Surviving Images: Cinema, War, and Cultural Memory in the Middle East by Kamran Rastegar (review)

SURVIVING IMAGES: CINEMA, WAR, AND CULTURAL MEMORY IN THE MIDDLE EAST By Kamran Rastegar Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 248 pp.REVIEWED BY NAJMEH MORADIYAN RIZIKamran Rastegar s Surviving Images: Cinema, War, and Cultural Memory in Middle East (2015) is an important contribution to discussion of and cultural memory connecting these realms to broader fields of trauma studies, colonial and post-colonial studies, and Middle East studies. In seven chapters of book, Rastegar aims to investigate production and circulation of collective memory through in some Middle Eastern countries during or after time of war and conflict in order to show crucial role of cinematic representations in formation of cultural discourses and sociopolitical meanings. In this regard, he asserts that cinema even has served to play a significant and unique role in opposing dominant appropriations of, or conversely, cultural amnesia toward, memory of conflicts (2). Pointing to contested notion of 'Middle East' both geographically and discursively, author resituates Middle Eastern cinema's discourse within lines of social trauma and cultural memory to understand these notions in cinematic representations of countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, and Israel within historical periods: colonial age, independence moment, and postcolonial period (2). In doing so, Rastegar meticulously and comparatively analyzes both canonical and less-studied films depicting the changing dynamics of cultural memory of social conflicts (3).The significance of Surviving Images is in highlighting competing historical and (post)colonial narratives in socio-cultural context of Middle East and their impacts on cinematic representations from various perspectives of colonizers, colonized, states, resistance groups, and people. For instance in chapter two, by analyzing A. E. W. Masons novel The Four Feathers (1902) and its cinematic adaptation within context of colonial and imperial history, Rastegar argues that this literary work reflects traumatic defeat of British army in Khartoum, Sudan, by Mahdist forces in 1885 as a nexus through which particularities of British cultural memory (perpetrators trauma) are shaped. In this context, British army is seen as defender of Sudan which ultimately became victim of savage religious extremists [... ] rather than as a colonial army which had been defeated by resistance of native defenders (42). The author analyzes three cinematic adaptations of novel directed by Merian C. Cooper (1929), Zoltan Korda (1939), and Shekhar Kapur (2002) postulating that while these films are produced within different social contexts (American or British) and are transformed to some extent according to each filmmaker's vision, all three films center around idealization of imperialist ideas within a masculine setting embodied through figure of main character of novel/film (s), Harry Feversham. The cinematic representations of colonial social trauma and its recovery occur through transformation of Harry s character within course of narrative. [...] marks left upon body of Harry Feversham, interpellates audiences, presumably primarily male, in a fantasy of gaining social honor through [military] service to colonialimperial ends (66).Aligning with masculine construction of colonial hegemony, embodied through Harry Fevershams persona discussed in chapter two, following chapter navigates gendering of independence moments in Egypt and Tunisia underlining centrality of womens roles in anti-colonial struggles. Through examining two post-Second World War Egyptian films, I Am Free (Anna hurra, dir. Salah Abu Sayf, 1958) and The Open Door (Al-Bab al-mafiuh, dir. Henri Barakat, 1963), Rastegar asserts that in Egypt, like any other recently independent country in region in 1950s and 60s, formation of cultural memory through cinematic medium turned to be both ideological and gendered. …

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