In partnership with the Middle East Institute

Stories of desert landscapes, cutting-edge production facilities, and lavish festivals often dominate narratives about film and digital media on the Arabian Peninsula. However, the newly released anthology Reorienting the Middle East: Film and Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean Meet  (Indiana University Press, 2024) reveals a more complicated history between the Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. Just as these waters are fluid spaces, so too is the flow of film and digital media between Southwest and Southeast Asia, South Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and the United States. In this conversation, Alia Yunis, a co-editor of the volume and AGSIW visiting scholar, and Samhita Sunya, a professor at the University of Virginia, will consider the role of Hollywood, Bollywood, and Nollywood in past and current films made in and about the Gulf; the Western oil companies that introduced film to the Gulf in the 1930s; the first Gulf films produced on the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1960s; Dubai’s emergence in global film production; social media as a vehicle for filmmaking; and citizen and migrant amateur films that turn a lens on rarely discussed social issues.