Local Saudi film productions struggle to secure a niche

Local Saudi film productions struggle to secure a niche By Abd al-Wahab al-Saleh in Riyadh
2010-02-19

Saudi drama proved in recent years that it is capable of competing in the Gulf media market.

All Arab and privately-owned channels are now competing for the sole rights of soap operas produced by Saudis abroad.

Abd al-Aziz Al-Semaail, a Saudi script writer, director, actor and former chief of the Culture and Arts Association in the eastern region, told Al-Shorfa that Saudi drama was finding an outlet in Arab channels while shunning the official Saudi TV stations.
"Drama is similar to cinema," he said. "It is an industry, not just a creative process. What applies to industry in terms of conditions, requirements and standards, also applies to drama, which is controlled by the private sector."
"The private sector controls drama productions not only because they are free from a government censor, but also because they pay more to the actors, writers and art production staff. The private sector survives the hefty production costs and the various requirements, as opposed to the bureaucracy, red-tape and frozen systems that govern local television stations because these production companies are owned by the state."
Regarding the obstacles faced by Saudi TV drama, Al-Semaail said, "Saudi TV produces many soap operas that address daily life. However, as an official body, it works, produces and broadcasts within calculated boundaries of censorship that cannot be crossed. Unfortunately, we notice that local production companies have not even succeeded in capitalizing on the margins [of freedom] tolerated by the censor."
Dr Thuraya al-Arid, a Saudi writer and poet, told Al-Shorfa that Saudi drama is going abroad. "First of all, local creativity in drama is still newborn and unrecognised. Secondly, the priorities of change and support have not yet been aimed at acting."
Al-Arid said, "The general preference states that there are more important things and that it is best to stay away from taboos. Thirdly, our entertainment is saturated with imported drama, which is consumerist, tailored to our taste and prepared for a shallow type of entertainment."
Buthayna Al-Nasr, a Saudi journalist and presenter at Al-Hurra channel said, "Saudi TV boils down to a famous quip where all society groups agreed to label it 'Ghasb 1' [compulsion 1] and 'Ghasb 2', in reference to the first and second Saudi TV channels."
Al-Nasr added "We have a scarcity when it comes to producing drama from human resources to the subject matter (the writing of stories and novels that can be produced for TV). We also suffer from a shortage of directors, technicians and professional actors, not amateur ones, let alone the actresses. Actresses cannot become prominent in society and must run away to live and work abroad to avoid being exposed to harm."
Regarding female actresses from other countries, Al-Arid said that "Gulf societies have overtaken ours, which is still leery about a woman's participation and the female presence in public life. We are also apprehensive about keeping pace with time."
Al-Semaail disagrees with Al-Arid, saying that "Saudi actresses are present in local and Gulf drama side by side with actresses from other Gulf countries." He does agree, however, that "Gulf drama has greatly overrun us in terms of the focus on talent and distinction rather than privacy and the identity of the actor."
When asked about the polarization and monopoly of some artists by Arab and private channels, Al-Nasr said, "The financial return may be [the reason]."
She added, "The space for freedom in terms of content and treatment is more flexible abroad than it is in [Saudi Arabia]."
On the topic of screenplay writing, Al-Semaail said, "I do work with local producers and Arab bodies as well because of their presence in the [satellite channel] space. But the absence of an official product has not been favourable to art productions, which became subservient to consumerist standards and to making a profit at the expense of substance."
"And here comes the paradox," Al-Semaail adds, "between the official and privately-owned product: You either give in to the strict censorship or produce something with a totally superficial substance."

Debate over underage marriage rages in Saudi Arabia

Debate over underage marriage rages in Saudi Arabia
By Abdel Wahab Al Saleh in Riyadh2010-02-11

"Without mercy or compassion, he undressed amidst my screams. I felt the room become smaller ..."
That is how Malak, age 12, from the city of Jubail in eastern Saudi Arabia recalled the story of her marriage, which had no preludes, except for a "barbarous rape", followed by the ambulance that took her to the emergency room.
The story of Malak’s marriage was repeated with Fatima, Rasha, Abeer, and most recently, the 'Onaiza girl' in central Saudi Arabia, a 12 year-old married to an 80-year-old man.
The debate over the marriage of underage girls still rages in Saudi Arabia. Recently, the debate was renewed when a mother filed a complaint with officials to convey the cries of her daughter, "Help me, I don't want him." This rattled the Saudi judiciary system, which lacks written laws on the issue and relies on sharia, interpretations of the members of the Supreme Judicial Council and some of the court judges.
Saudi Arabia is the only Arab country that has not stipulated the age of marriage for a boy or a girl, and there are no accurate statistics on the number of underage marriages.
Sultan bin Zahim, an attorney appointed by the government's Human Rights Commission to review the Onaiza case, told Al-Shorfa that "the mother of the 'Onaiza girl' withdrew the divorce petition." The reason, he said, is that "her ex-husband (the girl's father) has been haggling with her to drop the lawsuit in exchange for him dropping all the charges he had against her".
In this case the role of the commission will be "to verify the primary aim behind the marriage contract in order to ensure that such marriages, based on financial pressure or revenge between the spouses, do not take place in the future," according to Zahim. He added that "based on that, the marriage between the ‘Onaiza girl’ and the octogenarian is valid, and cannot be dissolved".
An underage girl "is not completely independent', Zahim said, "and the consent for her marriage is given by her guardian (the father). His consent should be in accordance with the girl's well-being, and not against it, as was the case with this child. It is clear that financial haggling was a major factor in the marriage in terms of relieving the guardian (the girl's father) of a debt, or it was an act of vengeance against the first wife (the girl's mother) by marrying off her daughter and thus getting rid of her."
Dr. Suhailah Zain Al Abideen, a member of the Saudi National Society for Human Rights, said that "this type of marriage goes against the international treaties signed by Saudi Arabia, but the absence of written laws is preventing the application of these family laws which aim to protect children."
Al Abideen added that it is necessary to "review fathers’ guardianship of children older than nine years, especially after it has been confirmed that all child marriages were planned by the father while the mother’s role was non-existent."
Jaafar Al Shayib, a member of the National Society, said that the marriage of underage girls is a "form of trade". He told Al-Shorfa that "these types of marriages are a violation of human rights. Our role is to sensitize people and to strive towards enacting a law that would punish all the parties involved in this crime."
Sheikh Saleh Al Humaid, president of the Supreme Judicial Council, already announced at the first Convention for Judges that "the Judicial Code which will come out soon will include a complete organisational structure of the judicial system and will address important issues, among them the marriage of underage girls, which are handled by the judicial system."

Saudi family to be reunited after nearly five-year separation

Saudi family to be reunited after nearly five-year separation
By Abdel Wahab al-Saleh in Riyadh2010-02-02


Noha was about to turn one when the Al Jawf court, in northern Saudi Arabia, issued a ruling to separate her parents, Mansur al-Timani and Fatima al-Azzaz, until the matter of their tribal background is settled.
Noha had to experience the grief of her parents' separation. Meanwhile, her family has been homeless for the past five years.
Fatima and her four-year-old son, Suleiman, live in a shelter in the eastern side of the country, while Noha and her father live in Riyadh. Noha has only seen her brother in pictures, and she has not sat in her mother's lap for years. The long years of separation, however, will end soon.
On Wednesday (January 27th) the Saudi Supreme Court overturned the previous ruling by a court of appeals, which annulled the marriage on the grounds that the wife comes from a tribal background while the husband does not.
"I won't believe the ruling until we are reunited as a family," Mansur said in an interview with Al-Shorfa. His wife shared the same feeling, telling Al-Shorfa that she has not told her son yet "so that he doesn't have another emotional crisis".
The couple had been married in 2003 with the consent of Al-Azzaz’s father, as required under Saudi law, the Saudi Gazette reported. However, when her father died, her half brothers approached the court in Al-Jawf to dissolve the marriage, arguing that her husband, Al-Taimani, was of a so-called inferior class.
In July 2005, Mansur and Fatima's marriage was annulled by the court despite Fatima's testimony that she wished to remain with her husband. Suleiman was only three months-old when the ruling was issued.
But the media coverage and the local and international response that the story generated tipped the scales in Mansur and Fatima's favour.
"The extensive media coverage forced former Minister of Justice Abdullah Al Sheikh to promise a review of the case, but the review never happened," Fawziya al-Ouyouni, a member of the Association for Women's Rights told Al-Shorfa.
The couple's previous lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, expressed his dissatisfaction with the first ruling and said in a press release that "this ruling is against the principles of sharia and rules of justice", saying that a woman's right to chose "is a fundamental right of the charter of human rights which Saudi Arabia has already recognized."
Lawyer Ahmad Al Sadiri, who is now handling the case, was able to forward the case to the Royal Court with the assistance of the Committee for Human Rights (a government agency). Saudi King Abdullah Ben Abdul Aziz ordered the Supreme Court to review the entire case.
Several gaps were found where the witnesses and judges based their judgment on provisions and laws that are more than 200 years old.
The fact that Fatima maintained that she had the right to choose her own husband, "played an extremely important role in the development of the case and its conclusion", said activist Fawziya al-Ouyouni, "especially her refusal to surrender to the daily threats against her for the past several years".
"Many official bodies were against Mansur during that time," al-Ouyouni said. "They confiscated his identity card and prohibited his daughter Noha from benefiting from the most basic rights such as going to school and living within a stable family."
"The little girl has nervous breakdowns and other psychological problems from being separated from her mother," al-Ouyouni said. "After spending more than nine months in the penitentiary of Dammam, she was later taken away from her mother to live with her father in Riyadh some 400 km away. Meanwhile, her mother lived in a shelter in Dammam with Suleiman, who hasn't seen his father and sister for the past few years."
"Who will give my children back the best days of their childhood that were stolen from them?" Mansur said। "And what justice allows that my babies sleep in prisons and shelters? I will not give up any of my children's rights which were stolen from them in the name of law, justice and the Islamic sharia."

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