Revolutionary Melodrama explores intersections between cinema and
politics during the Nasser era, a period in which a military regime
embarked upon the construction of a new civic identity for an
independent Egypt. The way in which filmmakers participated in this
venture provides the focal point, with their cultural production as the
central texts which both shaped and were shaped by an emerging sense of
a new Egypt. With the blessing of a "revolutionary" regime, filmmakers
began to explore issues of social inequity, colonial and feudal
exploitation, changing gender roles, religious and cultural traditions
and, finally, the disappointments of the revolutionary project itself.
No realm of cultural production holds greater import for the Nasser era
than the cinema. Even those who are active in deconstructing the last
vestiges of the Nasserist state trumpet the Nasser era as a "golden age"
of the arts and media. The faces and voices on big and little screens,
many still alive, some still working, constitute a pantheon who many
Egyptians, young and old alike, feel will never be replaced. The author
approaches his subject as a scholar of the early Nasser years who has
turned his attention to questions of civic identity and its relationship
to art and political symbology. The work is enriched and informed by
extensive interviews with a large circle of people engaged in the
production or analysis of Egyptian cinema and broadcast, then and now:
directors, actors, critics, historians, scenarists, censors, musicians,
writers, politicians, and government ministers. Egyptian film remains a
largely ignored topic in an ever-growing literature on film and culture.
This book sheds new light on what many consider to be the greatest era
of Egyptian filmmaking, one that remains formative for many engaged in
creating Egyptian films today.
