Arab Modernism as World Cinema

Arab Modernism as World Cinema explores the radically beautiful films of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi, demonstrating the importance of Moroccan and Arab film cultures in histories of world cinema. Addressing the legacy of the Nahda or Arab Renaissance of the nineteenth and early twentieth centurywhen Arab writers and artists reenergized Arab culture by engaging with other languages and societiesPeter Limbrick argues that Smihis films take up the spirit of the Nahda for a new age. Examining Smihis oeuvre, which enacts an exchange of images and ideas between Arab and non-Arab cultures, Limbrick rethinks the relation of Arab cinema to modernism and further engages debates about the use of modernist forms by filmmakers in the Global South. This original study offers new routes for thinking about world cinema and modernism in the Middle East and North Africa, and about Arab cinema in the world.