Reorienting the Middle East : film and digital media where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean meet / edited by Dale Hudson and Alia Yunis.
Introduction : Interconnecting Histories and Migrating Cultures / Dale Hudson and Alia Yunis -- Area Studies and Its Afterlives : Perspectives from the Gulf / Nelida Fuccaro -- Petrocolonial Genealogies of Cinema in the Gulf / Firat Oruc -- Interview with Ammar Al Attar on Cinemas in the UAE Exhibition / Ammar Al Attar and Dale Hudson -- Audible Love : Letter Songs, Vocal Letters, and the Aurality of Love across the Indian Ocean / Bindu Menon -- Ultimate Slaves in the Dead Zone : Blackness in Iranian Sacred Defense Cinema / Parisa Vaziri -- Dreams for Sale or the Challenges of Representing 1980s UAE through the Lens of Malayalam Cinema / Sebastian Thejus Cherian -- Transnational Coproductions and Questions of International Festival Films from Saudi Arabia and Oman / Karolina Ginalska -- Import-Re-Export : Reconsidering the Film Festival as a Port Economy / Kay Dickinson -- Peeking behind the Curtain : Gulf Filmmakers Imagine the Lives of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the Arabian Peninsula / Suzi Mirgani -- Reorienting the Gaze : Emirati Women behind the Camera / Chrysavgi Papagianni -- Arabia's Ambivalent Auteur : Meshal Al-Jaser's Cinematic Vision for the New Saudi Arabia / Sean Foley -- Covering Critiques : Film and New Media Artwork in the UAE / Elizabeth Derderian -- The Gulf between Students : The First Decade of the Gulf's Longest-Running Film Festival / Alia Yunis and Sascha Ritter.
Summary:
"Stories of cutting-edge production facilities, generous tax incentives, and lavish film festivals often dominate perceptions of film and digital media on the Arabian Peninsula, but there is a much longer and more complicated history that connects it with the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. In Reorienting the Middle East, contributors consider oil companies that brought film to this area in the 1930s and '40s, the first Indian film produced on the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1970s, Blackness in Iranian films, the role of Western funding in reshaping stories, Dubai's emergence in global film production, uses of online platforms for performance art, the evolution of film festivals and cinemas, and short citizen-made films that critique racism and sexism perpetrated against migrants from Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Just as the Gulf is a fluid space where film and digital media reflect long-standing connections among the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, Reorienting the Middle East offers a way to analyze the oft-forgotten spaces between regions and disciplines and challenges the definition of film in the Middle East"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.