Postcolonial Images Studies in North African Film [Paperback]

Postcolonial Images is a comprehensive introduction to and resource for cinema of the Maghreb. In clear and accessible prose, Roy Armes examines the political and cultural context of the films and the film industry in the post-independence era. Since the birth of cinema, North Africa has been the site of countless European and U.S. film productions. This book, however, focuses on the postcolonial period, when indigenous filmmaking in each of the three Maghreb countriesAlgeria, Morocco, and Tunisiaarose with the newly independent nations. Comparative analyses of each countrys filmmaking in the decades following independence provide a historical portrait of the conditions and environment for the development of a postcolonial cinema. Armes then turns his attention to an in-depth examination of 10 key films produced between the 1970s and the 1990s, including Omar Gatlato, La Nouba, Halfaouine, Silences of the Palace, and Ali Zaoua. The book includes a dictionary of more than 135 North African filmmakers and a chronological filmography.

The book is the product of years of precise, systematic research, which the author deploys in an effective organization that is almost encyclopedic. . . .One of the finest recent studies of national cinemas . . .October 2005. . . Armes's well-researched book provides the reader with a major text on a neglected, important, and vibrant cinema. Vol. 40 2008Roy Armes's new book Postcolonial Images: Studies in North African Cinema provides an extremely useful survey of films from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, as well as films made by filmmakers of the North African diaspora in the postcolonial or politically postIndependence period. . .Hnet, April 2005

Roy Armes is Professor Emeritus of Film at Middlesex University in London. His recent books include Third World Film Making and the West, Arab and African Film Making, Dictionary of North African Film Makers, and Omar Gatlato.

Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
IntroduclC1