Reorienting the Middle East - Film and Digital Media Where the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean Meet

Dale Hudson is Associate Professor of Film and New Media at New York University Abu Dhabi. He is author of Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods and (with Patricia R. Zimmermann) of Thinking Through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places.Alia Yunis is a scholar, writer, and filmmaker whose work has focused on negotiations around culture, heritage, and media in the Arab and Islamic worlds and their diaspora. She is currently a research fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC.

"Stories of cutting-edge production facilities, generous tax incentives, and lavish film festivals often dominate perceptions of film and digital media on the Arabian Peninsula, but there is a much longer and more complicated history that connects it with the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. In Reorienting the Middle East, contributors consider oil companies that brought film to this area in the 1930s and '40s, the first Indian film produced on the Arabian Peninsula in the late 1970s, Blackness in Iranian films, the role of Western funding in reshaping stories, Dubai's emergence in global film production, uses of online platforms for performance art, the evolution of film festivals and cinemas, and short citizen-made films that critique racism and sexism perpetrated against migrants from Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Just as the Gulf is a fluid space where film and digital media reflect long-standing connections among the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, Reorienting the Middle East offers a way to analyze the oft-forgotten spaces between regions and disciplines and challenges the definition of film in the Middle East"--

Introduction: Interconnecting Histories and Migrating Cultures, by Dale Hudson and Alia Yunis1. Area Studies and Its Afterlives: Perspectives from the Gulf, by Nelida Fuccaro2. Petrocolonial Genealogies of Cinema in the Gulf, by Firat Oruc3. Interview with Ammar Al Attar on Cinemas in the UAE Exhibition, by Ammar Al Attar and Dale Hudson4. Audible Love: Letter Songs, Vocal Letters, and the Aurality of Love across the Indian Ocean, by Bindu Menon5. Ultimate Slaves in the Dead Zone: Blackness in Iranian Sacred Defense Cinema, by Parisa Vaziri6. Dreams for Sale or the Challenges of Representing UAE through the Lens of Malayalam Cinema, by Sebastian Thejus Cherian7. Transnational Coproductions and Questions of International Festival Films from Saudi Arabia and Oman, by Karolina Ginalska8. Import-Re-Export: Reconsidering the Film Festival as a Port Economy, by Kay Dickinson9. Peeking behind the Curtain: Gulf Filmmakers Imagine the Lives of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the Arabian Peninsula, by Suzi Mirgani10. Reorienting the Gaze: Emirati Women behind the Camera, by Chrysavgi Papagianni11. Arabia's Ambivalent Auteur: Meshal al-Jaser's Cinematic Vision for the New Saudi Arabia, by Sean Foley12. Covering Critiques: Film and New Media Artwork in the UAE, by Elizabeth Derderian13. The Gulf between Students: The First Decade of the Gulf's Longest Running Film Festival, by Alia Yunis and Sascha RitterIndex