Site Presented By
Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
Middle Eastern cinema provides a rich and complex look at a region that has suddenly moved to center stage.
Oct 9, 2001 | As our government performs a delicate political ballet in the Middle East -- with a generous role for cruise missiles -- Americans struggle to take in the dimly-lit setting. Ever since the Sept. 11 attacks, basic questions -- Who are these people? How do they live? What is Islam? Why do they hate us? -- have remained largely unanswered, in part because the only satisfying explanations will come from other average citizens, struggling with their own traumas, halfway around the world.
We have information about the Middle East, but we lack stories. There are stacks of books, reams of newspaper articles, hours of Christiane Amanpour to be devoured, but these resources rarely tend to the minutiae; they fail to bring any visceral understanding of life in places whose politics confuse or frighten us.
There is, however, a well of information about the people, culture and history of the Middle East, related in what is arguably the most immediate form: film. The cinema of this region is extraordinarily rich, with intelligent, beautiful, heartbreaking and terrifying films from countries like Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, and Israel.
These movies tell the stories of these places, shed light on private life -- in the street and under the mantle of Islam -- despite heavy government censorship and restricted distribution. A recurring theme is the division between the characters in the films and the often restrictive governments and religious regimes under which they live -- a rupture that is crucial to understanding the human undercurrent of our current crisis.
"What's missing with all the reports we get on TV, is that yes, there's turmoil and anger, but there's also so much sweetness and innocence and beauty in the culture," says John Sinno, president of Arab Film Distribution. "Arab cinema is really a great way to understand the complexities and subtleties of the Middle East. Arab filmmakers have tried very hard to raise issues -- they are there, but they haven't really gotten the distribution they deserve."
Some of the best Middle Eastern cinema comes from Iran, Israel and Egypt, all of which have a long histories of filmmaking. Countries with strong French influences, such as Lebanon, Tunisia and Algeria, also stand out. Films from these countries have been winning awards at international film festivals like Cannes for years, but they get little recognition in the United States. In the rest of the Middle East, though, including Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, filmmaking is rare, often because of economic or religious reasons.
"Arabian countries are suffering from extreme poverty; filmmaking is not a possibility in Afghanistan or Iraq because of economic restriction," Jamsheed Akrami, a professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey and director of the documentary "Friendly Persuasion," about the history of Iranian cinema. "In Saudi Arabia and Kuwait you have a different set of restrictions -- Islamic-based moral restrictions, [which prevent] filmmaking. In Syria, there is filmmaking talent, but because the Syrian people are more interested in foreign films than Syrian films, you don't see domestic films becoming popular."
Even films that do get made and enjoy some film festival successes lack a significant or diverse audience. Not only are they missing from the shelves of the local Blockbuster, they are not widely shown in their home countries. "I'm sure that films are made, that great films are even made there. The problem is that there is a very tenuous and difficult network to navigate to see films from and about the Middle East," says Ray Privett, coordinator of Facets Video Collection. "Connections between people in these countries are complicated, and filmmakers have to go through rigorous censorship processes that vary from country to country."
