By Tania Kamal-Eldin
"Tania Kamal-Eldin has once again produced a stunning video, a half-hour documentary, this time taking critical aim at Hollywood's abiding fascination with and fantasies about all things east. Juxtaposing film clips from the 20s through the 60s, 70s, and 80s, Kamal-Eldin explores the organization of gender, race, and sexuality in Hollywood's portrayal of the exotic east an indiscriminate fusion of things Arab, Persian, Chinese and Indian. She argues, convincingly, that in abridging cultural plurality and difference, these technicolor fantasies have worked both to shape and reinforce often derogative assumptions about peoples of the east while at the same time reinscribing the moral, spiritual, and cultural supremacy of the Anglo-European west.
Reviews
~ "Hollywood Harems" is skillfully crafted, well-paced technically adept production versatile and especially suitable for use in a variety of classroom settings." Dr Valerie Hartouni, Director, Critical Gender Studies Program, University of California at San Diego
~ "'Hollywood Harems' is a video demanding that it be viewed twice: once for sheer chuckles and enjoyment, but again to trace the carefully developed themes of Orientalist portrayal of women in Hollywood's past feature films." - Ellen Fairbanks-Bodman, University of North Carolina
~ "Effectively cuts through to the heart of the matter--the pernicious objectification of women by race and gender. Useful in courses on women and ethnic studies as well as national and world cinema." - Zeinabu Irene Davis, Independent filmmaker and educator
~ "Opens new windows on the shifting, often conflicted set of paradigms that have cast Middle Eastern women in fantastic, romanticized, racist and often destructive roles." - Dr. Elizabeth Newsome, Visual Arts Department, University of California at San Diego
Notes
~ Walker Art Center Women with Vision Festival
~ Middle Eastern Studies Association Film Festival
~ Reel Women Film Series, Northern Arizona University
~ Women in the Director's Chair
~ Arab and Iranian Film Festival, Seattle, WA
~ North African Women's Film Festival
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