‘IT’S A NEW ERA, A NEW AGE – IT’S THAT SIMPLE’
▶ A front-row seat on the night that a cinema audience in Saudi Arabia made history – by watching a film
The lights dimmed and the audience of men and women erupted into applause and hoots as Hollywood blockbuster Black Panther made its premiere in a Saudi Arabian movie theatre.
It was a private, invitationonly screening on Wednesday evening, but for many Saudis, it marked one of the clearest moments of change to sweep the country in decades.
It is part of a new era in which women will soon be allowed to drive and people will be able to go to concerts and fashion shows – and tuck into a bucket of popcorn in a cinema.
“It’s a new era, a new age – it’s that simple,” said Rahaf Alhendi, who attended the screening. “Things are changing, progress is happening. We’re opening up and we’re catching up with everything that’s happening in the world.”
Authorities said that the public would be able to buy tickets online yesterday for screenings starting today. But there may be delays.
Movies screened in Saudi cinemas will be subject to approval by government censors, and Wednesday night’s premiere was no exception. Scenes of violence were not cut, but a final scene with a kiss was axed.
It is still a stark reversal for a country where public movie screenings were banned in the 1980s during a wave of ultra-conservatism that swept Saudi Arabia. Many clerics view western movies and even Arabic films made in Egypt and Lebanon as sinful.
Despite decades of ultraconservative dogma, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has pushed through major social reforms with support from his father, King Salman, to satisfy the desires of the country’s majority young population.
“This is a historic day for your country,” Adam Aron, chief executive of AMC Entertainment, told the crowd at the screening. “It’s been about 37 years since you’ve been able to watch movies the way movies are meant to be watched, in a theatre, together, on a big screen.”
AMC, an American company that is one of the world’s biggest cinema operators, only two weeks earlier signed a deal with Prince Mohammed to operate the first modern-day theatre in the kingdom.
AMC and its local partner quickly turned a concert hall in Riyadh into a cinema complex for Wednesday’s screening.
Mr Aron said the company plans to rip out the concert-style seats and replace them with plush leather recliners, and build three more screens in the complex to accommodate up to 5,000 moviegoers a day.
Samer Al Sourani travelled from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province for the event. He commended the crown prince for following through on his promises to modernise the country.
“This is the first time that we really see something that’s really being materialised,” Mr Al Sourani said.
The social reforms undertaken by Prince Mohammed, 32, are part of his Vision 2030, a blueprint for Saudi Arabia that aims to increase local spending and create jobs amid sustained lower oil prices.
The Saudi government projects that the opening of movie theatres will contribute more than 90 billion riyals (Dh88.1bn) to the economy and create more than 30,000 jobs by 2030. The kingdom says there will be 300 cinemas, with about 2,000 screens, built by 2030.
AMC has linked up with a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund, to build up to 40 cinemas across the country in the next five years.
Saudi Arabia had already started gradually loosening restrictions on movie screenings in the past few years, with local film festivals and screenings in makeshift theatres.
But for the most part, until now, Saudis who wanted to watch a film in a movie theatre had to drive to nearby Bahrain or the UAE for weekend trips.
In the 1970s, there were informal movie screenings, but the experience could be interrupted by the country’s religious police, whose powers have since been curbed.
Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi writer, describes the theatres of the 1970s as being “like American drive-ins except much more informal”. In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, he wrote that a friend once broke his leg at a screening in Madinah when he jumped off a wall to escape the religious police and avoid arrest.
By the 1980s, movie screenings were largely banned unless they took place in private residential compounds for foreigners or at cultural centres run by foreign embassies.
Access to streaming services such as Netflix and satellite TV steadily eroded attempts by the government to censor what the Saudi public could view.
By 2013, the film Wadjda made history by becoming the first Academy Award entry for Saudi Arabia, although it was not nominated for an Oscar.
To adhere to the kingdom’s norms on gender segregation, certain screenings may be held for families and others for male-only crowds.
But generally, movie theatres will not be segregated, with “family sections” for women and related men, and separate “single sections” for maleonly crowds as is customary at restaurants and cafes.
Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Culture and Information Dr Awwad Al Awwad said that the government aimed to strike a balance between the country’s Islamic values and people’s movie experiences.
“We want to ensure the movies are in line with our culture and respect for values. Meanwhile, we want to provide people with a beautiful show and really enjoy watching their own movies,” Dr Al Awwad said.