Archive for the ‘Profiles’ Category
Simple Kapadia
Born on August 15, 1958, Simple was the younger sister of actress Dimple Kapadia. She started her career at the early age of 18 and made her debut with Rajesh Khanna in Anurodh in 1977. However, she failed to establish herself as a prominent actor. She worked in at least 10 films. Simple quit acting ...
Shadia (1931 – )
Fatma Ahmed Kamal Shaker was given the stage- name “Shadia” by director Helmi Rafla. In her heyday during the 1950s and 1960s, she avoided being typecast by working with a number of different directors and in different genres—melodrama, romance, and comedy. It was, however, her musical talent as a singer that established Shadia as one ...
Mohammad Ali Fardin (1930 – 2000)
A former wrestling champion, Fardin was the biggest star in Iran’s cinema during the 1960s and early 1970s. He acted and sometimes directed films in the luti genre, playing the proletarian rogue with the heart of gold, who rejects Westernization and materialism yet does not challenge the status quo (Champion of Champions [Siamak Yasami, 1965]; ...
Niki Karimi
Karimi is an award-winning Iranian actress, film director, and translator. Dariush Mehrjui’s Sara, based on Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, gave Karimi her first nationally and internationally acclaimed role, an emotionally charged rendering of the title character, Sara, a woman on the verge of discovering the truth about her exploitative and loveless marriage. She is ...
Abdel Halim Hafez
For thirty years, Muhammad Abdel Wahab dominated Arabic song. Then suddenly a sickly young man called Abdel Halim Hafez appeared, and earned for himself the name al-Andalib al-Asmar, The Dark Nightingale. The upstart’s sudden rise to fame took the Singer of Kings and Princes by surprise. In an attempt to smother him, he signed him ...
Tawfik Saleh (1927 – )
In a career in cinema of more than forty years, Tawfik Saleh has made just seven feature films. Al-Mutamarridun (The Rebels, 1967) was banned for political reasons, and his last two films, al-Makhdu’un (The Dupes, 1972) and alAyyam al-Tawila (The Long Days, 1980), made in Syria and Iraq, have never been shown in Egypt. In ...
Niazi Mustafa (1911 – 1986)
Niazi Mustafa lived with Egyptian cinema for over half a century— from its birthing pains in the mid-thirties until 19 October 1986, when he was found murdered in his apartment, a crime that remains unsolved to this day. The brighter side of Mustafa’s love story with cinema started when he persuaded his father to send ...
Naima Akef
Naima Akef’s father owned the Akef Circus and at the age of four, she began her training as a trapeze artist. Growing into a beautiful young woman, she became an oriental dancer at Casino Badia Masabni. She made a brief dancing appearance in Sit al-Bayt (Lady of the House, 1949) by Ahmed Kamel Morsi. Soon ...
Samia Gamal (1924 – 1994)
Born in Wana, Egypt, and raised near the Khan El Khalil bazaar in Cairo, this world-renowned belly dancer began her performance career in a 1940s Cairo nightclub owned by Badia Masabni, a highly influential Syrian-born dancer, who also discovered Tahiyya Carioca. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Gamal met and began co-starring with Syrian— ...
Hind Rustom (1931 – )
Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Rustom was a sex symbol of 1950s Egyptian cinema who starred in more than 60 films—largely comedies, melodramas, and crime genre vehicles—from that period through the early 1970s. Although not a formally trained belly dancer, Rustom did perform as such onscreen, incorporating Latin American modes (mambo, cha-cha). Rustom’s career was marked ...
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Cineplot Photo GalleryRandom Profiles
Sharmila Tagore : Sharmila Tagore
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All That Jazz (1979):
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Silsila (1981):
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Madhumati (1958):
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