was Egyptian and produced a number of domestic successes, Kiarostami’s films, although in many respects steeped in Persian culture, were not much seen or sought after at home. His slow-paced, self-referential films explore ideas both intellectually and philosophically, revealing self-critical insights into Iranian life and society. Border Café (Kambozia Partovi, 2005) is another Iranian film that emphasizes displacement in a world in which people are forced constantly to cross borders, only here the cafe of the title offers a brief taste of home and a place in which nationalities can mix; its images of trucks, drivers, and their passengers on the move reveals another form of displacement, and specific food items, among other things, help to provide a temporary home.
The cultures of a far-off homeland are replicated in diasporic communities across the globe, whether in the cooking of traditional dishes, often refashioned in accordance with current circumstances, or in the watching of satellite television stations, which can bring a little bit of Cairo or Tehran to those who view. Kechiche’s The Secret of the Grain (2007) celebrates North African cultural traditions through mealtime and belly-dancing scenes, while responding to their potential exoticism by placing the nostalgia often experienced by exiled and diasporic communities in the context of host-country prejudices and racism. Similarly, just as many Middle Eastern cities today are populated by television antennae that allow people access to a wide variety of media, some of which may be discouraged by local authorities, films may be made in communities and transported to diasporic and exilic communities outside the region. VHS Kahloucha (Néjib Belkadhi, 2006), for example, a record of the work of amateur filmmaker Moncef Kahloucha, whose films are made with extremely low budgets, begins with the delivery of cassette tapes of his newest production to a group of Tunisian migrant workers in a small town in Italy. Film is again seen to forge connections and to build community across borders. By the same token, the contradictions of transnational digital culture are examined and pried apart in independent and experimental/avant-garde films that, in the wake of the Arab Uprisings, problematize the relationship between technological development—including that of cinema and the televisual—and the political and economic conditions leading to exile and diaspora. Noteworthy, among such works are those of U.K.-based Palestinian filmmaker Larissa Sansour (Nation Estate [2013] and In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain [2015]); Fatenah (Ahmed Habash, 2009), the first Palestinian animation; and Out on the Street (Jasmina Metwaly/Philip Rizk, 2015), an Egyptian experiment with filmed theater of the oppressed.
Indeed, such issues lie at the core—and grappling with them may be part of the mission—of international film festivals, important instances of which have developed in the Middle East, especially in the wealthy Gulf states; although in contrast to well-established festivals in Carthage (Tunisia) and Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), each with a significant audience base, such transnational “red carpet” festivals have often lasted only a few years. Nevertheless, the displacement of refugees from, through, and around the Middle East continues to be a pressing issue, one that has had major consequences for nationalistic, even chauvinistic, governance within and outside the region, and films, both documentaries and features, about migration itself are a developing genre, as is a proliferating series of films, both commercial and independent, which hold up for critical examination contemporary worker exploitation and the oppression of indigenous populations.
The Form of the Historical Dictionary in Theory
At first glance, the division of information implicit in the historical dictionary format may seem to work against a recognition of the transnational interconnectedness detailed above by ghettoizing the material. (This possibility is, after all, inherent in the encyclopedia form, which developed historically as a mode of dividing and categorizing knowledge, often deployed to abstract and generalize about particular geographical regions under European colonial control.) We do not, however, believe that this is necessarily the case and have striven to ensure that it should not be. Indeed, the nonlinear, cross-referential nature of this work can, we believe, counter this tendency by facilitating multiple entry points into the general topic of Middle Eastern cinema, and thus encourage readers to cross possibly unfamiliar cinematic and philosophical borders. Following certain threads through the volume may also aid readers in adopting alternative approaches to the typical ways this material has been organized, and we hope in this way to enable them to measure the cinemas of the Middle East against each other, as well as in comparison to the Hollywood cinema with which they may be most familiar.
In addition, in selecting material for the historical dictionary, we have tried to balance inclusion of the best-known figures and movements internationally—those most likely to engage the book’s probable readership in the first place—with lesser-known material from an already underserved area of cinematic inquiry, where some of the more innovative and challenging work has consistently taken place. We acknowledge claims made by Shafik, as well as Kiarostami, that the cinema—and its modern conditions—are by no means “alien” to the Middle East, as has sometimes been asserted, and that to presume otherwise oversimplifies the history of the region and its cultures. This discussion evokes questions raised by long-standing scholarly debates over whether concepts of symbolism, metaphor, and allegory are especially appropriate or inherently valid means for interpreting non-Western films, as originally suggested in controversial work by Fredric Jameson and debated in critical responses by, among others, Aijaz Ahmad, Madhava Prasad, and Rey Chow (representative works by all of whom can be found in the bibliography to this volume). As noted throughout these pages, an alternative perspective on the national-cultural significance of Middle Eastern films to be considered here is the reemergence of Islam and Islamism, forces linking much of the region in ways that complicate and generally contrast frameworks that emphasize pan-national, pan-Arabist, and pan-African interconnections.
In his original essay, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capital” (1986), Jameson raises issues related to the relationship between cultural work—including cinema—and its national conditions of production. He argues that this relationship is allegorical: that is, that a subject and narrative stand in for or analogize figures and events associated historically with their country or region of origin. While Jameson’s critics commonly acknowledge the importance of his essay for encouraging Western film scholars to recognize the political and economic determining factors in much Third World culture, they have argued that his theory runs the danger of affirming prejudicial or otherwise unnuanced interpretations of works from the Third World by allowing readers/audiences to disregard such works’ formal properties and the specific traditions bound up with them. Thus, the danger is that readers/audiences are discouraged from recognizing the many individual and alternative means of responding to national and transnational conditions, such as those described above.
Critics have further suggested that, while Jameson is correct to point out that transnational exchange provides the parameters for First World/Western encounters with the non-West—including, in cinema, the kinds of coproductions discussed above—his argument implies that all Third World culture is primarily concerned with its relationship to the First World/West, either explicitly or unconsciously. This approach tends to position First World readers/spectators as a work’s main critical audience, thus inviting interpretations unfamiliar—and possibly inappropriate—to many local audiences. In fact, Jameson’s critics have argued, not all Third World or non-Western culture is primarily concerned with its relationship to the First World/West—although much evidently is; in any event, such concern is often articulated in terms, both aesthetic and conceptual, that speak more directly to non-Western peoples and that may therefore not be readily interpretable according to Western cultural and intellectual frameworks. Furthermore, while transnational capitalism and the nation-state are codependent functions of the modern world system, it does not necessarily follow that cultural responses and critiques of that system will always take a nation-centered form. For many Third World critics, ignoring these complex variables while interpreting culture for what Jameson calls a text’s “political unconscious” may result in acts of theoretical “violence” that can serve, if inadvertently, to support the (neo)colonial interests that have constrained non-Western cultures and societies for so long. As a critical countermeasure to these
