The genesis of cinema in Egypt was more or less contemporaneous with its invention in Europe, with the Lumiere brothers' first film being screened at the Grand Café in Paris on 28 December 1895 and at the Toson Café in Alexandria on 5 November 1896. It was soon after this that the two Alexandrines Aziz Bandarli and Umberto Dores started to make their own films, and in the next three decades the Egyptian film industry emerged. At this stage Egyptian films often took documentary form, with Mohamed Bayoumi's cinematic journal Amon in the first half of the 1920s reflecting a political concern. The first edition of Amon in 1923, for example, welcomed the return of the great statesman Saad Zaghloul from exile. The heavy presence of foreign communities in the film industry, given the cosmopolitan nature of Cairo and Alexandria, led to the exoticisation of the east, as in the first ever fiction film by Victor Rosetto, In the Country of Tutankhamon, also in 1923. With economic development pioneered by Talaat Harb, who founded Misr Bank in 1920, the film industry quickly embarked on what was to become its golden age or renaissance. In October 1935, 15 years after the first national bank came into existence, Harb inaugurated Studio Misr — starting the institutional stage of Egyptian filmmaking. Studio Misr was not merely a cluster of film plateaus and laboratories built over a vast plot of land. It was also an effective institute for film studies. Studio Misr soon managed to make significant contributions to the history of the industry, introducing such filmmakers as Fritz Kramp, who made many films including Wedad starring Umm Kolthoum in 1936, co-directed by Ahmed Badrakhan. It was not only Studio Misr's first major production but also the first full-length Egyptian film to be screened in a world event, namely the Venice Film Festival, in the same year. Kramp was also behind the first Egyptian revolutionary film, Lashin, in 1938. Through the 1930s and early 1940s Egyptian filmmaking saw major evolutionary developments, becoming significantly more profound than before and eschewing exotic views of Egyptian society. This was no doubt due in part to the spread of production studios along the lines of what was happening in Europe since the 1920s. The focus shifted to the Egyptian human being, their culture, thoughts and feelings. And it was then that the soil became ready for the growth of a number of cinematic schools: the realist school, pioneered by, among others, Kamal Selim, who made Al-Azima (Determination) in 1939: a subtle take on the urban middle class in Cairo and its suffering following the Depression. This film opened the way to the alleyway becoming an essential element of realist cinema. Forms of realism were spreading, with Mohamed Karim, for example, using non-realistic techniques to convey a picture of reality, notably in Zeinab — based on Mohamed Hussein Haikal's eponymous novel — which he made twice, as a silent film starring Bahiga Hafez in 1930 and as a talking film with Raqia Ibrahim in 1950. Films proved successful at the box office through the 1930s thanks to the employment of famous singers in lead roles and incorporating their songs into the drama. Among the more important of these is Mohamed Karim's Awlad Al-Zawat (or The Gentry's Children) in 1932 — the first Egyptian film with sound. Karim subsequently made a string of films starring the great composer-singer Mohamed Abdel-Wahab: Al-Warda Al-Baida (The White Rose) in 1933; Dumou' Al-Hobb (Tears of Love) in 1936; Yahya Al-Hobb (Long Live Love) in 1938; Yom Said (Good Day) in 1940; Rossassa fil Qalb (A Bullet in the Heart) in 1944; and Lastu Malakan (I Am No Angel) in 1947. This song-oriented cinema dealt with a variety of topics, with some retaining the exoticism of years past: Ahmed Badrakhan's Dananir in 1940 and Togo Mezrahi's Salama in 1945, both starring Umm Kolthoum were mildly exotic films. The 18th anniversary of the death of Laila Murad, which coincides with this exhibition, was among the star singers most successful at carving out a space on the silver screen. Her first film, opposite Abdel-Wahab, was Yahya Al-Hobb. It paved the way for some 27 lead roles over a period of 17 years, after which she resigned following Hassan Al-Saifi's Al-Habib Al-Maghoul (The Unknown Lover) in 1955. Murad was a box-office idle who was said to receive the highest fee among her cinematic counterparts. Yet when she was accused of espionage following the July Revolution she grew distressed and isolated, even after the court declared her innocent and it became clear that this was an attempt to frame her out of personal malice. The film industry went on until well into the 1970s, and its early and glorious history has made film lovers especially disappointed since then, with financial pressures producing few and weak products to wholly commercial ends. Yet there is hope...
