Cairo’s first alternative movie house, Zawya (‘angle’), opened in March 2014, occupying a 175-seat second-floor theater in downtown’s Cinema Odeon. Equipped with a separate entrance and lobby café, Zawya presents semi-commercial documentary and fiction films from the MENA region, charging (original) (raw)
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Screening Egypt : Reconciling Egyptian Film ' s Place in " World Cinema
2011
I have tried, as much as possible, to limit the use of Arabic transcription throughout. However, in those rare instances where it is necessary, the format I use is a simplified version of the commonly cited transcription found in the Encyclopedia of Islam (Bosworth, 1960). Moreover, Arabic names, places and titles are not always strictly transcribed, but referred to as most commonly referenced. It is worth noting that they may appear differently in other published materials.
Like other major Third World film industries such as those of India, Mexico, and Brazil, Egyptian cinema has a long tradition (years) with a production often amounting to an average of films a year. It has gained a central position within the Arab World, managing to break through language barriers by familiarizing other Arab countries with its particular dialect. Once Egyptian cinema became politicized it was perceived as troublesome by the colonizers in the neighboring Arab countries. The French in the Maghrib, for example, formed a "special department" on African problems that was "responsible for setting up a production center in Morocco whose official mission was to oppose the influence of Egyptian cinema." The political-economic realities in the colonies that substantially led to the emergence of "Third Worldism" after World War II, structured the psycho-cultural dimensions of "underdeveloped" (i.e. colonized) societies. Writing on the emergence of a "national cinema" in Egypt, therefore, necessitates examining the correspondences between the cinema and key events of political significance, especially the revolution. Despite the fact that years have passed since the Free Officers movement seized power on July , , only in recent years has it become possible to outline the revolution's repercussions for Egyptian cinema. Although some traditional genres such as the sentimental melodrama remain dominant today, another cinema has emerged, built on the foundations laid in. This new cinema is characterized by an attempt to tackle the political dilemmas and social problems of contemporary Egypt. Directors such as Salah Abu-Seif, Youssef Chahine, Tawfiq Saleh, and later Ali Abd el-Khaliq, Shadi Abd-al-Salam, as well as critics such as Samir Farid, Sami al-Salamuny, Hashim al-Nahhas (members of the "New Cinema Collective") contributed to the development of a politically conscious cinema. My purpose here will be to examine the consequences of the revolution for the orientation and structure of the film industry as well as for the films themselves. I will focus on the first decade under Gamal Abdel
American University in Cairo Press, 2021
The enormous influence of the Egyptian film industry on popular culture and collective imagination across the Arab world is widely acknowledged, but little is known about its concrete workings behind the scenes. Making Film in Egypt provides a fascinating glimpse into the lived reality of commercial film production in today's Cairo, with an emphasis on labor hierarchies, production practices, and the recent transition to digital technologies. Drawing on in-depth interviews and participant observation among production workers, on-set technicians, and artistic crew members, Chihab El Khachab sets out to answer a simple question: how do filmmakers deal with the unpredictable future of their films? The answer unfolds through a journey across the industry's political economy, its labor processes, its technological infrastructure, its logistical and artistic work, and its imagined audiences. The result is a complex and nuanced portrait of the Arab world's largest film industry, rich in ethnographic detail and theoretical innovations in media anthropology, media studies, and Middle East anthropology.
‘Dégage—We’re Filming!’: Egyptian Cinema and the Arab Uprisings
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2014
The Egyptian film industry has gone through dramatic changes since the early 2000s. One tangible consequence of such changes was the production—whether intentional or not—of protest films that expressed opposition to prevailing viewpoints and sought to break the taboo on key sociopolitical issues. Not only do these films serve as historical documents reflecting the state of society, but they also proved to be efficient tools of soft influence and mobilization, and they contributed to the creation of a new dynamic that inspired people to take to the streets on 25 January 2011. Based on the analysis of a large sample of blockbuster films, this article sheds light on the roles played by Egyptian cinema between 2001 and 2011.
Egyptian Film Censorship: Safeguarding Society, Upholding Taboos
Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 2012
Films are a representation and manifestation of culture; yet, since the early days of filmmaking public debates have questioned whether “the motion picture industry was morally fit to control the content of its own products” (Robichaux). Today, the Arab world is plagued by the same dilemma. In a region where government censorship is the norm, heavy restrictions are imposed on locally produced films as a means of “safeguarding” public norms, religion and culture. Also problematic in today’s globalised world is the influx of foreign films into local markets, which not only defy public norms, but also represent cultural values and traditions that are quite alien to societies that have been inherently religious and conservative. Against this background, this article aims to analyse the role of censorship in Egypt with regard to the relationship between cinema and culture—a relationship often overlooked and perhaps intentionally ignored. In doing so, it will examine how censorship has traditionally been used as a tool to control the representation of existing social and cultural realities and to define cultural and religious norms, thus also affecting the normative context
Constructions of Chaos: Cinematic Representations and Politics in Egypt in the 2000s
2009
In my master thesis I focus on a comparative study of cinematic productions of the popular Egyptian films entailing a description of slum areas and the poor classes. Films produced in the 2000s present an imaginary cultural constellation that stirred controversy within the middle classes audience in regard to the portrayal of the poor, social mobility, and sociopolitical context in the last ten years of Husni Mubarak's rule. I am delineating the projections and reflections of middle class cultural elite and audience on the poor dwellers of the growing slum areas of Cairo, as part of the reflexive discourse of the Egyptian middle class ethic and conception of modernity. In the light of political and economic transformations, cultural productions are scrutinized from the ethnographic lens to produce a comprehensive analysis of social positions, signs, and signifiers portrayed in the Egyptian cultural scenery, few years before 2011 uprising.
State Control over Film Production in Egypt
Scholars of media in the Middle East have tended to discuss state control over media production both as a formal and as an informal process. Formally, political and legal arrangements repress subversive narratives; informally, media producers are said to operate in a social and institutional environment where non-mainstream narratives are made unthinkable, leading to a form of self-censorship. This language of formality and informality is useful to describe the Egyptian state's hold over film production, but it assumes a) that the source of control is some centralized agency and b) that the sphere beyond formal and informal state control is one of " freedom. " State control, however, is distributed over a number of institutions that cannot all be claimed to act at the behest of a central authority. Moreover, film production is always constrained by the kinds of factors designated by the label of " informal control. " Indeed, constraints over media content do not necessarily have to do with state intervention: they can arise by other means—e.g., when citizens interfere with film sets. The assumption that " the state " can control media production is unsettled as soon as we consider the minutiae of issuing film permits in Egypt. This essay describes the interaction between Egyptian filmmakers, bureaucrats, and law enforcement officials in the process of issuing permits. Through this description, it argues that the idea of " state control " is visibly inadequate to account for the state's peculiar social and material effects. To sustain this argument, the essay starts by giving a detailed description of existing permit-issuing rules in Egypt, going on to argue that the materiality of official letters and street politics can complicate our understanding of state control over Egyptian film production.