&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/64665?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Cinema+and+the+Arab+spring%3A+the+revolution+starts+here%3AArticle%3A1635509&amp;ch=Film&amp;c3=Guardian&amp;c4=Documentary+%28Film+genre%29%2CAnimation+%28Film+genre%29%2CFilm%2CCulture%2CICA+%28Institute+of+contemporary+art%29%2CArab+and+Middle+East+unrest+%28News%29%2CFestivals+%28Culture%29&amp;c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CFilm+Reviews&amp;c6=Sukhdev+Sandhu&amp;c7=11-Sep-20&amp;c8=1635509&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Interview%2CFeature&amp;c11=Film&amp;c13=&amp;c25=&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FFilm%2FDocumentary&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;A revealing new season of films at the ICA looks at the links between religion and revolt&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the roots of the Arab spring lie in cinema? The question seems absurd: surely kleptocratic dictatorship, youth unemployment and grain prices all played a more important part. Iranian film scholar Hamid Dabashi disagrees: &quot;If you want to understand the emotive universe from which the Arab spring arose, cinema is a good place to start. Look at a film like Elia Suleiman&#039;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2003/jan/17/artsfeatures7&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Divine Intervention&lt;/a&gt;: there the director spits out an apricot pit at an Israeli tank and blows it up. The scene is both fantasy and prophecy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dabashi will be speaking this month at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ica.org.uk/29968/Seasons/Winds-of-Change-Cinema-from-Muslim-Societies.html&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Winds of Change&lt;/a&gt;, a series of talks and screenings at the ICA in London showcasing films from across the Muslim world; it hopes to explore the rich, sometimes fraught relationship between religion and civic society. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ica.org.uk/?lid=29980&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;&Ouml;zer Kiziltan&#039;s Takva&lt;/a&gt; (2006) is a powerful psychodrama in which a devout Turkish man, given a rent-collecting job, has a crisis of faith after meeting people outside his spiritual circle. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1556046/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Hatem Ali&#039;s The Long Night&lt;/a&gt; (2009), a study of the transformed and alienating Syria into which four political prisoners return, has not yet screened in that country. Moufida Tlatli&#039;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111055/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Les Silences du Palais&lt;/a&gt; (1994) is set at the end of French colonial rule in Tunisia, and examines independence through the lens of feminism.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;These films are striking for their national and thematic diversity. Others include Palestinian-American &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBbPUxbjiuc&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Annemarie Jacir&#039;s Salt of This Sea&lt;/a&gt; (2008) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EPMDDZa6hQ&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Ceddo&lt;/a&gt; (1977), a groundbreaking work by Sengalese director &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/jun/05/features&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Ousmane Sembene&lt;/a&gt;, often hailed as the grandfather of African cinema. But, with the exception of Takva, which makes artful use of grids and geometric shapes, the films don&#039;t draw on any aesthetic techniques that might be thought of as Islamic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the idea of an Islamic cinema problematic, I ask Ali Nobil Ahmad, co-curator of the series. &quot;Sure, but what if we call it Middle Eastern cinema? That&#039;s also quite a patronising, eurocentric term. Actually, I don&#039;t think the idea of Islamic cinema even exists in the west. Islam is presumed not to have a modern culture. I&#039;d argue it&#039;s important that these films don&#039;t insist on any kind of stylistic unity &ndash; and that in nearly all of them Islam is portrayed as quite marginal. They argue against religiosity as a determining force. They&#039;re all about change, too, about modernity, which neocons like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/23/francis-fukuyama-americans-not-good-nation-building&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Francis Fukuyama&lt;/a&gt; say the Islamic world is incapable of.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are already many critically feted Muslim directors who don&#039;t get labelled as such &ndash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/feb/06/nuri-bilge-ceylan-interview-transcript&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Nuri Bilge Ceylan&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/13/abbas-kiarostami-film&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Abbas Kiarostami&lt;/a&gt; among them. The film world prefers to use narrower categories, such as Iranian cinema or Turkish cinema. &quot;If you want to be thought of as an auteur, you don&#039;t want to be categorised according to ethnicity or religion,&quot; Ahmad says. &quot;By calling someone &#039;Islamic&#039;, you&#039;re meant to be taking away from their universal appeal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Winds of Change may be effective at drawing attention to the various liberation struggles within the Islamic world; it is less successful when it comes to highlighting the flourishing range of film-making styles. Some of the most provocative films owe more to pulp and lo-fi subcultures than to mainstream cinema: look at Omar Ali Khan&#039;s anti-yuppie, anti-fundamentalist horror flick &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887973/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Hell&#039;s Ground&lt;/a&gt; (2007), Halil Uysal&#039;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OKhT7kNwcA&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Tirej&lt;/a&gt; (2002), a mesmerising film about &ndash; and made by &ndash; Kurdish guerrilla soldiers, and Omar Majeed&#039;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/04/islamic-punk-muslim-taqwacores&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Taqwacore&lt;/a&gt; (2009), about a bunch of dope-smoking Muslim punks in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experimental and avant-garde film is well-placed to ask difficult questions and to fashion oblique, suggestive stories about modern-day Islam. An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ubu.com/bidoun/index.html&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;alternative canon, curated by the Middle Eastern art magazine Bidoun&lt;/a&gt;, points to gems such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXBaW9BrkuQ&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Peggy Ahwesh&#039;s Beirut Outtakes&lt;/a&gt; (2007), made up of film scraps from an abandoned cinema in the Lebanese capital; its combination of colour and decay, Hollywood and local celluloid, high and low culture captures the city&#039;s vivid history with panache. Winds of Change would have profited from programming left-field works like this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because the Arab spring was a revolution spread (if not created) by digital media such as mobile phones, Twitter and amateur video, it could be argued that more Muslims than ever before now associate political freedom with the moving image &ndash; rather than the printed word. What&#039;s more, the speed and sophistication of image-production by canny campaigners may also help to dispel some of the orientalist stereotypes that still circulate in the west. The generational impetus propelling the uprisings is the subject of the two most topical films in the festival: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ahmadabdalla.net/wordpress/?p=334&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Ahmad Abdalla&#039;s Microphone&lt;/a&gt; (2010), a portrait of the skateboarders, graffiti artists and hip-hop prodigies struggling to express themselves on the streets of Alexandria in pre-revolution Egypt; and Ali Samadi Ahadi&#039;s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegreenwave-film.com/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;The Green Wave&lt;/a&gt; (2010), an often heartbreaking combination of animation and archive footage, in which Iranian activists reflect on the promises and disappointments of 2009&#039;s populist insurgency.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Ahmad, the kinds of youthful resistance depicted in these films may have a special resonance for one particular constituency. &quot;A lot of British Muslim kids are very keen to see themselves represented,&quot; he says. &quot;They want to see they have a great culture. But often they go back to a glorious, nostalgic version of Islam that offers them only a narrative of cultural degeneration since the middle ages. Winds of Change should remind us that we have powerful and well-established critiques of religion from within our societies.&quot; It&#039;s a reminder that would benefit non-Muslims, too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/documentary&quot;&gt;Documentary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/animation&quot;&gt;Animation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/ica&quot;&gt;ICA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/arab-and-middle-east-protests&quot;&gt;Arab and Middle East unrest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/festivals&quot;&gt;Festivals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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