Movies are in Gianluca Chakra’s blood. His childhood was spent in Rome perusing the scripts, brochures and films his distributor father brought home from festivals.
He even moved into the family business for a while before rocking the boat by moving to work for a rival in Lebanon.
And in 2004, he came to Dubai to set up Front Row Filmed Entertainment, a specialist distributor of independent cinema.
It can’t be easy flying the independent flag in such a Hollywood-dominated market, but Chakra was convinced the audience was there – and a decade later Front Row is still going strong.
Last year was one of its busiest in theatres to date, with 42 releases. Chakra, though, is modest about his achievements.
"Remember that 'independent' means everything produced outside the major Hollywood studios, so we're not just talking about ultra-underground art-house stuff," he says. "I had a big advantage when I started, because most of the distributors here were pretty old, so they weren't looking for films like the ones we started with – Bowling for Columbine, City of God or The Motorcycle Diaries.
“These were high-profile films, but I could buy them cheaply for the Middle East because nobody else wanted them.”
Although Chakra’s initial aim was for success in the burgeoning DVD market – cinema managers “just weren’t interested” – even this was fraught at first.
"We weren't just selling films, but the whole idea of independent cinema, which people really didn't understand at that time," he says. "Our first releases were Bowling for Columbine and Kandahar. We received 40 orders for the whole of the Middle East. In the end, we went direct to stores such as Virgin and said: 'Just take the films, display them, and whenever you sell one, pay us'".
As stores began to realise there was a market for Chakra’s films, things gradually became easier, but it was one particular 2004 movie that really opened the floodgates.
"Our breakthrough came with Fahrenheit 9/11," he says, referring to the acclaimed documentary by director Michael Moore that took a critical look at the presidency of George W Bush and the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
“It was the most expensive film we’d bought at the time, and I got called a moron because everyone said it would be banned. It passed, and was the first documentary ever to be released in Middle East cinemas, grossing over a million dollars.
“That put us on the map, although it was really a matter of luck, a case of ‘right film, right time’, as there was such anti-Bush sentiment at the time. We had Pakistani printers calling us offering to print the publicity materials for free and weird stuff like that.”
The film’s political agenda came with its own set of problems, though.
“We were getting threats not to release it, and the TV stations didn’t want to touch it as they were mostly Saudi- or Kuwaiti-owned and didn’t want to go there,” says Chakra.
He even found himself embroiled in international politics briefly when a group of pro-Hizbollah Lebanese students got in touch to ask if they could help with publicity. He politely declined, but mentioned it to a journalist friend from Screen International. The magazine published the story and suddenly accusations were flying that Front Row, and Moore himself, were funded by Hizbollah.
“I got a call from Al Gore’s publicist, who also represented Michael Moore, asking me to issue a statement confirming that Michael wasn’t financed by Hizbollah,” says Chakra. “That was a scare, although it undoubtedly worked in the film’s favour.”
Even with the film’s high profile, it remained tough to persuade cinemas and TV broadcasters to take it.
“I was at a meeting with one TV exec,” Chakra says, “and he asked: ‘Where’s the cast?’ There’s a weird lack of movie geeks in the industry here, and the idea of screening a documentary was alien.”
He adds that it’s still a challenge pushing independent films, and anything “too artsy” or “foreign language” remain non-starters.
Nonetheless, recent successes include The Queen and The Woman in Black, and Front Row also holds the rights to about 70 per cent of all Arabic movies released, partly thanks to its partnership with Kuwait National Cinema Company.
The challenges keep coming though, not least the rise of downloading, which has decimated the DVD market.
Chakra hopes a watershed could be coming here through video on demand, and Front Row has recently signed up as aggregator for the Middle East iTunes stores.
This means that aside from films from the Hollywood majors, which Apple acquires directly, Front Row will be responsible for selecting which of its own, and which from other local distributors, make it to the store. He’s hoping this is as many as possible – but notes that in cases where censorship may be detrimental to the film he’s likely to decline to release a butchered version.
Many regional movie buffs already regularly use the huge libraries of the US or UK iTunes stores, so how does Chakra hope to persuade them to switch their loyalties to the fledgling Middle East version?
“We’ll be trying to beat US release dates, and we’re working on a deal for Saudi Arabia where films will be available on the day of release, since they don’t have cinemas there. Also, we’ll be carrying lots of Arabic and Bollywood movies you won’t find in the US store – so the motivation is there, and Apple has really big plans for the region.”
cnewbould@thenational.ae
