Gaza on Screen

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Gaza on Screen

edited by Nadia Yaqub

Duke University Press, 2023

ISBNs

Cloth: 978-1-4780-1999-2

Paper: 978-1-4780-2045-5

eISBN: 978-1-4780-9360-2 (OA)

eISBN: 978-1-4780-2457-6 (standard)

About the Book

Gaza’s long association with resistance and humanitarian need has generated a complex and ever shifting range of visual material, comprising not just news reports and documentaries, but also essay, experimental, and fiction films, militant videos, and solidarity images. Contributors to Gaza on Screen, who include scholars and Gazan filmmakers, explore the practice, production, and impact of film and videos from and about the Gaza Strip. Conceptualizing screens—both large and small—as tools for mediation that are laden with power, the volume explores Gazan film and video in relation to humanitarianism and human rights, care, community, environment, mobility and confinement, and decolonization. The volume includes visual material ranging from solidarity broadcasts on Lebanese television, mid-twentieth-century British Pathé newsreels, and fiction films to breaking news, visuals of contemporary militant resistance, documentaries, and found footage films, arguing for a visual ecosystem in which differing types of film and video affect and inform each other. Throughout, Gaza on Screen demonstrates that screens shape and sustain relationships between Gaza and the world, and help to sustain the possibility of a different future.

Contributors. Nayrouz Abu Hatoum, Shahd Abusalama, Samirah Alkassim, Basma Alsharif, Hadeel Assali, Azza El-Hassan, Hatim El-Hibri, Mohamed Jabaly, Ahmed Mansour, Arab Nasser, Tarzan Nasser, Kamran Rastegar, Viviane Saglier, Abdelsalam Shehada, Yaron Shemer, Rebecca L. Stein, Helga Tawil-Souri, Shaira Vadasaria, Nadia Yaqub

About the Author

Nadia Yaqub is Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; author of Pens, Swords, and the Springs of Art: The Oral Poetry Dueling of Palestinian Weddings in the Galilee and Palestinian Cinema in the Days of Revolution; and coeditor of Bad Girls of the Arab World.

Reviews

“Gaza on Screen is a groundbreaking text that considers Gaza filmmaking, cinema, and visual production. Its contributors include key Palestinian, especially Gazan, thinkers and artists. The collection offers original, deeply engaging, and often captivating conversations and analysis.”

-- Frances S. Hasso, author of Buried in the Red Dirt: Race, Reproduction, and Death in Modern Palestine

"In many ways, this book opens up new paths. The emphasis on screens both large and small is innovative and bound to become more important as the Internet and the cloud provide opportunities for Gazans to break out of the blockade, at least in cyberspace. Above all, the book’s contributors argue successfully for new visions of Gaza, ones not defined solely by images of destruction but instead offering steadfast hope, resilient humor, and a firm attachment to place."
-- Inez Hedges Jump Cut

"This collection represents a labour of love amidst intensifying anti-Palestinian racism and a global outcry for Palestinian liberation and self-determination."
-- Joe Garrard Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

"Gaza on Screen is an essential contribution to film and media studies, as well as Middle Eastern studies. It provides a nuanced and comprehensive analysis of Gaza’s representation on screen, offering valuable insights into the power of visual media to shape political narratives and influence public perception."
-- Jarvis Curry Alphaville

"Within a media and political landscape that threatens to silence stories of resilience and solidarity, Gaza on Screen offers a compelling compendium of texts for scholars engaged in studies of visual culture, ethnography, race and ethnicity, and rhetoric."
-- Michael Anthony Turcios Film Quarterly

"The literature on Palestinian film and media is quickly growing, with new monographs appearing regularly. Still, Gaza on Screen clearly ranks at the top of these various offerings."
-- Greg Burris Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication