printable versionMiddle Eastern film series brings obscure cinematic treasures to the screen
BY BARBARA PALMER
Giovacchini holds some of the Arabic language art work he has collected for Green Library.
In the Green Library office of Arabic librarian David Giovacchini, stacks of videos and DVDs seem to sprout on every surface like colorful mushrooms. The part of his job that includes overseeing the university's growing collection of Middle Eastern films is a labor of love, said Giovacchini, a cinema buff since his childhood days in western Pennsylvania, when he used to pull a blanket over his head while watching thrillers on television with his father.
Since he arrived on campus two years ago from Florida Atlantic University, where Giovacchini taught classes including The Politics of Middle Eastern Film, he has guided the addition of approximately 200 films produced in the Arab world, including North Africa, Iran and Turkey, to the library. Stanford's collection of Middle Eastern film now ranks as one of the best in the country, said Giovacchini, who previously was the Arabic librarian at Harvard University.
Giovacchini also organizes and hosts an ongoing Middle Eastern film series, featuring films from the university collection. A five-film Winter Quarter series will begin on Jan. 18. Screenings, scheduled every other Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Assembly Room at the Bechtel International Center through March 15, are free and open to the public. The films—from Iran, Egypt, North Africa and Turkey—are all subtitled in English.
In selecting films, Giovacchini alternates between classics—"the things I think people need to see"—and films that American audiences aren't likely to encounter elsewhere, he said. "I like to show things nobody else shows."
Although the series, now in its second year, isn't organized around specific themes, the struggle of women in Arab and Islamic society to change their lives is a recurring topic, Giovacchini said.
On Feb. 1, he plans to screen The Fifth Reaction (2003), by Iranian director Tahmineh Milani. The story is about a widow who is fighting for the custody of her children with her father-in-law. Milani was jailed by the Tehran Revolutionary Court as a result of her portrayal of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in her 2001 film, The Hidden Half, Giovacchini said. (The film series screened The Hidden Half in fall 2004.)
Also on the schedule (March 15) is the first feature film to be made in post-Taliban Afghanistan, At 5 in the Afternoon (2004), by award-winning young Iranian director Samira Makmalbaf. The film tells the story of a young girl in Kabul who is attending a school newly opened to females; she wants to be president of the new republic.
In addition to films such as those by Makmalbaf and Milani, which receive the attention of the international film world, Giovacchini schedules films that are popular in the countries where they are made but rarely seen by Westerners. One example is A Citizen, A Detective and a Thief (2002), a popular Egyptian comedy, which will be shown on Feb. 15. Giovacchini selected that film partially because it will introduce audiences to one of its stars, the controversial singer Shaban Abd al-Rahim, who is known for singing songs with anti-American lyrics.
Giovacchini and curator John Eilts are acquiring popular movies along with classics of contemporary cinema as they build the library's Middle Eastern film collection, "not because we see these films as of entertainment value only," but conversely, because of the information that popular films can convey about culture and society, Giovacchini said. The library also recently acquired a collection of about 100 vintage Egyptian film posters, which Giovacchini hopes to ultimately reproduce in a book.
Giovacchini has particular expertise in the once-thriving Egyptian film industry, which once was the primary supplier of movies to the Arab world. Though Egyptian cinema now is in decline, Egypt was once called "Hollywood on the Nile," he said. On April 15, Giovacchini will lead a special one-day exploration of Egyptian film and culture, including the screening of two classic Egyptian films, in an event offered through Continuing Studies.
In addition to the Middle Eastern film series, Giovacchini hosts campus screenings of silent films at the Bechtel International Center, as well as in San Francisco at the Brainwash Café and at the French cultural center, the Alliance Française. Giovacchini, a jazz musician, often accompanies the films with original music performed by his band, The Ahl-i Nafs.
"Film and music are passions with me, which I am lucky enough to be able to indulge in my daily work," Giovacchini said. The librarian also considers himself to be on a mission to use the power of storytelling to dispel misconceptions about the Islamic world, he said.
"The main job of films is first and foremost to tell stories," Giovacchini said. "You are far less likely to hate, far less likely to kill, once you've seen someone's story."