Screen Seminars at Glasgow

Speaker: Dr Stefanie Van de Peer, University of St Andrews
Date/Time: 6 Nov 2013, 12-2pm
Venue: Room 217A, Gilmorehill Centre, University of Glasgow
Title: Women making Documentaries in the Arab World

Filmmaking in the Middle East is often a matter of idealism and activism, especially in the case of women documentary makers. In spite of harsh censorship, conservative morals and a lack of investment, women have found ways of subtly negotiating dissidence in their films, something that is coming to light very clearly since the ‘Arab Revolutions’. In this talk I will introduce the aesthetic and ethic practices by the very first women making documentaries in the Middle East.
A historical overview of the struggles by women making documentaries will be supported by images and clips taken from documentaries by the pioneering women of Arab documentary making, e.g. Jocelyne Saab (Lebanon), Ateyyat El Abnoudy (Egypt), Selma Baccar (Tunisia) and Assia Djebar (Algeria).
Assisted with illustrations, the talk first looks briefly at the traditional roles of women in cinema, as enchanting actresses on screen or assistants behind the scenes. While this reveals well-known stereotypes, it also shows that women have, from the very start of cinema, been central to the developments of the art form, as producers, editors and writers.
The second part of the talk will argue that the pioneering documentary making women have been unduly neglected because of these stereotypical audience expectations. The documentaries under discussion show a preoccupation with the dissident role of women in a conservative society, which makes some of the films outspoken feminist statements, even though the term ‘feminist’ is despised by many Arab women. The films play with the meaning and power of the concept of ‘representation’, and experiment with permissibility: how far can they go in critiquing their political leaders, or how do they go about outsmarting the censor?

Bio
Dr Stefanie Van de Peer is the Research Coordinator of the Centre for Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. Prior to that, she was a Research Fellow at Winchester School of Art and at the Five Colleges Women's Studies Research Centre in Massachusetts. She is specialised in postcolonial film theory and trauma theory, and researches women making films in the Arab World. She has published about women and film in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Syria and Lebanon. She also directed Africa in Motion Film Festival until 2011, has collaborated with the Middle East Film Festival in Edinburgh, REEL Festival in Damascus and Beirut, and with the Boston Palestine Film Festival.