This three-part program aims to map the largely unknown heritage of personal, artistic, and sometimes experimental cinema from the Arab world. In the 1960s, galvanized by a broader global vanguard of countercultural experimentation in poetry, literature, and theater, filmmakers began to craft a language and form that broke away from established conventions and commercial considerations, ultimately clearing the ground for boldly subjective cinematic expressions. Much of the inventive, daring, and formally challenging filmmaking at work today in the Arab world has its roots-both acknowledged and not-in this pioneering drive to experiment with narrative, representation, and the production of images.
This first installment of Mapping Subjectivity is organized in clusters that reflect thematic and aesthetic kinship rather than considerations of chronology and geography, specifically highlighting intangible connections and conversations between works. Showcasing thematic areas that can loosely be described asMummies, Memories, and Mischief, these films and videos-which hail from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Syria-range from acclaimed masterworks to the rare and recently rediscovered. Together, they are sure to inspire new ways of thinking about and appreciating modernity in art and cinema from the Arab world. All films are in Arabic with English subtitles, unless otherwise noted.
For more information on film screenings, please visit: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1115.
28 October 2010-22 November 2010
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019
