Transvergence and cultural detours: Nadia El Fani's Bedwin Hacker (2002)

Author: Martin, Florence

Source: Studies in French Cinema, Volume 7, Number 2, May 2007 , pp. 119-129(11)

Publisher: Intellect

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Abstract:

When analysing films by women directors from Tunisia, the usual theoretical toolbox at the critic's disposal contains, for instance, postcolonial, feminist or transnational cinema studies. Although useful to start investigating the work of women who are at least bilingual and bicultural steeped in a Muslim culture and trained in a western one these frameworks fail to reflect the multi-fold resistance to authoritarian discourse (on either side of the Mediterranean) in which these directors are engaged. This article argues that their dissident moves find a more plausible explanation in Marcos Novak's notion of derailments.

The directors use various tactics of derailment away from the cultures to which they are affiliated, to say what their Muslim culture will not frown upon, what their public can accept. Following the multiple derailments and detours at work in Nadia El Fani's Bedwin Hacker, this article shows how this film, as a work of cinematic transvergence, takes cinema from the familiar to the alien and back along a surprising nomadic path.

Keywords: Maghreb; transvergence; alloself; allogenetic; dissidence

Document Type: Editorial

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/sfci.7.2.119_1

Affiliations: 1: Goucher College.

Publication date: 2007-05-17

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Studies in French Cinema is the only journal published in English devoted exclusively to French cinema, providing scholars, teachers and students from around the world with a consistent quality of academic investigation across the full breadth of the subject. Contributors scrutinise the cultural context of various works and the diverse stylistic approaches that infuse the visual fabric of this genre.
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