Meanwhile, an entire genre of feminist Middle Eastern cinema has emerged -- a body of work that graphically depicts womens' struggle against the strict rules of Islam, as well as their rebellion against it. Iran, in particular, has a strong feminist filmmaking movement, which has produced films like "The Day I Became a Woman," "The Hidden Half" and "The Circle."

"These films are probably a direct byproduct of the restrictions that women are subject to in Iranian society, as well as the restrictions that are imposed on their representation in Iranian media," says Akrami. "Iranian filmmakers, men and women, are basically fighting back and making these moving films about women's situation."

"The Circle," which was released earlier this year, tracks the hopeless situation of a half dozen Iranian women, including three who have escaped from jail. One woman desperately wants an abortion but isn't allowed to get one without a man's permission; another mother abandons her daughter because she can't afford to keep her; and a prostitute is arrested for simply being in a car with a strange man. "The Circle," which was banned in Iran, offers a heartbreaking and intimate view of oppression in culture in which a woman can't even buy a bus ticket without a male guardian's help.

The most oppressive Islamic regimes are in countries where there is no film industry whatsoever, such as Afghanistan. Nonetheless, there are numerous documentaries which depict how women fight back when oppressed: "Beneath the Veil" and "Beneath the Borqa," for example, both examine the treatment of women under the Taliban in Afghanistan, where they are forbidden to hold jobs, get an education, or speak to men who are not blood relatives. These films not only manage to show the extent and brutality of the various forms of oppression; they demonstrate how women rebel against the burqa, and use it to conceal anti-government activities -- secretly filming public executions, for example, or running underground women's schools.

Other films explore the choice of some women to embrace fundamentalism. "A Door to the Sky" (1989) by Moroccan feminist director Farida Ben Lyzaid, is a leisurely portrait of Nadia, a Moroccan woman whose father's death forces her to return from her expatriate life in Paris to the buttoned up Muslim customs of her homeland. Nadia returns to Fez with pink hair but is soon wearing a nun-like djellabah, reading the Quran, and turning her father's palace into a Muslim women's shelter. "A Door to the Sky" is a slow-paced meditation on the battle between modernity and the conservative religious roots of the Islamic world's younger generations; unlike the Iranian or Afghan feminist films, however, a women's decision to adopt conservative customs is depicted as her own religious choice.

Films out of the Middle East, like films made in America, cannot be expected to yield the gospel truth about the region or the lives of its citizens. Whether they are fiction or documentaries, the films will always convey the subjective views of the filmmakers, as well as their own versions of life in their home countries. Taken together, however, the work goes a great -- and entertaining -- distance to educate us about a place that looms, confuses and now frightens us.

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