How did Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol reach Jeddah?

Not long ago, people from Saudi Arabia used to go to Dubai to watch movies, but now the Red Sea Film Festival is being held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. How did it happen, before embarking on this long journey you have to go through a story.

Abul Hasan was saying: ‘In the evening the Muslim traders of the Zain Kalan took me to a wooden house with pictures on the walls and where many people lived.’

(Abul Hasan is narrating the theater of China some eight to eight and a half centuries ago)

It is not possible to describe this house in words. It was a single spacious room, lined with rows of cupboards like cabinets above. (Spectator Seats)

People were sitting in these booths eating and drinking. Some people were also sitting on the floor and verandah. The people sitting in the porch were playing tambourines and harps, but there were fifteen or twenty of them who were wearing purple veils and they were reciting prayers or singing and talking to each other.

‘They used to become masked prisoners but no one could see the prison. They used to ride horses but the horses were not visible. They used to fight wars but their swords were made of bamboo. They used to die but rise again.’

(This is about theater actors being told by a tourist to his native friends.)

‘The actions of the mad are beyond the imagination of the sane,’ said Faraj.

‘He was not mad,’ said Abul Hasan. ‘A businessman told me he was presenting a story.’

No one understood anything and no one wanted to understand. (The minds of the listeners could not imagine.)

Abul Hasan, in a state of unhappiness, began to give a crude explanation of his story. He waved his hand, ‘Imagine someone showing a story instead of telling it. For example, take the story of the Companions of the Cave. We see them go into the cave, we see them worship and sleep, we see them sleep with their eyes open, we see them grow and we see them wake up after 309 years.

‘We see them handing an old coin to a shopkeeper, and we see them waking up from their sleep in heaven. We see them waking up with their dog. He was showing something similar on that porch that evening.’

(That is, for the stage, the narrator gave the example of Companions of the Cave).

‘Did those people even speak?’ Faraj asked. (What an innocent question!)

‘Speaking of course,’ said Abul Hasan. He was now forced to defend an act that he barely remembered and that had even annoyed him at the time. ‘He would talk, sing and make long, rousing speeches.’

‘In that case I didn’t need people,’ said Faraj. ‘No matter how complex the event, one person is enough to tell it.’ Everyone nodded at this decision and began to build bridges of appreciation for the Arabic language.

This story about Andalusian Ibn Rushd was written by Borges of Argentina and translated into Urdu by our Zafar Syed. What is in brackets is penned by the fakir so that the youth can read with comfort.

Theater was a stranger in Arabia for a long time. As we used to tell stories here in India, in the same way, there were poets, philosophical talks, anecdotes, stories, but there was only one person who told them all.

Cinema, however, came around in Saudi Arabia and India and it was not too late. In 1895, the world saw the first moving image we call film, and by the 1930s, cinema had made its way into India, including Saudi Arabia.

After the partition of India and Pakistan, cinemas were also divided here, but films continued to be made and watched equally.

During the period when we shifted from the Bhutto era to martial law and our dramas and films faced the harshest policies, in the same decade, the cinema of Saudi Arabia faced complete destruction.

After the attack on the Kaaba in 1979, the overall policy of Saudi Arabia changed, resulting in no cinemas nationwide after 1980. Total ban.

Arab News is an English newspaper of Saudi Arabia. It has an interview with a film director in which he explains that sometimes he had to go to Dubai just to watch a film.

In 2017, Prince Mohammed bin Salman lifted a 35-year-old ban on cinema, aligning Saudi Arabia’s cultural policy with the rest of the world.

Lifting the ban was not the solution. 2600 movie screens will be built across Saudi Arabia by 2030 to provide healthy entertainment to the people. It was just one part of Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030.

At present, more than fifty multiplex cinemas with a capacity of 430 film screens have been built here, while more are in the works.

In 2021, the Saudi cinema market was $238 million. Then, in the film festival organized by Saudi Arabia, thirty thousand citizens watched 138 films from 67 countries, including 27 Saudi films.

The 2022 Red Sea Film Festival has begun.

This year, 131 films from 61 countries representing 41 languages ​​will be screened here.

So Shah Rukh Khan, AR Rahman, Kajol, Priyanka Chopra, Shabana Azmi including many big Western artists from Lebanon, Egypt, Africa but also from all over the world are also guests of this ten-day film festival and are currently in Jeddah. All this was possible in Saudi Arabia!

A dream was seen called Vision 2030. Work started on the interpretation of this dream. Entirely new cities were built from the tip. The economy began to be made capable of shedding its dependence on oil and moving towards a free market. A part of this whole dream is in front of you in the form of Red Sea Film Festival.