By: Fedal Hanoun / Arab America Contributing Writer The globe has historically benefited greatly from the intellectual, artistic, and cultural contributions made by the Middle East. A thriving generation of artists and filmmakers from the area has surfaced in recent decades, drawing attention from all over the world with their examinations of modernity, identity, and … Continued
n today’s highly politicized identity discussions around media, representation, and visibility within the arena of the Western entertainment industry valorized as the official and universal vessel of meaning-making, it is refreshing how unconcerned prolific filmmaker Terrence Malick (of Lebanese and Assyrian heritage through his father) is of the politics of identity markers. The calls for re-imagining Arab American representation in media are warranted after decades of fetishizing, otherizing, and villainizing.
This is the eighteenth in Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series includes personalities from entertainment, business, sports, science, academia, journalism, and politics, among other areas. Arab America contributing writer, John Mason, highlights our seventeenth pathbreaker, Cherien Dabis. A Palestinian American, she was born in Omaha, Nebraska, her physician father being of Palestinian descent and her mother from Salt, Jordan. She is a critically acclaimed and award winning Palestinian American film and television director, writer, and actor dedicated to telling complex authentic stories about under and misrepresented communities.
By: Norah Soufraji / Arab America Contributing Writer This year, a number of Arab filmmakers made their international debuts at the 79th Annual Venice International Film Festival, which ended this weekend. This stunning selection included films from Algeria, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq offering an eclectic mix that deals with such themes as immigration, … Continued
BY: Amr El-Bayoumi / Arab America Contributing Writer Despite my ongoing commitment to avoid perpetuating demeaning depictions and narratives of Arabs and Muslims (or any other group of people for that matter), I have encountered these stereotypes and distorted narratives regularly as an actor. To name just a few of the 19th and 20th-century precursors … Continued
By: Anthony Bayyouk / Arab America Contributing Writer Introduction: Did you know about the amount of Arab-Americans in the production and film industry? The Middle East has a long history of entertainment from the Egyptian singer-songwriter umm Kulthum to the current Lebanese singer Fairuz. There has never been a dull moment in Middle East entertainment. … Continued
SOURCE: COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW BY: JACKIE SPINNER A still from Assia Boundaoui’s film, The Feeling of Being Watched. Courtesy of Assia Boundaoui. GROWING UP, ASSIA BOUNDAOUI felt like she was being watched. She wasn’t the only one. Just about everyone she knew in her Arab-American community of Bridgeview, just south of Chicago, suspected that the … Continued
By: Ashlie Stevens Source: 89.3 WFPL Mike Elsherif is a filmmaker living in Louisville who’s best known for his 2013 film “City Strays.” Recently, he was awarded the the 2018 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship in film by the Kentucky Arts Council. Elsherif will be using the funds from the fellowship to produce his next … Continued
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