Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class, and Nation
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.
Viola Shafik studied cinema in Hamburg and is a freelance film scholar and filmmaker. She has directed several documentaries, including The Lemon Tree (1993), which was awarded the prize for best documentary short at the Images of the Arab World Festival in 1993. She is also the author of Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity (AUC Press, 1998; revised edition, 2007).
