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1. Revisiting Gaza Ghetto

Author:
Shifaa Alsairafi
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
Abstract:
Gathering for Alarba’een, a day of remembrance when mourners come together on the 40th day after the death of a loved one or prominent figure, is a common practice in much of the Arab world. The 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking film Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian Family, 1948-84, which was co-directed by CCAS Professor Joan Mandell and was the first documentary produced about Gaza, was accompanied by a similarly solemn tone—not only because the neighborhoods depicted in the film have been destroyed since the documentary was released in 1984 but also because the situation in Gaza has grown exponentially worse in recent decades. Gaza Ghetto is set in Jabalia, which—along with the entire Gaza Strip—came under Israeli occupation following the 1967 war, and by the 1980s had become home to the largest refugee camp in the occupied Palestinian territories. Mandell and her co-directors chose Jabalia as the primary site for the documentary not only because of its size and historical importance, but also because of her familiarity with many intellectuals and artists living there who could narrate their story. “Jabalia had a vibrant life of arts and activism, and many people who wanted to share it,” recalls Mandell. Although the film includes interviews with many Jabalia residents, its producers decided to center the story around an individual family so that they could document daily life under occupation. They ultimately selected the family of Abu el-Adel because of the family’s openness and ability to articulate their own experiences as part of a collective story. Indeed, the personal stories narrated by Abu el-Adel, his daughter Itidhal and son-in-law Mustafa, were representative of the tragedies facing thousands of Palestinians and the mass dispossession forced upon them by the Israeli state. Mandell recalls that Itidhal and her daughter Ra’ida—both strong female figures—were a major reason she was drawn to portray this family. The film opens with Itidhal confronting the Israeli settlers who live in a town that displaced her father’s village and includes scenes of Itidhal caring for her six children while husband Mustafa works the nightshift, as well as sharing the story of how her mother died in childbirth when Israeli soldiers would not allow an ambulance to reach her during a camp lockdown.
Topic:
Human Rights, History, Film, Atrocities, and Documentary
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and Jabalia

2. Raising the Alarm: Climate Activism in North Africa

Author:
Moussa Sall, Intissar Fakir, Hajar Khamlichi, Thowaba Ben Slema, and Houssem Hamdi
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
Across the MENA region, civil society plays a key role in putting climate on the agenda for governments and the private sector. How are activists and advocates in North Africa building momentum in their communities and globally to address climate change? How can social media, film, and art bridge gaps and create a global demand for greater sustainability? Intissar Fakir will be joined in conversation with leading figures in the fight for climate action in North Africa.
Topic:
Civil Society, Climate Change, Arts, Social Media, Film, and Sustainability
Political Geography:
Middle East and North Africa

3. The Fauda Effect: Israeli Active Defense on the Screen

Author:
Asaf Romirowsky
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Strategically, Israel’s fundamental military premise is defensive but its tactics are offensive—a result of its geography and absence of territorial depth. Israeli decision-making has always been driven by the active defense ethos, and this is reflected in Israeli filmmaking and TV-making.
Topic:
Military Strategy, Culture, Media, Film, and Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, and Palestine

4. Diplomacy and the Art of Storytelling

Author:
Isabel Roemer
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
Abstract:
A MAAS grad’s work at the intersection of diplomacy and cinematic arts is shaping American narratives and empowering storytellers around the globe. When people think about the tools of diplomatic engagement, narrative storytelling is not one that usually comes to mind. But for Rachel Gandin Mark, Program Director of the American Film Showcase (ASF)—the State Department’s film, television, and digital diplomacy program —the two go hand-in-hand. “I love thinking about how to incorporate entertainment, particularly story and character, into specific foreign policy strategies,” says Gandin Mark, who graduated from MAAS in 2003. “Some of our country’s biggest diplomatic challenges today stem from conflicting global narratives. Film and TV, when produced with authenticity and nuance, have the potential to complicate narratives and reveal a shared human experience.”
Topic:
Diplomacy, Culture, Media, and Film
Political Geography:
Middle East, North America, and United States of America

5. The Hero’s Wife: The Depiction of Female Holocaust Survivors in Israeli Cinema Prior to the Eichmann Trial and in its Aftermath

Author:
Liat Steir-Livny
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Polish Political Science Yearbook
Institution:
Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
Abstract:
Israeli culture in the 1940s and 1950s was dominated by ideological consider- ations. Zionist films, as other aspects of Eretz-Israel and Israeli culture, distinctively propa- gated Zionist ideas. As a consequence of their sociopolitical focus, these films neglected the complexities of the relationship between Holocaust survivors and the native Jews in Eretz- Israel. Instead, Holocaust survivors were reduced to a homogeneous entity that bore distinct negative connotations. Films depicted female Holocaust survivors as mentally unstable, unfit mothers, and often played up negative sexual stereotypes. In these films, the women were “cured” or went through a process of “purification” thanks to the Zionist establishment. Historical research often cites the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961) as being a turning point in the Israeli public’s perception of the Holocaust, and its representation in Israeli culture. This article will focus on an analysis of the film The Hero’s Wife (Peter Frye, 1963) that was produced in the aftermath of the trial. It will discuss the innovative representations of this unresearched film, and will seek to answer the questions of why, and in what way, its narra- tive comprises a subversive antithesis to the narrative shaped by Zionist fiction films made prior to the Eichmann trial.
Topic:
Culture, Media, Film, Zionism, Holocaust, Psychology, and Stereotypes
Political Geography:
Middle East and Israel

6. Reshaping Dominant Narratives through Film

Author:
Isabel Roemer
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
Abstract:
Three MAAS grads share how careers in documentary filmmaking have enabled them to give voice to untold stories and reshape dominant narratives.
Topic:
Arts, Culture, Film, and Higher Education
Political Geography:
Middle East, Arab Countries, and United States of America

7. Lens on Palestine: Stitching Palestine discussion with Nusayba Hammad

Author:
Nusayba Hammad
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
The Middle East Institute's Arts and Culture program is proud to present a documentary series highlighting the voices of Palestinian women in collaboration with Filmlab: Palestine. Twelve resilient, determined and articulate Palestinian women speak about their lives, memories and identities before their exile. Their narratives are connected by the enduring thread of the Palestinian tradition of embroidery, directed by Carol Mansour. A conversation with Nusayba Hammad, managing director of the D.C. Palestinian Film and Arts Festival, on Emwas and Stitching Palestine followed the screening.
Topic:
Arts, Women, Film, and Material Culture
Political Geography:
Middle East, Palestine, and United States of America

8. Lens on Palestine: The Judge discussion with Lama Abu-Odeh

Author:
Lama Abu-Odeh
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
The Middle East Institute's Arts and Culture program is proud to present a documentary series highlighting the voices of Palestinian women in collaboration with Filmlab: Palestine and the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Directed by Erika Cohn, The Judge chronicles the struggle of Kholoud Al-Faqih, who became the first woman judge to be appointed to the Middle East's Shari'a (Islamic law) courts.The film was followed by a conversation with Lama Abu-Odeh.
Topic:
Islam, Women, Film, and Courts
Political Geography:
Middle East and Palestine

9. Lens on Palestine: Speed Sisters discussion with Rhana Natour

Author:
Rhana Natour
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
The Middle East Institute's Arts and Culture program is proud to present a documentary series highlighting the voices of Palestinian women in collaboration with Filmlab: Palestine and the Foundation for Middle East Peace. Directed by Amber Fares, Speed Sisters is a documentary follows the first all-female Palestinian car racing team and explores the social issues surrounding their career. The film was followed by a conversation with assistant producer Rhana Natour.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Women, Sports, and Film
Political Geography:
Middle East and Palestine

10. ARAB STUDIES JOURNAL VOL. XXV, NO. 2

Author:
Ifdal Elsaket, Suhad Daher-Nashif, Nisa Ari, Tamer ElGindi, Manfred Sing, Nader Atassi, Sophia Azeb, Deen Sharp, Nicholas Simcik Arese, Charles Anderson, Kristi N. Barnwell, and Charles Wilkins
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Arab Studies Journal
Institution:
Arab Studies Institute
Abstract:
In this issue, we are proud to feature a series of groundbreaking interventions. Ifdal Elsaket explores anti-Blackness in Egypt through the genre of “jungle flms.” She lays bare the racial and imperial fantasies that informed these flms’ popularity. Elsaket exposes a process of racialization through which Egyptians positioned themselves as superior and modern, at a time when Egypt’s claims to Sudan took on a greater urgency and Blackness marked otherness. Tis deeply engrained vision of Africa as a place of inferiority would continue to infect flm and visual culture long afer decolonization. Suhad Daher-Nashif interrogates the national-civic service which has successfully targeted young Palestinian women who are citizens in Israel. Her ethnographic study carefully details the complex web of considerations, interests, and strategies that shape the national-civic service as a “trapped escape.” Women’s participation in the service reveals the mutually constitutive nature of Israeli colonial and Palestinian social structures. By showing how women use a colonial apparatus to escape patriarchal norms DaherNashif rethinks Palestinian experience in Israel as well as the imposition of and resistance to gender norms more broadly. Nisa Ari explores the interaction between local and foreign artistic communities in early twentieth century Palestine. She focuses on the work of Palestinian artist Nicoal Saig (1863-1942) who copied photographs that the American Colony Photo Department (ACPD) produced. Te relationship between Saig and the ACPD, Ari shows, reveals a multidirectional artistic exchange between local and foreign. She uncovers a world in which a diverse group of artistic agents employed diferent practices, produced and sold religious representations and object, and formed a vibrant economic market in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Palestine. Tamer ElGindi tackles the World Bank’s assessment of the massive uprisings that rocked Egypt and Tunisia as “puzzles,” given both countries’ achievements in poverty rates, access to education, child and maternal mortality, and infrastructure services. Trough a close reading of various inequality measures from the developmentalist era of Gamal Abdel Nasser to the subsequent neoliberal eras of Anwar al-Sadat and Husni Mubarak, ElGindi shows that macroeconomic improvements never “trickled down.” Energy and food subsidy systems in particular benefted the wealthiest instead of targeting the needy. He urges for a comprehensive understanding and measurement (of the monetary and the non-monetary) as a prerequisite to understanding and ameliorating inequality. Manfred Sing revisits the wave of Arab social criticism that marked intellectual life afer the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Trough a careful rereading of fve intellectuals Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm, Yasin al-Hafz, Mustafa Hijazi, Nawal El Saadawi, and Hisham Sharabi, Sing traces the normative shif in Marxist thought away from a critique of capitalist society and towards theorizing the absence or failure of revolutionary mass movements. Following neither the admirers of Arab criticism nor their countercritics, Sing maps a social criticism that was timely, provocative, polemic, disenchanted, and marred by heuristic fallacies. Tis issue also features the usual robust array of book reviews.
Topic:
Race, History, Arts, Socialism/Marxism, Women, Inequality, Film, and Intellectual History
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, North Africa, and Egypt