Cinema in UAE has not really reached up to the potential and talent it has. The era of cinema is changing very fast as new kinds and interactive movies are coming on slowly in the country. The Dubai International Film Festival showed one of them.
Watching TV and films is a much more social experience in the age of social media. Many people now view a show on one screen, while simultaneously tapping on another about their reactions to what’s happening.
But what about a film that allows the viewer to pick their own beginning, middle or end?That’s what the Emirati director Hassan Kiyany has just made.His first interactive film, also billed as the country’s first interactive film, received its premiere at the Dubai International Film Festival and on Wednesday it went live for the world to see.
Zaabil iDoc, a documentary showing efforts to photograph the now abandoned Zabeel Secondary School for Girls in Deira, Dubai, allows viewers to pick and choose the order in which they watch the scenes, and to click through to extra content.
Kiyany, 32, has been making films for a decade. His most recent offering, a documentary titled Marwan the Boxer about a female Emirati pugilist, won first prize in the short documentary competition at this year’s Abu Dhabi Film Festival.
Zabeel Secondary School was built more than 35 years ago but has been vacant since 2011. The school taught a lot of orphans and children from very low income families. It was one of the emirate’s oldest schools and catered for about 300 pupils.
The buildings and courtyards of the school are eerily empty. The film shows dirty whiteboards with faint writings and drawings. There are trees and shrubs growing in the courtyards and graffiti dotted around the walls including a typical teenage scrawl of “Jamila my love, I love you so much and for ever”. Dubai International Film Festival is one of the key event of the country and the movie does the just to the reputation of the event.
Al Attar, who was born in Dubai and now lives in Ajman, uses a Linhof Super Technika III camera, dating back to the Second World War, to capture the abandoned school. Viewers can click on info buttons in certain scenes to view Al Attar’s biography, and also learn more about the camera. He speaks in Arabic but there are English subtitles.
There are also pop-ups to Wikipedia pages for Sheikh Zayed, the founding President, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the Vice President and Ruler of Dubai.Interactive movies have existed for more than 20 years. One of the first was the 1992 short film I’m Your Man. This was the first offering from director Bob Bejan’s interactive cinema company Interfilm and centred on a plot to expose someone to the FBI for extortion.
The Director is not obviously hoping for something dramatic to happen after the movie. However, he is still hopeful that this will bring a new era of interactive cinema in UAE. He believes the definition of movies going to change in the country.
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