Cinemagic has been standing strong for the past 15 years in the industry. Today we have evolved as an Innovative Media Powerhouse on a mission to revolutionize how content is created and distributed.
Were we always this way, though? Not really! Most successful organizations in the world have a cool backstory behind them. No idea is born overnight, and neither was Cinemagic. We've come a long way from where we started, and we've got an even longer way to go.
I personally, or we as a team wanted to create an industry of content creation or film industry. So we wanted to create new content that hasn't been done - stories that have never been told. - Nasser M. Al Sabah, CEO & Founder, Cinemagic
Established in Kuwait in 2005, Cinemagic first started as somewhat of an institution where workshops regarding different motion-picture related subjects were provided. Back in 2005, Kuwait's Cinema relied on importing their films from foreign countries and showing them at the Kuwaiti Theaters. American imperialism has always been a major problem in the development of Arab cinema in general, and Kuwaiti cinema in particular. The act caused the absence of a Kuwaiti community and history's real personality and character. In short, the film and production industry wasn't really all that.
When we first started, there wasn't an industry. The first thing to start an industry is to inject know-how. - Nasser M. Al Sabah, CEO & Founder, Cinemagic
And know-how was what we started with! At Cinemagic, you could attend workshops for cinematography, production, VFX, editing and so on. These workshops weren't extremely large-scaled in size.
Small concentrated workshops for people who do this as a hobby, and wanted to turn that hobby into a career. I went to NYFA and wanted to implement the same in Kuwait. We didn't have any sort of certification, back then there wasn't any such thing for film-making. - Nasser M. Al Sabah, CEO & Founder, Cinemagic
Some students that joined Cinemagic for workshops ended up changing their entire career lines to get into film and TV production. For ex students that specialized in editing went through a drastic career shift into editing and are now editors.
We had very talented people with us who are now a backbone of the industry today. - Nasser M. Al Sabah, CEO & Founder, Cinemagic
With constant growth and immensely talented people that made their way to Cinemagic to learn, eventually, we developed into a hiring machine for Al-Watan TV. We moved into hiring mostly the technical staff for the TV channel. Throughout the process of hiring and training staff members for Al Watan, Cinemagic eventually moved into having a team.
After he did the workshop, he just did the transition. We wanted to create that kind of meta-shift for people to pursue their dreams.
Since there wasn't an industry as vast as compared to other places, at the time, it was a challenge to create a team because of how difficult it was to find talent. At Cinemagic, the 'can-do' attitude has always been constant. So to make up for the lack of expertise, we created some. And in time, Cinemagic had finally created a team that was ready to take over the content creation industry in Kuwait.
Over the years, we started doing things that weren't done ever before. Shooting TV shows like After the End... things that weren't really done within this region. - Nasser M. Al Sabah, CEO & Founder, Cinemagic
According to our founder, Nasser M Al Sabah, at Cinemagic, we like to be the disrupters rather than the disrupted. After 15 years of constant growth, learning, taking challenges hands-on, constant evolution, Cinemagic, stands strong for the values and creative brains of our people to empower organizations globally to tell a better story.
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