Negotiating Dissidence: The Pioneering Women of Arab Documentary

249 Pages·2017·2.424 MB·English

by  Stefanie Van de Peer

Negotiating Dissidence

Negotiating Dissidence
The Pioneering Women of
Arab Documentary
Stefanie Van de Peer
For Richie McCaffery
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© Stefanie Van de Peer, 2017
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The right of Stefanie Van de Peer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted
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Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1 Ateyyat El Abnoudy: Poetic Realism in Egyptian
Documentaries 28
2 Jocelyne Saab: Artistic-Journalistic Documentaries in Lebanese
Times of War 55
3 Selma Baccar: Non-fiction in Tunisia, the Land of Fictions 83
4 Assia Djebar: Algerian Images-son in Experimental
Documentaries 110
5 Mai Masri: Mothering Film-makers in Palestinian
Revolutionary Cinema 140
6 Izza Génini: The Performance of Heritage in Moroccan Music
Documentaries 168
7 Hala Alabdallah Yakoub: Documentary as Poetic Subjective
Experience in Syria 194
Works Cited 225
Index 233
Figures
1.1 The symbiotic relationship between a boy and his goat in The
Sandwich 39
1.2 Aziza and her daughter in Permissible Dreams 44
2.1 Jocelyne Saab writing a letter to a friend, from Letter from
Beirut 77
3.1 A close-up of Fatma’s facial expressions when she listens to
the factory boss, from Fatma 75 106
4.1 Ali framed by the door to Lila’s room in La Nouba 129
5.1 Issa saying he can ‘see’ in Children of Shatila 156
6.1 A close-up of Fatna Bent El Hocine singing in Aita 181
6.2 The girls’ choir in La Nûba d’Or et de Lumière 192
7.1 Fadia’s insecurity in I Am the One Who Brings Flowers to Her
Grave 214
7.2 Rola finding it difficult to bear witness in I Am the One Who
Brings Flowers to Her Grave 215
7.3 Raghida’s anger in close-up in I Am the One Who Brings
Flowers to Her Grave 217
Acknowledgements
Like all books, this is the result of a long gestation period and many years
of thinking and re-thinking. I am indebted to family, friends, colleagues
and mentors for inspiring me, for forgiving the little obsessions and uncer-
tainties, and for indulging my single-mindedness.
First, I want to thank colleagues and mentors David Murphy, Michael
Marten, David Martin-Jones and Elizabeth Ezra. Their guidance and
recommendations were of immense value. I truly treasure their support.
I also thank the anonymous reader, who, through pointed questions, pro-
vided clarity and confidence. I am indebted to the Arts and Humanities
Research Council for funding part of this project, and the Five Colleges
Women’s Studies Research Centre for providing the time and space to
continue to think, discuss and write at a crucial point in my early career.
Second, I am very grateful to the film-makers whose work I discuss
in this book – I have been very lucky to interview some of them. Ateyyat
El Abnoudy is quick and generous; Selma Baccar is formidable as a film-
maker and as a politician; Izza Génini is professional and honest; Jocelyne
Saab is entertaining and forthcoming; and Hala Alabdallah Yakoub has
been very kind and enthusiastic about the project. I feel privileged to have
come across their work. I thank them for making the inspiring films that
they did and for allowing me to ask so many questions.
I also thank my many friends and family members who gracefully
showed an interest: Clare Clements, Lizelle Bisschoff, Ana Grgic,
Jonathan Owen, Allyna Ward, Paige Medlock Johnson, Leen Maes,
Öznur Karaça, Laure Van den Broeck, Malikka Bouaissa, Kathleen Scott,
Philippa Lovatt, Emilie and Valerie Van de Peer, Marjan Weyn, Dirk Van
de Peer, Edmond Weyn, and Mari and Leon. I am immeasurably grateful
to Richie McCaffery, my main source of inspiration for always wanting to
be and do better.

Introduction
Film-making in the Arab world is often a matter of idealism and activism,
especially for women making documentaries. In spite of many practi-
cal and ideological difficulties, women have found ways to supply and
subtly negotiate dissidence into their films. As a result, all films in this
book – whether they are experimental, essayistic or poetic – are political
in nature. I trace the histories of women making documentaries in the
Mediterranean Arab world, and the inspirational political and cultural
statements these pioneers made for their subjects, their spectators and the
documentary-making women who followed in their footsteps.
Pioneers are not always necessarily the first: they are the most sig-
nificant or most influential examples for those who came later. The time
frame with which this book is concerned overs an almost a fifty-year
period, spanning the early 1970s until the 2010s, and the documentary
form has, at several points in this half century in the Arab world (and
elsewhere), been contested, problematised and censored. Likewise, the
positions of women in the societies under discussion have fluctuated
markedly, from relative freedom to increased oppression or vice versa. It
is therefore necessary to look at national circumstances as well as transna-
tional developments in women’s status and in film-making practices in the
Arab world. To make matters even more complex, the term ‘Arab’ poses
problems, in general and in this book, as we look here at countries in the
Middle East and North Africa, not all wholly Arab, while one of the film-
makers is in fact Jewish.
In this book I discuss seven pioneering women documentary makers:
in chronological order I look at Ateyyat El Abnoudy from Egypt, Jocelyne
Saab from Lebanon, Tunisian Selma Baccar, Assia Djebar from Algeria,
Palestinian Mai Masri, Moroccan Izza Génini and Hala Alabdallah
Yakoub from Syria. I call these women ‘pioneers’ for several reasons, most
effectively illustrated perhaps with concrete examples. For instance, while
Izza Génini was not the first documentary maker in Morocco historically