sea brings: cinema at the shoreline in Bahrain's first feature production and film culture

Abstract

This essay explores cinema in the small island nation, the Kingdom of Bahrain, focusing especially on the first feature film, The Barrier (1990), and the country's developing film culture. The beginning of film-making and film exhibition in Bahrain is inextricably linked to the rise of the oil industry and the concurrent decline of the pearl industry – two institutional discourses that shape (often contradictory) cultural mythologies associated with modernity and tradition. The shoreline and sea imagery, and narrative and representational strategies of The Barrier present a cautionary message regarding insular existence, lack of a larger communal identity and absence of a sense of social and political responsibility. I connect my reading of The Barrier with the larger Bahraini film cultural landscape, constructions of ‘Gulf’ cinema and contemporary transmedia assertions of Bahraini identity.

Notes

^1. The exhibition history in Bahrain here is reconstructed with assistance from information provided by online resources from the Bahrain Film Production Company (http://bahrainfilmproduction.com/) and the published United States Department of State Bahrain Post Reports. In the 1980s, video stores emerged, followed by Bahrain's first multi-screen theatres in the 1990s. Currently, Bahrain Cinema Company runs almost every cinema in Bahrain, showing Hollywood films, Arabic films (mainly Egyptian, but also from other countries, especially from the Gulf region) and Indian films. Bahrain's multicultural exhibition landscape is discussed later in this essay.

^2. A high-profile initial breakthrough for Bahrain on the international stage was via Khalifa Shaheen's involvement with the production of Hamad and the Pirates, a 93-minute live-action film made in multiple episodes for the weekly Wonderful World of Disney Sunday night prime-time TV series. Filmed in 1969 and finally premiering in March 1971, Hamad and the Pirates featured the story of a young orphaned Arab pearl diver fallen overboard during a typhoon who is rescued by pirates with a traditional-looking wooden dhow secretly fitted with high-speed Rolls Royce engines, and full of priceless treasures stolen from Bahrain. Hamad escapes the pirate ship and travels to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and finally Manama, Bahrain, where he helps a British gunboat catch the pirates in the Persian Gulf and recover the stolen antiquities. According to journalistic accounts, Khalifa Shaheen was Production Manager and Assistant Director on the project, and when the film's director Richard Lyford suggested him for the role of the Pirate Captain because of his knowledge of local culture, customs and language (Salman 2011, quoting Shaheen 2007). Shaheen tried to develop a sequel, but it never realized because of lack of funds. He is currently director of KSDi (Khalifa Shaheen Digital Images), a family-run company established in 2006, and has initiated a number of projects to cultivate local talent.

^3. This is according to Al-Thawadi (2009) via the transcript of a speech he delivered at the Rotary Club of Adliya in Bahrain.

^4. Intertextuality in Arab fiction, including Gulf literature, is addressed in Deheuvels, Michalak-Pikulska, and Starkey (2010).

^5. Submitted by Bahrain as the county and the GCC's first-ever entry for the best foreign language film category at the Academy Awards, The Cruel Sea offers a critical look at societal norms and materialistic values, and a harrowing self-amputation climax. Gulf cinema since its inception had deconstructed the region's own pearly cultural heritage and petroleum-lubricated modern mythologies, and The Barrier continues this tradition.

^6. I discuss this further in my essay ‘Cinema “of” Yemen and Saudi Arabia: Narrative Strategies, Cultural Challenges, Contemporary Features’ (Ciecko 2011).

^7. In 2009, Bahraini film-maker Khalifa Shaheen was honoured at the second annual Gulf Film Festival in Dubai for his accomplishments as ‘the first Khaleeji filmmaker to establish a production house’ (Staff Writer 2009) and one of the first film-makers who ‘started a movement that would introduce the Arab tradition of storytelling to the medium of moving images’ (Bharadwaj 2010), along with UAE writer and film culture activist Abdel-Rahman Saleh and The Cruel Sea director Khalid Al-Siddiq, who was also recognized as a leader in initiatives promoting regional Arabic-language film. More recently, Bassam Al-Thawadi received a lifetime achievement award at the 5th Gulf Film Festival in Dubai in 2012.

^8. The critical presence of non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the Gulf, Bahrain and other GCC countries is recognized in the ever-growing number of Indian films with diasporic themes. Having made short films in Bahrain previously, Ajith Nair's debut feature film Nilavu (Moonlight 2010) is the first Malayalam film made in the Gulf, set in Bahrain and Kerala. Nilavu showcases the theme of disconnectedness and the possibility of relationships between Indian migrant workers in the Gulf countries. Paradoxically, as a review in The Gulf Daily News points out, the title song of the filmfeels like tourism advertising (Haider 2010). Another recent Malayalam film The Metro (Bipin Prabhakar 2011) is a multi-strand transnational thriller with a NRI Gulf storyline. The film's production involved a widely publicized talent search for its five lead actors, adding an extra-diegetic level of audience engagement. Within Bahrain, events such as the Bahrain Finance Company-sponsored Indian Cinema Club Dance Competition move NRI film culture beyond the screen. Cinema and culture clubs established by migrant workers from Kerala are especially active in Bahrain, where auteurist and humanist issue-based programming often informs the selection of international films showcased by these expat communities.

^9. Philippine cinema has developed a lively subgenre of films about Filipinos working abroad, including ones living in the Gulf region (e.g. the 2005 feature film Dubai directed by Rory B. Quintos, which, like the aforementioned Nilavu, also has a tourism-promotion look and feel, despite its melodramatic core). Some workers' residences in Bahrain, particularly the luxury hotels, offer The Filipino Channel, with entertainment and news programming targeted to overseas Filipinos.

^10. Al-Thawadi launched festivals including New Egyptian Cinema Days in Bahrain in cooperation with the Information Ministry and the Bahrain Cinema Club (1993) and the first Arab Cinema Festival in Bahrain (2000).

^11.A Bahraini Tale was made with a million dollar budget by Bahrain Cinema Production Company, launched in 2006 with the stated mission of raising Bahrain's film-making standards to the international level. Bahrain Cinema Production Company has been involved with the production of short films, documentaries and commercials, and developed intra-regional partnership with the co-production market Dubai Film Connection (associated with the Dubai International Film Festival) and production assistance for Bahraini short films for participation in the Dubai-based Gulf Film Festival.

^12.Four Girls (2007, directed by Hussain Al-Hulaybi and executive produced by Al-Thawadi), offers a feminist perspective as four girls from different socio-economic backgrounds (played by actresses with backgrounds in TV serials and Bahraini films) work together with an older widow to reopen a car wash and build a thriving business despite male objections, including those of a newly religious fundamentalists. Bahrain's fifth feature film (also produced by Al-Thawadi) is Hussain Al-Hulaybi's star-crossed Sunni/Shi'a romance, Longing (2010). Spanning 1983 through 2000, through the first and second Gulf Wars, Longing also pointedly addresses issues of democracy and Bahrain's relationship with the rest of the Arab world, constitutional rights, employment and lack thereof, and possibilities of subversion.

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Anne Ciecko

Anne Ciecko is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and a core faculty member in the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she also coordinates the Graduate Certificate in Film Studies. Her international research and curatorial activities focus on contemporary emerging, resurging and under-represented film industries and film cultures.