Leila and the Wolves.From Dhofar to Vietnam, passing by Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt, I always found myself siding with the David of the moment against the Goliath of circumstance. My loyalty is always with the oppressed. —Heiny SrourHeiny Srour’s Leila and the Wolves (1984) is a film of monumental resolve and ambition, determined to address the contradictions within the anti-colonial struggle. It tells the forgotten and repressed stories of Arab women throughout the 20th century, fighting against British and Zionist colonialism, but also against male chauvinism, whether at home or on the battlefield. With a single actress playing multiple characters in different historical moments, the film dispenses with teleological linearity to emphasize the recurrence of oppression and the consequent need for constant and multifarious opposition. Born into a Lebanese Jewish family whose extended members were also Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic, Srour rejected from an early age the social hypnosis...
- 5/16/2024
- MUBI
“He who feeds you, controls you.” —Thomas SankaraTo be ahead of your times is a debatable notion, if only for the simple reason that historical time is not linear. Progress in (film) history is hardly consecutive and cultural taste is, to a discernible degree, an emanation of the dominant clique to which we often adhere for fear of being left out. Which is why the logics and dynamics of retrospective rehabilitation tell us always more about the present than they do about the rediscovered past. Outliers and renegades are generally celebrated posthumously, for their canonization always requires a certain amount of institutional acceptability which, by definition, they tend not to enjoy in life. Be that as it may, Med Hondo’s recent resurgence in the collective memory and consciousness of world cinema couldn’t be timelier, the politics of (individual) identity having proved their insufficiency in probing the contradictions of our crumbling societies.
- 10/16/2020
- MUBI
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