Cinema in the Arab World: New Histories, New Approaches

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.

Philippe Meers is Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He has published widely on historical and contemporary film cultures and audiences in journals including Screen and Media and Culture & Society. He is co-editor of Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies (2011), Audiences, Cinema and Modernity: New Perspectives on European Cinema History (2012), The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History (2019) and Memory Studies (2017).

Daniel Biltereyst is Professor in Film and Media Studies at the Department of Communication Studies, Ghent University, Belgium. He is the co-editor of books including Explorations in New Cinema History (2011), Cinema, Audiences and Modernity (2012), Silencing Cinema: Film Censorship around the World (2013), Moralizing Cinema: Film, Catholicism and Power (2015), and The Routledge Companion to New Cinema Audiences (2019).

Ifdal Elsaket is assistant-director of Arabic and Middle East Studies at the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, Egypt. Her research on the cinema in Egypt has appeared in Arab Studies Journal and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. She is working on a manuscript about the cinema in Egypt from 1896-1952.