Book Reviews / Bustan: The Middle East Book Review () –
Roy Armes, Arab Filmmakers of the Middle East: A Dictionary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ), pp. ISBN ----
Roy Armes, Professor Emeritus of Film at Middlesex University in London, is a prolific author on European and Third World cinema, whose work has been translated into several languages, including French and Hebrew. For the past two decades, he has focused upon African and Arab cinemas, producing seven books since . Among the best known are his highly regarded Postcolonial Images, Studies in North African Film (), African Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara (), and the Dictionary of African Filmmakers ()— all published by Indiana University Press. He has most recently published another ambitious dictionary project with the same press, Arab Filmmakers of the Middle East (), here under review. Like Armes’ earlier books, Arab Filmmakers of the Middle East provides a much needed data-base for a region whose cinematic history, with the notable exception of Egyptian cinema, has been insufficiently studied. Without Egyp- tian filmmakers, classified as African by Armes and treated in the earlier Dic- tionary of African Filmmakers, one might have thought such a database would be sparse indeed, but Armes has been able to document feature films made by filmmakers, to which he added “because filmmaking is so fragmented in this area” a list of documentary and shorts made by more filmmakers, It should be noted though that no less than of them are mostly graduate students from the United Arab Emirates. Many of the films by these Emirati student filmmakers are no more than a few minutes in length (some as short as one or two minutes). The countries examined are Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Pales- tinian Authority, Syria, and the Gulf States, with the most productive nowa- days being Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. All these countries have had a different history, and although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has domi- nated most of it, Armes says they have to be examined one by one. However, after a brief introduction on the history of the area, there is not much writ- ten about each country, except for Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Author- ity. As he states in the prefatory “Note on Layout” (pp. xiii–xiv), this dictionary offers broadly the same kind of information as in the preceding Dictionary of African Filmmakers. Like the latter, it is divided into three parts after the general introduction, “Filmmaking in Divided Lands” (pp. –). This intro- duction tries to give a historical survey of filmmaking for each country. Armes laments the division of the Arab world following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, and echoing Pan-Arab ideology feels that the great opportunity to
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, DOI: 10.1163/187853011X605195 Book Reviews / Bustan: The Middle East Book Review () – unite the Arab world into a single nation was sadly lost (pp. –). The country- by-country historical surveys are rather uneven. For example, Armes simply mentions that “the late s features which did emerge were shot either as co- productions by experienced Egyptian directors or by a Frenchman” and states that “the first feature to claim Iraqi identity is Abdl Khaliq al-Samari’s Regrets ().” Later Iraqi filmography, for political reasons, ignored the feature #Aly¯awa-#I.s¯am, since the script was written by the poet and author Anwar Shaul andthefilmproducedbytheBaghdadStudioforFilmandCinemafounded by Ezra Sawdayee, both Jews. Armes himself only mentions Andre Chotin as director of the film. In this introduction, Armes gives synopses of ten impor- tant films representing these countries, and concludes it with a section called ‘Arab Filmmaking’ which shows the differences between filmmaking in the Maghreb and the Mashreq. He attributes them primarily to the different for- eign schools in which young filmmakers were trained according to the local political and cultural allegiances. For example, the Lebanese, like the North African filmmakers, mostly went to French and European film schools, while other nationals from the Middle East went to Egyptian and Soviet schools with their very different styles and languages. Part One, “Dictionary of Filmmakers” (pp. –) is by far the heftiest. It is an alphabetical index of the filmmakers providing, when available, their date and place of birth, their training and the titles of their movies or other creative activity. The filmmakers’ names in capital letters are only for those who have completed feature films. Part Two, “Feature-Film Chronologies” (pp. –), gives a year-by-year account of feature films produced in each country. The chronological listing for each country is preceded by some general statistics on the country itself, a list of the number of feature films per decade, and an alphabetical listing of the names of feature filmmakers and a separate list for other or short filmmakers. Part Three, “Index of Feature-Film Titles” (pp. –), lists all movie titles in French, English and Arabic. The listing for each title also provides its filmmaker’s name, country of origin and date of production. The designation of country of origin is somewhat confusing. Armes does not take into account where the film was made, or which country provided the funds, but rather only registers the nationality of the director or his/her parents, because he considers ‘Arab’ any filmmaker who was born in the Middle East or to a family of Middle Eastern émigrés in the Diaspora. This, he explains, is because of the common situation of displaced or exiled filmmakers in this region, owing to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the civil war in Lebanon or ruthless political regimes like in Iraq or Syria. For example, while Ziad Doueiri, of Lebanese origin and living abroad, in the United States and in