According to a recent report in the daily newspaper New York Times2016 has been a significant year for films from the Middle East at Cannes, which suggests that they will triumph at other smaller festivals and, more importantly, secure distribution in cinemas around the world. The Iranian Asghar Farhadidirector of the magnificent About Eli y Nader and Simin, a separation'.competed for the Palme d'Or and finally won the prize for best screenplay for his latest work The client (Forushade), who also won the Award for Best Male Performance for Shahab Hosseini. The film tells the story of a group of young amateur actors who take part in a production of Arthur Miller's play. Death of a traveller. Farhadi's next film will be shot in Spain and will feature actors Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem.
The renowned 'Un Certain Regard' section at Cannes also featured several productions from the region. It was opened by the Egyptian screenwriter Mohamed Diab with his second film as director The Clash (Eshtebak) about the triumph and fall of the Egyptian revolution. His directorial debut, Cairo 678The film, a bold and original portrayal of sexual harassment of women in the Egyptian capital, is considered to be the most awarded film in the country's recent history. The also Iranian Behnam Behzadi presented his film Investment (Varoonegi), which tells the story of a young tailor shop owner whose brothers want to force her to move to the countryside to take care of her lung-sick mother, who cannot tolerate the pollution of Tehran. Two Israeli films also participated in this section. On the one hand, the latest film by screenwriter and director Eran Kolirin, 'Beyond the mountains and hills'. (Me'ever Laharim Vehagvaot), about a man's difficulties in joining civilian life after 27 years in the army. Kolirin already gained international recognition with his debut film The band visits usa sensitive and at times hilarious story about an Egyptian police brass band that travels to Israel to play at the opening of an Arab cultural centre, but ends up lost in a forgotten village in Israel. The director Maha Haj also presented his first foray into the world of cinema, Personal Affairs (Omor Shakhsiya), inspired by her experience as a Palestinian living in Israel, tells the story of an Arab-Israeli couple from Nazareth worried about their unmarried son living on the other side of the wall in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Finally, two other films from this region were selected to participate in the Cannes Critics' Week, which showcases the first and second works of emerging directors: One Week and a Day of the Israeli Asaph Polonsky y Tramontane by the Lebanese director Vatche Boulghourjian.
The large presence of Middle Eastern productions at one of the world's biggest film industry events is not, however, representative of the reality of the region, where it is still difficult to speak of a film industry as such and distribution depends largely on the hybrid nature of the productions, which are easier to show in markets outside the region when they are European or American co-productions. In fact, in recent years, the appearance of films from this region at this same festival has been rather scarce and irregular.
In this context, the Three Cultures of the Mediterranean Foundation has, since its creation, carried out an intense work to contribute to to raise awareness of film production in the Middle East and North Africa. For an institution dedicated to the promotion of knowledge of these regions, especially through culture, cinema can only occupy a prominent place in the achievement of this objective, as a vehicle for the transmission of a country's culture and society. With this aim in mind, the Tuesday Cinemaa programme through which the Fundación Tres Culturas promotes the production of this geographical area in sessions that take place every Tuesday throughout the year. The Fundación Tres Culturas also cooperates with other entities and initiatives related to the cinematographic field, such as the Seville European Film Festival which takes place in November and with which Tres Culturas collaborates in the promotion of works from the Middle East and North Africa.
This week's 'Reflections' brings together some articles and academic works that offer a detailed analysis of the film scene in the region and that will allow the reader to obtain a detailed vision of the subject, as well as numerous references to filmmakers and their productions that will serve to explore and delve deeper into a panorama that is as fertile as it is unknown.
Article: 'Arab cinema today: trends and challenges'. By Viola Shafik. Magazine culturesnumber 2, Youth in the Arab world.
The film director Viola Shafikauthor of the work Arab Cinema: History and Cultural IdentityThe film production in the Middle East and North Africa since the mid-1990s. The region as a whole suffers from certain common shortcomings in this area, such as a weak market for film distribution, weak infrastructures for the promotion of local industries, and little support from national television stations for film production in their countries, which has led to an over-reliance on external funding, more specifically from Western Europe. This latter aspect has had an impact on the themes addressed by filmmakers in the region, who are sometimes more concerned with adapting to the tastes and demands of their sponsors than with satisfying local audiences. Thus arises the dichotomy between auteur cinema and popular cinema that is at the heart of the current problem of Arab filmmaking.
However, in recent years, the application of new technologies to the field of cinema has had a remarkable impact in the region, allowing access to filmmaking by young filmmakers. In countries such as Lebanon and Egypt, the new electronic and digital media have led to the emergence of independent, avant-garde and critical currents and the development of new concepts that challenge the status quo, encouraging the alternative production of short films and documentaries, even in the Gulf countries, hitherto only consumers of foreign films and productions.
Topics considered taboo, such as homosexuality or transvestism, have been addressed by young creators who have turned to digital video to make fictional films. A new generation of young Arab innovators, such as Nabil Ayouch, Philippe Aractingi, Nadia al-Fani o Elia Suleiman have been able to grasp the importance of contemporary popular culture, questioning 'the paradigms of the art of the intellectuals, the purity of form, stylistic consistency, with a conscious inclusion of 'trivial' elements of global culture that visualises the porosity of culture rather than feigning the existence of stable boundaries'. For Shafik, popular Arab cinema best represents the mixed, impure and globalised realities of the Middle East and North Africa to its audiences. However, these recent individual adventures cannot compensate for the economic difficulties of mainstream film production in the Arab world.
The article, which contains numerous references to Middle Eastern and North African filmmakers and their productions, can be read in full at the following link: http://revistaculturas.org/el-cine-arabe-actual-tendencias-y-retos/
Article: 'Cinema made by women in the Arab world'. By Amal Ramsis. Magazine culturesnumber 5, Art and culture in the Middle East.
Cinema made by women in the Arab world is characterised by the presence of documentaries and the scarcity of fiction, a militant and committed cinema that tries to reflect lesser-known issues. In this article, Amal RamsisEgyptian filmmaker, director, among others, of the documentary film Just Dreams and holder of the Euro-Arab Chair in Arts and Cultures, analyses the context that has had an impact on the characteristics of this production. The biggest change in cinema in the Arab world came with the advent of the digital camera in the late 1990s, which led to the rise of the documentary, a format that makes it possible to break with the schemes of large-scale productions and leap the limits of censorship.
Women have been present in the world of cinema in Arab countries from the beginning as directors, producers, editors, etc., the problem for women being not so much their exclusion from the market, but the difficulty of breaking the rules of commercial cinema in terms of the image it wants to portray of Arab women. Today, the debate on the situation of Arab women seems to focus on two issues: the veil and sexuality, which are represented as the two pillars on which all discrimination against women rests. Although this vision is far from reality, the creative and cinematographic treatment will change depending on the type of cinema and the market each filmmaker opts for, and we find two tendencies within the so-called cinema made by women: fiction and documentary. Opting for one or the other means opting for the market with its laws or not counting on it.
In terms of fiction films made by women, there are two sub-types: the typical commercial film in which women are sex objects for men - the Egyptian filmmaker Al Degheidy would represent this trend - and cinema that has a fairly wide distribution in Europe and European co-production - in this section one can cite Dunia from Jocelyne Saab o Caramel from Nadine LabakiBoth films are Lebanese and co-produced with France, and both deal with the theme of women's sexuality, which is understood by the preferences of the Western market.
The situation changes radically when it comes to documentaries since, despite the extensive production made by women and the fact that they deal with very urgent issues regarding the situation of Arab women, none has achieved the diffusion of films such as 'Dunia' or 'Caramel'. The new generation of women filmmakers represents an innovation in terms of the themes they deal with, probably due to the access to digital cinema which allows them to produce independent works and which focus mainly on political themes in which the starting point is the personal. In this sense, we can mention the following filmmakers Hala Abdallah -I am the one who brings the flowers to my grave'.; Habiba Djahnine - Letter to my sister- o Eliane Raheb -This is Lebanon-.
The article, which contains numerous references to Middle Eastern and North African filmmakers and their productions, can be read in full at the following link: http://revistaculturas.org/el-cine-realizado-por-mujeres-en-el-mundo-arabe-un-acercamiento-sociopolitico/
Turkish cinema. Identity, Distance and Belonging. Gönül Dönmez-Colin (Reaktion Books, 2008)
This compact work offers a detailed analysis of the question of identity in the cinema of Turkey, a country of multiple identities amalgamated by Kemal Atatürk in his attempt to create a nation-state.
The first chapter traces the history of cinema from its introduction into Ottoman Turkey by a Frenchman in 1896 to the present day. The second section, focusing on exile and emigration, examines films that deal with the social and identity changes brought about by migration from the countryside to the city or to other countries. Denied Identities' is the title of the third chapter, which explores Turkish cinema's attitude towards ethnic and minority identities. The renowned director, screenwriter and novelist Yilmaz Güney (1937-1984), winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1982, features in the next episode, which discusses his artistic corpus in detail and relates his output to the 'denied identities' of the previous chapter. The fifth chapter focuses on the representation of gender, sexuality and moral values in Turkish cinema, as well as the presentation of other sexual alternatives. Finally, it looks at new Turkish cinema and the question of identity in a modern world. The book contains a list of directors and films.
Gönül Dönmez-Colin is a specialist in Central Asian and Middle Eastern cinematographies and the author of the works: Women, Islam and Cinema; Cinemas of the Other: A Personal Journey with Filmmakers from the Middle East and Central Asia and editor of The Cinema of North Africa and the Middle East.
Masters & Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema. Hamid Dabashi (Mage Publishers, 2007)
How is it possible for an Islamic Republic to produce so many visionary directors? And what makes this movement great, in any case? What are the origins of this cinema? Who are its representatives and why?...In this book, the author tries to answer these and other questions by focusing on the life and work of twelve of the most important Iranian film directors of the last fifty years. Dabashi analyses the reasons that have led Iranian cinema, despite the censorship imposed both during the Pahlavi monarchy and under the Islamic Republic, to transcend its borders and occupy a prominent place among the world's most prestigious and acclaimed productions. The author also explores the role that prominent film festivals have played in promoting the global success of Iranian cinema and the reception these films have received at home.
Hamid Dabashi is a cultural critic and Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of, among others, the works Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future; Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema; Iran: A People Interrupted.
All the material recommended in this section is available on the website of the Three Cultures of the Mediterranean Foundation (www.tresculturas.org) or in our Specialised Library, which also offers the possibility of collective loans of some of the works mentioned above (for more information: http://www.tresculturas.org/club/PAUTAS.pdf). The opening hours are Monday to Friday from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm and Wednesdays from 4:00 pm to 6:30 pm.
*Featured image by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, licensed under Creative Commons. For more information visit the following link.