Historical Dictionary of Middle Eastern Cinema. Terri Ginsberg
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1999]). After a period of absence, he featured alongside a younger generation of actors in The Magician (Radwan El-Kashef, 2002). He played a single father who struggles to preserve his daughter’s virginity in The Baby Doll Night (Adel Adib, 2008) and appeared as the gang leader in Ibrahim Abyad (Marwan Hamed, 2009). Abdel-Aziz continued to act in both television and cinema up until his death.
ABDEL-SALAM, SHADI (CHADI) (1930–1986)
A committed nationalist and liberal of the Nasserist era, Abdel-Salam, born in Alexandria, trained as an architect and worked as a set and costume designer with Egyptian directors such as Youssef Chahine, Salah Abu Seif, and Henri Barakat, as well as with Joseph Mankiewicz on Cleopatra (1963), Jerzy Kawalerowicz on the Polish Pharoa (1966), and Roberto Rossellini on the television series Mankind’s Fight for Survival (1967). In 1968, he became head of the Unit for Experimental Cinema, in which directors were given more freedom of expression, and for which he directed two documentaries: Horizons (1972), about the arts in modern Egypt, and The Armies of the Sun (1975), on the 1973 war with Israel.
Given his background in architecture, his experience in costume and set design, and his knowledge of history and philosophy, Abdel-Salam manifested his desire to rekindle the splendor of ancient Egypt, rejecting both socialist pan-Arabism and Islamism—the two solutions offered for the salvation of Egypt. Abdel-Salam’s work reveals a rigorous attempt to draw on and understand ancient Egypt and its significance within contemporary Egyptian society, most apparent in his only feature, The Night of Counting the Years (1968), also known as The Mummy. His other films, including the fictional short based on an ancient papyrus The Complaints of the Eloquent Peasant (1970), and his unfinished project, Akhenaton, about the ancient king who sought to unify Egypt, highlight his conviction that this rich past is one that remains relevant to Egyptians today. He also directed three nonfiction shorts on the subject of ancient Egypt: Tut Ankh-Amon’s Chair (1983), The Pyramids and Their Antecedents (1984), and Ramses II (1986).
ABDEL-WAHAB, FATIN (1913–1972)
Born in Dumyat, Abdel-Wahab became Egypt’s most important comedy director during the 1950s and 1960s, and the vast majority of his films belong to that genre. He worked closely with Ismail Yasin following the success of their collaboration in Miss Hanafi (1954), in which Yasin becomes a woman and marries a butcher; the collaboration continued with a series of films with “Ismail Yasin” in the title, beginning with Ismail Yasin in the Army (1955). The fact that Abdel-Wahab graduated from military college in 1939 and continued to work in the armed forces until 1954 indicates that his experience fed much of the content of his early films. Their plots frequently revolve around the unlucky Yasin, who finds himself unable to meet the physical demands of army training or is diminished by a stronger or richer adversary. Typical of the genre, following a series of adventures, justice is restored.
Through his comedies, Abdel-Wahab explored a number of significant social issues in Egypt—in particular, class differences and the role of women. The social aspect of his films came to be emphasized during the 1960s, when he made films such as Oh Eve (1962) and Bride of the Nile (1963), both starring Rushdi Abaza and Loubna Abdel Aziz. In My Wife the General Manager (1966), Abdel-Wahab explores the shifting role of women in a story about a couple whose married life is dramatically affected when the wife (Shadia) is promoted above her husband (Salah Zulficar) and is forced to redefine her role as both a wife and a boss. Another of his significant films is Wife Number 13 (1962), a loose adaptation of the 1001 Nights, with stars Shadia and Abaza. As a director, Abdel-Wahab worked well with stars, and was able to draw them out of their typecast roles; among his earliest films was Professor Fatima (1952), starring Faten Hamama as a lawyer who uses her cunning to prove the innocence of her neighbor’s son, wrongly accused of murder.
ABDO MOTA (2012)
This popular Egyptian film directed by Ismail Farouk and produced by Ahmed El Sobky, stars Mohamed Ramadan in his most prominent role as a thug (baltagi), Abdo Mota, who lives in Cairo’s informal districts (ashwaiyyat). Released in cinemas during Eid El Adha, the narrative is a typically sensationalist depiction of life in Cairo’s slums, marked by musical interludes (wedding dances, songs), street fights and brawls, thugs brandishing guns and knives, drug dealing and alcohol consumption, violence against women, unlikely love triangles, illegitimate children, abortion and self-induced miscarriage, and robbery and murder. Shabi/mahraganat (popular or electronic dance music) song lyrics are coupled with Ramadan’s rhyming slang—with some controversy among critics provoked by the film’s inclusion of women dancing to a song venerating the prophet Mohammed’s grandchildren (Hassan and Hussein) and their mother Fatma El Zahra. As is typical of Ahmed El Sobky productions, the narrative is haphazard and uneven—musical scenes are interspersed with action and drama designed to depict the extremity of life in the slums—and critics accused it of being vulgar and immoral: Abdo frequently appears bare chested and occasionally with a snake around his neck, and the film begins with his jumping out of bed with a woman as the police come to arrest him. He is determined to avenge the drug lord Mokhtar El Aw for failing to prevent his arrest, and the two men compete over not one but two love interests: Angham (Abdo’s cousin who has a food cart selling cooked beans) and Rabia (performed by the renowned dancer Dina), the “tart with a heart.” After going clean, settling down to sell bread on the pavement beside Angham’s bean cart, and working as a driver for the same rich family as Angham’s father, Abdo and Angham get engaged, but the joy is dramatically overturned when Abdo is framed for robbery and murder. Angham resolves to marry Mokhtar instead, and when questioned by her father, she articulates her despair: the whole slum is jinxed, she says, and just when things get really bad, the government steps in to finish them off. Abdo eventually manages to escape from prison and shoots Mokhtar and his henchmen. The film ends with Abdo on death row, full of regrets. After its release, the film became a widespread reference, Abdo Mota becoming synonymous with street thugs and tough-talking youth. Following the film’s success, Ramadan’s association with El Sobky was consolidated, and he performed a similar role in another El Sobky production, Lion’s Heart (Karim El Sobky, 2013).
ABDUL-HAMID, ABDULLATIF (1954–)
The internationally most renowned Syrian director, Abdul-Hamid was born in the port city of Lattakia in northwest Syria near the Turkish border. He graduated from the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in 1981, then began directing documentaries for the National Film Organization (NFO) in Damascus, where he also worked as an assistant director on Dreams of the City (1983) with VGIK peers Mohammad Malas (director) and Samir Zikra (coscriptwriter). After starring in a subsequent NFO production, Stars in Broad Daylight (1988)—directed by another VGIK graduate, Oussama Mohammad, in which Abdul-Hamid plays a character made up strongly to resemble then Syrian president Hafez al-Assad—he directed his first feature, Nights of the Jackal (1989), concerning a traditional rural family’s encounter with the modern state on the cusp of the Six-Day War. This was followed by Verbal Letters (1991), a story of unrequited love resembling Cyrano de Bergerac. Both were highly successful with Syrian audiences—the first Syrian films to meet with such popular reception since the Ba‘th Party first took power in 1963.
Abdul-Hamid’s Soviet training is evident in his directorial technique, which forges associative and interpretive connections, often within the span of a single zoom, between characters and their surroundings, and between everyday objects and their social functions, notwithstanding relatively straightforward story lines. These connections often find common ground in the Syrian experience of defeat, a salient thematic in At Our Listeners’ Request (2003) and Nights of the Jackal, and a recurrent trope in much Syrian cinema. At Our Listeners’ Request, set in 1969, exposes the potential for political enlightenment of even the most escapist of entertainment media, while Out