CAIRO, 9 March 2005 — Cairo, long considered the capital of Arabic music and films, is now playing second fiddle to the giant Saudi Arabian company Rotana according to some critics in Egypt.
Rotana, which controls 75 percent of the total Arab and Egyptian music market, has recently raised eyebrows after it launched its free satellite movie channel, Rotana Cinema. The round-the-clock channel that airs the vast stock of films from the Egyptian cinema’s golden age has drawn accusations that it is monopolizing the country’s film heritage.
Last year, media production company Rotana bought the rights to a healthy fraction of Egypt’s store of classic movies, in the hope of soon launching a pan-Arab movie channel. Rotana acquired 70 percent of the Arab Company for Arts & Publishing, also known as Founoon, from the company’s initial owners, which included local financial house EFG-Hermes and Arab Investment Bank, among others.
This means that Rotana now owns some 3,200 Egyptian films, dating back to 1935 along with another 200 recent releases for 15 million Egyptian pounds.
“The Egyptian film heritage was threatened by the deterioration of films and negatives. Many of them were broken or spoilt due to the (hot) climate. Some of the data is more than 100 years old (and) the biggest problem in preserving this Egyptian cultural heritage was finding a way of restoring them,” said Hala Sarhan, prominent Egyptian TV hostess and head of Rotana Cinema. “In order to do that we had to expand our business and have an access to digital content so we would restore old Egyptian films and preserve them for the next generation,” she told reporters.
While officials at the Ministry of Culture believe that the sale relieved the state of the expenses of storing the film negatives, some analysts see it as a threat to Egypt’s cinema heritage. “The sale means that Egyptian state-owned channels will not be able to air the films purchased for years,” said Gamal Al Ghittani, editor of the weekly cultural magazine, Akhbar Al Adab. “We have to remember also that two-thirds of Egypt’s cinematic heritage is now owned by Saudi companies,” he told Arab News.
Other critics, however, believe that the new channel promotes the Egyptian culture.
“Instead of leaving these movies to decompose in under-equipped laboratories, as happened to many others, we have given them to a pan-Arab channel that would propagate Egyptian cultural influence,” said movie critic Essam Zakaria. “We have already had some positive responses from audiences all over the Arab world who have become more attracted to our cinema industry and the channel is for free which means billions are watching our films everyday.” Zakaria added that Rotana promised that it would allow Egypt to make copies of the film negatives for non-commercial use — a project that is expected to cost the country some $25 million.
It’s not the first time for the Saudi company to make headlines in Egypt. The company has previously launched campaigns in the regional music market to sign most of the Arab world’s leading singers. Rotana, which has already increased its number of singers from 75 artists in 2002 to more than 180 in 2004 such as Angham and Amr Diab, drew some accusations from some local music companies that claimed they went out of business due to the tough competition with the Saudi company. They added signing many singers, particularly Egyptians, is part of Rotana’s scheme to monopolize the country’s cultural market.
Few singers who singed with Rotana said the company has a strict monopoly policy and has exclusive rights to the artists’ performances in concerts as well as their video clips. Lebanese singer Nelli Magdsi, for instance, said she left the company as it refused to let her broadcast her clips at any of the satellite channels other than Rotana music.
High Quality record company, owned by Egyptian businessman Tareq Abdallah, said they stopped producing pop music after its major artist, Ihab Tawfiq, left for Rotana. “We could not compete with the company so we decided to leave the music industry and only produce religious tapes,” said High Quality’s manager, Mohamed Abdalla. “Rotana is also hoarding singers and promotes some over the others,” Abdalla added.
Officials at Rotana, however, said the company “does not impose a monopoly on its artists and is totally opposed to that concept.”
Though repeated attempts to reach officials at Rotana in Jeddah were unsuccessful, an official at the Cairo branch of the company, denied that the company hoards singers, and added that it works hard to plan the careers of both professional artists and newcomers.
“The company is very professional and that’s the main reason for why many Arab singers join us,” said Said Imam, production manager for Rotana in Egypt. “We also do not monopolize the market. Whenever we produce video clips we air them first exclusively on our music channel for a short time then we give them to other satellite channels and I think this is fair enough,” Imam told Arab News.
Other Egyptian music companies who undoubtedly agreed on Imam’s viewpoint blamed their inability to compete with Rotana on the dire state of the Egyptian economy.
