JO Magazine

SINCE ITS FOUNDING IN 2003 as a tiny semi-governmental entity with little money or clout, Jordan’s Royal Film Commission has grown like wildfire, and become an impressive resource for local and international filmmakers alike. In 2010, however, it looks like the RFC’s expansionary goals will have to compete with substantial budget cuts.

When the RFC began, it was commonly criticized for talking big about helping local filmmakers but lacking the budget to provide them with the material assistance they most needed. Those criticisms are now a thing of the past, as the commission has expanded both its production services and its community outreach and education.

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Today, the commission provides “a one-stop shop” for artists, says George David, who has worked with the RFC for six years, and was appointed General Manager in December. “You can come in, call us, e-mail us, get permissions to [film] anywhere public within days, get contacts and connections with the industry here immediately, whether it’s crew, equipment or other production services—transport, hotels,” he says.

The RFC has also expanded its staff, to the point where it can mirror every job in a regular film production office; RFC staff are available to support filmmakers on everything from location scouting and local-community liaisons on up. An RFC officer is tasked to be on-set for every film the commission works with, to help smooth out the disasters that always arise while shooting.

And they have been able to provide all these services without charging fees or selling permits.

When we spoke with David in December, he had just received a message from Doug Liman, director of such films as Swingers and The Bourne Identity, who was in Jordan recently to shoot scenes for his upcoming film, Fair Game.

“I’ve filmed all over the world and all over the Middle East, and Jordan was an absolute delight. It’s literally a filmmaking paradise. It’s as though the word “no” doesn’t exist in their dialect of Arabic,” Liman wrote. “Plus the crew was incredibly enthusiastic and hard-working.”

Crew is really how David measures a great deal of the RFC’s success. Over the past few years, he’s seen many ambitious young people quit 9-to-5 jobs to pursue freelance work in the notoriously fickle film world. But the results for Jordan have been spectacular.

“We used to not be able to crew up a film,” David said. “In ’06 you couldn’t find 20 percent of a film crew here. Now we’re up to 70 percent; you can actually crew up 70, I’d say even 80 percent of a crew from Jordan.” Still, he warns, there’s a lot of investment that has to be made in the industry, particularly when it comes to lights, cranes and other big equipment that’s still not easily available in Jordan.

The RFC today has also built up an remarkably active wing dedicated to film education—both providing workshops and training opportunities to filmmakers, and arranging screenings around the country to introduce people to the culture and ethos of filmmaking. In 2009, for example, the commission provided funding for young Jordanian filmmakers to work as paid crew on a movie, as a training experience. Beneficiaries of the training program worked with directors like Ken Loach and Doug Liman.

One of the most successful programs is the RAWI Middle East Screenwriters Lab, held every year in Wadi Feynan, with the cooperation of the Sundance Institute. So far, three feature films have come out of this lab, including the multiple award-winning movies Amreeka, by Cherien Dabis, and Pomegranates and Myrrh, by Najwa Najjar. A third, Son of Babylon, directed by Mohamed Al Darajdi, opened this year at the Emirates Film Festival, and has just become an official selection at Sundance 2010.

And in 2009, the film commission opened its Film House in Jabal Amman. The new venue is a completely public facility, including a public (non-lending) library of more than 4,000 films around the world, indoor and outdoor screening rooms where visitors can watch them for free, and workshop space and editing suites available for nonprofit projects. In the coming years, RFC officials envision it becoming a center for cinema and creative life in Jordan. A café there is expected to open in January.

And the much-rumored film fund, subject of discussion since perhaps before the RFC was created, is still in the works, David says.

It’s been extensively researched, though thanks to the economic crisis there’s no date set for its rollout as yet.

In fact, all these new programs will face challenges in the coming year, as the economic crisis shaves down budgets across the board. David says he doesn’t have final numbers yet, but he’s certain cuts will affect RFC operations in 2010.

“Everything will be reduced,” he says. We’re going to do our best not to cut anything completely, but to reduce the amounts” of funding for each program. That definitely means fewer workshops and screenings, and some things, like the paid intern program, may still get cut altogether.

Still, David is hopeful that 2010 will be another great year for Jordanian cinema. He’s as cagey as ever about what films, or how many, might be coming, but he says numbers aren’t everything.

“Last year [2009] we didn’t have that many films, but the effect that Transformers [II] had … in terms of size, publicity, promoting Jordan … was better than 100 films.”

—Nicholas Seeley