page_title: Cinema of the Middle East
section_title: History of the Industry
hierarchical_section_title: Cinema of the Middle East / Jordan / History of the Industry
caption_attribution_description: العربية: سينما الحسين في العاصمة الأردنية عمان، والتي أُنشئت في عام 1958، وفتحت أبوابها للعمل في 18 ديسمبر (كانون الأول) 1960.
context_page_description: Middle Eastern Cinema collectively refers to the film industries of the Middle East. By definition, it encompasses the film industries of Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
  Since the inception of cinema in Europe and the United States, many people assumed that cinema in the Middle East arrived much later than Western Cinema. However, it was found that cinema was brought into most of the Arab countries by the beginning of the 20th century by Pathé Frères or the Lumière Brothers. Eventually by the 1950s Egypt was and still is the main dominating Arab and Middle Eastern film industry and this led to many other Middle Eastern countries incorporating Egyptian conventions into their own films.
  Each Middle Eastern country has a different and distinctive culture of cinema which differs in both history and infrastructure. The historical component includes key events and trigger points which led to the inception or emergence of cinema in the Middle East.
context_section_description: The first known cinema in Jordan was the Petra Cinema in 1935. However, it is said that there was a cinema called 'Abu Siyah' in the 1920s and one of the first films it screened were Charlie Chaplin's silent films.  As opposed to Egypt and Lebanon, Jordan joined the film industry much later, with their first films being released in the 1950s. The reason was most likely due to the fact that Jordan gained independence from the British mandate in 1946. 
  The first film to be created in Jordan was Struggle in Jerash, being released eleven years later in 1957. The film was set in Jordan and Palestine and was a romance film (especially with the success of such films were in Egypt at the time). To this day, this film is used as a reference to how Jordan and Palestine looked like in the 1950s. This film also tried to introduce the idea of Jordanian nationalism. In fact, at one point in the film, the female love interest, Maria, says, "As long as I am by you I feel like I am home." The male love interest, Atif, replies "you are truly home," and then Maria says, "It's true, I was born in Jordan".  It was directed by the Jordanian director, Wasif Al-Shaikh and was filmed by the Palestinian refugee, Ibrahim Hassan Sirhan, who created many documentary-styled films in Palestine in the years before. Historians disagree over whether this was documentary or narrative film, because it uses elements of both. In 1964, A Storm on Petra by the Egyptian director, Farooq Ajrama was created. This film was a collaboration between the film industries of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Italy, and was distributed internationally.
  Since then, only four new films were made. Instead, there were more Western studios that were filming in Jordan in order to use Wadi Rum and other desert-like areas as locations for many of their films. Some of the more famous examples include, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) .  Years later, the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation was founded in 1989 to help cultivate a cinema culture of Arab films in an attempt to establish the film industry in Jordan. Moreover, in 2003 the Royal Film Commission was established that was also an attempt to encourage the production of Jordanian films. As a result, more Jordanian films were being produced including, the 2014 Academy Award nominee, Theeb, Captain Abu Raed (2008), and 3000 Nights (2016) which was a recipient of the Royal Film Commission's Fund.
  The Commission fund is central to Jordan's contemporary film infrastructure and serves as a backdrop for Arab Cinema as a whole through a grants program, support for local filmmakers and an established series of workshops. Increasingly, Jordan has been capitalizing on its unique landscapes as ideal film location (especially Wadi Rum) and is now becoming a go to destination for Hollywood prestige pictures which around the world such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Martian, or even Star Wars: Rogue One. Therefore, natural landscapes can be considered an essential part of Jordan's film infrastructure because it enables the import of internationally acclaimed film productions.
caption: Al Hussein Cinema, an abandoned movie theater in Amman, Jordan.[14]
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