Jocelyne Saab’s Egypts, 1976 – 1989: Class Ruptures

But she turned her camera to many subjects beyond her native Lebanon – most notably in Egypt, Western Sahara, Iran and Vietnam – where her distinct style of filmmaking – inquisitive, personal, playful – enabled poetic portraits at the same time as producing unique, often atypical, historical documents.

This programme of films made by Saab in Egypt between 1977 and 1989 offers a slant insight into the evolution of Saab’s political perspectives over time, and a novel understanding of her enduring commitment to justice and freedom.

With an introduction by Elhum Shakerifar & Mathilde Rouxel and followed by a discussion.

The Programme

Egypt, The City of the Dead (also known as ‘Every Year in January’) | 35 mins

Once upon a time it was a cemetery on the outskirts of the capital, but the City of the Dead effectively became an inhabited suburb of Cairo as poverty pushed people to inhabit the necropolis. This is the site of potent metaphor and political commentary in Saab’s 1977 film, which caused her to be banned from Egypt for 7 years. Opening with the bread riots, Saab’s investigation looks to those most affected by class disparities and Egyptian president Sadat’s policy of liberalisation (infitah). At the same time, it is also characteristically wide-ranging, juxtaposing the views from the street with bourgeois political analysis. As ever with Saab, literature and music become political anchors – here she looks to popular singer Sheikh Imam and people’s poet Ahmad Fouad Negm, who were both imprisoned at the time.

The Cross of the Pharaohs | 18 mins

Upon returning to Egypt after 7 years of being banned from the country, Saab turns her camera to the worlds under threat of disappearance from a range of forces – not least the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Here, she paints an absorbing portrait of the Copts, the oldest Christian community in Egypt, reflecting on their link to ancient Egypt and to their traditions. In an interview prior to the French TV broadcast of Egypt: The Cross of the Pharaohs (Taxi programme, 29th September 1986), she stated: “I fled Beirut to flee the war. For ten, eleven, years I have been living through war, filming it in all its guises. To arrive in Paris and to be reunited with all this violence, all these images that we have seen this week, is to be reunited with an infernal cycle. It’s also to be reunited with all the reactions that follow such violence, that I have no desire to film ever again. But images, they’re in my blood; that’s being a reporter.”

The Ghosts of Alexandria | 17 mins

Saab’s astute and charismatic storytelling gift shines bright in this sparkling portrait of Alexandria, Egypt’s charming port city, once a central hub of the Mediterranean and Arab worlds. By turns Hellenistic, Greek, Roman, Copt, even a “petit Paris” at the end of the 1930s, the Alexandria of the 80s is poised with faded opulence, jaded testament to a new world order. Kapuscinski-like in its portraiture, Saab invites us to glean truths in the melancholy of bourgeois women recalling with nostalgia that the handsome men of times past gifted “diamonds not chocolate, gold not today’s paper-maché” as well as in the unease of their servants hovering subtly in the corners of the frame. The film is woven with literary references, including the works of Greek Alexandrian poet, journalist, and civil servant Constantine P. Cavafy alongside British writer Lawrence Durrell’s celebrated tetralogy The Alexandria Quartet (1957-60).

Films courtesy of Jocelyne Saab Association.