"This series was developed as a re-launch within the framework of NAAS Network's participation in the "United Screens" project, a long-term research project concerned with studying different ways of circulating films and cinematic videos in the Global South. It asks questions we have been exposed to throughout this introduction, questions of technology, of censorship, and of archives.
This particular series focuses on questions of infrastructural and collective experience with regard to film culture in North Africa. (...) We hope that it will be a starting point towards a critical re-historicizing of Arab cinephilia and collective cinematic culture.”
"Malaffat" is a blog that aims to produce and preserve knowledge about films in the Arabic-speaking region. "Malaffat NAAS" series revive the role of archival materials as techniques for preserving, building, and participating in communities. We hope that published pieces will become a space for discussion about different experiences in the field of cinema, such as cinema clubs, independent theaters, and others, especially with regard to what is related to “cinematic zeitgeist,” as Syrian director Nidal Al-Dibs, one of our first guests on this platform, called it. The blog is not a place to display movie readings or reviews, but rather a place to raise questions about the other elements that make cinema a unique cultural and societal institution.