The Culturist Film Club x Jameel Arts Centre on August 15: The Blazing Sun
Jameel’s Summer Cinema programme, in collaboration with The Culturist Film Club
Film 5 of 5:
We close this film series with Youssef Chahine’s The Blazing Sun, and to celebrate the centennial of one of the most critically acclaimed auteurs of Egyptian and Arab cinema. It stars Faten Hamama, one of my favourite actors, and Omar Sharif in his first acting role in a film. I won’t have a guest speaker for this screening, but I will introduce the film and say more about the director and actors.
THE BLAZING SUN / صراع في الوادي / SERA’A FIL WADI
Youssef Chahine, 1954, 110 min
Arabic with English subtitles
In pre-1952 Luxor, Ahmed — a freshly graduated agricultural engineer — uses his newfound knowledge to help his village’s impoverished peasants upgrade their sugar cane crop, which threatens the interests of their feudalist landlord, Taher Pasha. Seeking revenge, the Pasha and his conniving nephew, Riad, devise a plan to flood the peasants’ fields, spoiling the crop and setting off a murderous chain of events. The resulting conflict is further complicated by the star-crossed romance between Ahmed and the Pasha’s daughter, Amal, and Riad’s scheme to force her into marrying him. Starring Faten Hamama and Omar Sharif.
“Released two years after the Egyptian revolution, traces of neo-realism are detected in Chahine’s first socially-conscious work, one that openly discussed the growing rift between the decaying aristocracy and the rising working class.” — Joseph Fahim
Date and time: August 15, 19:30-21:30
Venue: Lobby, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (location map)
Free to attend, please register here.
Director’s Bio:
Youssef Chahine (1926–2008) is widely considered the leading pioneer of film-making in Egypt and the Middle East. With a distinctive brand of cinema and a truth-seeking lens, Youssef Chahine has time and time again focused on intricate topics seldom discussed before in Egyptian cinema and never presented with such honesty.
Since 1950, when he released his first film, and until his very last movie, Chahine’s lens has mirrored the upheavals in Egyptian society, from the British occupation, to the post-monarchical rule under Nasser, to the rise of political Islamism and the ever-changing relation between the Arab and Western worlds. At their core, his movies sought to connect with the world at large.
On the 25th of January of 1926, Chahine was born to a lawyer father of Lebanese descent and a Greek mother in Alexandria, a city that represented an ideal of fusions of creeds and cultures, and embraced amalgams between different ideologies and art movements, giving it its own unique character and a place at the forefront of theatre and film arts. As a son of this open maritime city, Chahine learnt early on about the rest of the world. This gave him a unique platform to penetrate the international film festivals circuit and quickly establish himself, amongst western critics, as one of the greatest film makers in the world.