20 October, 2005

"City of Gold" Dubai Stands like Oasis in Desert :: Seoul Times

Link

Extract:

Like, for instance, the beautiful Arab women who have no qualms about walking with their faces exposed. What is more, they may wear the traditional veil that cover their bodies, but beneath it lies a fascinating lesson in fashion, a sure indication of a splendid butterfly trying to wriggle out of the ugly pupa.

It is in this context that the recent Dubai International Film Festival was a first and novel attempt at giving cinema more respectability than what Islam would want to. An Egyptian movie, part of the Arab cinema that the Festival showcased, "I Love Cinema," deals with this conflict, told through a father and his little son.

In an endless debate of right and wrong, the father admonishes his child, who is crazy about watching motion pictures. His wife has a different passion: painting nudes, and the man of the house is shown fighting a losing battle.

In some ways, the Arabs in Dubai probably face such dilemma: the moment a strikingly good looking woman in a dull black veil begins talking into a fancy mobile phone in a clipped British accent, there is no mistaking the fact that here is a race that is struggling to emerge out of the shadows of religious autocracy.

3 comments:

Emirati said...

Portraying women who wear abaya as repressed. Not very informed of them.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Who cares? When Arab/Muslim world stops worrying about the West, like the West use to be terrified of "Turks" fron the 9th century until the 17th, then they will be totally free to wiggle in their Abayahs, Kunduras, and Tents all they want and if someone feels excluded from the party, then let them go make their own and wiggle on their side of the planet.;)

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