ABSTRACT
Al-Khoroug Lel-Nahar/Coming Forth by Day shows how revolutions on film do not always translate into fast-paced, energetic images or outspoken opinions. When it comes to gender roles in films about war, conflict and revolution, the grand narratives of history have by and large focused on the “male” theatre of war, seeing conflictual situations as an exclusively male environment. As the ideas of Third Cinema were taken up around the world, on the African continent the Third Cinema Manifesto influenced militant cinema in previously colonised areas at the same time as the New Arab Cinema Collective announced its aesthetic and thematic plans for cinema in the Arab world after 1967. Documentary filmmaking in particular contributed substantially to critiquing the racist nationalist doctrine of the apartheid state, making efforts to redefine national identity in the post-apartheid nation. Of particular interest are a number of female-directed anti-apartheid documentaries focusing on the participation of women in the liberation struggle.
