Arab Modernism As World Cinema : The Films of Moumen Smihi

__Arab Modernism as World Cinema__ explores the radically beautiful films of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi, demonstrating the importance of Moroccan and Arab film cultures in histories of world cinema. Addressing the legacy of the Nahda or “Arab Renaissance” of the nineteenth and early twentieth century—when Arab writers and artists reenergized Arab culture by engaging with other languages and societies—Peter Limbrick argues that Smihi’s films take up the spirit of the Nahda for a new age. Examining Smihi’s oeuvre, which enacts an exchange of images and ideas between Arab and non-Arab cultures, Limbrick rethinks the relation of Arab cinema to modernism and further engages debates about the use of modernist forms by filmmakers in the Global South. This original study offers new routes for thinking about world cinema and modernism in the Middle East and North Africa, and about Arab cinema in the world. "The career of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi (b. 1945) spans nearly fifty years yet, like so many important Arab filmmakers, his films are not well-known in the Anglophone world. Limbrick's book, the first extensive study of his work, places Smihi within the context of Moroccan, Arab, and world cinema, revealing how the filmmaker creates a traffic of images and ideas between Arab and non-Arab cinemas and cultures. In tracing other Arab experiments with modernism, the book considers the historical phenomenon of the Nahda, the "Arab Renaissance" of the nineteenth and early-twentieth century, when Arab writers and artists re-energized Arab culture by engaging with other languages and societies, especially Europe. Showing how Smihi takes up the challenge and the spirit of the Nahda for a new age, Limbrick argues that we can't understand the importance of Arab film to global cinematic modernisms without reference to Smihi's radically beautiful work. Arab Modernism as World Cinema continues the project of rethinking the relation of Arab thought and culture to modernity and provides new routes for understanding cinematic modernism in the Middle East and North Africa as integral to world cinema"-- Provided by publisher Arab Modernism as World Cinema explores the radically beautiful films of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi, demonstrating the importance of Moroccan and Arab film cultures in histories of world cinema. Addressing the legacy of the Nahda or “Arab Renaissance” of the nineteenth and early twentieth century—when Arab writers and artists reenergized Arab culture by engaging with other languages and societies—Peter Limbrick argues that Smihi’s films take up the spirit of the Nahda for a new age. Examining Smihi’s oeuvre, which enacts an exchange of images and ideas between Arab and non-Arab cultures, Limbrick rethinks the relation of Arab cinema to modernism and further engages debates about the use of modernist forms by filmmakers in the Global South. This original study offers new routes for thinking about world cinema and modernism in the Middle East and North Africa, and about Arab cinema in the world.