Locating the Storyteller: Muslim Women’s Auto/Biographical Cinema from the Islamic World

Project Information

MUSLIMWOMENFILM

Grant agreement ID: 837154

DOI

10.3030/837154

Project closed

EC signature date 24 April 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 1 May 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 196 590,72

EU contribution

€ 196 590,72

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK - NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, CORK
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MUSLIMWOMENFILM (Locating the Storyteller: Muslim Women’s Auto/Biographical Cinema from the Islamic World)

Reporting period: 2020-01-01 to 2021-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project broke new ground as the first comprehensive study of Muslim women filmmakers’ first-person documentary and auto/biographical cinemas from the Muslim world. Filling for the first time a gaping lacuna in Film Studies, the project mapped Muslim women’s filmic depictions of their own condition and, through their personal experiences, of issues that broadly impact women’s lives across Muslim cultures, such as gender-specific marginalization, oppressive religious laws, and domestic violence. The study drew attention to the struggle of Muslim women filmmakers who face momentous constraints to assert their right to represent their own lives and feminist perspectives, and contributed new material and knowledge to the rapidly growing field of first-person expression in film, and of autobiographical studies more broadly.

Much like their Western counterparts, Muslim women academics, historians, critics, feminists, journalists, and authors from the Islamic world have been instrumental in establishing a distinctly Muslim women’s/feminist identity. Taking on an oppositional and critical stance, they have done this through their context-oriented literature, life-writings and critiques of Islamic cultural constraints, Sharia laws and religious and cultural discrimination against women in their respective Muslim societies. They have questioned their own political, social and gender histories to redefine the sources of their particular oppressions in order to formulate strategies for emancipation and equal rights.

Additionally, they have turned to the film medium to extend their creative and activist intent and representations from their particular socio-historical and contextual perspectives. Muslim women filmmakers are uniquely positioned within their societies to depict, examine and critique their respective personal and collective histories, experiences and subjugation under patriarchal oppression, religious fundamentalism and socio-cultural and political restrictions. However, research on Muslim women’s cinematic contribution to socio-cultural, religious, and political constraints regarding film production remain relatively limited from within the Muslim world itself. Research on Muslim women’s regional, historical, and culture-specific autobiographical cinemas even more so. This project aimed to fill this gap, thus significantly advancing beyond the state of the art in both Western and non-Western film studies.

MUSLIMWOMENFILM has a strong gender-specific focus in that it brings to light the contribution and struggles of Muslim women filmmakers from a vast geographical area and different cultural perspectives, and attracts attention to the condition of Muslim women in local, national, and diasporic contexts.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Work performed during the project focused in particular on:

Data Collection

Work consisted in data mining and processing in view of the categorization and evaluation of a large number of films, resulting in the compilation of a dataset of 290 auto/biographical film titles made by Muslim women filmmakers from Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Turkey from the 1980s to date.

Contextual scholarly study

The study focused on two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. It looked at the history of auto/biographical women’s cinemas in these settings; at the impact of fundamentalist regimes on women’s freedoms and rights; at the emergence of women’s resistance through the filmic medium; at films by diasporic filmmakers depicting their home countries. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship (Film Studies; Women’s Studies; Feminist Thought; Postcolonial Studies and Theory; Cultural Studies; Study of Religions), it gave rise to a number of articles, conference papers, and a monograph proposal. Some of the most important outputs are: an article on Pakistani filmmaker Sabiha Sumar; an article on Afghani filmmaker Nelofer Pazira; and a book chapter on women’s activist filmmaking against gendered violence in Pakistan. The project symposium, Women’s Auto/biographical Cinemas: The Gendered Story, took place online on 27 and 28 November 2021. It included world-renowned speakers such as South African artist Penny Siopis and documentary film studies specialist Professor Bill Nichols (San Francisco). It focused on discussion of the contribution of global women/feminist filmmakers who have used the film medium to record, archive, and disseminate women’s stories, to share their experiences, build cross-cultural solidarity for change, consciousness-raising, and pedagogical purposes. The symposium was attended by over 50 delegates.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

This pioneering interdisciplinary project identified and indeed produced a new object of study, Muslim women’s auto/biographical filmmaking. It focused on often-relegated, representative contemporary women filmmakers from the Muslim world who are at once activist and historiographical in their intent and scope, and offer varied and complex depictions of personal and national histories. It studied the effectiveness of these auto/biographical representations as creative, activist, and consciousness-raising tools for women’s/feminist resistance, and their cross-cultural appeal and cinematic value beyond the marginalized realm of Muslim women filmmakers. In so doing, it situated their voices not only within the broader field of women‘s global cinema, but particularly addressed the lacuna of women’s autobiographical cinema from the Muslim world with the aim to contribute to cinema studies, film and history, women’s/feminist and gender studies, and to foster solidarity and gender justice.

The project proposed novel concepts for a more nuanced and progressive understanding of women’s auto/biographical cinemas. In particular, major findings include the introduction of a new paradigm, that of the (Muslim woman’s) filmmaker as experiential ‘auto/bio-historiographer’, i.e. as a historiographer and counter-historian of her times who is tacitly located within the filmic narrative. Another major contribution consists in an extension of Hamid Naficy’s crucial formulation of ‘accented cinema’, as the often-autobiographical cinema of filmmakers in diaspora or exile, to account for a ‘formulaic accent’ in films by diasporic filmmakers whose depictions of Muslim countries are aimed specifically at appealing to Western audiences.

The dataset produced during the project is a landmark contribution, bringing about for the first time identification and classification of women’s auto/biographical cinemas from the Muslim world. The film data gathered and the categories chosen to describe the films will support further research on: the history of films by Muslim women filmmakers; the history of film in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Turkey; the history of feminist filmmaking; the history and aesthetics of auto/biographical film; the understanding of forms of auto/biographical cinema and related genres including all those listed in the chosen categories.

Logo MUSLIMWOMENFILM project

Project Symposium Banner

Banner for social media