FILM329W

Students will take a close look at how different aspects of identity personal, communal, gendered, religious, national, urban, and so on are articulated in contemporary Middle Eastern cinemas. We will examine a number of genres, including auteur cinema, such as Yousself Chahine's, Elia Souleiman's and Bahman Ghobadi's; urban film genre; minority cinema, i.e. films that became representative of identity discourses in minority communities, such as Coptic and Kurdish; and other cinematic genres. We will also explore celebrity culture in the Middle East. All course materials are in English.