Arab modernism as world cinema : the films of Moumen Smihi / Peter Limbrick

Includes filmography, bibliographical references and index

Introduction: Moumen Smihi, world cinema, Arab modernism
Radical realities
"The voice of the Arabs"
"Kan ya makan . . . :" : Intertextuality and Arab modernism
Religion and modernity
Situating desire

The career of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi (b. 1945) spans nearly fifty years yet, like so many important Arab filmmakers, his films are not well-known in the Anglophone world. Limbrick's book, the first extensive study of his work, places Smihi within the context of Moroccan, Arab, and world cinema, revealing how the filmmaker creates a traffic of images and ideas between Arab and non-Arab cinemas and cultures. In tracing other Arab experiments with modernism, the book considers the historical phenomenon of the Nahda, the "Arab Renaissance" of the nineteenth and early-twentieth century, when Arab writers and artists re-energized Arab culture by engaging with other languages and societies, especially Europe. Showing how Smihi takes up the challenge and the spirit of the Nahda for a new age, Limbrick argues that we can't understand the importance of Arab film to global cinematic modernisms without reference to Smihi's radically beautiful work. Arab Modernism as World Cinema continues the project of rethinking the relation of Arab thought and culture to modernity and provides new routes for understanding cinematic modernism in the Middle East and North Africa as integral to world cinema.