Film-making in the Arab world is often a matter of idealism and activism, especially for women making documentaries. In spite of many practical and ideological difficulties, women have found ways to supply and subtly negotiate dissidence into their films. As a result, all films in this book – whether they are experimental, essayistic or poetic – are political in nature. I trace the histories of women making documentaries in the Mediterranean Arab world, and the inspirational political and cultural statements these pioneers made for their subjects, their spectators and the documentary-making women who followed in their footsteps.

Pioneers are not always necessarily the first: they are the most significant or most influential examples for those who came later. The time frame with which this book is concerned overs an almost a fifty-year period, spanning the early 1970s until the 2010s, and the documentary form has, at several points in this half century in the Arab world (and elsewhere), been contested, problematised and censored. Likewise, the positions of women in the societies under discussion have fluctuated markedly, from relative freedom to increased oppression or vice versa. It is therefore necessary to look at national circumstances as well as transnational developments in women's status and in film-making practices in the Arab world. To make matters even more complex, the term ‘Arab’ poses problems, in general and in this book, as we look here at countries in the Middle East and North Africa, not all wholly Arab, while one of the filmmakers is in fact Jewish.

In this book I discuss seven pioneering women documentary makers: in chronological order I look at Ateyyat El Abnoudy from Egypt, Jocelyne Saab from Lebanon, Tunisian Selma Baccar, Assia Djebar from Algeria, Palestinian Mai Masri, Moroccan Izza Génini and Hala Alabdallah Yakoub from Syria. I call these women ‘pioneers’ for several reasons, most effectively illustrated perhaps with concrete examples. For instance, while Izza Génini was not the first documentary maker in Morocco historically (Farida Bourquia was, but Bourquia focused on TV documentaries), she has a consistent style and thematic preoccupation, as she looks at heritage, women, diversity and music in a filmography of more than twenty films.