Cinema in the Arab World: New Histories, New Approaches (World Cinema)

"Cinema in the Arab world has been the subject of varied and rigorous studies, but most have focused on films as text, providing in-depth analyses of plot, style, ideologies, or examination of the biographies of prominent directors or actors. This innovative new volume shifts the focus on Arab cinema off-screen, to examine the histories, politics, and conditions of distribution, exhibition, and cinema-going in the Arab world. Through broadening the frame of study beyond the screen, the book widens understanding of the cinema, not merely as a collection of films-as-texts, but as a site of cultural and political contestation in the Arab world. Divided into two sections, and guided by interdisciplinary considerations, the contributors examine historical and contemporary issues of Arab cinema in terms of the experience of movie-going and filmmaking. They examine the networks of distribution and exhibition, as well as the contested and multiple meanings that the cinema embodied through diverse historical periods and geographical locations. Part I focuses on new histories of Arab cinema in terms of film production, distribution, exhibition and audience's experiences of cinema-going. Part II deals with more recent issues within scholarship on Arab cinema such as issues of politics, economics, ideologies, as well as issues related to Arab movies' international circulation and screenings at festivals. Together, the chapters enrich our understanding of the cinema in the Arab world, showing how deeply embedded it is within its social, political, and economic contexts."-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 6 Illustrations 8 Contributors 10 Acknowledgements 15 Note on transliteration 16 Introduction: New histories and approaches to cinema in the Arab world 18 Part I: Arab cinema histories: Distribution, exhibition and audiences 42 Chapter 1: Misr abroad: Trading Egyptian films in colonial Maghreb 44 Chapter 2: ‘Le Roi du Cinéma’: Joseph Seibarras and North African film exhibition, 1925–45 63 Chapter 3: Access for the Axis: The battle for ideological supremacy on Middle Eastern, North African and Turkish cinema screens between 1933 and 1945 79 Chapter 4: Egyptian women’s empowerment and early cinema-going 99 Chapter 5: Anti-colonial masculinity, the Catholic Film Center and the screening of religious difference in 1950s Egypt: The multiple lives of Husayn Sidqi’s Night of Power 110 Chapter 6: Bollywood film traffic: Shaping routes for Hindi films in the Arab world, 1954–2014 138 Chapter 7: The business of cinemas in Ismailia with a case study of Ghweba Cinema: An interview with Abbas Ghweba and Tareq Ghweba 151 Chapter 8: Cinema-going in Egypt in the long 1960s: Oral histories of pleasure and leisure 167 Part II: Contemporary issues of circulation, experience and memory 192 Chapter 9: Film distribution and exhibition in Tunisia since 2011: Is cinema-going back in style? 194 Chapter 10: Gatekeepers or facilitators?: MAD Solutions and other film distribution networks for Arab cinema 212 Chapter 11: A new online cinema audience?: An interview on Aflamuna with Jad Abi Khalil 228 Chapter 12: A taste for cinema: Saudi Arabia’s mediated transitional public film culture 237 Chapter 13: The multifunctional cinema exhibition space at the turn of the century: A dialogue 261 Chapter 14: The visual nation: Film, soft power and Egypt as a community of spectators 271 Bibliography 294 Index 312 Dieser innovative neue Band verschiebt den Fokus auf das arabische Kino außerhalb der Leinwand, um die Geschichte, Politik und Bedingungen des Vertriebs, der Ausstellung und des Kinobesuchs in der arabischen Welt zu untersuchen. Durch die Erweiterung des Studienrahmens über die Leinwand hinaus erweitert das Buch das Verständnis des Kinos nicht nur als Sammlung von Filmen als Texte, sondern als Ort kultureller und politischer Auseinandersetzungen in der arabischen Welt