Volume 21, Issue 1 (1999) Middle Eastern Films Before Thy Gaze Returns to Thee

From the Introduction That's All

"In the two film series I curated at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, I presented films from or relating to the Middle East... that cannot be reduced to pretexts to speak about politics, ethnography, sociology, psychology, or religion;... I did not show any works whose main function is to provide a critique or parody of stereotypes of Middle Easterners, let alone works that do not even provide such a critique but merely the occasion for subsequent verbose discussions full of resentment... I find the encounter with such ostensibly critical academic catalogues of stereotypes of Arabs even more oppressive than the rude transactions with prejudiced airport security officials or embassy employees..." (Read More)