Step into the Limelight
Saudi culture is being reimagined on a grand scale by a new generation of writers, filmmakers, and poets who are rising to redefine the kingdom as the center of cultural renaissance. Vision 2030, a government-sanctioned vision of diversification and culture, is at the forefront as artists are leading the charge of a new art movement dedicated to finding a balance between heritage and fresh vision.
The new film is a new frontier for storytelling and the directors are breaking boundaries in stories of identity, social revolution, and tradition. The film world was part of the industries that were targeted, and the Saudi directors left their imprints in the international industry. Among them will be Haifaa al-Mansour, whose Wadjda—the fantasies of freedom by a girl in patriarch society—blew international limelight. Her movies have been pioneering in cutting through wider Saudi Arabian cinema trends and soft power possibilities and social activism filmmaking.
Besides the blockbuster film, new vision in the sense of new genre and new form is also being provided by the independent producers. The producers are providing pluralized Saudi Arabia everyday life and collective and individual experience vision that has been ignored by the mass media. They are providing products that break stereotypes and please the domestic and foreigner viewer.
Verse, the most ancient of Arabic literature’s forms, is living a second life. Saudi poets revive old forms to survive to become useful for new reasons and document love, identity, and revolution. Authors like Mohannad al-Harithi and Ahlam Mosteghanemi are transforming classical verse to web times and employ words in order to connect generations and ideologies.
To web sites is already the course taken. Publishing technologies and the Internet have facilitated artists to introduce their creations in front of an extensive public than ever before, bypassing the well-known barriers of art diffusion. Live performances on the stage of concerts, theater performances, and readings are also becoming increasingly popular in cities as an interactive space for culture is being created and solidarity among new and experienced artists is being developed.
This heightened visibility of Saudi creatives is re-writing the perception that the world holds about Saudi Arabia’s cultural identity. Creatives, whether in the form of cinema or poetry, are re-telling stories of strength, self-realization, and having to be heard. What their works are offering are not only the personal tales but the larger social reality, and hence re-writing what it is to be a Saudi today.
With the expanding creative economy, each Saudi producer, writer, and author will be a national cultural hero of diplomacy at some point in time. Not only do they construct the country’s story, but they also make the Kingdom a desirable worldwide community of artists.
