Sensuous Cinema: The Body in Contemporary Maghrebi Film examines a cluster of recent films that feature Maghrebi(-French) people and position corporeality as a site through which subjectivity and self-other relations are constituted and experienced. These films are set in and between the countries of the Maghreb, France and, to a lesser degree, Switzerland, and often adopt a sensual aesthetic that prioritizes embodied knowledge, the interrelation of the senses and the material realities of emotional experience. However, despite the importance of the body in these films, no study to date has taken corporeality as its primary point of concern.
This new addition to the Thinking Cinema series interweaves corporeal phenomenology with theological and feminist scholarship on the body from the Maghreb and the Middle East to examine how Maghrebi(-French) people of different genders, ethnicities, sexualities, ages and classes have been represented corporeally in contemporary Maghrebi and French cinemas. Via detailed textual and phenomenological analyses of films such as Red Satin (Amari 2002), Exiles (Gatlif 2004), Couscous (Kechiche 2007) and Salvation Army (Taïa 2014), Kaya Hayon Davies conveys the pivotal role that corporeality plays in articulating identity and the emotions in these films.
Author(s): Kaya Davies Hayon
Series: Thinking Cinema
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 192
City: London
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
A note on terminology
The body in contemporary Maghrebi(-French) cinemas
From transnationalism to transvergence: Situating Maghrebi(-French) cinemas
Understanding embodiment: Phenomenology, Islamic mysticism and feminist (film) theory
A note on chapter structure and corpus selection
Notes
Chapter 2: The Materiality of Exile
Introduction
‘Je suis une étrangère de partout’: The material realities of exile in Tony Gatlif’s Exils
Physical displacement and corporeal alienation in Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche’s Bled Number One
Embodied encounters in Mehdi Charef’s La Fille de Keltoum
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 3: Dance, Performance and the Moving Body
Introduction
From exoticism to empowerment: Belly dance in Arab culture
From the cabaret to the silver screen: Images of belly dance in cinema
Trance and the spiritual body
Representations of belly dance and trance in contemporary Maghrebi and French cinemas
Resistance and reinvention in Raja Amari’s Satin rouge
Reclaiming the belly dancing body in Abdellatif Kechiche’s La Graine et le mulet
Embodying the intercultural encounter: The Sufi trance scene in Tony Gatlif’s Exils
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 4: Embodying Islam
Women, gender and the body in early Islamic discourse
Islamic family law in the countries of the Maghreb
The female body in Islamic culture and tradition
Islam and the veil: (Un)covering the female body
Embodying religious oppression: Women in contemporary Maghrebi cinema
Subverting spiritualism in Yasmine Kassari’s L’Enfant endormi
Veiled desires in Aziz Salmy’s Amours voilées
‘Tu es une femme, un tabou, un corps interdit’: Uncovering Tunisian women’s bodies in Nouri Bouzid’s Millefeuille
Veiling in Tunisia: A contested history
Gender, secularism and the body in Millefeuille
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 5: Queer Desires in the Maghreb and France
Introduction
Divergent sexual practices, the Qur’an and the Muslim nation-state today
Queer Arab cinemas
Corporeal alienation and sexual exploitation in Abdellah Taïa’s L’Armée du salut
Sexual and spatial (re-)orientations in Rémi Lange’s Tarik el hob
Embodying queer sexual citizenship: Amal Bedjaoui’s Un fils
Sexual citizenship in France
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 6: Conclusion
Bibliography
Filmography
Index
