Interview with Viola Shafik
2018A filmmaker and a theorist of Arab cinema, Viola Shafik shares her insight on the interplay between film and identity and how the history of these components came together in the Arab world and through Arab film.
Viola Shafik is an Egyptian-German film theorist, curator, and filmmaker. She is the Head of Studies of the MENA Programme Documentary Campus, an initiative focused on directing and producing documentary films in Middle Eastern and North African countries. She is known for writing and directing My Name Is Not Ali (2011), a film that explores the story of a lover and collaborator of provocative German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She is the author of Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity (revised edition, 2016), and is featured in the Voices and Conversations publication accompanying the Arab Identities, images in film exhibition.