Arab Cinema – History & Cultural Identity: History and Cultural Identity - Softcover

Shafik, Viola

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9774244753 ISBN 13: 9789774244759

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Combining detailed narrative history -- economic, ideological, and esthetic -- with thought-provoking analysis, this study provides extensive coverage of cinema in the Arab world. Arab Cinema traces the industry's development from colonial times to the present. It analyzes its ambiguous relationship with commercial Western cinema, and the effect of Egyptian market dominance in the region. Covering not only Egyptian but also North African, Syrian, Palestinian, Iraqi, and Lebanese cinema, it traces the influence on the medium of local and regional art forms and modes of thought, both classical and popular, and shows how indigenous and external factors have combined in a dynamic process of "cultural repackaging."Illustrated throughout with stills from the movies, and backed up by comprehensive documentation, Shafik's study breaks new ground, and will become an indispensable point of reference for all those interested in world cinema.

About this title

Review:

"Shafik discusses the history, genres, and esthetics of Arab film. She is very good at analyzing its antecedents in Arab literary, theatrical, storytelling, and musical traditions. She gives broad coverage to typical genres and is particularly good on realism and the cinema d auteur. Although Shafik focuses on Egyptian films, which comprise well more than half of all Arab films made, she discusses the films of the other Arab nations as well, delineating the differences and similarities among them. The author devotes the preponderance of the book to the films themselves, but she is also thorough in her analysis of the conditions political, religious, economic that determine what films are made, how they are made, and where they are seen. Intelligent, perceptive, and elegantly written, this volume deserves a broad readership. Highly recommended. All readers, all levels." --Choice

About the Author:

Viola Shafik studied cinema in Hamburg and is a freelance film scholar, creative consultant, and filmmaker. She has directed several documentaries, most notably My Name Is Not Ali (2011) and Arij: Scent of Revolution (2014). She is also the author of Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class, and Nation (AUC Press, 2007).

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 9774244753
• ISBN 13: 9789774244759
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264