Screens and Veils Maghrebi Women's Cinema [Paperback]

Examined within their economic, cultural, and political context, the work of women Maghrebi filmmakers forms a cohesive body of work. Florence Martin examines the intersections of nation and gender in seven films, showing how directors turn around the politics of the gaze as they play with the various meanings of the Arabic term hijab (veil, curtain, screen). Martin analyzes these films on their own theoretical terms, developing the notion of transvergence to examine how Maghrebi womens cinema is flexible, playful, and transgressive in its themes, aesthetics, narratives, and modes of address. These are distinctive films that traverse multiple cultures, both borrowing from and resisting the discourses these cultures propose.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2012Martins Screens and Veils provides a welcome addition to the rapidly expanding field of Maghrebi film studies. . . Martin is at once a creative and complete commentator of films, and her book stands to become a staple for novices and experts of the filmic Maghreb alike.

Overture: Maghrebi Womens Transvergent Cinema
Act I: Transnational Feminist Storytellers: Shahrazad, Assia, and Farida
1. Assia Djebars Transvergent Narrative in The Nuba of the Women of Mount Chenoua (Algeria, 1978)
2. Farida Benlyazids Initiated Audiences in A Door to the Sky (Morocco, 1998)
Act II: Screens & Veils
3. Yamina Bachir-Chouikhs Transvergent Echoes in Rachida (Algeria, 2002)
4. Raja Amaris Screen of the Haptic in Red Satin (Tunisia, 2002)
5. Nadia El Fanis Multiple Screens and Veils in Bedwin Hacker (Tunisia, 2002)
Act III: From Dunyazad to Transvergent Audiences
6. Yasmina Kassaris Burning Screens in The Sleeping Child (Morocco, 2004)
7. Selma Baccars Transvergent Spectatorship in Khochkhach (Tunisia, 2006)
Coda
Appendix A: Political and Cinematic Chronology
Appendix B: Primary Filmography
Bibliography

This book inscribes a new chapter in women filmmakingl,