Cafe Arabica Takes a Brief Look With Professor Viola Shafik at Arab Cinema, Past and Present

Professor Viola Shafik is the Rockefeller Humanities Fellow at New York University's Center for Media, Culture, and History. Following is an adaptation of a Cafe Arabica interview with Professor Shafik.

The current Arab film festival has a number of important films, the title "Centennial of Arab Cinema," however, is somewhat misleading. It doesn't refer to the span of time Arab films have been produced, rather it is the Centennial of the presentation of films in the Arab World,

Nascent cinematography, the films of the Lumiere brothers and Edison appeared in the Arab world soon after their debut in Europe in 1896. They Were presented to primarily distinguished, affluent audiences - in Morocco, for example, they were shown at the royal palace in Fez, while in Egypt, films were viewed at Alexandria's prestigious Cafe Schneider. The first true big native Arab productions wouldn't start until the 1920's; the groundwork, though, was set with these films.

Fast on the heels of the first presentations, Edison and the Lumiere brothers dispatched camera men to the Arab world, which would provide an exotic milieu. North Africa was alluring to French audiences. Palestine was popular as it was the Holy Land and Egypt because of its antiquity. The market for films, meanwhile, soon opened in Arab countries. Cinemas appeared in some cities before World War I, and audiences had the same opportunities to watch the films their counterparts viewed in Europe and America. 

The First Local Productions

It would be Europeans residing in Arab countries who would launch the first local productions - in Alexandria, the Italians; in North Africa, the French. Around 1906, a resident of Algeria, Felix Meskich shot his first film in Morocco. Such efforts attracted Arabs who wanted to try their hand at this exciting new medium, and they joined with native Europeans to produce films as World War I raged in Europe. These collaborations occurred mainly in Egypt which had an active cultural scene and flourishing theater, but aspiring Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese filmmakers also joined up with Europeans to produce films.

From this period sprung what we would consider the first real native Arab big productions in the 1920s. These first works may have been somewhat feeble compared to Western productions, still they represent the birth of Arab cinema.

The Tunisian, Shamama Chiklin, shot his first film in 1922; his first long film in 1924; and in 1929, Elias Mabruk's "Adventure" became the first Lebanese film. Somewhat earlier, Italian companies had tried to set up a professional film industry production in Egypt during World War I. They were unsuccessful because they didn't focus on the local market. However, during the 1920s local production proved quite successful.