Hollywood
Harems
1999
24 minutes
Color, VHS
U.S.A.
"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. "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
SCREENINGS:
-
North African Women’s Film Festival
- Middle East Studies Association Film Festival (MESA)
- Arab and Iranian Film Festival
- Presentation and screening at DePaul University
- Women in the Director’s Chair International Film and Video Festival
- Women with Vision—A Festival of Film and Video—Walker Art
Center
- Women in the Director’s Chair International Film and Video Festival