Description
An exploration of filmmaking from the Arab world and Iran, addressing the complex relationship between crisis and creativity in cinema.
About the Author
Shohini Chaudhuri is a Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex, UK. Her main research and teaching area is World Cinema, with particular interests in film and human rights, film-philosophy, feminist and postcolonial theory. Her work develops transnational and comparative frameworks to explore links between different film cultures. She is the author of Cinema of the Dark Side: Atrocity and the Ethics of Film Spectatorship (2014), Feminist Film Theorists (2006) and Contemporary World Cinema (2005).
Reviews
Crisis Cinema in the Middle East is an absolute tour de force. Chaudhuri's account of the dynamics of creativity and constraint in Iranian and Middle Eastern filmmaking offers deep and compelling insights into the nature of freedom of expression. Engagingly written and theoretically astute, this is, quite simply, one of the best books I have read in a very long time. -- Mette Hjort, University of Lincoln, UK
Shohini Chaudhuri masterfully captures the complex and paradoxical relationship between the notion of creativity and various constraints filmmakers face in Iran and the Arab world. This book offers a fresh and unique study of filmmaking practices across the region from production to distribution organised in nine chapters, each representing a creative solution these filmmakers have employed considering those constraints. This is an essential reading for anyone interested in cinema of the region and an important contribution to global and transnational cinema studies in general. -- Maryam Ghorbankarimi, Lancaster University, UK
Elegantly written and highly informed, Chaudhuri's book first expands our understanding of the immense constraints - political, social, economical - facing Iranian and Arab filmmakers to quickly transcend them through meticulous examinations into an incredibly wide array of creative responses and strategies. A must-read in Middle Eastern Film Studies! -- Viola Shafik, Head of Studies of the Middle Eastern and North African Programme Documentary Campus, Egypt.
Book Information
ISBN 9781350190511
Author Shohini Chaudhuri
Format Hardback
Page Count 328
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC