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Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt
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Book Presentation:
Explores the formative years of Egyptian cinema (1919–52) to contest the contradiction between Islam and innovation
• Discusses over 30 feature films, drawing on English and Arabic archival material including records of the British Foreign Office, the Egyptian National Archive, diaries of filmmakers and film censors, magazines and newspapers, and Islamic legal opinions on theatre and cinema
• Sets out a dialogic and innovative approach to studying modernity and Islam as interdependent lived experiences
• Steps outside the Orientalist formalist approach, which subjects subaltern cinema to the Hollywood standards of film language
• Writes a compelling account of Egyptian cinema as creative imagination and an Islamic popular culture shaped by Muslims and Non-Muslims
This book studies the rise of cinema in colonial Egypt as a supplemental secular public sphere that is not anti-religion. To this end, it investigates the reception of film by three centres of powers: the colonial authorities, the Muslim clergy and the Cairene bourgeoisie. It inquires about the representations of modernity in films produced during the time and the place filmmakers assigned to Islam in these representations. The result is a story of survival and coexistence told through the lens of cinema as modern art and popular culture negotiating its overt and covert censorship in the public sphere, despite colonisation and war.
About the Author:
Dr. Heba Arafa Abdelfattah graduated from Georgetown University in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies in 2017. Her research interests fall within the interdisciplinary area of humanities focusing on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of art as articulated in Arabic and Islamic thought in all its expressions(from the 7th to the 21st centuries). She works with sacred scripture, literary texts, archival documents, films, and other forms of artistic and cultural production to understand creative experiences at the intersection of discourses of modernity and religious mores. Her articles appeared in such peer-reviewed journals as Religions, Review of Middle East Studies, International Journal of Communication, and the Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies (JIMS). Dr. Abdelfattah served as visiting assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Sacred Music and a lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. She has been an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities at Grinnell College since 2022.
Press Reviews:
Heba Abdelfattah’s fascinating book shows how different interest groups, ranging from British colonizers to conservative religious scholars and progressive urban elites, tried to make the emerging Egyptian film industry work for them. This is a masterful analysis of how their interactions shaped the new media of cinema and its discourse on modernity and on Islam.– Frank Griffel, Yale University
Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the Egyptian cinema in its engagement with dominant socio-political forces; Islamic institutions, colonialism and the Cairene nationalist bourgeoisie. Heba Afara Abdelfattah’s work is a much-needed contribution, richly researched and intellectually engaging.– Hanan Hammad, Texas Christian University
Abdelfattah takes Arabic cinema studies in daring new directions, challenging – as do so many of the classic movies she covers – frozen critical framings of social class, faith, national identity and, above all, what it meant to be ‘modern’ in colonial Egypt. This book will compel us to re-view so many of our favourite films.– Joel Gordon, Revolutionary Melodrama
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
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