Women's debut
Cinema arrived in Egypt only one year after its invention by the Lumière brothers. The first Egyptian film screenings took place in Cairo and Alexandria. From its birth, the 7th art had a love at first sight for Egypt. By 1917, there were already more than 80 cinemas throughout the country. Around 1915, we notice some scenes shot in Egypt, showing the Egyptian daily life. In 1927, Egypt gave birth to his first feature film, Laila, directed by Wadad Orfi. Set in a village above the ruins of Memphis, this film tells the story of Laila, whose fiancé falls in love with a tourist and abandons the young Egyptian girl. The main role is played by one of the legendary figures of Egyptian cinema, Aziza Amir (1901-1952), who also produced the film. A woman of conviction and truly modern, Amir selected her filmography, whether as a screenwriter, director, actress or producer. The works in which she participates tend to make the general public aware of Egypt's social problems, with themes such as the working class world or the traditions of marriage. Egyptian artists are truly involved in the birth and development of Egyptian cinema, such as the theatre actress Fâtma Rouchdi, who produced and acted in the film El zowaje (The Marriage, 1933).
Hollywood-on-Nile
The beginning of the 1930s led to the creation of several film studios such as Togo Mizrahi's studio (located in Alexandria, he was the largest Egyptian film producer at the time) or the Misr studios. These studios, built in 1935, contributed considerably to the development of Egyptian cinema, as did the arrival of talking pictures. Due to the social and political context of the country, cinema is growing faster in Egypt than in other Middle Eastern countries. Egypt is following Hollywood's lead, with cinema becoming the country's second most successful economic sector (after cotton). With the advent of talking pictures, one genre made its entry into Egyptian cinema: the musical. Mario Volpe, a Neapolitan director, directed the first Egyptian musical el-Fouad (The Song of the Heart, 1932).
The years of realism and Youssef Chahine
At the dawn of the 1940s, the self-taught Egyptian director Abd al-Ghani Kamal Salim offers us the work el Azima (The Will with Fâtma Rouchdi as the main actress), the first realistic film in an Egyptian cinema that until then, consisted almost exclusively of comedies or melodramas. Salim is also known for having directed the Egyptian adaptation of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables (al-Bu'asa', 1943) as well as that of Romeo and Juliet (Shuhada'al-Gharam, 1944). The early 1950s followed in the footsteps of realist cinema, with directors such as Salah Abouseif or Youssef Chahine. Abouseif set a good half of his films in his hometown, Cairo, and more precisely in Boulaq. In 1960, Abouseif shot Morts parmi les vivants, based on a work by Mahfouz, with Omar Sharif, a famous Egyptian actor. The latter made his first film appearance in 1954 in Youssef Chahine's Ciel d'enfer. He followed in 1956 with Chahine's Les Eaux noires. In 1989, he returned to the Cairo studios to shoot Le Marionnettiste by Hani Lachine and in 1991, Le Citoyen Masri by Salah Abouseif. Youssef Chahine came to the forefront of the film scene in 1958 with Gare centrale, which he directed and performed. Tensions and passions in this fixed place that can be a railway station, the central station Ramses. Pursued and harassed by censorship, he settled in Lebanon but returned to Egypt in 1969 with La Terre. Alexandria followed, and in 1978 he was awarded a Silver Bear and the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Festival. L'Émigré with Michel Piccoli (1994) is, in turn, banned in Egypt. Chahine wins the Special Jury Prize at Cannes with Le Destiny in 1997, about the Muslim philosopher Averroès, and enters definitively in the heart of the French. L'Autre Sort (1999) then Silence, on tourne (2001) before Alexandria - New York, which was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004.
The 1990s and 2000s
The 1990s and 2000s dealt a heavy blow to Egyptian cinema, which was oppressed by extreme censorship by the police (which undermined filming rights), television (the first subsidies for productions) but also by the authorities who prosecuted directors and producers on religious grounds. The saga The Mummy (starring Brandon Fraser and Rachel Weisz, 1999), whose plot is set in ancient Egypt, is being filmed in Morocco because of the very tense Egyptian political climate. The film's scenes are finally shot in Marrakech and the Moroccan Sahara. Some young filmmakers nevertheless manage to emerge from this difficult period for the Egyptian 7th art, notably Radwane Al Kashef with The Sweat of the Palms (1998) or Atef Etata and The Closed Doors (1999). Some major international productions sometimes pass through Egypt to shoot certain scenes in their films. This is the case with Syriana (2005), a thriller directed by Stephen Gaghan with Georges Clooney and Matt Damon. In an Egyptian society that is as conservative and oppressive as ever, the only progression is the rise of women artists in the world of cinema. Asma El-Bakri, a director from Cairo, began her career as an assistant to Youssef Chahine and Salah Abouseif. She received the first prize at the Biennale of Arab Cinema in 1992 for her film Mendiants et orgueilleux. In recent years, on the Egyptian small screen, it is the three directors of the Egyptian series The Seventh Neighbour(Saba'a gar) that have been the subject of much ink. This series, which we can compare to Plus belle la vie en France, deals with the lives of seven Egyptian families all living in the same building. It deals with important themes of daily life such as parent-child conflict, relationships outside marriage or abortion. Part of Egypt sees in this programme a "desire to corrupt the youth" and calls for the programme to be stopped. The audacity of the directors pays off, however, because The Seventh Neighbour attracts nearly two million viewers per episode.
