By Mursi Saad El-Din I have the strange habit of reading more than one book at a time. At the moment I am enjoying three books, all published by the AUC Press: Beyond the Victim, by Kamel Fahmi, which deals with Cairo's street children, Edward Said and Critical Decolonisation, a collection of articles by Said and 20 other writers, edited by Ferial J Ghazoul and Viola Shafik's Popular Egyptian Cinema. Fahmi's book is a deep and thorough field research about one of the most serious problems not only in Egypt but in the whole world. In it the author discusses the ethics of field research and compares covert and overt methods. But it is more for the specialist and not for my regular readers. Edward Said's book, due to the great number of contributors, is difficult to deal with. I am at a loss to choose from among the 20 contributors. So I have settled for Popular Egyptian Cinema: Gender, Class and Nation. The author Viola Shafik is, according to the cover "a free lance film scholar and film-maker. She has directed several documentaries, including The Lemon Tree 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 which is published in a revised edition by AUC Press." In her introduction the author discusses why she chose to write about popular Egyptian cinema. "Despite increasing competition in the Arab market and an evident diversification of products and services in the Arab media industry," Egypt still hosts the major entertainment industry in the Middle East. Egypt feeds the numerous channels of other Arab broadcasting stations with talk shows, quiz, variety, and television serials. Even more importantly, the author goes on to say, "Egyptian movies with their popular film stars are still screened and aired all over the Arab World." The book starts with the emergence of Egyptian cinema in the 1920s and follows its progress to the present time and the different themes dealt with in the films and the realisation of a National Film Industry in Egypt. This process is even more evident in the changing composition of the country's film industry. Post- independence film historiography "understood national achievements at the expense of cincecastes who were later not considered native Egyptians. There was in Egypt a large number of immigrant population, some of them involved in the cinema." With the national sentiment on the rise came an effort to identify the first really "native" Egyptian films. Most critics named Layla, which was produced and co-directed by actress Aziza Amir in 1927, as the first full-length feature film. Ironically the film was the brain child of Wedad Orfi, a Turkish director who persuaded Aziza Amir to produce it. Later on, however, and in 1989, the leading Egyptian film critic Ahmed El-Hadari proved that the first full length film produced in Egypt was In Tut Ankh Amon's Country (Fi Bilad Tut Ankh Amon) by Victor Rositto, shot in 1923. The author mentions a number of leading filmmakers who were not Egyptian: Ibrahim and Badr Lama (Chilean- Lebanese), Asia Dagher, a Christian Lebanese, Mary Queeny, Togo Mizrahi. There were also many native Egyptians who played a role in creating an Egyptian film industry and a great number of actors and actresses, including Youssef Wahbi, Aziza Amir, Amin Atallah, Fatma Rushdi, Naguib El-Rehani, Bishara Wakim, Mary Munib and others. In 1934, Studio Misr was created by Talaat Harb and became the nucleus of a genuine film industry as part of 20 or more enterprises by Talaat Harb meant to contribute to the Egyptianisation of the economy. Like other companies, Studio Misr was financed by Misr Bank, the first Egyptian Bank. I have so far dealt with what can be regarded as a bird's eye view of the film industry in Egypt. But the book deals with some important issues: feminism, femininity and its use in films, giving prominence to what Shafik calls "feminism as a problem: the case of Inas Al-Dighidi", women directors, female stardom, the Egyptian class system as reflected in films, and violence.
