MER Article Nasrallah, On Boys, Girls and the Veil Yousry Nasrallah’s new documentary film, On Boys, Girls and the Veil, touches on a paradoxical aspect of Egyptian filmmaking. Despite the ubiquitous hijab -- the neo-Islamic “veil” -- in Egyptian life, covered women are quite rare in the cinema. The reason for this is that both filmmakers and Islami Walter Armbrust • 6 min read
MER Article Bezness Nouri Bouzid, Bezness (1992). What happens when a poor Arab country with a high birth rate, an enormous youth population and endemic unemployment bases a significant part of its development strategy on attracting European tourism? In Nouri Bouzid’s film, Bezness, the Tunisian coastal town of Souss Garay Menicucci • 5 min read
MER Article Terrorism, Class and Democracy in Egypt During April 1994, armed actions of the radical Islamist opposition in Egypt achieved a new level of lethal efficiency. One Gama‘a Islamiyya (Islamic Group) hit squad killed Maj. Gen. Ra’uf Khayrat, who was responsible for conducting undercover operations against them; another assassinated the chief Joel Beinin • 5 min read
MER Article Gender in Hollywood's Orient From its very beginning, Western cinema has been fascinated with the mystique of the Orient. Whether in the form of pseudo-Egyptian movie palaces, Biblical spectaculars, or the fondness for “Oriental” settings, Western cinema has returned time and again to the scene of the Orient. [1] Generally thes Ella Shohat • 10 min read
MER Article Constructing a Cinema of the City Turkey’s much vaunted “return to democracy” suffered an embarrassingly visible setback at last year’s Istanbul International Filmdays when censors banned four of the 92 films invited for the foreign section: three on grounds of obscenity and a fourth -- Georgian filmmaker Tenguiz Abouladze’s 1968 cl Miriam Rosen • 8 min read
MER Article Gaza Ghetto Pea Holmquist, Joan Mandell and Pierre Bjorklund, Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian Family, 1948-1984 (Icarus Films, 1984). Taline Voskeritchian • 4 min read
MER Article Van den Berg, Stranger at Home Rudolf van den Berg, Stranger at Home (1985). It is no small compliment to say that Stranger at Home is a film you want to see more than once (and should). Over the years -- 19 to be precise -- Palestine documentaries have become a veritable genre, but with few exceptions, they have hardly become a Miriam Rosen • 6 min read
MER Article Document: The Mind of the Censor Gaza Ghetto, a documentary film about a Palestinian family in the occupied Gaza Strip by MERIP editor Joan Mandell and Swedish filmmakers Pea Holmquist and Pierre Bjorklund, premiered in Stockholm in November 1984. In January 1985, a Palestinian theater company in Jerusalem, El-Hakawati, purchased a (Author not identified) • 4 min read
Arab Cinema in Exile The smiling young actor posed on the cover of Cinematographe magazine this summer is Tunisian-born ‘Abd el-Kechich, star of ‘Abd el-Krim Bahloul’s 1984 film, Thé a la Menthe (Mint Tea). Jeune Cinema, meanwhile, is featuring Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, whose personalized retelling of the Frenc Miriam Rosen • 12 min read
MER Article Gitai, Field Diary Amos Gitai, Field Diary (1984). Rarely has the cinema verité technique, with its false naiveté, been deployed so strategically as in Field Diary. It looks as if it could have been made by your little brother with the family toy camera, and it is even hard to credit filmmaker Amos Gitai with the ear Pat Aufderheide • 5 min read
MER Article Hanna K. and Farah H. Michel Khleifi, The Fertile Memory (Marisa Films, 1980). Costa-Gavras, Hanna K. (Universal Studios, 1983). I didn’t make this film to judge, but to transmit the diversity of attitudes. And also, because I can’t forget that as children my brothers and I had to steal fruits and vegetables in order t Miriam Rosen • 9 min read
