Description
Book SynopsisArab Modernism as World Cinema explores the radically beautiful films of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi, demonstrating the importance of Moroccan and Arab film cultures in histories of world cinema. Addressing the legacy of the Nahda or Arab Renaissance of the nineteenth and early twentieth centurywhen Arab writers and artists reenergized Arab culture by engaging with other languages and societiesPeter Limbrick argues that Smihi's films take up the spirit of the Nahda for a new age. Examining Smihi's oeuvre, which enacts an exchange of images and ideas between Arab and non-Arab cultures, Limbrick rethinks the relation of Arab cinema to modernism and further engages debates about the use of modernist forms by filmmakers in the Global South. This original study offers new routes for thinking about world cinema and modernism in the Middle East and North Africa, and about Arab cinema in the world.
Trade Review"Weaving together close film analysis, studies of cinematic techniques, and scholarly engagement with a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary material, Limbrick offers an unprecedented window into Smihi’s 'multifaceted and polyphonic' filmography. At the same time, he demonstrates that Arab film culture, when studied in its global ramifications and affinities, reveals an inner complexity that resists systematic and univocal readings, and invites to rethink Arab modernism as a dynamic and multidimensional concept." * Critical Inquiry *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction: Moumen Smihi, World Cinema, Arab Modernism
Chapter One: Radical Realities: Form and Politics in the New Arab Cinema
Chapter Two: The Voice of the Arabs: Smihi’s Soundscapes
Chapter Three: Kan ya makan: Intertextuality and Arab Modernism
Chapter Four: Religion, Secularism, Modernity
Chapter Five: For a New Nahda: Gender, Sexuality, and Freedom
Notes
Filmography
Bibliography
Index
