Najeh Hassan.. The map of Arab cinema and its stakes
There have been many studies on the history of Arab cinema during the past century, and new currents and trends emerged among its makers, and the elements of production, whether governmental or independent, developed, as well as its presence as an actor and expression of social, political and cultural changes.
A scene whose extension is not limited to the time dimension, or the disparities between one country and another, but rather to an accelerated technical development, especially in the last two decades, as explained by the Jordanian researcher Najeh Hassan in his book “Arab Cinema… Spectra and Dreams,” which was recently published by “Now Publishers and Distributors.”
The author says in his introduction that “there is a lot of similarity in the cases of the Arab film industry, in which countries that were absent for many years from the cinematic scene experienced, but today are at the forefront of the scene with achievements and aspirations. About educating and activating cinematic knowledge in terms of organizing festivals of a regional and international format, as in the Gulf countries (UAE, Qatar and Oman), or in terms of the emergence of young names who presented films in international festivals, as is the case with Jordanian cinema.
The book points to a lot of similarities in the cases of the film industry in Arab countries that have been absent for many years
Hassan enumerates the most important features of the cinematic map in most Arab countries, but he draws attention to the Egyptian cinema, where local theater shows still dominate the format of that model that it has been presenting for decades, while different Egyptian films have succeeded in achieving it by a group of its most prominent creators. It takes place in a closed circle of marginalization and oblivion, and faces rejection from moviegoers, as well as from those in charge of production institutions that follow the private sector, unlike what is in the films of those new young directors, in which Arab cinemas are almost limited to their works that are limited in imagination and talent, and are full of elements of clowning. And lightness and “al-ifihat” accompanying repetitive dialogue sentences.
The first chapter deals with ideas and methods of renewal and innovation, creativity concerns, reality transformations, and visual preoccupations in the new Arab cinema, while the second chapter reviews topics of expressions of literature, music, and popular heritage in the lenses of Jordanian filmmakers, and a view of the Jordanian feature film “Joy” by director Darine Salam, and samples of films that reflect the image of Women in the Jordanian film industry.
The third chapter includes articles related to Palestinian cinema and its makers, namely: “Jerusalem in the eyes of the seventh art, between the dramatic epic and the documentary scene”; and “Three female directors from Palestine… dramatic and aesthetic visions that dive into the worlds of cinematic creativity”; and “The Aesthetics of Creativity in Rashid Masharawi’s Cinema”; and “Our House We Don’t Walk To” by Darren Albo; And “The Time That Remains” by Elia Suleiman and “3000 Nights” by Mai Al-Masry.
The fourth chapter discusses the reality of Syrian cinema in the films of Abd al-Latif Abd al-Hamid, Raymond Boutros and Ghassan Shmit. The fifth chapter also deals with the Lebanese cinema and the romantic dimension in the films of Al-Rahbanah and Fayrouz, aesthetic visions and human ideas within propositions between experiment and reality, and readings regarding the manifestations and manifestations of creative visions in a number of the movies.
As for the sixth, it dealt with Iraqi cinema through two topics; The first of them is that the majority of the productions of the Iraqi feature film, which is governed by its subordination to the public sector, relies on the texts of a number of stories, novels and plays in Iraqi literature, while the second topic talks regarding Iraqi films that examined the difficult conditions of Iraq and its people, while the seventh chapter is devoted to the film industry in a number of Arab Gulf countries.
The eighth chapter focused on topics related to Egyptian cinema, including the first experimental attempt in Egyptian cinema by mentioned Thabet, a reading of the films of director Dawood Abdel Sayed and director Mahmoud Suleiman, and readings of the films “The Yacoubian Building”, “The Jungle”, “Egypt Time” and “Cousins”. The ninth chapter also reviewed the Tunisian cinema and the most prominent filmmakers and directors and their experiences, including Abdel Latif Ben Ammar, Nouri Bouzid and Fadel Al Jaziri.
The book concludes with the tenth chapters, which contain topics and models from Algerian cinema, and the eleventh, which examines Moroccan cinema, with readings with views of examples of films, visions, trends, and intellectual and visual treatments in the Algerian and Moroccan cinema industry.
