West as home in Ruba Nadda’s films

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I draw on the concepts of accented/transnational cinemas to discuss four feature films directed by Canadian Syrian filmmaker and TV director Ruba Nadda. Through Sabah (2005); Cairo Time (2009); Inescapable (2012); and October Gale (2014), the viewers witness the reconstruction of the West as home from the standpoint of a Canadian-born Toronto-based woman filmmaker of Arab descent. Despite Nadda’s constant yearning to her Arab origins, one can claim that borders between Arab and non-Arab are not always blurred in her films. Instead, cultural bridges are built across borders to transcend the traditional poetics of exile/immigration and to overcome politics of cultural despair triggered by binaries such as East and West, homeland and hostland, national and transnational belonging, etc. By focusing on issues of homeness, integration, religious difference, and cultural recognition, on the one hand, and questions of home-returning and home-reconstruction, on the other hand, I argue that no matter where Nadda’s characters dwell, they belong to the Western set of values, and they represent each a facet of her multiple identities, chief among them Western individuality. I also investigate the filmmaker’s gender-based approach to mainstream cinematic genres such as romantic comedy and thriller and her interest in these genres as a TV director as well.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational cinema
• Arab diaspora
• Arab Canadian filmmakers
• ruba nadda
• homeness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See May Telmissany (2012; 2013; 2016; 2020; 2021).

2. Short bio on IMDB https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0618779/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm (accessed 19 May 2023)

3. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/ruba-nadda/article736739.

4. Leong, Melissa, “An inescapably slow ride through a treacherous land″. Ottawa Citizen, 29 September 2011. Catsoulis, Jeannette, ‘You Can’t Escape the Past, and Other Truisms’, The New York Times, 22 February 2013.

5. Interview with Ruba Nadda for Variety, 12 September 2014 https://variety.com/video/patricia-clarkson-scott-speedman-and-ruba-nadda-on-october-gale/ (accessed 21 May 2023)

6. ‘Arab Canadian’ is an ethno-cultural category that refers today to the descendants of the 22 different Arab countries migrating to Canada. Bahaa Abu-Laban’s book (1980) is the first comprehensive account of the history of Arabs in Canada since the late 19^th century. The book was commissioned by the government of Canada.

7. Yasmeen Abu-Laban rightfully remarks that ‘feminism is, by definition, attuned to boundaries. This has specifically involved attending to the manner in which the historically and culturally specific drawing of boundaries around “the public” and “the private” have differential implications for men and women’. (2008:2)

8. Nadda refers in almost every media appearance to the difficulties of finding funds for her feature films in Canada and internationally, as well as the difficulties of shooting in Cairo for an Arab Canadian female director.

9. « Nous ne sommes pas modernes parce que nous utilisons des objets technologiques particulièrement sophistiqués (…) Nous sommes modernes parce que nous parions que c’est dans ce que nous produisons et faisons librement chaque jour et dans la personne que nous aimons librement que se définit notre identité. Nous ne sommes modernes que lorsque nous pensons que notre liberté et notre perfection morale se mesurent dans la liberté de l’amour et du travail. Aucune autre culture ne l’avait jamais imaginé. Et si le travail est devenu à la fois le fondement et le centre de la cité, la maison – affranchie de la nécessité d’être le lieu de la production – est devenue au contraire le temple de l’amour, de la relation quotidienne et symbiotique avec une personne. Ce n’est pas par hasard que toutes les grandes révolutions morales auxquelles nous associons l’idées de progrès sont liées à l’amélioration des conditions de travail et à la liberté amoureuse. » (My translation; Coccia 2021, 40–41)

10. IMDB https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0618779/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm (accessed 19 May 2023)

11. Idem.

12. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15689870/?ref_=nm_flmg_unrel_1_dr (accessed 29 May 2023)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

May Telmissany

May Telmissany is Associate professor of Cinema and Arabic Studies in the Department of Communication, University of Ottawa. She is the former Director of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and founder of the Arab Canadian Studies Research Group (ACANS). She is an established novelist and columnist, as well as the author of numerous academic books including La Hara dans le Cinéma Egyptien. Quartier populaire et identité nationale, and Counterpoints. Edward Said’s Legacy. Her scholarly articles are published in English, French and Arabic in France, the UK, the USA, Canada, and Egypt. Her research spans a variety of topics in media and film theories including the representation of the popular neighborhood in cinema, the emergence of minor cinemas and transnational filmmaking, the political contributions of the diasporic intellectuals during and after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, and the impact of SVOD platforms on Arab countries and the Francophonie. As a novelist, she published four novels and four short story collections, many of which were translated into several languages. Telmissany won two literary awards, in Egypt and in France, and was recently awarded the prestigious medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic, in recognition of her literary and academic achievements.