trend toward locally funded productions, often genre films, in Tunisia and Morocco. The quite different structural constraints of the Syrian and Iraqi cinemas, and the difficult, transnational mixture of industry and auteur production, albeit some of it emergent and some of it derailed, in Iraq, Jordan, and the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Yemen, are represented, as is the phenomenon of exilic-diasporic, minority, and women’s filmmaking connected to each and every Middle Eastern country. We also cover the range of cinematic modes, from documentary to fiction, representational to animation, generic to experimental, mainstream to avant-garde, and entertainment to propaganda, and the variety of exhibition practices, including the demise of many traditional cinemas, the growth of shopping mall screens, and the rise—and in some cases fall—of film festivals in the Middle East and Middle East–themed film festivals internationally. These entries are supplemented by those on general concepts (colonialism, pan-Arabism, transnationalism), historical events (the Arab Uprisings, Iranian Revolution, Lebanese Civil Wars, Nakba), political figures (Arafat, Khomeini, Nasser), and, of course, the pertinent countries and regions themselves.
It is always difficult to know what the future holds in cinema: at the end of the Cold War, there were many predictions for its worldwide demise; they have proven unwarranted. As certain national cinemas flourish and others struggle (for example, the current tendencies in Morocco and Algeria, respectively), centers of interest, innovation, and development in the cinemas of the Middle East will undoubtedly change. If national cinemas are able to resist Hollywood penetration and to attract substantial domestic audiences, as is currently happening, for example, in Turkey, then local and national concerns may be explored in greater depth and breadth; on the other hand, today’s interlinked global world, now epitomized in the Middle East by the Gulf states, surely conditions the likelihood that all new cinema produced in the region will be consequent upon and reflective of transnational issues and concerns, whether such cinema be commercial or independent in origin. Cultural analysis of these cinemas, meanwhile, starting from sociological and anthropological bases (the work of Armbrust on Egypt and Kevin Dwyer on the Maghreb), as well as those trained primarily in film (Viola Shafik, Hamid Naficy, Ella Shohat, and many others), should grow under the influence of younger and lesser-known scholars, including those who have participated in the production of this volume. The latter are Samirah Alkassim (Palestine, Syria), Farshad Aminian (Iran), Savaş Arslan (Turkey), Patricia Caillé (Maghreb), Sandra G. Carter (Maghreb), Anne Ciecko (Jordan, Gulf states, Yemen), Gayatri Devi (Iran, Palestine), Iman Hamam (Egypt), Dale Hudson (Jordan, Gulf states, Yemen), Wissam Mouawad (Lebanon), Helga Tawil-Souri (Palestine), Negar Taymoorzadeh (Iran, Kurdistan, Turkey), Mark R. Westmoreland (Lebanon), and Alia Yunis (Jordan, Gulf states, Yemen). We thank them for contributing their expertise in the various cinemas of the Middle East. We ourselves have contributed the general entries and additional material, as well as entries on the following: Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Maghreb, Palestine, Syria (Terri Ginsberg); Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Maghreb (Chris Lippard).
Several of us first met through the activities of the Middle East Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, and we wish to thank the successive chairs of that group who have devoted their time and energies to keeping the caucus active and encouraging critical scholarly discussion about the cinemas of the Middle East. In addition, we extend our appreciation to the following people who have helped us by reading draft entries, contributing information, or facilitating connections: Leonardo Alishan, Alia Arasoughly, Nirit Ben-Ari, Kay Dickinson, Mushira Eid, Fouad Elkoury, Kristen Fitzpatrick (formerly at Women Make Movies), Suzanne Gauch, Hadi Gharabaghi, Emma Hedditch at Cinenova, Tareq Ismael, Lina Khatib, Robert Lang, Peter Limbrick, Laura Marks, Rashid Masharawi, Touraj Noroozi, Darby Orcutt, Abdel Salem Shehada, Peter Sluglett, Ashkan Soltani, Sara Harris Thum, Alex Williams (formerly at at Typecast/Arab Film Distribution), Wanda vanderStoop at Vtape, Nadia Yaqub, Hadi Gharabaghi, Colleen Jankovic, and Maximiliane Zoller. From Rowman & Littlefield, we thank April Snider for her invaluable administrative support, Andrew Yoder for his exceptional editorial prowess, and Jon Woronoff, the general editor of this series, who showed great patience, acumen, and understanding as we negotiated the various issues of form and substance raised by this project over the course of its production. Finally, we thank our partners, Robin Mendelwager and Tiffany Rousculp, who have sacrificed their time to our immersion in this volume. We thank them unreservedly for their love and support.
Terri Ginsberg
The American University in Cairo
Chris Lippard
University of Utah
January 2020
Reader’s Note
The Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema is arranged alphabetically, with text in bold indicating cross-references to other entries, both within and beyond specific national-geographical boundaries, thus mirroring the national, transnational, and international origins and breadth, and the structural parameters and contradictions, of the subject. Included in addition to the alphabetized entries are a chronology of significant events marking the approximate 110-year history of Middle Eastern cinema; a filmography of titles referenced throughout these pages; a bibliography of useful scholarly texts and reviews—arranged by region and country—that inform the material, thinking, and research contained in this volume; and a list of acronyms and abbreviations for the numerous organizations and agencies also referenced.
Insofar as the great majority of the films discussed in this volume hail from the Middle East, they have been produced in languages other than English. Many are in Arabic, a language that varies considerably across the region, while the Iranian and Turkish films are in the national languages, Persian (or Farsi) and Turkish, respectively. Most Israeli films are in Hebrew, while some films from Lebanon and the Maghreb are in French, as are most of the diasporic films referred to collectively as beur cinema. Similarly, films of the Turkish diaspora are frequently produced in German. Other languages heard in Middle Eastern cinema that are not associated with particular states are Kurdish and Berber/Tamazight.
English transliterations of film titles and the names of individuals in those covered languages which do not use the Roman alphabet (namely, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Kurdish, and Tamazight) vary considerably. Whereas all film titles are listed in the entries to this historical dictionary in their English translations, the filmography also supplies those titles in transliteration. In choosing which transliteration systems to adopt, we have tried to adhere as closely and consistently as possible to the most commonly utilized spellings and translations in scholarly texts and in regional and dialectical contexts. Thus, we have, for instance, generally tried to follow Egyptian vernacular usage in the transliterations of Arabic titles from that country, and the Levantine vernacular usage in the transliterations of Arabic titles from Palestine. The glottal stop signified by the hamza is indicated with a diacritical ’; and by the ayn with a ‘. Maghrebi film titles in Arabic are transliterated according to their preponderant Francophone spellings. The filmography lists all non-English-language films in alphabetical order according to the most commonly used English title, with non-English (and alternative English-language) titles in parentheses.
The Arabic definite article markers, el- (mostly Egyptian figures) and al-, are common, and the entries for individuals whose names begin with them should be sought under those markers. Thus, the famous Egyptian comic Naguib El-Rihani is to be found under E rather than R.
Often a key non-English word used in the text of an entry (e.g., hijab) will appear first in italics, transliterated when appropriate, and followed by the English translation parenthesized and in quotation marks. Subsequently in that entry, only the non-English word or transliteration will be used. If a non-English word has acquired common usage in Anglophone contexts (e.g., Nakba), it will appear in the entry first in italics, while subsequently the italics will be dropped. In other instances, non-English words simply follow their English translations, italicized and in parentheses. Non-English names of organizations and agencies are not differentiated
