Representations of Palestine in Egyptian Cinema: Politics of (In)visibility

by Claire Begbie, Terri Ginsberg (Editor), Chris Lippard (Editor)

Overview

Representations of Palestine in Egyptian Cinema: Politics of (In)visibility traces how Egyptian cinema has represented Palestine across three paradigmatic moments in modern Egyptian history: in the years around the 1952 Revolution, which saw Egypt’s transition from monarchy to republic; in the wake of the 1967 Defeat, which signaled the end of Nasser’s pan-Arabist project; and around the turn of the twenty-first century, at which point Egypt had not only normalized relations with Israel but integrated into the neoliberal capitalist economy. Integrating textual analysis with politico-historical contextualization, the book investigates Egypt’s popular commitment and changing foreign policy toward the Palestinian issue, arguing that varied allegorical figurations of Palestine in Egyptian cinema appear as critical reactions to the political status quo. To this end, the book’s chapters analyze, respectively, generic conventions of melodrama, social realism, and transnational cinema, all in relation to their conditions of production—commercial, state-sponsored, and transnationally funded. The book offers a critical reconsideration of an important but largely neglected body of films on a struggle which persists until today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433188404
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	08/30/2023
Series:	Cinema and Media Cultures in the Middle East , #1
Pages:	122
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 8.86(h) x (d)

About the Author

Claire Begbie is a Ph.D. student in Film and Moving Image Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research interests include Palestine in Arab and transnational cinema, transnational approaches to film and media, and cultural histories of the Cold War era. She was recently Visiting Instructor in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at The American University in Cairo, where she earned an M.A. in Middle East Studies.

Table of Contents

List of Figures – Preface – Acknowledgments – List of Abbreviations – Introduction – The Emergence of Palestine in the Egyptian Melodrama – Resisting the Limits of Egyptian Cinema: Pan-Arab Representation of Palestine – Egyptian Cinema in a Transnational Context: Neoliberalism and Palestine Solidarity Cinema – Conclusion – Filmography – Bibliography – Index.