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This volume engages new films and modes of scholarly research in Arab cinema, and older, often neglected films and critical topics, while theorizing their structural relationship to contemporary developments in the Arab world. The volume considers the relationship of Arab cinema to transnational film production, distribution, and exhibition, in turn recontextualizing the works of acknowledged as well as new directorial figures, and country-specific phenomena. New documentary and experimental practices are referenced and critiqued, while commercial cinema is covered both as an industrial product and as one of several instances of contestation. The volume thus showcases the breadth and depth of Arab film culture and its multilayered connections to local conditions, regional affiliations, and the tendencies and aesthetics of global cinema.
List of contents
1. Introduction - Chris Lippard and Terri Ginsberg.- BLOC 1: HISTORY, POSITIONALITY, CRITIQUE.- 2. Documentary Diplomacy & Audiovisual Modernization: A Cold War Genealogy of Arab Cinema during the 1950s through American Declassified Archive - Hadi Gharabaghi.- 3. Making the Final Cut: Filmmaking and Complicating National Identity in Qatar and the GCC States - Suzi Mirgani.- 4. Lebanese Cinema and the French Co-production System: The Postcard Strategy - Wissam Mouawad.- BLOC 2: FESTIVAL AND NATION RECONSIDERED.- 5. Amateur Filmmaking in Tunisia: A Political Film Culture Eliding Contradictions in National Cinema - Patricia Caillé.- 6. "Not-Yet" an Industry: The Temporalities of Contemporary Palestinian Cinema - Viviane Saglier.- 7. Mobilities of Cinematic Identity in the Western Sahara - Chris Lippard.- BLOC 3: FROM RESISTANCE TO ENTRENCHMENT AND BACK AGAIN.- 8. Amiralay and Sabbagh in the Post-cinematic Age - Samirah Alkassim.- 9. Family Resemblance: An Anthropologist Looks at Moroccan Documentary - Kevin Dwyer.- 10. Affective Alternatives to Sectarianism in Maroun Baghdadi's Documentaries - Jeremy Randall.- BLOC 4: POLITICAL AESTHETICS OF STATE AND REVOLUTION IN EGYPT.- 11. Terrorism and Kebab: The Administrative Grotesque and the "Egyptian Chaplin"--Notes on Humor, Resistance, and Biopolitics - Isabelle Freda.- 12. Exceptions to the Rule: The Mechanics of War and the Institution in Egyptian Cinema - Iman Hamam.- 13. Teaching Egypt Cinematically -Terri Ginsberg.
About the author
Terri Ginsberg is Assistant Professor of Film at The American University in Cairo, Egypt. She is co-author of
Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema; author of
Visualizing the Palestinian Struggle and
Holocaust Film: The Political Aesthetics of Ideology; and co-editor of
Perspectives on German Cinema and
A Companion to German Cinema.
Chris Lippard is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Film and Media Arts at the University of Utah, USA. He is co-author of
the Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema and has recently published articles on contemporary Iranian cinema and on Anthony Mann's
Devil's Doorway.
Report
"One of the many merits of this volume is that it approaches cinema in its sociohistorical dimension, thus shedding as much light on the circumstances (social, historical, economic, etc.) under which films are produced and consumed as on the films themselves. ... The contributions in this collection present a series of possibilities and case studies in how to approach a field that remains both understudied and oversimplified ... ." (Giovanni Vimercati, Film Quarterly, Winter, 2020)
