Maghrebs in Motion

Exploring films made in Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria from 1985 to 2009, Suzanne Gauch illustrates how late post-independence and early twenty-first century North African cinema prefigured many of the transformations in perception and relation that stunned both participants and onlookers during the remarkable uprisings of the 2011 Arab Spring. Through multifaceted examinations of key films by nine filmmakers—Farida Benlyazid, Mohamed Chouikh, Nacer Khemir, NabilAyouch, Lyès Salem, Nadia El Fani, Tariq Teguia, Faouzi Bensaïdi, and Nejib Belkadhi—Gauch delineates the shifting relation of politics to film in the era of neoliberal globalization. Each work, she argues, taps the power inherent in cinema to destabilize patterns of perception and judgment whiletaking film's role as popular entertainment in new directions. Highlighting how each film taps into the mobility at the core of cinema to break through the boundaries that have long circumscribed filmmaking from North Africa, Gauch shows how this cinema continues to forge and reflect unexpected trajectories for itself and its audiences.

"Suzanne Gauch offers a cogent and comprehensive overview of cinema of the Maghrib (Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia) produced primarily in the 21st century...This book is noteworthy for its comprehensive array of film analyses, thus making it a useful resource for students and scholars alike in film studies...Gauch's volume is remarkable for its depth and scope, including analyses of a plethora of films that make this work one of the most useful among recently published cinematic studies on the region. She is certainly right when she insists that Maghribian filmmaking offers a window onto a region that is not often on the radar of the United States or other parts of the Anglophone world." --Valerie K. Orlando, International Journal Middle East Studies"An important book for students and scholars in film studies, Maghrebs in Motion cogently analyzes the roles of cross-border and global dynamics in films that transcend national and geographical provenances." --Touria Khannous, author of African Pasts, Presents, and Futures"Maghrebs in Motion provides a series of nuanced readings of landmark films from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia since the late 1980s, punctuated by the massive transformations of the past quarter century. Especially attuned to the changing relationship of creative artists to their publics, Gauch shows how a new generation of filmmakers from North Africa both heralded the aspirations to transnational mobility made vivid in the Arab uprisings and presaged the persisting immobilities of neoliberalism." --Brian T. Edwards, author of After the American Century"In this dynamic and beautifully written study, Gauch offers deeply contextualized, tour de force readings of key films from Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria that mobilize cinema against predictable national scripts. Especially welcome is her nuanced consideration of gender politics across production and reception contexts. Whether reimagining aspects of pre-modern culture or skewering state politics through the appropriation of globalized genres, the films she considers refuse progressive realist narratives in favor of cinema's capacity to transform perception and imagine social relations anew." --Patricia White, author of Women's Cinema, World Cinema"Maghrebs in Motion is a much-needed study of a rich, diverse, vibrant yet often overlooked regional cinema. Using 'mobility' as a unifying critical framework for a diverse body of work, Gauch weaves illuminating and elegant analyses of nine filmmakers' work into a timely and intricate examination of contemporary Maghreb cinema, drawing on various intersecting contexts-political, economic, cultural, and aesthetic. It will be of interest not only to scholars and students of the Maghreb region, but to anyone keen to explore the wide range of world cinema." --Meta Mazaj, author of Once Upon a Time There Was a Country

Suzanne Gauch is Associate Professor of English at Temple University. She is the author of Liberating Shahrazad: Feminism, Postcolonialism, and Islam.