Refocus: The Films of Annemarie Jacir - (Refocus: The International Directors) by Iqra Shagufta Cheema & Stefanie Van de Peer (Hardcover)

About the Book

Takes a transnational, feminist approach to the oeuvre of Palestinian director, Annemarie Jacir

Book Synopsis

This book offers a transnational, internationalist-feminist approach to the oeuvre of award-winning director, writer, and curator, Annemarie Jacir.
Palestinian film culture is unique due to its geopolitical circumstances, including continued colonialism and occupation, and the refugeeship of its citizens. The scholarship on the politics of film and its role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - including activist work, international solidarity films, and work on Palestinian documentaries - is usually defined by historical overviews of geopolitical events and developments. In contrast, this book offers an auteur-focused study of a global artist influenced by but not limited to the political discourse surrounding the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Jacir is a Palestinian woman whose work is recognised globally as innovative, politically challenging, and genre-crossing. The book offers an in-depth study of her films and other works by locating it in a geospatial, sociocultural, and critical theoretical framework. It critically analyses Annemarie Jacir's development as an artist, filmmaker, and curator of film.

From the Back Cover

Annemarie Jacir is a Palestinian filmmaker whose work is recognised globally as innovative, politically challenging, and genre-crossing. Most scholarship on the politics of film and its role in political conflicts is usually marked by historical overviews of geopolitical events and developments. In contrast, ReFocus: The Films of Annemarie Jacir offers an auteur-focused study of Jacir's transnational cinematic oeuvre, which is informed by the Palestinian experiences as well as the geopolitics and the political discourse around the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Shagufta Cheema and Van de Peer offer an in-depth study of Jacir's oeuvre by locating it in a geospatial and sociopolitical framework to critically analyse her development as an influential contemporary artist, filmmaker, and curator of film. Iqra Shagufta Cheema is an Assistant Professor in Humanities at Graceland University, Iowa. Stefanie Van de Peer is Reader in Film & Media at Queen Margaret University.

Review Quotes

Cheema and Van de Peer expertly illuminate Annemarie Jacir's engagement with the complexity of the Palestinian experience as it traverses questions of memory, space and the transnational. The book pays homage to Jacir's cinematic contribution as film editor, writer, producer and facilitator and perceptively traces the struggles and pleasures involved in the creation of a committed and aesthetically ambitious Palestinian cinema.--Anastasia Valassopoulos, University of Manchester

This is a well-documented study which offers an intimate vision of the evolution of Jacir's film oeuvre, and how Palestinian cinema and audio-visual practices can become acts of resistance exposing the incongruous cultural memories of diverse Palestinian generations and their struggles for the homeland, freedom, and transnational identity in exile.--Ihab Saloul, Author of Catastrophe and Exile in the Modern Palestinian Imagination: Telling Memories

About the Author

Iqra Shagufta Cheema is an Assistant Professor in Humanities at Graceland University, Iowa.

Stefanie Van de Peer is Reader in Film & Media at Queen Margaret University