Synopses & Reviews
When the Hebrew edition of this groundbreaking book came out, it provoked a stormy public debate. This is a new edition of Israeli Cinema with a substantial new postscript that reflects on the books initial reception and points to exciting new trends in the cinematic representation of Israel and Palestine. Ella Shohat explores the cinema as a productive site of national culture, dating back to the early Zionist films about turn-of-the-century Palestine. She offers a deconstructionist reading of Zionism, viewing the cinema as itself participating in the "invention" of the nation. Unthinking the Eurocentric imaginary of "East versus West," Shohat highlights the paradoxes of an anomalous national/colonial project through a number of salient issues, including the Sabra figure as a negation of the "Diaspora Jew," the iconography of the land of Israel as a denial of Palestine, and the narrative role of "the good Arab." The new postscript examines the emergence of a richly multiperspectival cinematic space that transcends earlier dichotomies through a palimpsestic and cross-border approach to Israel / Palestine.
Review
Israeli Cinema is a tour-de-force. Not only is it theoretically sophisticated, it is also deeply rooted in the changing politics and perceptions of the Israeli predicament as they bear upon Israeli films."--Edward Said
Review
'Israeli Cinema is a tour-de-force. Not only is it theoretically sophisticated, it is also deeply rooted in the changing politics and perceptions of the Israeli predicament as they bear upon Israeli films."--Edward Said "A new edition of
Israeli Cinema with a substantial postcript that reflects on the book's initial reception and points to exciting current trends in the cinematic representation of Israel and Palestine." --
Sight and Sound“Ella Shohats Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation should prove a milestone in the area of national film studies. Her discussion of major movements within Israeli cinema is far-reaching, while the analyses of individual works are never less than fresh and provocative.” -- Richard Peña, Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center "The book provides the reader with deep insight into Israeli mentality while tackling the question of displacement in Palestine as a common experience of different groups on different grounds...In the 2010 edition of her book, Shohat adds some important annotations about the last 20 years of events as filtered by art and cinema." -- Medarabnews.com “Shohats book played a large part in shaping the cultural and intellectual debates, forcing into the open disquieting realities about Israeli society and promoting a new critical narrative. Shohats book has since become vital historical documentation.” - Nana Asfour, Cineaste Magazine
Synopsis
When the Hebrew edition of this groundbreaking book came out, it provoked a stormy public debate. The author has now up-dated Israeli Cinema, adding a substantial new postscript that reflects on the book's initial reception and points to exciting new trends in the cinematic representation of Israel and Palestine. Ella Shohat explores the cinema as a productive site of national culture, dating back to the early Zionist films about turn-of-the-century Palestine. She offers a deconstructionist reading of Zionism, viewing the cinema as itself participating in the 'invention' of the nation. Unthinking the Eurocentric imaginary of 'East versus West', Shohat highlights the paradoxes of an anomalous national/colonial project through a number of salient issues, including the Sabra figure as a negation of the 'Diaspora Jew', the iconography of the land of Israel as a denial of Palestine, and the narrative role of 'the good Arab'. The new postscript examines the emergence of a richly multiperspectival cinematic space that transcends earlier dichotomies through a palimpsestic and cross-border approach to Israel/Palestine.
About the Author
Ella Shohat is Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University. Her books include Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices, Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age, and with Robert Stam Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media and Flagging Patriotism: Crises of Narcissism and Anti-Americanism.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements * Introduction * Beginnings in the Yishuv: Promised Land and Civilizing Mission * Post-1948: The Heroic-Nationalist Genre * The Representation of Sephardim/Mizrahim * Personal Cinema and the Politics of Allegory * The Return of the Repressed: The Palestinian Wave in Recent Israeli Cinema * Postscript * The Politics of Representation Revisited * Addressing the Intertext * Palestinians-in-Israel: Cinematic Citizenship in the Liminal Zone * Independence, Nakba and the Visual Archive * Iconographies of Spatial Anxiety * The Arab-Jew and the Inscription of Memory * The Mizrahi Cinema of Displacement * Revisionist Cultural Practices * Translation, Reception and Traveling Postcolonialism * Notes * Selected Bibliography * Index