Women in Middle Eastern Film - Part One

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Critical debates around women and gender politics in the Middle East are increasing and increasingly stimulating. This is particularly due to the expanding interaction between scholars’, critics’ and filmmakers’ writings and works from Western perspectives and from within Middle Eastern countries. This dialogue between the East and the West is also the centre of attention as far as writings on World Cinema and gender politics are concerned. There is growing interest in the cinema of countries far beyond Hollywood and away from Europe, both in geographical and metaphorical terms.

It is clear that in producing works about their own cultures, narratives and societies or their views on the West, filmmakers from the Middle East have never been so successful. Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s success with Three Monkeys in 2009 and Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s achievement with Copie Conforme at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival are good cases in point. Hollywood, then, may have been the carrier of ideologies and images of the East, but with the increased number of films produced from within Middle Eastern countries and/or filmmakers of that origin, previously absent images are now present. It is for this reason that focusing on Middle Eastern film in general, and women in it in particular, is significant. As far as ideas about transnational cinema and effects of globalisation on cinema are concerned, filmic representation is affected too. With more films from the East, and with more women directing them, change is inevitable: the existing and stereotypical images are shaken up as images of women of the Middle East originating from the East travel around the world.

Contemporary films from Middle Eastern countries build and reflect upon the plurality of thought and the potential offered by cultural exchange with and by women, films and cultures brought together within this spatial configuration. There seems to be three recurring themes central to the discussion of women in Middle Eastern film: the relationship between women and Islam; the concept of violence that resonates across multiple layers of reference (physical, emotional, political, economic, clandestine, sexual, military); and finally the idea of presence and absence both at the representational level on the screen and in regard to the existing and emerging women filmmakers.

Honour killings, women’s chastity, adultery, virginity and sex are topics which have a considerable impact upon women’s lives and experiences in countries where Islamic patriarchal regimes exist. There are certain expectations in the West about approaches to women in the Middle East informed by religion. Islam and tradition, in this sense, are depicted in film as the reasons for women’s oppression, as well as being presented as topics of criticism – particularly in films that have a feminist standpoint. A good example of this is Shirin Neshat’s 2009 film Women without Men, which offers a view of Iran in 1953, when a British- and American-backed coup removed the democratically elected government. Adapted from the novel by Iranian author Shahrnush Parsipur, the film weaves together the stories of four women, whose experiences are shaped by their faith and the social structures of a patriarchal regime. Neshat explores: “the social, political, and psychological dimensions of her characters as they meet in a metaphorical garden, where they can exist and reflect while the complex intellectual and religious forces shaping their world linger in the air around them.”3 Alternatively, take Eran Riklis’ Lemon Tree of 2008, the story of a Palestinian widow who must defend her lemon tree field when a new Israeli Defence Minister moves next to her and threatens to have her lemon grove torn down. The vulnerability of a widow, and the land as embodied within the woman’s body, is the focus of the film. Another film that is worth considering here is Syrian filmmaker Diana El-Jeiroudi’s Dolls (2007), produced by Proaction Films, the only independent film production company in Syria that is in operation today. This documentary film explores the significance of the ‘Fulla Doll’, the veiled version of the American Barbie doll, whilst at the same time asking questions about women’s identity and their place in a society where Islam is the dominant religion. As Shohreh Jandaghian’s interview with the director states: “With her first feature documentary, Dolls, El-Jeiroudi attempts to reveal a trend towards the commercial appropriation of a female model that limits the mind, soul and body of a young generation, into one approved set of social and religious frame of choice.” [...]




[*] Parts of this blog entry has been published in Near East Quarterly, Issue 1, 2010. http://www.neareastquarterly.com/index.php/2010/08/04/representations-and-or-interpretations-women-in-middle-eastern-film/