Intended for scholars of film and the contemporary Middle East, this title provides a comprehensive overview of cinema in the Arab world, tracing the industry's development, since colonial times. It analyzes the ambiguous relationship with commercial western cinema, and the effect of Egyptian market dominance in the region.

Exploring the impact of travel on Arab cinema, Kay Dickinson reveals how the cinemas of Syria, Palestine and Dubai have been shaped by the history and politics of international circulation. This compelling book offers fresh insights into film, mobility and the Middle East.

Building on a growing body of literature, this Handbook provides an up-to-date and authoritative survey of Arab cinema. The collection includes contributions from academics and filmmakers from across the Arab region, Europe, and North America, and fills a gap in media studies by examining the entire Arab region, rather than focusing on one country or theme. The Handbook also sheds light on the heterogeneity of Arab filmmaking not only within the Arab region, but also globally, within diasporic communities. It is split into six parts: Part 1 provides an overview of each sub-region in the Arab world, including a chapter on Arab animation films. Parts 2, 3, and 4 address topical themes, encompassing the representation of gender, religion, and identity politics in Arab cinema. Part 5 discusses the theme of diaspora and Part 6 concludes the volume with reflective essays penned by selected diasporic filmmakers. This book is an essential reference for Arab media and cinema scholars, students, and professional filmmakers. With case studies from across the Arab region, it's also a valuable resource for anyone interested in film and media, global cinema, and the Middle East generally.

New Voices in Arab Cinema focuses on contemporary filmmaking since the 1980s, but also considers the longer history of Arab cinema. Taking into consideration film from the Middle East and North Africa and giving a special nod to films produced since the Arab Spring and the Syrian crisis, Roy Armes explores themes such as modes of production, national cinemas, the role of the state and private industry on film, international developments in film, key filmmakers, and the validity of current notions like globalization, migration and immigration, and exile. This landmark book offers both a coherent, historical overview and an in-depth critical analysis of Arab filmmaking.

Cinema in the Arab world has been the subject of varied and rigorous studies, but most have focused on films as text, providing in-depth analyses of plot, style, ideologies, or examination of the biographies of prominent directors or actors. This innovative new volume shifts the focus on Arab cinema off-screen, to examine the histories, politics, and conditions of distribution, exhibition, and cinema-going in the Arab world. Through broadening the frame of study beyond the screen, the book widens understanding of the cinema, not merely as a collection of films-as-texts, but as a site of cultural and political contestation in the Arab world. Divided into two sections, and guided by interdisciplinary considerations, the contributors examine historical and contemporary issues of Arab cinema in terms of the experience of movie-going and filmmaking. They examine the networks of distribution and exhibition, as well as the contested and multiple meanings that the cinema embodied through diverse historical periods and geographical locations. Part I focuses on new histories of Arab cinema in terms of film production, distribution, exhibition and audience's experiences of cinema-going. Part II deals with more recent issues within scholarship on Arab cinema such as issues of politics, economics, ideologies, as well as issues related to Arab movies' international circulation and screenings at festivals. Together, the chapters enrich our understanding of the cinema in the Arab world, showing how deeply embedded it is within its social, political, and economic contexts.

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.

The Arab theatre and cinema are among the most neglected subjects in the studies of Oriental literature and research into the history of theatre. This book, written by the acclaimed scholar Jacob M. Landau and first published in 1958, is a survey of the development of the Arab theatre and cinema as cultural and social phenomena and goes a long way in shedding some light on these neglected subjects.

In a major addition to the academic library on the cinema of Youssef Chahine and on Arab and Egyptian cinema in general, Malek Khouri here presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date study on Chahine's work to appear since his death in 2008. The methodological approach of the book, and more precisely the discussion of the theme of Arab national unity from a post-colonial point of view, emphasizes the ideological underpinnings of this Egyptian director's themes as well as his esthetics. The author focuses on the interaction between Chahine's personal and political preoccupations, his eclectic cinematic style, and his devotion to connecting with a wide audience of filmgoers. The Arab National Project in Youssef Chahine's Cinema is an important contribution to original scholarship in the fields of cultural studies, sociology of film, and history of cinema, and will be of great interest to scholars, students, and cinema lovers all over the world.

Arab 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 century—when Arab writers and artists reenergized Arab culture by engaging with other languages and societies—Peter 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.

Roots of the New Arab Film deals with the generation of filmmakers from across North Africa and the Middle East who created an international awareness of Arab film from the mid-1980s onwards. These seminal filmmakers experienced the moment of national independence first-hand in their youth and retained a deep attachment to their homeland. Although these aspiring filmmakers had to seek their training abroad, they witnessed a time of filmic revival in Europe – Fellini and Antonioni in Italy, the French New Wave, and British Free Cinema. Returning home, these filmmakers brought a unique insider/outsider perspective to bear on local developments in society since independence, including the divide between urban and rural communities, the continuing power of traditional values and the status of women in a changing society. As they made their first films back home, the feelings of participation in a worldwide movement of new, independent filmmaking was palpable. Roots of the New Arab Film is a necessary and comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the foundations of Arab cinema.