Women’s Filmmaking in the Aftermath of the Arab Uprisings
Watch the event on Facebook live.
Join the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University and the Ten Years On Project for an online panel discussion with prominent Arab woman filmmakers who have documented the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Uprisings, in the region capturing both pivotal moments and everyday life in Yemen, Libya, and Saudi Arabia.
Featuring:
Naziha Arebi is a Libyan/British artist and filmmaker who returned to Libya after the revolution to work and explore her father’s homeland. In 2012 she co-founded HuNa Productions, a Tripoli-based production collective, aiming at developing Libyan cinema as a tool for change. Naziha is a HotDocs Blue Ice and a Sundance Lab fellow and a WEF Global Shaper. Naziha also works as a cinematographer in the MENA region, and her artwork has been published extensively in print and exhibited globally. Alongside her award-winning, BAFTA-nominated feature “Freedom Fields” (TIFF, LFF, IDFA, CPHdox), she is also producing “After a Revolution” by Giovanni Buccomino and working on her first hybrid fiction feature. Filmed over six years, “After a Revolution” is the intimate story of two siblings struggling to rebuild their lives after fighting on opposite sides of the Libyan revolution. As they raise their children amongst the chaos, they witness their country’s explosive course from rebellion to elections to the edge of civil war, and experience at close range the human impact of conflict and international intervention.
Sara Ishaq is an Academy Award nominated Yemeni-Scottish film director, screenwriter and trainer who was born in Scotland, grew up in Yemen and is currently based in Amsterdam. She holds an undergraduate degree from University of Edinburgh and an MFA in Film Directing from Edinburgh College of Art. Sara’s independent debut film “Karama Has No Walls” (2012), went on to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) and a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award.
After graduating with her MFA, she released her award-winning personal feature documentary “The Mulberry House.” In 2015, Sara began teaching filmmaking in Yemen at the wake of the current war and later co-founded Comra, a Yemen-based film foundation and academy from which some of Yemen’s most exciting new talent has emerged.
She is currently working on 3 independent films: “Sheba’s Daughter”, an experimental personal documentary about the loss of a homeland (supported by the Scottish Documentary Institute’s 2021 ‘Connecting Stories’ program); and her first Fiction Feature, “The Station,” which was selected for L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation Festival de Cannes 2020.
Safa al-Ahmad is a journalist and filmmaker who has directed documentaries for PBS and the BBC focusing on uprisings in the Middle East. Her film “Saudi’s Secret Uprising” was the first documentary of its kind to document the historically unprecedented protests in the kingdom and was the first documentary to be jointly produced and simultaneously aired by BBC English, Arabic and Farsi. Her work on Yemen spans almost a decade and reflects the bloody trajectory of the conflicts within the country and their international impact. In “The Fight for Yemen,” which was produced for the BBC and PBS’s Frontline, Safa was one of the few journalists reporting to international news organizations from the ground during the crisis. Her follow-up film “Yemen Under Siege,” which took a close-up look at the staggering human toll of the conflict in Yemen, took home two Emmy Awards in 2017.
Safa is also the winner of the 2015 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for Journalism, the El Mundo award for journalism for her body of work in 2015, the 2015 Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) International Press Freedom Award, and the Association of International Broadcasting (AIB) Best International Investigation for her film “Saudi’s Secret Uprising” in 2014.
Dr. Katty Alhayek (Moderator) is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Alhayek’s research centers around themes of marginality, media, audiences, gender, intersectionality, and displacement in a transnational context. Professor Alhayek completed her Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a graduate certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies.
Her publications include articles in the International Journal of Communication; Feminist Media Studies; Gender, Technology and Development; and Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. Alhayek is also committed to public engagement through initiatives such as Jadaliyya, Status, and Security in Context. Her scholarship and teaching are inspired by her lived experience as a scholar-activist from Syria as well as her work with international organizations like the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.
Dr. Alhayek’s work has been awarded grants from major international organizations and universities, including the Open Society Foundations, the Social Science Research Council, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
CCAS public events are made possible by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant. This event is part of the Ten Years on Project, a year-long series of events, reflections, and conversations created to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the start of the Arab uprisings in Tunisia.
Co-Sponsors: American University of Beirut (Asfari Institute), Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Brown University (Center for Middle East Studies), UC Santa Barbara (Center for Middle East Studies), Harvard University (Center for Middle East Studies), University of Exeter (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies), Birzeit University (Department of Political Science), University of Chicago (Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory), Stanford University (Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, Stanford University), AUC Affiliates, Georgetown University (Qatar) Center For International And Regional Studies (CIRS), The Global Academy (MESA Affiliated), Institute of Palestine Studies.