1st Edition

Cinema in Muslim Societies

Edited By Ali Ahmad Copyright 2016
    182 Pages
    by Routledge

    182 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book collates a comprehensive range of fascinating essays by leading authors on film from across the Muslim world. Responding to political and theoretical misconceptions about Islam and Muslim culture, it covers North African, Arab and Asian cinemas in a rich series of industry histories, single film studies and detailed analyses of celebrated directors. Cinema in Muslim Societies is innovative and timely in its explicit engagement with vexing questions of Islamic aesthetics, political activism, socialism and the role of women in Muslim contexts.

    The authors explore a wide variety of topics, from cinematic art and poetry to religious identity and pornography. Debated extensively at a programme of public talks and screenings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 2011, this volume remains supremely relevant in a world of polarising identities and political violence engulfing Muslim societies and the West.

    This book was originally published as a special issue of Third Text.

    Foreword Iftikhar Dadi

    Preface Ali Nobil Ahmad

    1. Introduction: Is There a Muslim World? Ali Nobil Ahmad

    2. Paradise Delayed: With Hany Abu-Assad in Palestine Hamid Dabashi

    3. Two Theses on the Afghan Woman: Samira and Hana Makhmalbaf Filming Agheleh Farahmand Haim Bresheeth

    4. From Resistance and Bearing Witness to the Power of the Fantastical: Icons and Symbols in Palestinian Poetry and Cinema Rasha Salti

    5. Between Socialism and Sufism: Islam in the Films of Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty David Murphy

    6. The Poetic Vision of Nacer Khemir Roy Armes

    7. ‘Framed Patterns of Infinity’: Takva, a Mortal Individual’s Fight for Becoming-Imperceptible Serazer Pekerman

    8. Women in Turkish Cinema: Their Presence and Absence as Images and as Image-Makers Gönül Dönmez-Colin

    9. Innovation and Tradition in Indonesian Cinema David Hanan

    10. I am Crazy about the Lord: The Muslim Devotional Genre in Hindi Film Rachel Dwyer

    11. Cut-Pieces as Stag Film: Bangladeshi Pornography in Action Cinema Lotte Hoek

    12. From Zinda Laash to Zibahkhana: Violence and Horror in Pakistani Cinema Ali Khan and Ali Nobil Ahmad

    Biography

    Ali Nobil Ahmad is a Fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin, Germany, and Assistant Professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. He is a former editorial board member of the journal Third Text. In 2011, he co-curated Winds of Change, a programme of film screenings and talks about cinema and the Arab Spring at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, UK.