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Koutaiba al-Janabi
Koutaiba al-Janabi is a photographer, film-maker and screenwriter, born in Baghdad. He graduated from the Budapest Academy of Drama and Cinema as a cinematographer, studying under the Oscar-winning cinematographer Lajos Koltai. Before moving to live in London, he worked in the Hungarian film and television industry and pursued a PhD on the aesthetics and history of Arab cinema. He has produced and directed a number of short films and documentaries around the themes of displacement, alienation and exile, which are very personal to his own experience.
His first feature film was the award-winning Leaving Baghdad. Independently produced, the film won awards and was shown at many festivals and other screenings. Stories of Passers Through is a collection that he describes as “A visual diary, using the medium of film and photography to process my feelings and nightmares”. It is the second in his trilogy of independent feature films, the first being the aforementioned Leaving Baghdad (British Independent Film Awards 2011 – winner of the Raindance Award, nominee for Cinema for Peace in Berlin, and Dubai International Film Festival). The third, an experimental feature film, The Woodman, is in post-production.
For more about Koutaiba al-Janabi, go to the Traces Project.
Contributor's Issues
The Tent Generations
Things I Left Behind by Shada Mustafa, translated by Nancy Roberts
Shadow of the Sun by Taleb Alrefai
Birds of Nabaa, A Mauritanian Tale by Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah
The Stone Serpent, Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy for Regina his Beloved by Nouri Al-Jarrah
Mansi A Rare Man in His Own Way by Tayeb Saleh (Banipal Books, 2020)
Tayeb Salih
Goat Mountain by Habib Selmi
Habib Selmi, author of Goat Mountain and 3 times shortlisted for the IPAF
The Mariner by Taleb Alrefai (Banipal Books, 2020)
Taleb Alrefai, author of Shadow of the Sun and The Mariner
Digital images
Fadhil Al-Azzawi's Beautiful Creatures by Fadhil al-Azzawi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Fadhil al-Azzawi
Poems of Alexandria and New York by Ahmed Morsi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Digital Banipal promotion B67
Saïd Khatibi
Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)
Digital Banipal the full archive
Denys Johnson-Davies (1922–2017) 70 years translating Arabic literature
Ahmed Morsi, author of Poems of Alexandria and New York
Sarajevo Firewood
The Madness of Despair
Mahmoud Shukair – see special feature of Banipal 70 (Spring 2021)
LATEST NEWS
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Link to poems by Mosab Abu Toha, published in Banipal 71 (Summer 2021), available to read online
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Link to poem by Liana Badr published in Banipal 74, now available as an online selection
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GRIFFIN PRIZE SHORTLIST 2023
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Banipal's first audiobook* * *
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Banipal Book Club
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