Dubai in the spotlight

MANILA, Philippines - Dubai’s landscape is constantly changing and growing, so tourists can always expect something new with each visit. One of these new attractions – which has been formally open to the public for only five months now – is the Dubai Moving Image Museum.

Located in the building of the Middle East Communication Network, the museum is the personal collection of advertising mogul Akram Miknas who was on arabianbusiness.com’s list of the 500 most powerful Arabs in the world in 2013.

Miknas’ collection started with an unusual find in a flea market in London – it turned out to be a zoetrope, an early animation device that heralded the development of the motion picture.

Over the next 35 years, Miknas’ extensive collection grew into a treasure trove of shadow puppets, zoetropes, praxinoscopes, magic lanterns and stereoscopes, mutoscopes, and more. The museum features toys as well, which show how storytelling through moving images has always been an important source of entertainment, both as a communal experience and a personal one.

The museum concentrates on the development and experimentations that lead up to the actual discovery of filmmaking. It highlights the Middle East’s contribution to the development of film, starting with Arab scientist Alhazen who is credited with inventing and truly understanding the camera obscura. The word “camera” itself comes from Alhazen’s term, Al Qumara, museum manager Mandy Aridi points out.

The museum’s central piece is a fully functioning kaiserpanorama, a precursor to film, popular in the early 20th century. The large wooden contraption has stations where viewers are shown painted slides lit from behind, creating a 3D effect.

“The concept of the Moving Image Museum was born not only out of my true love for the craft, but more out of my desire to share this important piece of history with the greater public,” Miknas writes in his message to museum goers. “Dubai’s growing art culture is the perfect backdrop for the historical journey of one of the most important forms of expression – the moving image,” he adds.

Indeed, Dubai has become a worldwide venue for the moving image, not only through the museum but also with the prestigious Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF), which celebrated its tenth year last December.

The highly-regarded festival featured films from around the world, including Omar, which won as the festival’s best Arab film and has been nominated in the foreign film category in this year’s Oscar awards.

Singapore-made film Ilo Ilo, about a dedicated Filipina yaya (played by indie actress Angeli Bayani), did not make it to the Oscar’s short list, but did win at the DIFF for best film in the Asia and Africa category.

Leo Abaya’s Instant Mommy represented the Philippines, with the director and the film’s star Eugene Domigo present at the screening.

Also present at the DIFF were eminent festival programmers Tony Rayns and Philip Cheah, both of whom have been instrumental in bringing Philippine cinema to the international scene and easily have more knowledge of Philippine film history than the average Filipino.

Since the 70’s, Rayns has been supporting Philippine cinema. He vividly remembers his first encounter with Philippine cinema in 1977 at the Hong Kong Film Festival, where Lino Brocka’s Tinimbang Ka Nguni’t Kulang was shown.

“When I made that first visit to Hong Kong in ’77, it was a growing acquaintance with a range of national cinemas which I never had access to before. I became rather shocked to discover that a lot of countries in Asia had film histories that go way back to the 30’s or even earlier, and they were completely unknown in the West,” says Rayns.

What kept him interested in Philippine cinema was finding films that were exciting, surprising or intriguing, and meeting filmmakers, usually through festivals. He was also the first to show Raymond Red’s films outside the Philippines, giving the filmmaker his international break.

One of Rayns’ favorite Filipino directors is Gerardo de Leon, whose best work, he says, could be placed side by side with any of the best Hollywood directors.

In 1982, Rayns made a documentary on the history of Philippine cinema and he remains up to date with the developments of filmmaking in the country today.

Singaporean Philip Cheah, who is a festival programmer and consultant for many film festivals all over the world, says, “We are driven by the feeling that the knowledge has to be spread on a horizontal level. Too much of the cultural exchange has been from North or the West. That model is too limited and does not spread the wealth of knowledge, so you have to spread the knowledge around you regionally,” pointing to Teddy Co and Arnel Mardoquio as some of those who share his advocacy of promoting regional cinema.

Some of Cheah’s first encounters with Philippine cinema were through Filipino directors who had become part of Singapore’s film history as well – “Lamberto Avellana used to work for some of the early Singapore films.”

He adds, “Later on, the guy who everyone knew was Lino Brocka, he came to Singapore for the very first jury we had when we introduced the competition for Asian films in 1991.”

Cheah is one of the first programmers to show Lav Diaz’s films in the international scene, garnering recognition for the director when Batang West Side won the Asian film prize in Singapore.

Cheah says, “The Philippines, for me, was the last of the Southeast Asian film industries to collapse under the weight of Hollywood… but since then, it’s been reborn.”

Rayns agrees: “Indie cinema has grown enormously in the recent years. Cinemalaya has played a large part in this. The money available is small, but it has enabled a lot of people who wouldn’t have been able to make films without it. So that was a great spur of creativity… The Philippine situation has been quite lively in recent years. There has been some innovative work.”

“Creation comes out from emptiness,” says Cheah. “The Philippines has proven that when you don’t have anything, you can create a lot of things. It’s just remarkable.”

He adds on Philippine cinema, “It’s the best in Southeast Asia. It’s the undisputed leader in Southeast Asian cinema today. And you should be damn proud of it.”