ACTING & FILM SCHOOL

Abu Dhabi’s Rising Film Industry

Aspire Magazine May-June 2009. Show business has actually been no business for most of the oil-rich Gulf economies. The bright lights are firmly fixed on Elemack Spyder dollies and tracks in the lots of Universal Studios, Paramount Studios and Warner Brothers in Burbank. A-list Hollywood producers have enough cigars to chew on. Further east, Mumbai’s flashing bhangra lights are also on rotation; Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai have enough offers coming in to keep their Altamount Road mansions stuffed with statuettes. In the US and India, producers, stars and screenwriters have no intentions of going elsewhere - and neither does the money. Or at lest for now.

Unsurprisingly, the Gulf wants a share of the spotlight. Even in Nigeria, directors armed with a few thousand dollars, a digital camera, and a couple of lighting rigs have managed to create a US$236 million industry. It may only be a fraction of the capital generated by Hollywood, but it’s a good start - Nollywood has grown into the largest film industry outside the U.S. and India within two decades. There is a fledgling Iranian film industry and the Beirut Film Festival has helped carve a niche for Lebanese filmmakers. But the Middle East is still caught in the cultural crossfire between Hollywood and Bollywood.

Yet times are changing. Abu Dhabi has a new film academy, a new film commissioner and a billion dollar fund called imagination. The government’s far-sighted plan is to turn the capital into the Middle East’s hub for film education, development and production. Like anything else Abu Dhabisets its mind to, the Emerate can already see its name in lights. “Its a new initiative,” says David Shepheard, Aub Dhabi’s newly-appointed film commissionar. “The Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) has wanted this for a long time. It’s part of the government’s wish to diversify the economy; media is lucrative. They see it as helping promote the new face of Abu Dhabi.”

At the core of this vision is the imagination film fund, a wholly owned subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Media Company fashioned to develop, finance and produce full length feature films and content for Arabic and global markets. Within a few months of its inception, imagination made financially-oiled agreements with Warner Brothers and National Geographic Entertainment for the production of up to 15 films over the next five years. It also partnered with Hollywood-based Hyde Park Entertainment in a US$250 million deal to create up to 20 films over seven years and formed a US$250 million fund with Participant Media to finance a further slate of films. Headed by former executive vice president of Walt Disney International, Edward Borgeding - the man who took Disney to China and India - it is clear that there is money to burn onto celluloid in this town.

“The long term aim of a traditional film commission is to attract filmmakers to come and make pictures and to develop indigenous talent,” says Shepheard, previously UK’s film commissioner for the south west region. “The Film Commission will be the linking point between these areas. The world is starting to look the Middle East - film production doesn’t recognise political barriers and producers are interested in talking to us.”

Robert De Niro also has a lot to answer for. As well as producing some of cinema’s most memorable performances - Vito Corleone, Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta and Al Capone for instance - he was partly responsible for the inception of the New York Film Academy (NYFA). Its doors swung open in 1992 at De Niro’s Tribeca Film Center and has since become a celluloid godfather for the global filmmaking family.

Orsen Welles once stated: “If you give me three days, I can show you the ABC of film”, but NYFA has taken this further, offering Masters courses for anyone with the drive and ambition to make films. The academy has only ever had two campuses - one on 17th Street in New York and one at Unversial Studios in Los Angeles - but clapperboards are now clacking in Abu Dhabi.

“ADACH” wants to expand its film industry for two reasons,” says Simon Hunter, president of the NYFA Abu Dhabi. “Firstly, to develop its cultural industries so that young Emirati filmmakers develop Emirati stories on screen and, secondly, to encourage Arabic filmmakers and filmmakers from around the world to the region. Students studying here will understand the UAE and be able to provide a certain viewpoint this culture.”

The walls of the film academy are adorned with movies posters of the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, Goldfinger, teen comedy Superbad, and colour prints of Gregory Peck’s To Kill a Mocking Bird and French triumph Amelie. But is this importing culture for culture’s sake? Shouldn’t a nascent film industry be allowed to grow organically without force?

“Our hope is not to mimic an American industry.” Hunter explains. “The industry here is in its infancy. But what’s fascinating about this region is its deeply ingrained tradition of oral storytelling. In oral storytelling, the next stage is visual storytelling. and the combination of those. We will be the next generation of storytellers.”