first feature, Downpour (1972), is a relatively straightforward mystery. The motif of a stranger’s arrival is replayed in The Stranger and the Fog (1975), which shows the influence of the traditional Shi‘i passion play, or taz’ieh. The Crow (1977), now lost, depicts the loss of personal and societal identity and has been read as an allegory for the Pahlavi regime. Two films completed at the time of the Iranian Revolution, The Ballad of Tara (1978) and The Death of Yazdgerd (1980), both mythological and allegorical tales featuring Susan Taslimi, were and remain banned in Iran, apparently for their depiction of unveiled women. In the former, Taslimi plays the keeper of a powerful sword, a similarly totemic figure as Nai’i, who takes in a war-orphaned refugee from the south of Iran in Bashu, the Little Stranger (1986), a key film in establishing Iranian cinema’s reputation for a deep humanism at the end of the 1980s, but which did not receive an exhibition permit in Iran until 1989.
Maybe Some Other Time (1988) is a self-reflexive mystery story, referencing Beyzai’s own The Crow, of a woman (Taslimi in her last Iranian role) searching for her family and identity. These themes recur in The Travellers (1992), which again utilizes distanciation techniques reminiscent of taz’ieh, such as direct address, in the context of a story about a family who die on their way to a wedding but eventually reappear, alive, through the force of the matriarch’s refusal to believe in their deaths. Killing Rabid Dogs (2001) took many years to complete; it is a dark urban thriller, easily interpreted as a critique of the Islamic regime, set in the years immediately following the revolution, which depicts the oppression of intellectuals. When We Are All Asleep (2009) is nominally the story of a woman negotiatng a new relationship after her husband and child have been killed in a car accident; however, the film is highly self-reflexive, with a film crew attempting to shoot the film, multiple actors playing the same role, and different roles and films overlapping so that the “real” is effectively unidentifiable. Since 2010, Beyzai has been mostly resident in the United States, where he has been teaching Persian culture at Stanford University. In October, 2019 Beyzai was one of many luminaries of the Iranian film industry both at home and abroad to sign a statement objecting to increasing obstacles to film production and exhibition in the country.
BLACK HONEY (2010)
Directed by Khaled Marei, this very popular comedy, particularly among young Egyptian adults who have been exposed to North American and European culture, and Third Culture Kids, is a reverse migration narrative, in which the main character, a diasporic Egyptian named Masry Sayed El Arabi (literally, the Egyptian Arab Master) returns to the homeland at the age of 30 and is compelled to adjust to a place where the kindness of strangers has been replaced with opportunism and deceit, but where redemption occurs as the protagonist manages to find his parents’ apartment and is taken in by his childhood friend and the latter’s family. The film offers a light critique of Egyptian culture and society before resolving to reinforce nationalistic stereotypes and sentiments in the course of making frequent intertextual references to recognizable cultural figures and occasions (alash). Its central conflict revolves around Masry’s refusal to use his U.S. passport and, in that context, his desire not to be treated as a foreigner (khawaga). Upon arrival in Cairo, he is extorted by an airport taxi driver, and he is subsequently granted several privileges on account of his perceived foreignness, but is later left to fend for himself and suffer the trials and tribulations of everyday life in a country with which he has difficulty connecting on a social and emotional level. With an estimated 4.7 percent of Egyptians living outside the country, Black Honey along with other mainstream films, such as You Fly (Ahmed El Guindi, 2009), addresses the dilemma of diasporic living and the desire for home.
BOSTA (2005)
Before the international film festival success of Under the Bombs (2007), filmmaker Philippe Aractingi and producer Christian Catafago successfully brought to the screen this first fully Lebanese feature film. Using an entirely Lebanese cast and crew, they acquired financing from Lebanese businessmen to make a postwar road musical centered on the Lebanese national dance, the dabkeh. Bosta attempts to channel postwar anxiety through a story of renaissance and rejuvenation. Kamal, who lost his father during the Lebanese Civil War, reconvenes his now-closed school’s dance troupe in order to compete in the national dabkeh competition; he rebels against the traditional conventions of dabkeh, pushing a new, modern approach. This theme serves as a thinly veiled commentary about the way youth must deal with the baggage of the past in postwar Lebanon. Once accepted for competition, Kamal and his troupe travel around the country in a brightly colored bus, singing and dancing their way to personal resolution—including Kamal’s romantic relationship with Alia (Nadine Labaki)—and national unity. Bosta garnered large audience support and recouped the money invested in its production, thus proving to Lebanese financiers that Lebanese cinema could be profitable.
BOUAMARI, MOHAMED (1941–2006)
Born in Algeria but raised in France, Bouamari returned to Algeria in 1965 to work at the Office National pour le Commerce et l’Industrie Cinématographiques as an assistant director for Gillo Pontecorvo, Ahmed Rachedi, and Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina, while also making his own short films. His first feature, The Charcoal Burner (1972), catapulted Bouamari to attention, as it set a precedent for interrogating rural transformations following the Algerian revolution. His subsequent films—The Heritage (1974), First Steps (1978), and Refusal (1982)—analyze the conditions of women and their social emancipation. Also an actor, Bouamari has appeared in some noteworthy Algerian films, including The Citadel (Mohamed Chouikh, 1988) and Enough! (Djamila Sahraoui, 2006). During the 1990s, however, his work was targeted by Islamists, and he was forced into temporary exile in France. There, at the end of 2006, while in production on his film Le Mouton de Fort-Montluc, which concerns prisoners condemned to death in 1958 for having participated in the Algerian revolution, he died suddenly and unexpectedly; the film has not been completed.
BOUCHAREB, RACHID (1953[1956?]–)
Born in France to Algerian parents, Bouchareb studied cinema at the Centre d’Études et de Recherches de l’Image et du Son, then directed films for French television (SFP, TF1, Antenne 2). Recognized for critically reflecting a “global village” in which different cultures coexist in mutual ignorance, Bouchareb’s films project themes of alienation, marginalization, and exile and narrate stories of immigration, identity crisis, the search for home, and the return to origins. He has filmed in Africa, Vietnam, the United States, and Europe, and many of his films have been short-listed for Academy Awards.
Bouchareb’s first feature, Baton Rouge (1985), tells an ostensibly true story of three Parisian friends who, inspired by the Rolling Stones rock group, decide to emigrate to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The film recounts their adventures until their expulsion by the immigration services. His second film, Cheb (1991), a pointed critique of the French policy of deporting “immigrants” for petty crimes, focuses on Merwan, a 19-year-old beur who has been expelled from France and forced to return to Algeria, where he was born, but where he now finds the language and customs quite alien. The Algerian authorities confiscate his passport and enroll him in mandatory military service—in the desert—where other soldiers constantly remind him of his foreignness. Swapping passports with a Frenchman he encounters, he reenters France but is conscripted once again into army service. In Little Senegal (2000), Alloune, a tour guide in a museum to the notorious slave island Gorée, traces the path of his ancestors, who were sold into North American slavery, to Harlem, United States, where he discovers Ida, a forceful kiosk owner who has no interest in her African roots.
Bouchareb’s interest in the North African experience abroad is continued
