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Film in the Middle East and North Africa: Creative Dissidence Josef Gugler, ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011. h/bk 383 pages. ISBN: 978-0292737563.
This is a much-welcomed addition to the study of cinema in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet, the volume does more than this, as it also offers important lessons for scholars of national, regional, and world cinema in general. Although the volume explores films from many different countries, the editor, Josef Gugler, identifies common themes that run through most of them. In particular, the book consistently emphasizes films that were either screened at Western film festivals, or could have been screened at such international venues. However, as the contributors hail from different disciplines, the essays in the volume can be read to satisfy various interests, and some could also be used in undergraduate-level courses on world cinema, area studies, and culture studies. The volume is divided into nine parts, dedicated to nine national cinemas. Each consists of one essay and several case studies (or only one, in the cases of Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco), and in-depth analyses of exemplary films.
The first chapter, on the cinema of Iran, opens with an essay by Eric Egan, "Regime Critics Confront Censorship in Iranian Cinema." The essay introduces the cinema of Iran in light of various legal restrictions, from its inception to the 21st century. Egan demonstrates how cinema culture has responded to political changes, different censorship rules, and governmental obstruction. Most importantly, however, he also discusses issues bound up with production, domestic distribution, and even exhibition of nonIranian films in the country. While some attention is also given to popular Iranian films unknown in the West, it is scant. For example, Egon mentions the critical work of the "genre-oriented engagé films of the late 1990s," (47) only in passing.
In the second chapter, which opens with the essay, "Tolerated Parodies of Politics in Syrian Cinema," Lisa Wedeen looks at a lesser-known national cinema. She too describes various censorship mechanisms in detail and how several films responded to them throughout the history of filmmaking in Syria. However, unlike the first...