From a white wall to the big screen: How cinema travelled from humble beginnings to the Dubai International Film Festival

Before I ever entered a cinema hall, cinema came to us.

I was a boy in when a well-known government official introduced us to the magic of moving pictures. There was no cinema building, no rows of comfortable seats and no air-conditioning. There was simply a projector, a white wall belonging to a house, and a group of boys and some of their fathers sitting on the sand, waiting for the pictures to begin.

The films were mostly black and white and often historical. I still remember Antar and Abla. For us, that white wall was enough to transform an ordinary evening into something magical.

Later, cinema moved from that white wall to an actual cinema theatre. I remember Haroon Cinema in Jumeirah in the early 1970s, and I still remember the film I watched there: the Lebanese film, The Lady of the Black Moons, starring Egyptian actors including Hussein Fahmy and Adel Adham.

Looking back, I realise that my relationship with cinema did not begin with an interest in stars, directors or film criticism. It began with wonder. It was the wonder of seeing people and places appear on a wall where, only moments earlier, there had been nothing but white paint.

Perhaps this is what cinema has always done. It takes something ordinary and transforms it.

A wall becomes a screen. Darkness becomes a theatre. A story becomes a memory.

That memory came back to me last week when Her Excellency Mona Ghanem Al Marri, Vice Chairperson and Managing Director of the Dubai Media Council and Chairperson of the Organising Committee of the Arab Media Summit, announced the return of the Dubai International Film Festival. The Dubai Media Council announced that the festival's 15th edition will open on December 8, 2027, ten years after its previous edition.

The festival, which began in 2004, is returning with a new vision, with its first edition in this new chapter focusing on Middle Eastern cinema and filmmakers. The organisers say it will also create an industry platform connecting filmmakers with producers, talent with investors and ideas with markets.

The announcement made me think about how far cinema has travelled — and how far Dubai, and the UAE, have travelled with it.

Cinema crossed borders long before the age of social media. A film could carry a language, a song, a landscape, a style of dress and a way of life from one country to another. People could sit in a dark theatre and encounter societies they had never visited.

That is why cinema is much more than entertainment. It is also memory.

A film can preserve a city that has disappeared. It can capture the way people spoke, dressed and lived at a particular moment in history. And sometimes, a film becomes inseparable from the place where we first saw it. That is certainly true for me.

The history of cinema in the Emirates goes back much further than many people realise.

In Sharjah, the Royal Air Force established what is widely regarded as the first cinema in what is now the UAE. The open-air cinema began screenings on May 4, 1943, during the Second World War, at the RAF base in Al Mahatta. Its screen was projected onto a wall, while audiences sat on makeshift seats, including old petrol tins. The screenings were initially for servicemen but were also opened to local people.

In Dubai, the story developed in a similar spirit.

When Ahmad Golchin arrived in Dubai in the 1960s, he recalled that there was only one cinema in the city — the National Cinema in Naser Square. It was an open-air theatre with simple walls, a projector and basic seating. Some people sat on crates; others sat directly on the sand.

Historical accounts associate the establishment of Al Watan Cinema with the Kuwaiti businessman Murshid Al-Osaimi, while other accounts, including Golchin's recollections, describe the early development of National Cinema through the involvement of other businessmen. The early history was therefore part of a wider group of entrepreneurs who saw the potential of cinema in a growing city.

Golchin would become one of the important figures in the development of the UAE's cinema business, through film distribution and the development and operation of cinemas in different emirates. He later became involved with Deira Cinema and other theatres that became familiar names to generations of residents.

There was also the Jumeirah cinema, which Golchin remembered as an open-air cinema capable of accommodating around 2,400 people. For important films, he recalled, it could be completely full.

The films came from different parts of the world — India, Persia, Lebanon, Egypt, Hollywood and elsewhere. By the 1970s, cinemas had appeared across the Emirates.

I remember travelling to Sharjah to see The Godfather first release at Al Hamra Cinema in the early seventies of last century. It was another reminder that a film could become an event — something worth travelling for.

Cinema therefore became part of the cultural fabric of the young country.

The UAE's cinematic story did not begin with an international festival. It began much earlier — with the RAF cinema in Sharjah, open-air screens in Dubai, a cinema in Jumeirah, and young boys sitting on the sand.

Today, Dubai has become a global city, and filmmaking has changed beyond recognition. Cinema is no longer confined to the theatre. Films are watched on television screens, computers, phones and streaming platforms, while digital technology and artificial intelligence are transforming filmmaking itself.

Yet the basic magic remains. A story appears before us and, for a while, we enter it.

That is why I find myself returning to that white wall. I think of the boys sitting on the sand. I think of the black-and-white images. I think of Antar and Abla. I remember Haroon Cinema and The Lady of the Black Moons. I remember travelling to Sharjah to watch The Godfather.

And I think of the journey from those simple beginnings to the return of the Dubai International Film Festival.

The technology has changed. The screens have become enormous. The seats have become comfortable. The industry has become global.

But perhaps cinema itself has not changed as much as we think. It still begins with darkness, a light, a screen and a story.

Perhaps that is where the story of cinema in Dubai really begins: not in a grand theatre, but with a white wall, a projector and the audience sitting on the sand, fast forward to film festival. That’s the spirit of Dubai.

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Abdul Hamid Ahmad is a UAE Writer and Columnist