French Mandate
The first feature, The Adventures of Elias Mabruk, was filmed in Lebanon in 1929 and directed by Jordano Pidutti. In the Ruins of Baalbeck (1936) was the first sound film. It was a hit with audiences and profitable.
By the mid 1920s cinemas were common in Beirut, and some where used as a place for political gatherings. For example in 1925, the Communist Party met at the Crystal Cinema in Beirut. Cinemas had become so popular that in 1931, students marched in a protest, demanding that prices of movie tickets be lowered. To compete against Hollywood, France decreed that all American films that were being imported to Lebanon be dubbed into French.
Documentaries were also being made during this period, but they were heavily censored by the French.
Read more about this topic: Cinema Of Lebanon
Famous quotes containing the word french:
“In bourgeois society, the French and the industrial revolution transformed the authorization of political space. The political revolution put an end to the formalized hierarchy of the ancien regimé.... Concurrently, the industrial revolution subverted the social hierarchy upon which the old political space was based. It transformed the experience of society from one of vertical hierarchy to one of horizontal class stratification.”
—Donald M. Lowe, U.S. historian, educator. History of Bourgeois Perception, ch. 4, University of Chicago Press (1982)