AKKAD, MOUSTAPHA (1935–2005)
Akkad was an innovative film producer and director who made both Hollywood genre films and Arab- and Muslim-themed epics promoting cultural understanding, during a career spanning more than three decades. Born in Aleppo, Syria, and educated in film and theater in the United States, Akkad began his film career as a production assistant on Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1962). His first film as director was The Message (1976), produced in English-language and Arabic versions with different actors, about the Prophet Mohammed (who was not shown on-screen in adherence to Islamic convention) and the birth of Islam. Carefully researched and endorsed as accurate by Qur’anic scholars and Muslim clerics, The Message garnered audiences worldwide. It was embraced by many as a respectful representation of Islam, but was banned in several Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia.
In 1978, Akkad forged a long-term partnership with John Carpenter, executive producer of the first and ultimately each of the eight Halloween slasher films. Akkad directed his second film, The Lion in the Desert, funded by Libyan head of state Muammar al-Gaddafi and starring Anthony Quinn (who also had featured in The Message), about a Muslim rebel who fought for Libya’s independence and self-determination. Akkad died in 2005 as a result of injuries sustained in a hotel bombing in Amman, Jordan; reportedly, more than 2,000 people attended his funeral services in Aleppo. At the time of his death, Akkad was continuing to seek financing for an epic project, Saladin, about the Muslim leader who fought the Crusaders, a story previously filmed by Youssef Chahine in 1963.
AL JANAHI, NAWAF (1977–)
Both a filmmaker and an advocate for Emirati filmmaking, Al Janahi is the son of the late Mohamed Al Janahi, an Emirati television and theater actor. Nawaf Al Janahi began acting at the age of seven and studied film at City College in San Francisco. His first narrative feature, The Circle (2009), was purchased by the Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting Center media network; his second, Sea Shadow (2011), was the first Emirati film funded by Image Nation and one of the first United Arab Emirates (UAE) films to get a major theatrical release in the territory. Al Janahi has also directed four shorts: On the Road (2003), Souls (2004), Mirrors of Silence (2006), and Between Two Worlds (2018). In 2001, he became one of the founding members of the Emirates Film Competition, thus beginning the development of a filmmaking community in the UAE. In 2014, he launched the Emirati Cinema Campaign, going on a bike tour through the UAE to bring local awareness to Emirati filmmaking. From 2014 to 2017, he curated the popular 50-seat Black Box Cinema at the annual Abu Dhabi Book Fair, showcasing shorts from around the Arab world.
AL JAZEERA
This Arab satellite news station started broadcasting from Doha, Qatar, a small oil-rich state on the Persian–Arabian Gulf, in 1996. A grant from Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who had come to power in a bloodless coup the previous year, established the station, partly to fill a vacuum left by the breakup of the British Broadcasting Company’s (BBC) Saudi-based Arabic Television Network and partly to supply continued employment to many of the journalists who had previously worked there. To some degree, Al Jazeera was modeled on the supposed objectivity of the BBC, adopting the motto, “Give the opinion, then give the other opinion”—although debate continues over the degree of influence exercised on the station by the Qatari government. Still, the emir has apparently resisted increased pressure from the United States since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and subsequently since the 2011 civil and military crisis in Syria, to dissuade the station from broadcasting material perceived as anti-American—and anti-Zionist.
The evident professionalism, wide coverage of issues, and relative objectivity of Al Jazeera quickly made the station popular in much of the Arab world, where government-run terrestrial channels are typically heavily censored. It has displaced the BBC and CNN as the preferred news station in most Middle Eastern countries. The station was brought to worldwide attention at the onset of the war in Afghanistan. Since then, it has expanded into sports programming and, in November 2006, into English-language broadcasting through Al Jazeera English, based in Doha, London, Washington, and Kuala Lumpar, and managed largely by British journalists, including Robert Fisk. In 2013, however, Al Jazeera America replaced Al Jazeera English in the U.S. television market, although it ceased operations in 2016 under circumstances attributed to censorship, which had compromised its branding as an alternative news venue. The station is the subject of a widely distributed documentary, Control Room (Jehane Noujam, U.S., 2004).
Al Jazeera’s success has spurred the establishment of several other satellite news stations in the Middle East, although none as free of their funders’ influence. Many are either directly funded by the ruling family of Saudi Arabia—as in the case of Al Jazeera’s most important rival, Al Arabiyya—or are recipients of Saudi funding.
AL SIDDIQ, KHALID M. (KHALID M. SIDDIQ) (1945–)
This Kuwaiti film director and producer is known primarily for his groundbreaking feature The Cruel Sea (1971). Al Siddiq studied film informally at Central Studios in India. He later received practical film training in Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 1990, all of his studios were looted and destroyed during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. However, he is still active, often working on foreign films under pseudonyms. The Cruel Sea continues to have an enduring effect and is often screened in international settings. It depicts challenges Kuwaitis faced in the pre-oil era, in particular the perilousness of pearl diving, which entailed spending several months on and in an often-rough sea each year. The film’s narrative follows a young man who takes on a dangerous and ultimately fatal journey in an attempt to find a danah—a large and expensive pearl that he hopes to use as a dowry with which to marry his sweetheart, a woman of higher social status. The film employs a pastiche of styles, fluctuating between realism and postmodernism. Its minimalist aesthetic contrasts while complementing Al Siddiq’s technical ambition, as it includes remarkable underwater scenes and deeply subjective point-of-view shots that probe cultural boundaries. The Cruel Sea is considered the first feature film from the Gulf region and has won several awards from international film festivals, including the FIPRESCI Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Among Al Siddiq’s other films as a director are Alia and Esam (1964), a short that focuses on vengeance and a blood feud between Bedu tribes; The Falcon (1965), a documentary about falconry; The Last Voyage (1966), a short film about an aging owner of a trading dhow (al-boom), which allegorizes the heyday of mercantile journeys to India and Africa, before an oil tanker paralyzes its movement; Faces of the Night (1968), a medium-length film about young lovers separated by arranged marriage; and Wedding of Zein (1976), a feature based on the classic Arabic novel of the same name by Sudanese author Tayib Saleh.
ALAEDDINE, HASSAN (SHOUSHOU) (1939–1975)
This Lebanese actor, famous for his long mustache and nasal voice, earned his screen name from his first film role