Planet of the Arabs

format_quote Originally Posted by ricardo_sousa

But anyway, the Arabs should start making their own movies. It would be actually a good thing to the world. Balancing views on different subjects. Like we have the America movies, but also the Europeans, South-America, Asiatic movies, and that help us see things trough different "ideals or theories".

Arabs already have heaps of movies!!!! They have been making movies from the days when tv was black and white!

Why do people always assume that just because they haven't heard of something, it doesn't exist. (Not targeting you specifically, it is just something that seems to happen a lot on this forum).

format_quote Originally Posted by Malaikah

Arabs already have heaps of movies!!!! They have been making movies from the days when tv was black and white!

Yeah.. which also have lots of drinking, kissing and dancing scenes just like the Hollywood movies .... since the days when the cinema was black and white.

format_quote Originally Posted by north_malaysian

Yeah.. which also have lots of drinking, kissing and dancing scenes just like the Hollywood movies .... since the days when the cinema was black and white.

Exactly.

format_quote Originally Posted by Malaikah

Exactly.

Our Malaysian movies are 100 times more conservative than the Arab. No kissing (lips to lips) scene!

Egypt makes TONS of movies.
Not islamic ones, mind you, but arabic. Egypt and Syria also make lots of TV shows.

format_quote Originally Posted by ricardo_sousa

I didn´t know that there was a "movie industry" of Arabs movies. Can you tell what countries make those movies? If it is Lebanon it wouldn´t be a surprise...

Yeh, Lebanon does a lot... I know Egypt does some too and I there are some Syrian ones too I think. I'm no expert though so there could be others.

format_quote Originally Posted by ABWAN

Out of 1000 films that have Arab & Muslim characters (from the year 1896 to 2000)
12 were postive depictions, 52 were even handed and the rest of the 90O and so were negative [/I]

This statement requires some backup.

format_quote Originally Posted by ricardo_sousa

I didn´t know that there was a "movie industry" of Arabs movies. Can you tell what countries make those movies?

The movie business in Egypt

Egypt is a big player in the movie business, though its heyday has past. What's happening now behind the scenes in Egypt? By Guy Brown in Cairo.


Egypt, once the Hollywood of the Arab world, is now a mere shadow of its former self. At its peak, Egypt made 80 films a year. By the late 1990s, it managed just 15. Movies are made by other Arab nations, but the Arab movie industry remains essentially the Egyptian movie industry.

Egypt's movie industry peaked in the 1950s, with internationally successful films, including a string of musicals featuring singers such as Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab and Umm Kulthum. Old films like these and comedies starring the likes of Ismail Yassin are shown and reshown on television channels throughout the region.

These films have become classics and their stars screen legends. Egypt's most celebrated director, Youssef Chahine, rose to prominence around this time with serious films such as The Blazing Sky (1953) and Cairo Station (1958). But when Nasser came to power in 1954, Egypt began moving towards socialism, and the movie industry suffered. By the end of Nasser's rule in 1970, the industry was in a sorry state and has never fully recovered.

Nevertheless, the Egyptian film industry is still the biggest in the Arab world. 'There is no comparison between Egypt and other Arab countries in terms of the volume of production,' says Inas al-Deghedy, a prominent Egyptian director. Only two or three films a year come from Tunisia, Morocco and Syria. 'And these films are most likely co-productions with Belgium, France or another European country,' she adds. 'This does not really count as an industry.'

The quality of filmmaking is another problem. 'Poor quality movies are a reflection of economic difficulties,' says al-Deghedy. 'People are not looking for movies that explore important issues; they are trying to escape the economic situation. That is why comedians dominate the industry at the moment.' The insatiable appetite for comedy also derives from the seemingly perpetual political conflicts in the region. Egyptians want a powerful antidote to reality. And they certainly get it: formulaic comedies that are crass, unsubtle and predictable farces or simply the most slapstick of slapstick comedy.

'Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films,' asked Samuel Goldwyn, 'when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?' In the 1980s, Egyptian studios shifted production to TV dramas. By the mid-1990s, close to 80 percent of Egyptian film studios were leased out to television stations. Actors and actresses prefer to act in TV series, particularly those that are shown during the lucrative advertising month of Ramadan.

Goldwyn also said, 'A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.' Crammed into a TV, a bad movie does not seem so bad, and were he living today Goldwyn might suggest the best thing for the Egyptian film industry is to confine itself to small-screen movies and dramas until it finds new inspiration.
Chahine used to provide that inspiration, and has been Egypt's premier director for decades.

The consensus is that his recent films are not as good as his earlier ones. According to al-Deghedy, 'Every director peaks in middle age. He will then start on a second career curve of generally lower quality - and occasionally good - films. You can never judge a director by just one film, you have to consider all his past work and experience.' Chahine won a special prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for his film Destiny.

Younger generations of directors are now following in Chanine's footsteps, including al-Deghedy. 'We do have a lot of well-educated directors and technicians who are knowledgeable about the cinema,' she says.

'The course at the High Cinema Institute is good, but it is insufficient to make a worthy director. A director needs to gain experience in the field after finishing his studies.' Some students go to America to study, but al-Deghedy says they are like fish out of water when they return to Egypt. 'Egyptians who studied in America do not know how to work in Egypt afterwards,' she says. 'No one has really succeeded following this path.'

Censorship is another issue in Egypt. An article in the Cairo Times blamed censor Hamdy Sorour for much of the damage inflicted on the Egyptian film industry. Sorour held the scissors in the early 1990s. Speaking about the British travel series A Rough Guide to the World, presenter Sankha Guha said, 'We were shocked at the level of interference.' Al-Deghedy says the censorship problem is one of policy not person, and the censor alone cannot affect the whole industry. 'The last five censors were good people and they tried to solve problems in the movie industry.'

Al-Deghedy says the censorship problem has roots elsewhere. 'The censors themselves as people are no longer the true censors,' she says. 'The Egyptian people are the true censors.' Self-censorship of this kind hinders the industry from raising the quality of output. 'There are some people trying to understand and discuss the important issues a movie raises, but there are other people who refuse to even discuss it. They are either too fanatical about religion or they do not want to face the problem.'

'Fundamentalists are creating a serious problem for the industry, because they are wrapping new films up in red tape,' adds al-Deghedy. 'The fundamentalists are attempting to sue people but, fortunately, there are laws protecting the producers and the films.' She says the country's culture minister is supportive of the industry's cause.

The level of production and technical standards in Egyptian filmmaking are also problematic. Production standards are poor compared to other movie-producing nations around the world - and not just America. 'There is no comparison between Egyptian and American or European movies,' says al-Deghedy. 'Production standards in American movies are far ahead of us; European movies are not so far ahead, which is partly because they are also experiencing financing problems.'

Financing problems partly explain why fewer Egyptian films are made. 'Now the whole industry is based on films that are self-financed,' says al-Deghedy. 'They do not have a good source of financing from Arab countries.' Films have to do well in Egypt to cover expenses. 'Seventy-five percent of revenues come from the cinema, and 25 percent from video and satellite,' she adds.
Revenues disappear into thin air because of inadequate intellectual property right protection, particularly on the international scene.

'The video itself is not well protected,' says al-Deghedy. 'You can find Egyptian movies in any country, and they are all pirated. We do not have the protection to secure the royalties. If we did there would be more money to finance new movies.'

The latest estimates show that pirates cost the Egyptian film industry $15 million per year. The process works like this: pirates race to get a hold of the latest releases - on DVD, video cassette or even a camcorded cassette shot in a theater - and then make copies as quickly as possible. This cuts down the normal 'distribution window' for an Egyptian release - typically six months between release in theaters and on the home-video market - to as short a span as a week.

Theater owners see ticket sales dwindle fast, and the trickle-down effect spreads across the industry. Everybody, except the pirates, loses big.

Fortunately, there is a large global market for Egyptian movies, with big Arab populations in Australia, the United States, Canada and Europe. And, in today's white-hot political climate, it would surely help to broadcast Arab culture around the world. Al-Deghedy, though, doubts that foreigners want to listen. 'The problem is not from the Arab side, but with the Europeans and other foreigners. They do not want to understand or listen to what the Arabs have to say. They have a fixed picture; they stick to these ideas.' Of cinematic classic Lawrence of Arabia, Lowell Thomas said: 'They only got two things right: the camels and the sand.'

There is also a language barrier standing in the way of movie exports. Non-English language movies from European countries have found some success by including subtitles in English. However, this is not the standard practice with Egyptian movies - and as a result many people who might watch an Egyptian movie do not. Al-Deghedy says subtitles will not make much of a difference because there is no real market, and subtitles do not communicate everything of the language. Still, English-language dubbing on Arab movies could broaden their appeal.

Al-Deghedy says there are other challenges in taking Arab movies to the world. 'Some of the technical standards of the films do not meet the required standards for projection in Europe and America,' she says. There is also a cultural gap. 'The ideas, the scenario itself and the treatment of the situations are completely different from Western ideas,' she says. 'We always have exaggeration in our filming, whatever the genre. American and European movies treat these situations in a completely different way.'

Al-Deghedy has found it difficult to film in Europe, facing similar problems as production companies considering Egypt as a location. 'It is not easy because there is a European movie industry mafia; they do not allow Arab films to penetrate in Europe,' she says. 'Even though there are many Arab movies winning competitions, they cannot be seen in any theater.'
Back in Egypt, al-Deghedy says Egyptian film companies face the same costs and red tape as foreign companies: 'Egyptian producers pay exactly the same fees; it is not just a position against European films. Problems with censors and the routine are the same for Egyptian movies.'

Egypt has missed out on some lucrative moviemaking because of red tape. The most talked-about was The English Patient, a film set in Egypt that was filmed in Tunisia. Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Star Wars sequels also might have chosen Egypt, but went for Tunisia instead. With Egypt's history, and excellent resort and desert locations, the country ought to be much sought-after as a film location. If Egypt made more of an effort to attract filmmakers, it would have a substantial source of foreign currency coming in, publicity for its tourism industry and the opportunity to channel revenues into the domestic movie industry.

Nabil Shazly, an agent for foreign productions with Misr International Films, reckons that Egypt lost out on $5 million for The English Patient alone. 'Our company deals with an average 10-15 approaches by foreign productions a year,' he said recently. 'If there are terrorist incidents, we lose all of them. If not, we still lose 50-80 percent, anyway.'

The challenges are clear: red tape has to be slashed, government bureaucrats removed from the production loop, filmmaking facilities modernized, piracy fought and distribution improved. And there's one last, fundamental challenge. Egypt has to start making much better movies - just like it used to.


Source: http://www.ameinfo.com/16692.html

^^^ you can watch in the ASTRO, am i right?

anyway....our islamic channel oasis i getting better don't u think so?

Propaganda makes great entertainment.

That's an observation, not an endorsement.

And Ghost Rider isn't worth a watch. It's not propaganda of any sort, it's just pants.