Arab World Cinemas: A Reader and Guide

by Marlé Hammond

Overview

From the exaggerated emotions of 1930s Egyptian melodrama to the cryptic allegories of late 20th-century Palestinian cinema, Arab World Cinemas guides you through 28 Arabic-language feature films released between 1933 and 2021, including Muhammad Khan's 'Dreams of Hind and Camilia' (1989), Moufida Tlatli's 'Silences of the Palace' (1994) and Elia Suleiman's 'Divine Intervention' (2002). Written specially for students, the book is split into 3 parts: Egypt, North Africa and the eastern Arab world. Each part begins with an introductory essay that highlights the aesthetic and socio-historical trends and currents in the cinematic traditions particular to that region. Marlé Hammond then dedicates individual chapters to a group of films from the highlighted region, interpreting their form and content through the lenses of cinematic technique and concepts drawn from various disciplines in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474435789
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2024
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Marlé Hammond is Senior Lecturer in Arabic Popular Literature and Culture at SOAS University of London where she teaches classes on Arabic Literature and Middle Eastern and North African cinema. She is the author of The Tale of al-Barraq Son of Rahwan and Layla the Chaste: A Bilingual Edition and Study (Oxford UniversityPress, 2020) and the award-winning monograph Beyond Elegy: Classical Arabic Women’s Poetry in Context (Oxford UniversityPress, 2010). She also edited Arabic Poems (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets, 2014). Having studied film modules at Columbia Universityin New York and The American Universityin Cairo, she started teaching about Arabic-language cinema in 2006 and began integrating it into her research in 2007, when she was awarded a three-year British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oxford Universityto explore representations of ancient female poets in modern Arabic literature and film. This led to her publication of studies of two films: Togo Mizrahi’s Sallama (1945) and Bahiga Hafez’s Layla, Daughter of the Desert (1937). She has also authored a book chapter on the role of the kiss in Egyptian film language of the 1940s. Her work at the archival collection of (primarily Egyptian) film scripts at the New York State museum in her home town of Albany, has enabled her to ‘reconstruct’ bowdlerized films, such as Yusuf Wahbi’s Love and Revenge (1945), the subject of Chapter 1.3, and have informed the regional essays at certain junctures. Whilst this ‘expertise’ has been focused on Egypt, over a decade of teaching of teaching on the subject of Arabic-language cinema more generally has resulted in her researching the cinemas of North Africa and the Eastern Arab world rather extensively.

Table of Contents

List of TablesList of FiguresAcknowledgementsNote on Transliteration and Filmic CitationPreface

Part 1 Egypt

Egypt: Regional Essay

1.1 The White Rose, Muhammad Karim (1933/34)1.2 Determination, Kamal Salim (1939)1.3 Love and Revenge, Yusuf Wahbi (1945)1.4 Struggle on the Nile, ʿAtif Salim (1959)1.5 The Open Door, Henri Barakat (1963)1.6 Night of Counting the Years/The Mummy, Shadi ʿAbd al-Salam (1969)1.7 Alexandria, Why?, Youssef Chahine (1978)1.8 Dreams of Hind and Camilia, Muhammad Khan (1989)1.9 I Love Cinema, Osama Fawzi (2004)1.10 Souad, Ayten Amin (2021)

Part 2 North Africa: The Maghrib and Beyond

North Africa: Regional Essay

2.1 Chronicle of the Years of Embers, Mohamed Lakhdar Hamina (Algeria, 1975)2.2 Omar Gatlato, Merzak Allouache (Algeria, 1976)2.3 Bab el-Oued City, Merzak Allouache (Algeria, 1994)2.4 Silences of the Palace, Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia, 1994)2.5 Season of Men, Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia, 2000)2.6 Waiting for Happiness, Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania, 2002)2.7 A Thousand Months, Faouzi Bensaidi (Morocco, 2003)2.8 aKasha, Hajooj Kuka (Sudan, 2018)2.9 Casablanca Beats, Nabil Ayouch (Morocco, 2021)

Part 3 The Eastern Arab World

The Eastern Arab World: Regional Essay

3.1 The Dupes, Tewfik Saleh (Syria, 1972)3.2 Wedding in Galilee, Michel Khleifi (Palestine, 1987)3.3 The Extras, Nabil Maleh (Syria, 1993)3.4 Chronicle of a Disappearance, Elia Suleiman (Palestine, 1996)3.5 Divine Intervention, Elia Suleiman (Palestine, 2002)3.6 The Time that Remains, Elia Suleiman (Palestine, 2009)3.7 Caramel, Nadine Labaki (Lebanon, 2007)3.8 Dawn of the World, Abbas Fahdel ([Iraq], 2008)3.9 Wadjda, Haifaa Al-Mansour (Saudi Arabia, 2012)

BibliographyMaterials from the New York State Archives Motion PictureScripts CollectionIndex

Editorial Reviews

This textbook is an invaluable resource for teachers and students of Arab cinemas. It fulfils a need in both Film Studies and Arabic Studies by providing a comprehensive reading of 28 canonical films from Egypt, the Maghreb, the Levant and the Gulf region. Marlé Hammond pays equal attention to a wealth of classic, emergent and diasporic feature films, while focusing on the overlapping histories of national Arab cinemas and the extraordinary social and artistic trajectory of notorious filmmakers such as Youssef Chahine, Moufida Tlatli and Elia Suleiman. A one of a kind incredibly accessible textbook!

May Telmissany