Skinny like an impossible lover, his mistress suddenly distanced him without saying goodbye to him. He is also a “tall” poet like a palm tree in Al-Ahsa, tall and simple at the same time, fruitful and resistant to cheap bowing. The stench.. is indifferent to grudges big and small, devoting his time to poetry, culture, the arts, and the “cinema” industry, which does not exist in our country except for jurisprudence from here and there. Our guest preferred to work on it four years ago without “fabricated” rituals, so it was the Saudi Film Festival that Its fourth edition finally passed, and it witnessed remarkable success.
I mean the great poet Ahmed Al-Mulla, director of the branch of the Saudi Arabian Society for Culture and Arts in Dammam. Okaz met him on the last day of the festival, on the eve of the closing ceremony and award distribution, and asked him a lot about poetry, absent cinema, the expected decision, and so on, but as usual he preferred to be away from being busy. With any decision, stressing that all that matters to him is the cultural movement and the convergence of all arts to serve the aesthetics of man and life. Here is the text of the dialogue:
• You are known as a poet, and also the editor-in-chief of Al-Riyadi newspaper, as the first intellectual or poet to head a purely sports newspaper, then you recently turned to cinema.. What is the link between sports, poetry and cinema?
•• I consider myself a poet in all my situations. Poetry for me is the origin and foundation. I wake up as a poet, sleep as a poet, and practice my whole life conscious of poetry as my first truth. Every other activity is an added effort. I work in cultural management, which is not only cinema, but I also have cultural administrative work. Cultural management separates the poet and puts him in the shadows, especially in procedural, administrative and discipline matters. It is true that poetry is mastered by me, but I struggle to separate it from administrative work, which I am trying to establish in an accurate and orderly manner. My role is to lead multiple teams, as we have administrative work in the Culture and Arts Association in Dammam in six cultural and artistic fields, not only in cinema. Cinema, theatre, composition, poetry and narration. We have five major festivals a year, with each festival having a different management team. We have now finished the fourth Saudi Film Festival and the second Child and Family Festival at the waterfront in Al-Khobar. If the attendance at the film festival is close to thousands, then the Child and Family Festival exceeds that number by tens of thousands. There is also the eleventh Dammam Theatrical Festival, and there is the third House of Poetry Festival this year. And there is a Children's Theater Festival, other than meetings and continuous activities such as workshops, exhibitions, evenings and daily seminars that occur even during these festivals.
Not to be sad
• But the momentum on the cinema, why all the momentum, is it due to its absence, for example?
•• Definitely one of those things the lack of another platform. When we say the theater festival is held by the Dammam Association, we will find that there are other festivals for theater, such as the Janadriyah Festival in the Taif Association, and there are theatrical activities in several places that take place. But when we mention the Saudi Film Festival, it is now the only one, and therefore the focus on it is higher, in addition to cinema itself or filmmaking as a new, contemporary field that converges with the feature of the current moment, which is modern means of communication.
• Isn't it shameful that we have a film festival when we don't have cinema halls, four days a year only for film screenings.. Don't you feel ashamed.. Don't you feel sorry?
•• I feel sorry, but I am not ashamed. I will not allow grief to get the better of me. I have a role, I have to play it as much as I can, and it is not my role as a cultural stimulator to put my effort into finding a movie theater. This is a commercial and economic matter that is completely different from my field. I am a cultural activist. I have to coordinate the cultural situation, activate it, and do it. The closest model and ideal vessel for it is a continuous organized festival that is able to absorb the movement of the film industry, and keep pace with its rapid development, which constitutes a platform for presenting the best of what Saudi filmmakers have produced. Therefore, this is my task as a cultural official, and it is not one of my tasks to discuss the issue of halls. Of course I wish it, but it is not my personal goal.
• You say that it is a commercial and economic issue.. But the reality is that the issue is a decision. There is no resolution?
A: Therefore, as I told you, these areas are for the cultural animator to talk about and expend effort in on useless matters. The decision is not in the hands of the cultural animator, nor is the commercial decision in his hand, nor is the building of the infrastructure either.. The cultural animator has to activate the cultural movement in The general climate in public life, and this is its main role.. If you spend your efforts on the areas that I mentioned, or on thinking about cinema halls, decisions, or other things that we as cultural activists do not have the power to take, then I imagine that it will spend our efforts and make us fall into a state of despair, and this is what I fear The cultural activator always has to fall into it.
• I heard that the winning films will be shown in all regions of the Kingdom. Is this true? Will they be shown in more than one region?
•• In fact, the Saudi Film Festival does not depend on its work only on the days of the festival itself. It naturally works throughout the year because it needs programming, it needs planning, and it needs to be organized in a very large way, in addition to that it plays other roles such as programming shows for many parties inside and outside Saudi Arabia. Last year, we programmed a number of overseas shows. We participated in the Saudi Film Days in Los Angeles. We participated and contributed to organizing our film screenings at the Nouakchott International Festival in Mauritania, and we programmed Saudi screenings at the Gulf Film Festival in Abu Dhabi of the GCC countries. We contributed to organizing or setting up the program for Saudi film screenings at the Sharjah International Children's Film Festival. In other external festivals, in addition to more than (12) show programs inside Saudi Arabia in Riyadh, Jubail, Abha, as well as Al-Ahsa and Dammam, this means that we are in a continuous state of work and organizing shows, in addition to our happiness at the visit of Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Asimi, General Supervisor of Cultural Affairs at the Ministry of Culture And the media on the opening day, and they were briefed on the entire experience, and we promised that the films would be shown in all cultural centers in the cities of Saudi Arabia in the coming period.
• I heard you talking about Paris with the consul, what will happen in Paris?
•• We now have a program for international shows, Saudi shows in various cities of the world. We have been working on them for more than (8) months. There are negotiations with international cultural bodies, with international cultural institutions, as well as with parties that have a desire for the Saudi film to be presented in a number of cities in the world. We are working on Preparing or organizing it, as many international bodies know, has programming, organization, and long-term agreements that are not close. The closest thing I expect is that Saudi Arabia will have a good share in the Arab Film Festival at the Arab World Institute in Paris.
• Who are you going to now?
•• Soon and in the middle of the year.
Terms and conditions
• There is a beautiful experience by Mahmoud Sabbagh in the movie "Baraka Meets Baraka", but we did not see Mahmoud playing any role in the festival. We did not see anything, neither a show nor a presence?
Baraka movie is a beautiful movie. We invited Brother Mahmoud, but it seems that he had a connection according to what I understood, and we invited him to show the film, but of course you know that the film has production companies that have requirements, and we hoped that it would be Bilal’s film. Usually festivals are concerned with showing new films that have not been shown. The film Baraka Meets Baraka and the movie Bilal have become possible to watch in Arab and international theaters.
• “The Virtue of Being Nobody” is a movie shown to you, but it had won an award at the Dubai Festival. Does this mean that it was shown before you?
•• Festivals, not a public show. Commercial public screenings make it easier for everyone to see the films, but it's the films that go to festivals that are usually restricted to specific categories.
• Through four festivals, do you think there will be a Saudi cinema?
•• In scientific terms, there is no Saudi cinema. There may not be a cinema industry in many countries of the Arab world except for Egypt, which is in a weak position now as an industry.
• what is the reason?
•• The economic conditions and the social and political conditions may be reasons, but as an industry there is no cinema, because when we say a cinematic industry there is an entire sector that works for that, working in the form of a complete economic cycle in this field. This is his job and this is his work, but this does not exist in reality. We have filmmakers, we have a cinematic movement, yes, but the cycle of economic capital related to cinema does not exist. There are no regular productions, there are no major supporting parties that move the cinematic scene in a sustainable, growing, evolving and permanent manner. We have many filmmakers who do not work in this field.
• This means that the matter is a hobby?
•• Yes, no more hobby. There may be a few who are professional, but they are professional in some production companies in order to produce commercial and advertising films that have an economic return, the creative film, the feature film, the cinematic film, that is not linked to advertising and commercial purposes that are specifically required. As for those that meet the artist’s passion, they are It is not profitable and does not cover production costs, so it is low in the full-time format for cinematic work.
• Does this mean that our cinematic work is random?
•• Not random. What is meant is that he cannot live in the field of making films that he desires alone, which satisfy him as an artist, because they have no return, but we find him working in production companies, producing advertisements for parties that pay for them to companies for advertisements for television stations to YouTube parties for YouTube platforms because they have a financial return, but he is through this You will see him produce one film during the year or within two years, the film that he personally represents, but he knows that he has to deduct this film from his personal financial return, because in order to spend on this film, he does not find anyone to spend on it, and therefore he will be limited in this field.
• Cinema was confronted by many sheikhs and opponents, religiously and even socially. Did you encounter any real social, religious or cultural oppositions during the four festivals?
A: We are part of this society, we are not separate from it, but rather part of its composition, and the interactions that society is exposed to, we are part of, and therefore it is natural for the Saudi Film Festival to face different viewpoints about it, there are those who disagree with it and there are those who agree with it and those in the region Neutrality, this is a natural thing that we do not see directed against it. Rather, like all other cases of cultural movement and confrontation with modernity and progress, such as the confrontation between conservative and renewable thought, this is a natural thing that we do not see as outside the map, nor do we see it as exceptional, and we are fully aware that different points of view are something necessary and natural and we have our point of view that In it, we try not to antagonize any party, this is not our desire at all nor to provoke the other parties, and we respect and value their opinions and as much as possible we do not work to harm anyone psychologically or scratch their belief or point of view and at the same time we wish to be given this same right that we grant For the other to give us the opportunity to be and present what we see as representing us and representing a large segment of youth, and I imagine that the segment of youth that we have arrived at the festival is a clear indication of the extent of their passion and direction in a country that is the highest in the Middle East in the use of means of communication and YouTube in particular, which is A platform in which visual material is produced and related to cinema, and therefore we want to employ this energy and refine it to serve and present something creative, aesthetic and artistic that is in harmony with itself and in its natural state.
• Poetry has been restricted in the recent period, just like other creations, such as the story. Is this the reason for your focus now on cinema, or is poetry no longer popular and no longer interested in it?
A: I do not see this duality at all, and the evidence for this is that two or three months ago we had the second House of Poetry Festival in the cycle of Fawzia Abu Khaled. The numbers exceed or are close to (400) people in the daily attendance to watch the evenings and participate in the events accompanying the festival. Poetry is an individual artistic state and not a collective state like other arts. Theater and cinema are a collective state and the means of communication are close to it. Here, poetry is an individual case that is closer to the area that needs a personal test case, not a test in the public space.
• There is a documentary film shown by the festival on "Discovering Garbage in the Philippines" about which Abdullah Al-Sikhan had a question: Are you sure that this film was not copied, for example, what are your criteria for selection, what are your criteria for testing the films that are shown, was it not copied Filmed by a Filipino, this is how Mr. Abdullah was posing in this way?
•• Mr. Abdullah, we were pleased to have him with us, and this is one of our goals in the Culture and Arts Association in Dammam, for the arts and their makers to converge with each other. For the poet to be close to the cinema, for the cinematographer to be close to the playwright, for the playwright to be close to the plastic artist, and there is no separation or isolation between the arts and their makers; Because, in my opinion, this is one of the most important elements of the artistic state that the arts receive. Because they drink from each other. Isolation is a severance that does not complete the artist and does not produce or weaken the products of culture. The cinematographer is weak when he cannot master the literary language, and it is dangerous for the narrator to have no visual experience. We were pleased with the presence of the poet Abdullah Al-Sikhan and others.. I have seen a number of poets, story writers and novelists such as the novelist Saad Al-Dosari, the Bahraini poet Qassem Haddad, the poet Abdul Rahman Mowgli and others. We focus on the convergence of arts and their makers in one space. And the issue of examining and scrutinizing the films recorded in the festival, we have a very long stage until the film is selected and before it is presented or classified until there is a testing stage. During implementation until we know its validity for display, in addition to all our activities and the participation of the filmmakers is through the website and there is an agreement for each filmmaker before registration that he must sign and abide by, including the property rights, we work so that the elements of the film are music from a material from each What is available in it according to international standards that guarantee ownership of intellectual rights.
poetic scene
• You are one of the most important writers of prose poems, not only in Saudi Arabia, but also in the Arab world, but there are other poets who say that the writers of prose poems in Saudi Arabia have no face or tongue, and that this poem is composed of an easy one?
A: I am a cultural administrator here. On a personal level, when I work in the cultural administration, I try to retire from the poet, which means that my poet is now imprisoned! We have important poets in Saudi Arabia and important prose poems at the level of the Arab world. We have names whose poetic achievement is now at the forefront of the Arab poetic scene, such as Hamad Al-Faqih, Ibrahim Al-Hussein and Ahmed Kattu’a. I can count for you (45) names, Salih Zamanan, Ali Al-Omari, Muhammad Al-Herz, we have young men among them who won the first book award Jassim Al-Sahih, Abrar Saeed, Ibrahim Hassan, from my knowledge of the scene or from my closeness to the Arab scene, I did not find this serious quality in writing The prose poem is as numerous as it is found in Saudi Arabia. I think your question is harsh on the poetic scene in Saudi Arabia, especially the prose poem. Poetry is poetry. For me, I enjoy the poem of Jassim Al-Sahih, I enjoy the poem of Hamad Al-Faqih, and I enjoy the poem of Al-Hamidi Al-Thaqafi, a state of confusion with poetry anywhere.
• At the end of the Saudi Film Festival, it was announced that it would be transformed into an institution for the production and manufacture of Saudi films. As if this news concealed a decision to start cinema in Saudi Arabia everywhere?
A: I cannot make the decision, because it is not in my hands. As we said at the beginning, I will not concern myself with whether the decision came or was delayed.
• But there are indications of a decision as it seems to me from your words?
A: I do not know at all, I am not a decision-maker and I am not close to the decision-making position until I say this thing, but I say we promise, as we promised in previous sessions, that the level of the festival will be higher than it was, and I imagine that everyone witnessed this, we, the festival management, promise that The fifth edition will be significantly superior to the fourth edition, in a way that establishes a true Saudi film industry.
Prepared by: Ali Makki