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In this groundbreaking work, film scholar Viola Shafik examines popular and commercial movies from Egypt's film industry, including a number of the biggest box-office hits widely distributed in Egypt and the Arab world. Turning a critical eye on a major player in Egyptian cultural life, Shafik examines these films against the backdrop of the country's overall socio-political development, from the emergence of the film industry in the 1930s, through the Nasser and Sadat eras, up to the era of globalization.This is the first comprehensive book on popular Egyptian cinema in English, a milestone at a time when numerous disciplines have shown an increasing interest in popular culture. As this book ably demonstrates, popular cinema is a form of wish-fulfillment that expresses mass audiences' dreams and fears, while symbolically translating and negotiating social realities.In unearthing the largely contradictory meanings conveyed by different films, Popular Egyptian Cinema examines a broad array of themes, from gender relations to feminism, Islamism and popular ideas about sexuality and morality. Focusing on representations of religious and ethnic minorities-primarily Copts, Jews, and Nubians-Shafik draws out issues such as the formation of the Egyptian nation, cinematic stereotyping, and political and social taboos. Shafik also considers pivotal genres, such as melodrama, realism, and action film, in relation to public debates over highbrow and lowbrow culture and in light of local and international film criticism.Popular Egyptian Cinema marks an important contribution to international film studies while offering general readers an engrossing and informative look at some of the most popular films in Egyptian cinema.
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. In this book, Deborah A. Starr recuperates the work of Togo Mizrahi, a pioneer of Egyptian cinema. Mizrahi, an Egyptian Jew with Italian nationality, established himself as a prolific director of popular comedies and musicals in the 1930s and 1940s. As a studio owner and producer, Mizrahi promoted the idea that developing a local cinema industry was a project of national importance. Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema integrates film analysis with film history to tease out the cultural and political implications of Mizrahi’s work. His movies, Starr argues, subvert dominant notions of race, gender, and nationality through their playful—and queer—use of masquerade and mistaken identity. Taken together, Mizrahi’s films offer a hopeful vision of a pluralist Egypt. By reevaluating Mizrahi’s contributions to Egyptian culture, Starr challenges readers to reconsider the debates over who is Egyptian and what constitutes national cinema.
In this groundbreaking work, film scholar Viola Shafik examines popular and commercial movies from Egypt's film industry, including a number of the biggest box-office hits widely distributed in Egypt and the Arab world. Turning a critical eye on a major player in Egyptian cultural life, Shafik examines these films against the backdrop of the country's overall socio-political development, from the emergence of the film industry in the 1930s, through the Nasser and Sadat eras, up to the era of globalization. In unearthing the largely contradictory meanings conveyed by different films, Popular Egyptian Cinema examines a broad array of themes, from gender relations to feminism, Islamism and popular ideas about sexuality and morality. Focusing on representations of religious and ethnic minorities primarily Copts, Jews, and Nubians Shafik draws out issues such as the formation of the Egyptian nation, cinematic stereotyping, and political and social taboos. Shafik also considers pivotal genres, such as melodrama, realism, and action film, in relation to public debates over highbrow and lowbrow culture and in light of local and international film criticism.
Intended for scholars of film and the contemporary Middle East, this title provides a comprehensive overview of cinema in the Arab world, tracing the industry's development, since colonial times. It analyzes the ambiguous relationship with commercial western cinema, and the effect of Egyptian market dominance in the region.
Revolutionary Melodrama explores intersections between cinema and politics during the Nasser era, a period in which a military regime embarked upon the construction of a new civic identity for an independent Egypt. The way in which filmmakers participated in this venture provides the focal point, with their cultural production as the central texts which both shaped and were shaped by an emerging sense of a new Egypt. With the blessing of a "revolutionary" regime, filmmakers began to explore issues of social inequity, colonial and feudal exploitation, changing gender roles, religious and cultural traditions and, finally, the disappointments of the revolutionary project itself. No realm of cultural production holds greater import for the Nasser era than the cinema. Even those who are active in deconstructing the last vestiges of the Nasserist state trumpet the Nasser era as a "golden age" of the arts and media. The faces and voices on big and little screens, many still alive, some still working, constitute a pantheon who many Egyptians, young and old alike, feel will never be replaced. The author approaches his subject as a scholar of the early Nasser years who has turned his attention to questions of civic identity and its relationship to art and political symbology. The work is enriched and informed by extensive interviews with a large circle of people engaged in the production or analysis of Egyptian cinema and broadcast, then and now: directors, actors, critics, historians, scenarists, censors, musicians, writers, politicians, and government ministers. Egyptian film remains a largely ignored topic in an ever-growing literature on film and culture. This book sheds new light on what many consider to be the greatest era of Egyptian filmmaking, one that remains formative for many engaged in creating Egyptian films today.
"Egyptomania," the West's obsession with the strange and magnificent world of Ancient Egypt, has for centuries been reflected in architecture, literature and the performing arts. But the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, by a sensation-hungry world newly united by mass media, created a wave of fascination unlike anything before. They called it "Tutmania" and its influence was felt everywhere from fashion to home decor to popular music--and notably in the new medium of film. This study traces the origins of 20th century cinema's obsession with Ancient Egypt through previous eras and relates its recurring themes and ideas to the historical reality of the land of the Pharaohs.
In 1957 the public sector in Egyptian cinema was established, followed shortly by the emergence of public-sector film production in 1960, only to end eleven years later, in 1971. Assailed with negativity since its demise, if not earlier, this state adventure in film production was dismissed as a complete failure, financially, administratively and, most importantly, artistically. Although some scholars have sporadically commented on the role played by this sector, it has not been the object of serious academic research aimed at providing a balanced, nuanced general assessment of its overall impact. This issue of Cairo Papers hopes to address this gap in the literature on Egyptian cinema. After discussion of the role played by the public sector in trying to alleviate the financial crisis that threatened the film industry, this study investigates whether there was a real change in the general perception of the cinema, and the government’s attitude toward it, following the June 1967 Arab–Israeli war.
In a major addition to the academic library on the cinema of Youssef Chahine and on Arab and Egyptian cinema in general, Malek Khouri here presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date study on Chahine's work to appear since his death in 2008. The methodological approach of the book, and more precisely the discussion of the theme of Arab national unity from a post-colonial point of view, emphasizes the ideological underpinnings of this Egyptian director's themes as well as his esthetics. The author focuses on the interaction between Chahine's personal and political preoccupations, his eclectic cinematic style, and his devotion to connecting with a wide audience of filmgoers. The Arab National Project in Youssef Chahine's Cinema is an important contribution to original scholarship in the fields of cultural studies, sociology of film, and history of cinema, and will be of great interest to scholars, students, and cinema lovers all over the world.
Egypt's film industry is the largest in the Middle East, with an output that spreads across the region and the world. In the run-up to and throughout the 2011 Revolution, a complex relationship formed between the industry and the people's uprising. Both a form of political expression and a documentation of historical events, 'revolutionary' film techniques have contributed to the cultural memory of 2011. At the same time, these films and their makers have been the target of increasing state control and intervention. Ahmed Ghazal, drawing upon his own background in film-making, looks at the way in which Egyptian film has shaped, and been shaped by, the events leading up to and beyond Egypt's 2011 revolution. Drawing on interviews with protagonists in the industry, analysis of films, and archival research, he analyses the critical issues affecting the political economy of the industry. He also explores the technological developments of independent productions and the cinematic themes of dictatorship, poverty, corruption and police brutality that have accompanied the people's calls for freedom - and the counterrevolution that has tried to suppress them.
It comes as little surprise that Hollywood films have traditionally stereotyped Arab Americans, but how are Arab Americans portrayed in Arab films, and just as importantly, how are they portrayed in the works of Arab American filmmakers themselves? In this innovative volume, Mahdi offers a comparative analysis of three cinemas, yielding rich insights on the layers of representation and the ways in which those representations are challenged and disrupted. Hollywood films have fostered reductive imagery of Arab Americans since the 1970s as either a national security threat or a foreign policy concern, while Egyptian filmmakers have used polarizing images of Arab Americans since the 1990s to convey their nationalist critiques of the United States. Both portrayals are rooted in anxieties around globalization, migration, and US-Arab geopolitics. In contrast, Arab American cinema provides a more complex, realistic, and fluid representation of Arab American citizenship and the nuances of a transnational identity. Exploring a wide variety of films from each cinematic site, Mahdi traces the competing narratives of Arab American belonging—how and why they vary, and what’s at stake in their circulation.