Ten Arab Filmmakers Political Dissent and Social Critique [Hardcover]

Ten Arab Filmmakers provides an up-to-date overview of the best of Arab cinema, offering studies of leading directors and in-depth analyses of their most important films. The filmmakers profiled here represent principal national cinemas of the Arab worldAlgeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Syria. Although they have produced many of the regions most-renowned films and gained recognition at major international festivals, with few exceptions these filmmakers have received little critical attention. All ten share a concern with giving image and voice to people struggling against authoritarian regimes, patriarchal traditions, or religious fundamentalismtheirs is a cin?ma engag?.

The featured directors are Daoud Abd El-Sayed, Merzak Allouache, Nabil Ayouch, Youssef Chahine, Mohamed Chouikh, Michel Khleifi, Nabil Maleh, Yousry Nasrallah, Jocelyne Saab, and Elia Suleiman.

Gugler has done an admirable job taking the reader on a complex but passionate journey through the work of ten Arab fi lmmakers.Illustrated with arresting stills and superbly edited, this volume is sharp, incisive, and thought provoking. . . . Essential.This volume offers perceptive essays on ten filmmakers from the Arab world, covering a wide span of countries and representing older as well as younger generations. Free of academic jargon and notable for their general accessibility, the essays, by authors from a variety of disciplines, provide biographies of the directors, characterize their dominant interests, themes, and aesthetic concerns, and closely examine individual films. The collection greatly enriches our understanding of the strains and tensions within individual countries and across the region, helping us appreciate the complexity of the regions filmmaking context and the regions immense cultural vitality.[A] welcome addition to the scholarship on Arab film. . . . [I]ncludes a rich and well selected mix of important directors from across the region [and offers] an alã)