The national imaginarium : a history of Egyptian filmmaking / Magdy Mounir El-Shammaa.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

El-Shammaa, Magdy Mounir, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Egypt--History.

Motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (262 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cairo, Egypt ; New York, New York : The American University in Cairo Press, [2021]

Summary:

A cultural, social, and economic history of Egyptian cinema of the twentieth century Spanning a century of Egyptian filmmaking, this work weaves together culture, history, politics, and economics to form a narrative of how Egyptian national identity came to be constructed and reconstructed over time on film. It goes beyond the films themselves to explore the processes of filmmaking-the artists that made it possible, the institutional networks, structures, and rules that bound them together, the changing social and political environment in which the films were produced, and the role of the state. In peeling back the curtain to reveal the complexities behind the screen, Magdy El-Shammaa shows cinema as at once both a reflection and a producer of larger cultural imaginings of the nation. The National Imaginarium provides an in-depth description of the films discussed. It explores the construction of a populist consciousness that permeated and transcended class structures at mid-century in Egypt, and how this subsequently came undone in the face of the bewildering social, economic, and political transformations that the country underwent in the decades that followed. More than similar treatments of the topic, this book draws on theoretical ideas from outside the immediate discipline of Film Studies, including investigations into the materiality and colonial foundations of cosmopolitanism, the stakes and aesthetics of realism, policy shifts around women's rights, transnational economic contexts, and the broader history of the country and region, including insightful snapshots of everyday life.

Contents:

Intro

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication Page

Contents

List of Tables and Figures

Acknowledgments

Prologue: The National Imaginarium

1. Early Egyptian Filmmaking: Reel vs. Real

Colonial Cosmopolitanism and Egyptian Film Histories

Behind the Silent Scenes

The Impact of Sound

Studio Mizrahi: Sharikat al-Aflam al-Misriya (The Egyptian Film Company)

On the Silver Screen

The Twilight of Colonial Cosmopolitanism

Toward the Construction of a Populist National Identity

2. Realism, Modernism, and Populism in Revolutionary Times

Cinema, Memory, and History

Awlad al-balad and the Effendis: Definitions and Redefinitions

Nasserism, "Realism," and Salah Abu Seif

Culture and Hegemony

3. Reading A Woman's Youth: Gender, Patriarchy, and Modernism

A Woman's Youth (Shabab imra'a, 1956)

4. The Revolution's Children: Gender, Generation, and the "New" Patriarchy

The Children Are Watching

Feminism, Revolution, and the "New" Patriarchy

Nationalized Film Production: The Golden Age and State Feminism

5. Behind the Silver Screen: Market, Artist, and State in the Production of Culture

Reconstructing Filmmaking in the 1950s

The Film Industry and Nasser's Egypt

Politics and the Public Sector

Nationalizing Culture: The State Film Industry

6. Pathos and Passions: The Twilight of Nasserism

Pathos

Chahine's Cinematic Vision

Passions

7. 1970s Egyptian Cinema: Sadat's Infitah on Screen

A "Golden Age" after the Golden Age?

Sadat: Rectification and Infitah

Post-populist Egypt on Screen

1970s Cinema by the Numbers

Adil Imam

Sadat: War, Peace, and Islam

8. End-of-century Egyptian Cinema: Mubarak's Egypt

1980s Egypt on Film

End-of-century Egyptian Cinema by the Numbers

The Roaring '90s and Neoliberalism.

The Roaring '90s and the Silver Screen

Epilogue: All That Is Old Is New Again . . .

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index of Films

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781649030405

1649030401

9781649030399

1649030398

OCLC:

1260160830