"Ten Arab Filmmakers provides an up-to-date overview of the best of Arab cinema, offering studies of leading directors and in-depth analyses of their most important films. The filmmakers profiled here represent principal national cinemas of the Arab world―Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestin ... e, and Syria. Although they have produced many of the region's most-renowned films and gained recognition at major international festivals, with few exceptions these filmmakers have received little critical attention. All ten share a concern with giving image and voice to people struggling against authoritarian regimes, patriarchal traditions, or religious fundamentalism―theirs is a cinéma engagé. The featured directors are Daoud Abd El-Sayed, Merzak Allouache, Nabil Ayouch, Youssef Chahine, Mohamed Chouikh, Michel Khleifi, Nabil Maleh, Yousry Nasrallah, Jocelyne Saab, and Elia Suleiman." (Publisher description) more

"This book, via an analysis of cinema, provides a discussion on some misunderstandings and assumptions about Algeria, which remains to a large extent underrepresented or misrepresented in the UK media. It is about Algerian national cinema and illuminates the ways in which the official mythologising ... of a national culture at the 'centre' of the postcolonial state has marginalised the diverse identities within the nation. 'Tahia ya didou' occupies a pivotal position between fiction and documentary, capturing the hectic modernization of the Boumediene era while reflecting back on the aftermath of historical trauma. 'La Citadelle presents' gender differences as culturally engrained and patriarchal power as secure. 'Youcef', 'Bab El-Oued City' and 'Rome plutôt que vous' present differing visions of how a Freudian melancholia in the shadow of a crushed revolt might relate to Algerian experience after Black October. 'Lettre à ma soeur' listens to the voices of the subaltern; the film is a sense of re-emergence that follows the initial insurgency of Nabila's activism, the trauma of her killing and the subsequent years of silence and self-imposed incarceration. more