Reviving the art of cinema in Gaza City - AJE News - 0 views
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The sight of an active cinema hall is not common in Gaza, where all cinemas were either destroyed or permanently closed around the time of the first Intifada. Save for a couple of failed attempts to reopen them in the 1990s, the 10 cinemas that existed across the coastal territory before the Intifada have remained shut ever since.
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Gaza Cinema, led by members of the production company Ain Media, launched about six weeks ago with a goal to revive cinema culture in the besieged enclave, where younger generations have grown up without ever setting foot inside a movie theatre. "I'm from the generation that never experienced cinema in Gaza," 27-year-old Hossam Salem, one of the organisers, told Al Jazeera. "People have a wider choice online, so one of the challenges is to get them to come and pay money to see a movie. I would like to see cinema culture one day become mainstream again."
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"We are working with films that do not breach our tradition and that carry a good message, whether it is national or social," Salem said, noting blurbs about each film are submitted to the culture ministry for approval prior to screening. Most of the movies screened so far have been Palestinian feature films and children's cartoons.
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The history of cinema in Gaza dates back to the 1940s, noted Khalil al-Mozayen, who directed a documentary called 36mm about the decline of cinema in Gaza. "After 1948, war and refugees came to Gaza," Mozayen told Al Jazeera. "UNRWA [the UN's Palestinian refugee agency] began showing Arabic cinema in the refugee camps. Before the film, they'd broadcast messages telling people to drink milk and clean their teeth. The project enjoyed a lot of popularity." In the 1950s, Mozayen said, businessmen started to open cinemas. But after 1967, "religious groups started broadcasting messages against cinema", he said.
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Al-Nasser Cinema was closed after the 1967 war, only to be reopened a year later upon the request of the new occupying authorities, the Israelis.
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"At that time, we could no longer bring films from Egypt; we brought films from Israel. The cinema started showing Chinese, Indian, and European films," Khazendar said. "It was then that people began to stop going to the cinema. It became associated with the 'bad people'."
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Gaza has produced notable film directors, such as Rashid Masharawi and the Nasser brothers, known as Arab and Tarzan, who have pursued their careers outside of Gaza