Egyptian Films and Their Makers Provide Insights On Their Society

by Katherine M. Metres

As radical Islamist suicide bombers threatened to disrupt Palestine’s march toward secular democratic independence, Egyptian filmmakers spoke in New York on how Egyptian popular culture is coming to terms with both Islamic revivalism and government censorship. Treating subjects like government bureaucracy, the nature of terrorism, and why more women are veiling, Egyptian films—long the liveliest and most popular in the Arab world—serve as an example of the importance of exploring social and political tensions through media and dialogue, not repression and violence.

The workshop, entitled “Film and Society in Contemporary Egypt: The New Egyptian Cinema,” took place March 1 and 2 at Columbia University. Its sponsor, the American Research Center in Egypt, collaborated with Columbia’s Middle East Institute and received partial funding from the United States Information Agency (USIA). USIA is one of three foreign affairs agencies isolationist Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) is working to abolish.

Comments by the directors, as well as by academics and specialists, complemented the issues raised in the films themselves. But the carefully written films, most of which made their U.S. premieres at the workshop, provoked the most food for thought.

Raafat al-Mihi’s 1994 film, “A Little Love, a Lot of Violence,” portrays the lives of three Egyptian men and the woman they all love (Fatma). Her husband Talaat, the arrogant son of a tycoon, decides to take a second wife against her will. Fatma passionately describes this injustice to Younis, the brother of the intended and the son of a an important government official. As a result, Younis breaks off his sister’s engagement and then marries Fatma himself after her angry husband divorces her.

Based on a novel by Fathi Ghanem, the film deftly explores alternate endings and characterizations. Each male character has two personas, one attractive like a traditional Egyptian movie star, the other unattractive. These dichotomies seem to debunk the social tendency to judge others on appearance or status. Fatma, too, lives multiple lives, both personally when she defies both vows and social snobbery to have a long-running affair with a chauffeur and professionally, when she dons a bobbed wig to work as a journalist writing political commentary. The fact that Fatma is the only character played by the same actor in both personas may suggest that in reality Arab women often do live double lives in the modern world and in the traditional home.

In the happy version of the plot, liberation from traditional notions of social worth based on money and position is a central theme. Younis defies his parents’ prescriptions on who makes an appropriate marriage partner. He is appalled that his sister would marry a married man, sight unseen, just because he can offer her two chalets and a big dowry, while his parents reject Fatma as a spouse because she was born into an ordinary family and is a divorcee. Younis shocks his parents by asserting: “Such women are better than we are more honest.”

In this version, the story ends with Fatma and Younis’s union. Triumphant women and men dressed in flamboyant hippie-like costumes dance to contemporary Arab music, smoke the shisha (the water pipe traditionally is a largely male prerogative) and sing: “Take the old system and dump it. We threw away our parents’ advice. Throw away the old system. Whoever doesn’t like us can go to hell. Ours is the new world.”

In the unhappy ending, however, the characters remain trapped in the traditional social structurewith tragic consequences. Sayed, Talaat’s chauffeur and Fatma’s discarded lover, is tasked by Talaat to take Fatma and Sayed’s daughter Mahassanwhom Talaat mistakenly believes is hisaway from Fatma. In the ensuing struggle, Sayed fatally stabs Fatma, then cries because he loved her. The enraged bridegroom, Younis, shoots Sayed dead. Yet because he is the son of a rich man, Younis will not face prison. Sadly, traditional notions like impunity for the privileged and “ownership” of children by husbands, while not supported by contemporary laws, may still govern social behavior.

The 1992 Sherif Arafa film, “Terrorism and Kebab,” has received wide exposure in an America fixated on Arab terrorism. Professor Walter Armbrust of the University of Pennsylvania called the film “a Capraesque view of modern Egypt,” because the screwball comedy features social reconciliation and equality, themes prominent in Frank Capra’s Depression-era American movies.

The film depicts a “Joe citizen” character, played by the star Adel Imam, who goes to the Mogama’a, the huge central government complex, in order to get permission from the Egyptian bureaucracy for his children to attend a school closer to home. After incredibly complicated but ultimately futile attempts to find someone who will help him, the frustrated man gets into a fight and is arrested by armed guards. Struggling, he manages to wrest a gun from a guard and is thus transformed into a “terrorist” who has seized control of the Mogama’a. The rest of the film consists of the increasingly madcap interaction between him, his hostages, and the minister of the interior, who is backed by thousands of troops.

The film shows the extremes of contemporary Egyptian culture. The office worker who fights the hero is a fundamentalist who spends all his time at the office praying rather than working. Another employee defies custom by indiscreetly gossiping on the phone about a friend’s marital problems. Mr. Medhat, the only bureaucrat who apparently can help the protagonist, suffers from constipation—presumably a metaphor for the bureaucracy.

In his attempts to locate Mr. Medhat, Imam’s character visits all the best bathrooms in Cairo. There he finds men having sex, foreigners speaking French, and a crabby critic who constantly refers superciliously to life “in Europe and the advanced countries.” Later recruits to his “terrorist cause” are a sexy woman wrongly accused of prostitution, a soldier who was humiliated by his commanding officer, an old woman who can’t afford the medicine she needs, and a shoe shiner who is on death row because of a murder he committed out of frustration that 16 years of legal action failed to achieve restitution of land stolen from him by the state.

To a Western audience, the film makes a progressive point. What is called “terrorism” may be the result of the state’ overreaction to the citizens’ demands for government that works. For example, the hero says, “You have declared me a madman, so I will behave as a madman.” And when asked by a reporter what the terrorist looked like, the hostages reply, “He was like any one of us.”

While not dismissing this content, Prof. Armbrust said that in the context of Egyptian cinema, the film is more a crowd-pleasing star vehicle than a brash political statement. For example, he noted, when the minister of the interior asks the “terrorist” what his demands are, the latter can think of nothing more substantial than to order a nice lunch of kebab for himself and the hostages. In real life, by contrast, the Egyptian opposition articulates concerns about government corruption and abuses as well as “bread and butter” and geopolitical issues. In any case, funny scenes like this one make the film a satire of both sides.

The three film directors in attendance spoke on Friday afternoon. Reflecting on the fact that Egyptians have a reputation for being fun-loving, Yusri Nasrallah said, “Humor helps people survive. Popular culture reflects that people see through government hypocrisy.” He also gave a unique view on Islam in Egypt. “There is something very hedonistic about the way Egyptians practice religion,” he said, pointing for example to the boisterous celebration of religious feasts and the historical fact that the Egyptians taught their Fatimid (Isma’ili) occupiers to dance. “Fundamentalists hate this,” he said. “It’s a kind of popular resistance to [religious] authority.” By contrast, Nasrallah's films emphasize the practical and personal, not rigid or clerical, nature of Islam.

A second director, Raafat al-Mihi, revealed that all of his films contain religious and death motifs. While his films are not conservative, “they always have their spiritual side,” he said, because “religion is an intrinsic part of the character of the Egyptian.” He also noted that the fundamentalists’ rejection of modernity and Western values is not inherent to an Islamic outlook. “Mohammed Ali sent the sheikhs to Paris,” he mused, and the Islamic university al-Azhar once encouraged development and enlightenment, though some of its clerics now oppose artistic freedom on religious grounds.

Such censorship motivated Mohamed Shebl to direct a 12-part documentary on the life of Yousef Shahin, a celebrated Egyptian filmmaker who has been sued repeatedly for various offenses of expression. Shahin’s story stands for “normal people’s aspirations,” Shebl said, and the importance of tolerance.

A Lifetime of Controversy

Shebl’s “The Trial” is the last part of that series. The 1995 film splices scenes from many of Shahin’s acclaimed films with actual footage from his trial. Shahin was sued by a fundamentalist from al-Azhar for his “profane” depiction of the Prophet Joseph’s life in his film, “The Emigrant.” The trial’s symbolic value as a blow against artistic freedom is heightened by Shebl’s use of slow motion, eerie music, and no dialogue in the lengthy opening, as the litigants and Shahin supporters file into court. Outside, two men argue about whether artists should be free to depict religious themes as they see fit.

The film cuts to a Shahin lecture. Those who defend free speech “used to be a silent majority,” he laments. “This is a very dangerous form of fascism. Who says the censor is more patriotic than I am?” He reflects on a lifetime of controversy: “During the Nasser years, I was told not to think, so I left the country.” Responding to popular demand, Nasser asked him to return. To have democracy, “we need everybody’s ideas,” Shahin implored. “Talk to me, convince me, but don’t beat me or we’ll all be like Algeria,” where 50 journalists and thousands of civilians have been killed by Islamic militants and government retaliation since 1992.

The government of Egypt, while repressing its opposition with force, tries to accommodate the fundamentalists in other arenas. The film shows Shahin’s judge ultimately dismissing the case because at the time Shahin made his film, it was not legally prohibited to depict a prophet. However, in a striking paean to the Islamists, the judge notes that the second article of the Egyptian Constitution asks the legislature to hasten the establishment of shariah as the law of the land.

The implementation of the shariah wouldin the interpretation of the fundamentalists who clamor for itrequire women to cover their heads, even though others interpret the Qur’an as requiring only that women dress modestly. But custom already has accomplished what law has not. Wearing a head scarf has become so widespread that even some Christian women assimilate by wearing an abbreviated version.

Nasrallah’s entirely unscripted documentary, “On Boys, Girls, and the Veil,” shows young men and women discussing opposite-sex relations and the role of the veil. Most of the youths regard the head scarf not primarily as a religious obligation, but as a social construction that symbolizes a “girl’s” respectability or sexual innocence.

Talking amongst themselves, young men acknowledge the sexual double standard. Asked by another if he fools around, a young actor named Basem replies, “A little.” With a twinkle in his eye he adds, “Do you expect me to be celibate and chaste?”

At the girls’ school, however, fooling around is no joking matter. A lone uncovered young woman sits in a circle of peers as another lectures on the importance of veiling. “The veil is the essence of femininity,” she intones. “A girl in the veil will never be harassed. A girl who wears makeup and shows her legs entices men. Boys think a veiled girl is appropriate to be a wife. From childhood we preserve ourselves for one man for propriety's sake, not religion. If your fiance loves you, wants to protect you, he makes you wear it.”

The unveiled girl speaks up, “But appearances can be deceiving! I’m perfectly respectable, and I don’t wear it.” In a later scene, however, she is shown veiled, having succumbed to peer pressure.

The boys’ discussion confirms the girls’ fears. Like boys everywhere, they are interested in picking up girls. But they believe strongly that “you don’t fool around with a girl you want to marry.” Basem poses a hypothetical question to his buddies: “You’re on a date with a girl and you see your sister with a boy. What do you do?” The first replies, “I would shout and beat her up right there.” A second differs, saying, “It happened to me. I joined them so I could find out what kind of guy he was.” Basem says, “I think we’re all split personalities.” Suggesting they give up dating if they expect their sisters to refrain, Basem declared, “We have to choose, we can’t be both permissive and strict.”

Most Egyptian families have chosen to be strict. A school mistress remarks that fathers check in with the school often to make sure their daughters are in attendance, so the school has to keep close track of them. Ironically, some girls use the veil precisely to maintain their freedom of movement. For them, “the veil is a way to go out without arousing comment,” to reassure their fathers and keep their peers from gossiping about them.

This film presents what is to a Western audience an altogether fresh look at veiling. Hearing the dilemmas of Egyptian youth dispels the myth of the veil as a symbol of the threat posed by Islam to Western values. While the sexism in Arab society is hard to miss in a film like this, so too is the fact that the appealing young people presented are enjoying their lives and looking forward to their futures. One veiled woman is shown dancing on a bus, and her peers are hardly the oppressed veiled women Westerners imagine. According to Nasrallah, one American woman who viewed the film at a previous showing exclaimed, “How dare you show those people as having fun and being happy!”

In her lecture, “A Culture of Our Own: Why Western Culture is Facing Resistance in Egypt,” Caryle Murphy of the Washington Post tried to bridge the understanding gap by explaining why Islamists eschew popular Western music, movies, and mode. Murphy, formerly a correspondent in Cairo, said that Islamists do not reject Western culture because of xenophobia but rather to assert a distinctly Islamic identity that gives them roots in a proud history.

Murphy likened the Islamic movement to the 1960s U.S. hippie counterculture but also said that cultural revolution was a natural extension of Egyptian ideological history in which Western culture is associated with the history of colonialism. The grandfathers of the young Islamists were anti-colonialists who sought political independence from the West; their fathers were Nasserists seeking economic independence. Those tasks are now more or less accomplished, so this generation naturally pursues intellectual and cultural independence.

The last film shown, Mihi’s 1986 “The Last Story of Love,” is a sad tale of a woman whose beloved husband develops a deadly heart condition. In desperation she prays for healing at the shrine of Tellawi, reputedly a holy man who has come back to life. Later that day, the doctor comes to tell her the diagnosis is a mistake. Rejoicing, the woman does not know that her husband requested the doctor to minimize the problem because the husband feared his wife might commit suicide. Later, the couple finds out that Tellawi was actually a highway robber. People assumed he was holy only because of his fancy tomb. A heart attack takes the husband’s life while a young man, oblivious to his suffering, tries to buy his bicycle. As actually happened in history, soldiers disperse the crowd at Tellawi’s tomb by beating them with batons and setting fire to fishermen’s boats, while old women cry and beg for God’s mercy.

This dark movie shows believers at sea in a cruel world where God seems absent. Seeing the drama unfold from the wife’s point of view, the viewer shares her feeling that only the couple’s deep love for each otherwhich has survived the hostility of the husband’s mother to his wifemakes life worth living. Likewise, at the film’s end, an old woman dressed in black sits among the smoking ruins of the soldiers’ rampage and laments her pre-pubescent marriage and the loss of her 15 children to war or emigration. Yet in both women’s cases, the human spirit somehow endures.

The Egyptian films shown at the workshop remind viewers that the ability of art to make people feel, think, laugh, and cry is what makes it precious. As Yousef Shahin emphasized in “The Trial,” the toleration of art’s challenge is a crucial test of a healthy society.