Iraqi Cinema Beyond the Screen

In the beginning of the 20th century, Iraqi cities and urban environments changed and new public spheres and forms of workand leisure emerged. New neighborhoods, and institutions, cafés, and theaters changed the structure of urban life.

In theprocess, modern leisure and entertainment began moving from the private realm into the public and increasingly came to beorganized on a commercial scale.

One index of these changes was cinema, which arrived in Iraq in the early 20th centuryand quickly became a highly popular form of entertainment.

A modern and global rather than a specifically Iraqidevelopment, the emergence of cinema in Iraq can be seen as a local inflexion of a global phenomenon.

Situated at thecrossroads of Egyptian, Indian, European, and American film production, cinema in Iraqi sheds light on the transnationalqualities of early cinema in Iraq itself but also in the many areas across the globe where national cinema only emergedbelatedly.

Yet, the development of the specific culture of cinema, so significant in the history of Iraq as well as in the field ofcinema studies and nonwestern cinema, has received scarce attention.

My project undertakes this fresh subject,interrogating the transnational circulation of cultural products and material objects, including films and technology, andexploring how they came together at a particular historical moment with capital, performers, and people with technical skillsto establish cinema as a form of leisure in Iraq.

Studying the emergence of cinema in Iraq through an approach that attendsto cinema’s material and transnational histories and contexts can enhance our understanding not just of Iraq and its manyentangled networks, connections and histories, but also of early cinema outside of the global centers of gravity.

Finally, TECIshows how the intersection of capital, public space, and popular entertainment lays open both the possibilities, tensions, andconflicts that developed in 20th century Iraq.