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Posted by: NYCGuy ® 01/31/2005, 15:21:30 Author Profile Mail author Edit |
I was amused to hear Peter Jennings, of ABC News, talk (in a special about Charleton Heston) about the Egyptians, who have never witnessed a filming process, running after Heston on the streets in Cairo thinking that he was the real Moses. The absurdity of thinking that Moses would walk the streets, anywhere at all, in the 1950's is besides the point. What I wish to point out here is that the first public showing of a film in Egypt was in 1896, Alexandria (only two years after the international public showing of 1894). And the first production of an Egyptian film was by the turn of the 20th Century, roughly around 1916, where the nascent film-making was pioneered by women (on the production end.) Those women may have been of high social standing such as Bahiga Hafez (of a prominent family, and with sizeable inheritance that was practically depleted through her ill-fated, yet noteworthy attempts in film-making.) Or else simply theatre actresses interested in the new medium and endless possibilities such as Aziza Amir, Fatima Rushdy and Asia Dagher. In other words, the film industry in Egypt, a thoroughly modern undertaking from the start, had reflected the cosmopolitan life in Cairo till the early 1950; then went on to document the dynamics of change in Egypt thereafter till the late 1980s. Both volume and production have been on a steady decline thereafter, mostly due to poor economy as well as the notable decline in civil liberties, etc. With that in mind, people chasing Heston on the streets, if indeed the case, may have simply reflected their recognizing him for the star he was at the time, rather than their mistaking the acting for a historic reality of millenia prior, as our journalism would feed our unsuspecting public.
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