Middle Eastern Cinema

In general the Middle Eastern cinema’s history was rather interesting to me. I thought it interesting when the book mentioned that the first films they saw were imported films from other nationalities. The problems they had with sound was interesting as well because the book mentioned that many different dialects are spoken in the Arabian world and it was hard to show the films to a wide audience.

Musicals were some of the first films with sound that Arabians created whereas it took other cultures a while to create musicals. Small things like that seem to show us clues about their culture. For instance, perhaps musicals were some of the first things they did because they do sing or chant a lot and maybe music is a prominent way for them to communicate, I really don’t know if this is true but I’m guessing and making assumptions from things in their history that I’ve read about.

Turkish cinema started off relatively early, the same time as Europe according to the book and they did very well until civil war broke out in the 70s. it looked like they wouldn’t be able to get their feet back under them but a wave of new, innovative Turkish filmmakers arose and saved the industry.

Iranian cinema started very late the 30s and they had many problems. Restrictions due to their religious and political beliefs caused Iranian filmmakers to be more creative and sometimes these films had difficulties being distributed because of the authorities in Iran at the time. Now more women are showing up in films but the authorities are being difficult. Some like the films, some don’t and that’s what determines if a film is distributed or not.