With Ziad Abdullah 
Ages 17+
In Arabic
 

Who turned off the lights? Who illuminated the screen? How did people come together in a single hall, eyes transfixed on a story conjured by images?

A leap back in time offers crucial clues. A cinematic recollection, this course takes us to Paris in 1895, to the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe and the legendary train that terrified the first film audiences. The invention surpassed Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope, paving the way for the magician Georges Méliès to propel film even farther into the realms of imagination and fantasy.

This course traces cinema’s emancipation from the predominance of theatre through the innovations of Edwin S. Porter, D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein. We will explore the evolution of the many forms of montage, the rich interplay between cinema and other arts, and the historical transitions from silent to sound and from black-and-white to colour films.

We then turn to the moment Arabic was first spoken in film, studying the circumstances behind the birth of Arabic cinema in relation to the histories, destinies and lived realities of different countries. Our pedagogic journey culminates in a survey of Arab cinema’s finest achievements including The Mummy (Shadi Abdel Salam, Egypt, 1969); Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine, Egypt, 1958); The Dupes (Tewfik Saleh, Syria, 1973); Dreams of the City (Mohamed Malas, Syria, 1984); Chronicle of the Years of Fire (Lakhdar-Hamina, Algeria, 1975); and Al-Yazerli (Kais al-Zubaidi, Syria/Iraq, 1974).

The course uncovers the story of cinema—a pioneering mass medium that impactfully combined industry and technology, whether for popular entertainment or elite tastes.

About Ziad Abdullah

A novelist, poet, translator and film critic, Ziad Abdullah is also the founder of Oxygen Magazine and Oxygen Publishing House. Since 1996, he regularly written on cinema and literature for numerous Arabic newspapers, including As-Safir, Al-Hayat, Al-Akhbar, Al-Ittihad and Al-Bayan. Between 2005 to 2012, he launched, authored and edited the cinema section of the Dubai-based newspaper Emirate Al Youm. He was a programmer and development manager at the Dubai International Film Festival. He is the author of The Biography of Buḥairah al-Inkishārī  (2019), Dogs of the Liberated Zones (2017), Dynamite (2012) and Bur Dubai (2008). His poetic works include Highway Angels (2005) and Sightly Before Ink (2000). He has translated into Arabic Charles Bukowski's Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame (2016) and John Berger's Ways of Seeing (2017), among other books.

The Foundation is committed to making its programmes inclusive and accessible. You can arrange for any support needed through the registration form.

For more information, email learning@sharjahart.org or call 065685050.