Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity
"Shafik discusses the history, genres, and esthetics of Arab film. She is very good at analyzing its antecedents in Arab literary, theatrical, storytelling, and musical traditions. She gives broad coverage to typical genres and is particularly good on realism and the cinema d auteur. Although Shafik focuses on Egyptian films, which comprise well more than half of all Arab films made, she discusses the films of the other Arab nations as well, delineating the differences and similarities among them. The author devotes the preponderance of the book to the films themselves, but she is also thorough in her analysis of the conditions political, religious, economic that determine what films are made, how they are made, and where they are seen. The book was first published in 1998; for this edition, Shafik updates the history, discussing in detail some of the seminal films of the last decade. Intelligent, perceptive, and elegantly written, this volume deserves a broad readership. SUMMING UP: Highly recommended. All readers, all levels." --CHOICE, Current Reviews for Academic Libraries