Episode 119 - Arab Animation (1937-2015) (with Omar Sayfo)
Stories of the Quran (Sabbah Brothers, 2011).
The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!
Special guest Dr Omar Sayfo joins Chris and Alex for Episode 119 of the podcast, which features a rundown of Arab Animation covering a range of cartoons from Egypt, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, alongside a discussion of Omar’s recent book Arab Animation: Images of Identity (2021). Omar is an Affiliated Researcher in the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht University, and a researcher at the Avicenna Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, who has published articles in animation: an interdisciplinary journal, Media Industries Journal and The Journal of Popular Culture, as well as chapters in a number of edited collections. His monograph Arab Animation: Images of Identity looks at Arab animation from the 1930s to the present, offering an in-depth study of the “institutional and infrastructural background of animation production in the Arab world,” but also how Arab producers and artists have used animation to “mediate national, pan-Arab, Islamic and revolutionary identities.” Listen as the trio discuss a cross-section of animated examples that negotiate national culture and the mediation of political and religious messages, but also invite questions of local audiences vs. transnational flow; humour, allegory, and censorship; and the broader Arab political environment into which animation and fantasy has repeatedly entered. The case studies up for examination include Mish Mish Effendi (Frenkel Brothers, 1937) featuring the first Arab cartoon star; the fantasy film The Princess and the River (Faisal Al Yasiri, 1982) animated in East Germany; television series Freej (Mohammed Saeed Harib, 2006-2007) on the importance of tradition and custom; the parable Animal Stories from Qur'an (Sabbah Brothers, 2011) that demonstrates animation’s ability for educational entertainment; and the computer-animated feature Bilal: A New Breed of Hero (Khurram H. Alavi & Ayman Jamal, 2015) that depicts the life of Bilal ibn Rabah.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
Suggested Readings
Sayfo, Omar. 2017. “From Kurdish Sultan to Pan-Arab Champion and Muslim Hero: The Evolution of the Saladin Myth in Popular Arab Culture.” The Journal of Popular Culture 50, no. 1: 65-85.
Sayfo, Omar. 2018. “Mediating a Disney-style Islam: The Emergence of Egyptian Islamic Animated Cartoons.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 13, no. 2: 102–115.
Sayfo, Omar. 2021. Arab Animation: Images of Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Van de Peer, Stefanie. 2017. Animation in the Middle East: Practice and Aesthetics from Baghdad to Casablanca. London: Bloomsbury.
Sakr, Naomi, and Jeanette Steemers. 2019. Screen Media for Arab and European Children: Policy and Production Encounters in the Multiplatform Era. London: Palgrave.