Arthouse Ambitions

After four years of pop-ups, Cinema Akil has launched its first permanent arthouse cinema in Alserkal Avenue. Co-founder and managing director Butheina Kazim talks film, censorship and the building of a film community.

- Iain Akerman

I get ab workouts from talking so much,” says Butheina Kazim with a laugh. She is drinking chai at Cinema Akil in Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue, the arthouse cinema’s first permanent theatre.

“It took us three-and-a-half years to make enough money to be able to build this space,” she adds, gesturing to the venue around her. Endless meetings, travel, research, and the grunt work necessary to bring an independent cinema to life have been part of her existence for months, if not years. Hence the ab workouts.

Yet here she is, all fresh-faced and full of life, pleased that Cinema Akil’s vision to bring great films from across the world to audiences in Dubai has graduated from an occasional pop-up platform to a permanent cinematic space.

“I’m happier when I see people coming in,” she says with an evident smile. “It’s one thing to have the cinema decked out and to have the programme. And it’s a whole other thing to have the audience that supports it and wants it and is insisting on the experience.”

There’s an old-school feel to Cinema Akil. The box office is a wooden kiosk with a lush, deep red curtain, while sections of the auditorium’s seating were salvaged from the Golden Cinema in Bur Dubai. There’s a wall of collectibles, too, with posters and photographs and an old map of the city that hangs near the entrance.

“This is actually from the Sergei Parajanov Museum in Yerevan,” says Butheina, pointing to a poster of Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates. “This is from a distributor’s apartment in Lebanon. This is from the original Bidoun library space in New York. That’s from Damascus, Syria. Not all of it is cinematic, but it’s worlds that collide into cinema.”