Saudi journalist, filmmaker and cultural commentator Abdulmohsen Al-Mutairi launched his long-anticipated book — “America’s View of the East, Cinematically” — at last month’s Saudi Film Festival.

Cementing his reputation as a vital voice at the intersection of cinema and Arab identity, the book is a natural progression from his award-winning documentary, “Memories From The North,” tackling Western portrayals of the East with the same precision, intellect and emotional clarity.

Al-Mutairi drew wide attention for his documentary, which offered a poetic look at the Gulf War of 1990-91 and was named best short documentary at the 2022 festival.

“The documentary looks to me like a chapter in a book, because both memories and the war look like chapters to us. To me, the war is a timeline, there is a beginning, middle and an end,” Al-Mutairi told Arab News at the time.

“America’s View of the East, Cinematically” continues that mission, serving as both critique and chronicle of how Arab and Eastern identities have long been distorted by the cinematic lens of the West.

“This encyclopedia will be a building block added to what the Saudi Film Festival has started since its launch in 2008 and an effective tributary in the path of Saudi cinema, reinforcing what the festival organizers believe in and what they seek to achieve by emphasizing that the film industry must be accompanied by a knowledge industry directed at those working in the local and Arab cinema field,” according to its introduction.

More than critique, the book offers a kind of cinematic reclamation.

Pico Iyer’s essay “The Joy of Quiet” dissects modern life’s paradox: the louder our world grows, the more we crave silence. The essay was first published in 2012 in The New York Times.

With the precision of a cultural surgeon, Iyer — a travel writer famed for his meditative prose — exposes how digital noise erodes human connection, leaving us drowning in a sea of notifications yet thirsting for meaning.

But this isn’t a diatribe against technology; it’s a forensic examination of our collective burnout.

He maps a silent counterrevolution emerging in the unlikeliest corners: Silicon Valley CEOs fleeing to Himalayan monasteries, Amish-inspired “digital sabbaths” trending among younger generations, executives paying to lock away their phones and nations like Bhutan trading gross domestic product for “Gross National Happiness” as radical acts of cultural defiance.

Iyer’s genius lies in reframing silence as an insurgent act of self-preservation. A Kyoto temple’s rock garden becomes a “vacuum of stillness” where fractured minds heal; a tech mogul’s secret retreats — funded by the same wealth that built addictive apps — mock his own industry’s promises of liberation.

The essay’s sharpest insight? Our devices aren’t just distractions but “weapons of mass distraction,” systematically severing us from presence, empathy and the sacred monotony of undivided attention.

Critics might argue Iyer romanticizes privilege (not everyone can jet to a Balinese silent retreat), yet his message transcends class: in an age of algorithmic overload, solitude becomes not a luxury but psychic armor.

He anticipates today’s “attention economy” battleground, where mindfulness apps monetize the very serenity they promise to provide.

His closing warning: “We’ve gone from exalting timesaving devices to fleeing them,” feels prophetic in 2025, as AI chatbots colonize conversation and virtual reality headsets replace eye contact.

Less self-flagellating than Orwell’s colonial reckonings, “The Joy of Quiet” offers no easy answers.

Instead, it dares readers to ask: When every ping demands obedience, what revolution begins with a silenced phone? What if reclaiming our humanity starts not with consuming more but with the radical courage to disappear?