Abstract
Ladder to Damascus (Sullum ila Dimashq) 2013 presents a tableau of Syrian youth living in a group house during the early days of the civil war in 2011, when it was still possible to imagine a revolution against tyranny. This chapter contextualizes the film and examines its critique of patriarchy by looking at the struggles of the protagonists to make sense of both rebellion and the past as they attempt to participate in the rebellion against authority. The innovative use of intertextuality, by the inclusion of multiple film references both to Malas’s previous work and to the films of directors Abbas Kiarostami, Theo Angelopoulos, and Yasujirō Ozu, facilitates a statement on the power of cinema to remember the past.
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Alkassim, S., Andary, N. (2018). Ladder to Damascus: On Patriarchy and Resistance. In: The Cinema of Muhammad Malas. Palgrave Studies in Arab Cinema. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76813-7_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76813-7_10
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