program description

Paraphrasing Assata Shakur’s dictum “a woman’s place is in the struggle,” this program of films by and about women in the Middle East is meant to foreground their place on the frontlines of political struggles, past and present. Often faced with a dual form of oppression, within and without their societies, women in the Middle East have had to confront the orientalist paternalism that frames them as helpless victims to be rescued. The films in this program are an antidote to this enduring stereotype, showcasing the many ways in which struggles have been articulated by Arab women against colonial occupation, patriarchal and economic exploitation. Unimpressed by the publicized promises of The West and its brand of duplicitous “freedom,” the emancipatory projects and urges these films document and stage are not meant to legitimize one system over another, but to undermine the very structure of oppression altogether. Though concerned with specific forms of coercion, historically and geographically situated, these films evoke a will to generalized liberation that ultimately transcend their contingencies.

about the curator

Giovanni Vimercati is a film critic and scholar whose work, often under the pseudonym Celluloid Liberation Front, has appeared in Cinema Scope, Film Comment, MUBI Notebook, The Guardian, Journal Safar, Sight and Sound, Times Literary Supplement, Film Quarterly, The Independent, Variety, New Statesman, Filmmaker Magazine, Vashti Media, Reverse Shot, The Brooklyn Rail, The New Arab, Rusted Radishes, and others. He earned a BA in film studies at the London Metropolitan University, received a BA in media studies at the American University of Beirut, and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of California. Parallel to his academic career, he has worked in the film industry for almost two decades, in a variety of positions. He is currently working on a book on the political economy of film distribution in midcentury Lebanon.