News

Jhally's 'Reel Bad Arabs' Part of Dubai Film Festival

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, a documentary directed by Professor Sut Jhally (communication), will be shown at the Dubai Film Festival in the United Arab Emirates the week of December 11. The 50-minute film is based on Arab-American film authority Jack Shaheen’s book of the same title, examines film portrayals of Arabs, and includes numerous clips and commentary from films of past decades to the present.

Reel Bad Arabs was produced with the support of the Northampton-based Media Education Foundation, headed by Jhally. It was shown on campus (free and open to the public) in early December, sponsored by the Asian Arts & Culture Program of the Fine Arts Center and the Department of Communication.

A member of the faculty since 1985, Jhally founded the Media Education Foundation in 1991. The Foundation produces and distributes video documentaries to encourage critical thinking and debate about the relationship between media ownership, commercial media content, and the democratic demand for free flows of information, diverse representations of ideas and people, and informed citizen participation.

Jhally is one of the world's leading experts on advertising and media studies. He is also a renowned public speaker and teacher. More than 2 million students in the last decade have seen his controversial and award-winning film “Dreamworlds: Desire/Sex/Power in Music Video” (over which MTV threatened to sue him).The Los Angeles Times called it "a scathing examination of pop video's use and abuse of women." Jhally has won UMass Amherst's coveted "Distinguished Teacher Award" where the student newspaper has also voted him "Best Professor."

Jhally has shown his films and lectured at many colleges and universities nationally and internationally. He was named one of New Woman magazine's "People of the Year" in 1992. His other film and video credits include “Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire”; “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land”; “U.S. News Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”; “Wrestling with Manhood: Boys, Bullying and Battering.” Books include “The Codes of Advertising” and “Enlightened Racism.”

For more information about Reel Bad Arabs (including a video trailer) and the Dubai film festival, click here.
For more about Sut Jhally, including links to articles by him, click here.

December 6, 2006