The Culturist Film Club: Terra Femme + Three Centuries of Travel Writing By Muslim Women
Film still from Terra Femme (Courtney Stephens, 2021)
After our event last November at Kutubna, I’m happy to say that Tamreez Inam and I will host a second screening and book discussion of Terra Femme and Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women, on March 8 at Jameel Arts Centre. If you missed it in November (Tamreez and I wrote about our highlights from that night), or if would like to see it again, please join us at on March 8, which is also International Women’s Day, which we didn’t realise when we agreed to host it on this day.
Film Screening and Book Discussion
Terra Femme + Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women
Presented by The Culturist Film Club and Tamreez Inam
Date: Saturday, March 8, 2025 at 9pm
Venue: Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (location map). Free parking is available.
Free entry, but pre-registration is required.
Join us for an evening of reflection and exploration, with a pairing of a film screening and book discussion on the theme of travel as a means for self-discovery and finding one’s place in the world, especially for women. Film curator Hind Mezaina and writer Tamreez Inam will interrogate the reasons why women travel, including religious and educational, and how for some, spirituality and a deeper awareness of oneself was the outcome of travel even if not the intended goal at the outset.
Film:
Terra Femme
Courtney Stephens, 2021, USA, English, 62 min
An essay film comprised of amateur travelogues filmed by women in the 1920s-1950s weaving between geographical essay, personal inquiry, and historical speculation, examining these films as both private documents and accidental ethnographies.
The films present a new type of traveler: no longer a male seeker of conquests, she might be a divorcee on a tour of biblical gardens, or a widow on a cruise to the North Pole. Representing the world through women’s eyes, the films raise questions about female representation in the archive, the role of amateurism in early non-fiction filmmaking, and the politics of the Western gaze.
Image credits: Film stills from Terra Femme (Courtney Stephens, 2021)
Book:
Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women
Edited by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz and Sunil Sharma, 2022
When thinking of intrepid travelers from past centuries, we don’t usually put Muslim women at the top of the list. And yet, the stunning firsthand accounts in this collection completely upend preconceived notions of who was exploring the world.
Editors Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma recover, translate, annotate, and provide historical and cultural context for the 17th to 20th century writings of Muslim women travelers in ten different languages.
Queens and captives, pilgrims and provocateurs, these women are diverse. Their connection to Islam is wide-ranging as well, from the devout to those who distanced themselves from religion. What unites these adventurers is a concern for other women they encounter, their willingness to record their experiences, and the constant thoughts they cast homeward even as they traveled a world that was not always prepared to welcome them.
Image credits:
Left: Sakineh Soltan Khanom Esfahani Kuchak (center) and other ladies. Courtesy of Sunil Sharma.
Right: Maimoona Sultan (second from left) with her husband, Nawab Hamidullah Khan; three daughters; and a Claridges’ footman, London, 1932.
Bios:
Hind Mezaina is an artist, film curator and writer from Dubai. Her interests lie in cinema, cities, visual culture, collective memory and archives. As an artist she works primarily in analogue photography and lately with moving image. In 2009 she founded The Culturist blog, and in 2022 she started The Culturist Film Club hosted at various venues across Dubai; and Moving Image Editor at Tribe, a non-profit publication that focuses on photography and moving image from the Arab World.
Tamreez Inam is a writer, literary consultant and curator. She is currently the Head of Programme for the Asia Pacific Cities Summit & Mayors Forum at Expo City Dubai. Previously, she worked for the Emirates Literature Foundation as Associate Festival Director and Head of Programming responsible for the curation and delivery of the Emirates Litfest. Tamreez is the recipient of the 2024 First Chapter Writers’ Fellowship for her unpublished debut novel.