The book is available with 30% off (in the US and Canada only) if you buy from the University of California Press using this link and use this code at checkout: 17M6662
If you’re interested in seeing the films discussed in this book or using them in the classroom, more information is available here.
Reviews
Critical Inquiry: Khalid Lyamlahy reviews Arab Modernism as World Cinema
“Weaving together close film analysis, studies of cinematic techniques, and scholarly engagement with a broad spectrum of interdisciplinary material, Limbrick offers an unprecedented window into Smihi’s “multifaceted and polyphonic” (p. 105) filmography. At the same time, he demonstrates that Arab film culture, when studied in its global ramifications and affinities, reveals an inner complexity that resists systematic and univocal readings, and invites to rethink Arab modernism as a dynamic and multidimensional concept.”
“The book’s great strength lies in its theoretical and methodological proposition to rethink intellectual and cinematic genealogies beyond both the postcolonial paradigm of a Western, imperialist influence on Oriental thought and the fantasy of an Arab modernity completely detached from transnational conversations with the West.”
Please contact me if you can’t access the review.
Interviews with the author about the book:
“Peter Limbrick: Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi.” Interview with online Arab cultural magazine, Jadaliyya, July 13, 2020.
Tarek Elhaik. “Cogitations #4: Interview with Peter Limbrick, Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi.” Anthropology of the Image Lab and KDVS 90.3, UC Davis.
Praise for the book:
“Smihi’s gorgeous, multivocal, and politically sophisticated films are too little known to world cinema enthusiasts and students of Arab modernism. In this beautifully written and compelling book, Limbrick shows why the Tangier filmmaker’s oeuvre deserves our extended attention. Curatorial, biographical, and critical at once, this book forces us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about postcolonial cinema and Moroccan modernism.” Brian T. Edwards, Tulane University, author of After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East
“This is a truly extraordinary book: gorgeously written, richly researched and contextualized, and generous on every page to the great cineaste Moumen Smihi and to the reader. Limbrick brings Smihi the accord he has long been due, showing that his films, by drawing voices religious and secular, Arab and Western into convivial encounters, embody the ecumenical spirit of the nahda.” Laura U. Marks, author of Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image
“In this well-researched and compelling volume, Peter Limbrick reveals the intellectual, political, and artistic energies of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi. Complementing the book’s focus on authorship is a complex analysis of a wide range of Arab and non-Arab films, taking us beyond national cinema frameworks to a rich study of cinematic intertextuality and modernist translocality.” Viola Shafik, author of Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity
“This book will change the way scholars approach the history of Arab cinema and of global modernism more generally.” Tarek El-Ariss, Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies, Dartmouth College