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Author: Viola Shafik

Viola Shafik is a filmmaker, curator and film scholar. She is the author of Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, 1998/2016 (AUC Press), Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class and Nation (AUC Press 2007), Resistance, Dissidence, Revolution: Documentary Film Aesthetics in the Middle East and North Africa (forthcoming from Routledge, 2023) and the editor of Documentary Filmmaking in the Middle East and North Africa (AUC Press 2022). She has taught at the American University in Cairo, Zurich University, Humboldt University and Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich where she held the position of a researcher 2016-2020. She served as the Head of Studies of the Documentary Campus MENA Program 2011-2013, curator and consultant for numerous international film festivals and film funds, such as La Biennale di Venezia, the Berlinale, Dubai Film Market, Rawi Screen Writers Lab, Torino Film Lab and the World Cinema Fund. She directed several documentaries, among others The Lemon Tree/Shajarat al-laymun (1993), Planting of Girls/Mawsim zaraa al-banat (1999), Jannat `Ali-Ali im Paradies/My Name is not Ali (2011) and Arij – Scent of Revolution (2014). Current works in progress are Home Movie on Location and Der Gott in Stücken. Viola Shafik is the guest editor of TMR’s BERLIN issue.

6 February, 2023 • Viola Shafik

Post-Revolution, Arab Cinema is Producing Dystopic Narratives

Viola Shafik has seen several post-thawra Arab features that convey a bleak and dystopian vision of the present.

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15 December, 2022 • Viola Shafik

Sexploitation or Cinematic Art? The Case of Abdellatif Kechiche

Film critic and historian Viola Shafik pillories cinematographic voyeurism.

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15 November, 2022 • Viola Shafik

Viral Depression in Maha Haj’s Mediterranean Fever

Viola Shafik saw the Montpellier CINEMED screening of a new feature in which Haifa Palestinians catch a strange virus.

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15 September, 2022 • Viola Shafik

Two Women Artists Dialogue with Berlin and the Biennale

Viola Shafik profiles Jihan El-Tahiri and Myriam El Haïk, two Arab artists in the 2022 Berlin Biennale.

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15 September, 2022 • Viola Shafik

Ziad Kalthoum: Trajectory of a Syrian Filmmaker

Film historian Viola Shafik interviews Syrian filmmaker Ziad Kalthoum about his peripatetic life in Syria and beyond.

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15 September, 2022 • Viola Shafik

My Berlin Triptych: On Museums and Restitution

Filmmaker and historian Viola Shafik muses on German art, colonialism and restitution in Berlin.

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15 September, 2022 • Viola Shafik

Photographer Mohamed Badarne (Palestine) and his U48 Project

Viola Shafik profiles Berlin-based Palestinian photographer Mohamed Badarne.

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The Markaz Review is a literary arts publication and cultural institution that curates content and programs on the greater Middle East and our communities in diaspora. The Markaz signifies “the center” in Arabic, as well as Persian, Turkish, Hebrew and Urdu.

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