Posts Tagged ‘Egyptian Cinema’
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 ...
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 ...
Egyptian Cinema – Video of the Month
Legendary Egyptian Belly Dancer Samia Gamal dances on the drums
Fatin Hamama (1931— )
Fatin Hamama discovered the cinema when she was young, living with her family in the eastern Delta, where her father worked as a primary school secretary. Her father took her to see her first film in the provincial town of Mansura. The actress Asya was there for the opening of her new film. Young Fatin ...
Yusef Wahbi (1897-1982)
Born the son of a pasha, Yusef Wahbi was expected to become an engineer like his father. But a passion for acting drove him along an unforeseen path. To his father’s astonishment and rage, Yusef joined the circus. In so doing he became a person whose testimony was inadmissible in court, and a disgrace to ...
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Suraiya (1929-2004) : Suraiya
The last of Hindi cinema’s illustrious singer-actresses, Suraiya set a tradition that
Talish : Talish
He was a man who knew how to conserve his energies! He
M. Ashraf : M. Ashraf
The sudden and tragic demise of M. Ashraf on February 4,
Shabab Kiranvi : Tea in the August moon! Well, it’s nothing to do with Marlon
Random Reviews
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Gone with the Wind (1939):
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3 Idiots (2009):
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