How Does Film Clockwise Represent Qatari Culture - Movie Review Example

In fact, through the introduction of Qatar National Vision 2030 in 2008, Qatar has clearly emphasized its unique ambition to incorporate both modernity and traditional culture in all state’s future strategies. The vision has also highlighted Qatar’s role as an active player in mediating between cultures outside of Qatar through the “Sponsorship and support of dialogue among civilizations, promoting coexistence between different religions and cultures.” In 2010, Qatar was selected to be the Arab Capital of Culture, an initiative launched in 1995 by the Arab League under the UNESCO.

  The initiative aims at promoting and recognizing Arab culture and encouraging fruitful collaborations between Arab countries. To celebrate this honor and to meet its goal of being a global cultural hub, Qatar arranged over 70 cultural events including performances, exhibitions and film screenings. As part of these efforts, the Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Heritage sponsored the production of the first Qatari feature film Clockwise. The film is an attempt to disseminate knowledge about the culturally-rich obscure nation and to incite an absent form of art in Qatar, cinema.

The film is considered a remarkable project to start introducing Qatari culture to the world through an interesting story that captures the ‘magic’ of the past. Viewers would notice that it has a great blend of a variety of universal themes including wisdom, romance, life and death, parenthood and so on. Despite the fact that the film was considered an “official selection” in four film festivals, it failed to receive any local or international award.  Failure to receive any local or international award may be attributed to a variety of reasons from storyline loopholes to cinematography issues, but the subtitles may also be a strong reason given that subtitles constitute a bridging tool that must be carefully used to achieve film success.

In this paper, I will examine whether Clockwise subtitles has succeeded in supporting the declared purpose of informing foreign audiences about Qatari culture. First, I will analyze the subtitles focusing on four elements related to Qatari culture, which are culture-specific items, politeness, songs, and humor. Secondly, I will evaluate the importance of technical and aesthetic factors.