Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema. Terri Ginsberg
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(2013) was a product of Guerilla Cinema, a filmmaking collective in which Boumouch participates that opposes expensive production requirements and the need for permits; the film details the attempt to get authorization for a film shoot from the state-run film agency, the Centre Cinématographique Marocain (CCM). Amussu (2019) is a documentary, but also a musical, in the Tamazight (or Berber) language, about a group of Amazigh villagers who have shut down a pipeline that diverted water from their almond grove to a silver mine. Citing comparisons with restrictions on water use among Palestinians in Israel, as well as the destruction of Palestinian film culture, Boumouch declined an invitation to show his film at the Israeli documentary film festival DocAviv.
Bouhmouch has advocated Saharawi self-determination, attending FiSahara in 2013 and narrating the story of the Green March of 1975—the event that began the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara—at the start of Life Is Waiting (Iara Lee, 2015), a film about artistic responses to occupation and displacement. He has also written against Martin Scorsese’s attendance at the Marrakech International Film Festival, where the American had claimed to be “home,” lending implicit support to the Moroccan regime. Recently, Bouhmouch has been writing and photographing for Al Jazeera English.
BOULANE, AHMED (1956–)
Ahmed Boulane began his artistic career in the 1970s as an actor for Moroccan theater and television. In the 1980s, he began working as an assistant director, then became a well-known casting director and an actor in more than 25 international films. His company, Boulane O’Byrne Productions, offers casting and production services in Morocco for international film and television projects. His first feature, Ali, Rabia and the Others (2000), starring Hiam Abbass, treats Ali’s difficult return from prison to encounter those he knew as a hippie youth in the 1960s, during Morocco’s Years of Lead, all of whom have taken different paths. The Satanic Angels (2007) is based on a true story that raised an outcry over freedom of artistic expression in Morocco in the late 1990s: the controversial arrest of 14 young Moroccan rock musicians accused of antisocial behavior contrary to Islam. The Son’s Return (2012) focuses on the difficulties experienced by a son born to a French mother and a Moroccan father in coming to terms with his own origins. Boulane also directed La Isla de Perijil (2015), a comic depiction of nationalist sentiments about a soldier stationed on an island, jurisdiction over which is contested between Morocco and Spain.
BOUREKAS
Named after a stuffed pastry indigenous to Turkey, the börek, the bourekas genre of Israeli filmmaking places uneducated, poor, and working-class Mizrahi characters into awkward and unlikely predicaments, the pain and contradictions of which are ameliorated through musical numbers and slapstick comedy. Bourekas films are examples of orientalism: they rehearse Western stereotypes meant at once to promote assimilation of Mizrahi Jews into Ashkenazi-dominated society and to construct Israeli identity in the image of a fetishized “Orient.” The most renowned bourekas film is Sallach Shabbati (Ephraim Kishon, 1964), a musical comedy starring Fiddler on the Roof’s Haim Topol as a Yemeni immigrant to Israel whose son falls in love with an Ashkenazi kibbutznik (Gila Almagor). Ra’anan Alexandrowicz would later name one of the characters in his James’ Journey to Jerusalem (2003) after Shabbati. Also noteworthy is The Policeman (Kishon, 1970), the star of which, Shaike Ophir, was frequently cast in Mizrahi roles. With the advent of Young Israeli Cinema, a post-bourekas genre emerged that ostensibly took more seriously the conditions and aspirations of Mizrahi Israelis. Examples include Queen of the Road (Menachem Golan, 1971), The House on Chelouche Street (Moshe Mizrahi, 1973), Sh’chur (Shmuel Hasfari, 1994), and Three Mothers (Dina Zvi-Riklis, 2006)—all of which feature Almagor.
BOUZID, NOURI (1945–)
Born in Sfax, Tunisia, Bouzid studied film at the Institut National des Arts du Spectacle et Technique de la Diffusion in Belgium from 1968 to 1972. Back in Tunisia (1972–1973), Bouzid worked for Radio-Télévision Tunisienne, then was arrested and imprisoned (1973–1979) for membership in the leftist Groupe des Études et d’action Socialistes Tunisienne. He worked subsequently on numerous Tunisian and international films before writing and directing his own features. These works have addressed social taboos, especially around gender and sexuality, by locating their root causes in the related phenomena of social division and political exploitation.
Bouzid’s Man of Ashes (1986) is a landmark film in the history of Tunisian cinema, noteworthy for its analysis of male sexuality that involves positioning the sexual abuse of young boys by an older male authority figure as a key narrative element, and for its recognizable lament of Tunisia’s lost Jewish community. Golden Horseshoes (1989) derives from Bouzid’s own prison experiences, as its formerly incarcerated protagonist is tormented by memories of torture and violence. Bezness (1992) analyzes the problem of sex tourism on the streets and beaches of Tunisia’s tourist towns through the contemporary story of a poor young man who, while attempting to earn money from foreign visitors through prostitution, claims to follow Muslim tradition when dealing strictly with his sister. Bent Familia (aka Tunisiennes) (1997) offers an intimate portrait of three middle-aged women in contemporary Tunisia: Aida, a tough, brash professor who is divorced and unashamed of her sexuality; Fatiha, a shy Algerian refugee who has suffered violent abuse in her own country and fears for her remaining loved ones; and Amina, the film’s central character, who seeks strength to cope with her confining, authoritarian husband. Clay Dolls (2002) continues Bouzid’s practice of interweaving character perspectives through montage and nonlinear narratives, to analyze the emotional and psychological survival strategies of two young, rebellious rural women, Fedhah and Rebeh (Hend Sabri), recruited to work as domestic servants in the homes of wealthy Tunisian families. Making Of (2005) addresses the lure of Islamism for young Tunisians acting in response to political repression and economic disadvantage.
In addition to directing, Bouzid adapted and scripted several acclaimed Tunisian films during the 1990s, including Férid Boughedir’s Halfaouine: Child of the Terraces (1990) and A Summer in La Goulette (1995) and Moufida Tlatli’s The Silences of the Palace (1994) and Season of Men (2000). He is also a significant critic of Arab cinema, having written the important essay “New Realism in Arab Cinema: The Defeat-Conscious Cinema” (1988), among other works. Bouzid founded the Tunis École des Arts et du Cinéma in 1994, where he still teaches. He has also taught film in the Faculty of Philosophy of La Manouba University in Tunis and at the Film Institute in Gammarth. Bouzid was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in France in 1992 and the Presidential Prize of the Cinema in Tunisia in 1998, as well as the 2007 Ibn Rushd Prize for Freedom of Thought for his work in challenging injustice and promoting critical thought in Arab society.
Bouzid has made two films since the 2011 revolution that complete a trilogy begun with Making Of (2009). The first, Millefeuille (2013), focuses on two young female friends who are seeking out spaces where they can free themselves from the pressures imposed on them by families, friends, and coworkers. This takes place at a time when, paradoxically, the Arab Uprisings provide them with a glimpse of a new and more equitable social order. The Scarecrows (2019) recounts the return of two women from Syria to Tunisia. Volunteers for the Islamist forces, they have been sequestered and sexually abused. One, Djo, has lost the capacity to talk but writes compulsively wherever she can, on loose sheets of paper, notebooks, or even on the walls; the other, Zina, finds solace in a friendship with a gay man who provides her with temporary shelter.
BRIDE, THE (1973)
This first installment of Lütfi Ö. Akad’s migration trilogy focuses on a rural Turkish family’s