ADIFF ’17: Sins of the Flesh

The combination of political unrest and illicit sex sounds very 1970s, in a Fassbinder-Wertmuller kind of way, but this film is very much rooted in the events of 2011. We are in Egypt, so both are decidedly dangerous, especially the sex. A morality tale of adultery, murder, and guilty consciences plays out in a remote tenant farm while the Tahrir Square demonstrations rage on in Khaled El Hagar’s Sins of the Flesh (trailer here), which screens during this year’s African Diaspora International Film Festival in New York.

Technically, Ali is a convicted murderer, but given the chaos roiling the country, nobody will spend much time looking for him after his prison escape. Having no other family, Ali takes shelter with his older cousin Hassan, who married his intended, Fatma. It is especially painful for Ali to see them together, because he was sent to jail for fatally defending her honor.

Regardless of marriage vows and cousinly ties, Ali is determined to take up with Fatma again—and she will soon give in to temptation. Unfortunately, their farm-owning landlord Mourad observes their assignation. Although he is not about to directly involve himself in the tenants’ grubby lives, he files it away to blackmail Fatma into sexual compliance at a later date. He is indeed an exploiter, but he is more right than wrong when he constantly predicts the “Days of Rage” will lead to a victory for the Muslim Brotherhood that will be even worse than the Mubarak regime.

Sins is a complicated film to parse, because nearly everyone is highly compromised, except perhaps poor clueless Hassan. There is a good deal of carnal micro sinning going, but it is nowhere near as damaging as the macro political sins. Arguably, the former are a result of the corrosive latter, but El Hagar tries not to overplay the polemical causality.

Nahed El Sebai and Ahmed Abdala Mahomud are both suitably intense, as Fatma and Ali, convincingly wrestling with their status as both victims and perpetrators. However, it is Zaki Fateen Abdel Wahab and Mahmoud El Bezawy who really bring heft, dimension, and often subtlety to the film as Mourad and Hassan, respectively.

In many ways, Sins is a bold film, but it basically builds to the revelation that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Still, when the Muslim Brotherhood is in charge of the nouveau status quo, that is a somewhat daring observation. Fortunately, it works rather well on purely melodramatic grounds. Recommended as an impassioned but somewhat unfocused critique of the old regime and its short-lived successor, Sins of the Flesh plays for a week (12/1-12/7) at the Cinema Village, each afternoon at 1:00, as part of the 2017 ADIFF.

Jews of Egypt: Censored by the Temporary Morsi Regime

Why would a supposedly democratically elected government prohibit any public screening of a film with absolutely no violent or sexual content? In the case of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi administration, a documentary describing how a sizable Jewish community once peacefully coexisted with Egypt’s Muslim majority was evidently not considered fit for public consumption, despite slavishly hewing to an “anti-Zionist” line. Arriving as a modest cause célèbre due to the fallen Morsi government’s misadventure in censorship (they eventually relented), Amir Ramses’ Jews of Egypt (trailer here) opens this Friday in New York.

During the first half of the Twentieth Century, a number of Egypt’s leading citizens happened to be Jewish. To this day, Laila Mourad remains one of the nation’s most popular recording artists, though many are apparently unaware of her Jewish heritage, judging from the brief man-on-the-streets interviews that open the film.

According to surviving members of the community, nearly all Jewish Egyptians self-identified with their country first and foremost, whereas their Jewish religion and culture was of secondary concern—if that. Everyone goes to agonizing lengths to distinguish between Jews and Zionists, clearly pre-supposing there is something fundamentally problematic about the latter. Yet, despite the vehement anti-Israeli sentiment expressed by many prominent Jewish Egyptians, they collectively found Egyptian increasingly inhospitable following Nasser’s ascent to power.

Ironically, the experience of the unflaggingly loyal anti-Zionist Jewish Egyptians dramatically proves the Zionist point. Despite their Communist, anti-colonialist political affiliations, they were still arm-twisted into immigrating and, most painfully, renouncing their Egyptian nationality. Some were even imprisoned on the scantest of charges, solely because they were Jewish.

Nonetheless, Ramses and his assembled talking heads are not particularly inclined to ironic self-awareness. As far as historical accuracy goes, JOE is also highly suspect. Frankly, the film works best when examining the interrelations between the various members of the loose-knit Jewish-Egyptian society. Who knew whom and where they all wound up is rather engaging stuff.

The Orwellian impulse to erase all trace of Egypt’s considerable Jewish population is depressing, but not especially shocking. At least Ramses plants a flag that says these people existed. Considerably better at painting a picture of a unique cultural milieu than explaining the wider geo-political forces at play, Jews of Egypt is still a decidedly mixed bag. Viewers should go in already well grounded in the history of the region and Israel’s constant battle for survival. For those intrigued by its rocky pre-release reception, it opens this Friday (3/28) at the Quad Cinema in New York, via Art Mattan Productions.

ND/NF ’11: Cairo 6,7,8

When CBS journalist Lara Logan was assaulted by a gang of rampaging men in Tahrir Square, it became clear there is a real problem in how a sizeable portion of the Egyptian male population relates to women. When NPR had to delete scores of hateful comments on the Logan story and issue a scolding reminder to its readers (serviced by our tax dollars) that violence against women is always unacceptable, the western media’s deficiency handling issues like the conditions endured by women in Egypt (and the wider Muslim world) also became blatantly clear. Now with his directorial debut, Mohamed Diab offers a blistering corrective to his country’s self-serving denial and outright misogyny in Cairo 6,7,8, which screens during the 2011 New Directors/New Films, co-presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Cairo’s buses are a groper’s playground. Fayza understands this only too well. Every time she files onto the titular 6/7/8 line, she is felt up. It is taking a toll on the traditional working class Muslim woman, depleting her spirit and further poisoning her already frosty relations with her boorish husband.

Modern and affluent, Seba was the victim of a large scale sexual assault during a soccer match that eerily parallels the subsequent Logan story. Naturally, her husband blamed her—not directly of course, but through his emotional distance. As part of her own recovery process, Seba begins teaching self-defense and empowerment classes for women, attracting Fayza as a student. Eventually, the two join forces with Nelly, a hip aspiring stand-up comic who has launched the country’s’ first sexual harassment lawsuit.

One day Fayza fights back with a straight pin. And the next day too. On the third day, the media gets wind of the story and Cairo’s buses are suspiciously empty. Finally, the police spring into action—to make mass transit safe for mashers again.

678 is an angry, bracing film. Though written and directed by a man, it clearly vents the rage (if you will) that Cairo’s women are largely unable to express. Yet, it is a tightly crafted drama grounded in its human elements. A braided story with multiple overlaying flashbacks, Diab draws the strands together quite adroitly. While dealing with a scaldingly hot button topic, 678 provides at least one nuanced male figure with a legitimate arc of character development. Indeed, keep your eye on that shrewd police detective.

Of course, the three women are the soul and nucleus of the story, but even here Diab does not take the easy way out, forthrightly exploring their own cultural prejudices towards each other. As Seba, Nelly Karim displays a riveting screen presence, while taking her character to the film’s most interesting emotional places. Perhaps the trickiest role is that of Fayza, who willfully subjugates herself underneath her headscarves and billowing layers of modest clothing, in an apparent attempt to deny her own femininity. Yet Bushra (one name) finds a spark of resistance buried beneath the harassed and self-hating woman. If there is a weak link in the film, it is Nahed el Sebai as Nelly. (Perhaps something was lost in the translation, but both she and her supposed comedian boyfriend seem painfully unfunny during their routines.)

678 is a bold film that has a currency beyond the recent tragic headlines. It certainly seems NPR listeners could benefit from its message as much as its target Egyptian audience. If not exactly subtle, it is a sharply written, tightly executed film. A standout highlight of this year’s New Directors/New Films, 678 screens this Saturday (3/26) at MoMA and the following Monday (3/28) at the Walter Reade.

ADIFF ’10: Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story

Hebba Younis wants to be Chris Wallace. Her husband wants her to be Oprah Winfrey. However, when at his behest she temporarily forgoes her hard-hitting newsmaker interviews in favor of women’s interest features, it somehow antagonizes the Egyptian government even more in Yousry Nasrallah’s Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story (trailer here), a recent selection of the Venice Film Festival which has its New York premiere during this year’s African Diaspora International Film Festival.

They should be Cairo’s most fearsome media couple. Younis is the formidable host of a morning talk show. Karim Hassan is an up-and-coming journalist in line to become editor-in-chief of one of Egypt’s state-owned newspapers. Unlike Younis though, Hassan never met a government official he wouldn’t suck up to. Reluctantly, she agrees to lay low during the editor selection process. Yet, as she invites average Egyptian women on her show to tell their stories, a portrait of a corrupt and misogynist Islamic society emerges that hardly thrills Hassan. When cabinet ministers start to be implicated in her guests’ stories of victimization, there will be trouble.

Essentially, Scheherazade is four films in one, telling three discrete story arcs in flashbacks within the framework of Younis’ show. As the least controversial (and therefore least memorable), her first interview with a late middle-aged volunteer social worker gives Hassan reason for hope. While it runs a bit long, the second woman’s story is a much different matter. Convicted of murdering the man who was playing her and her two spinster sisters, it raises hot button questions about women’s legal rights in Egypt specifically and under Islamic law in general—not exactly territory Hassan and his political masters are eager to explore. When Younis’ third guest Nahed, a dentist from a prominent family, accuses a sitting minister of sexually and financial preying on mature unmarried women, all bets are off.

While cinematographer Samir Bahsan gives Scheherazade a lush, sophisticated look, it is a surprisingly tough film. Though Hassan might appear to be a modern dope-smoking yuppie, it becomes clear he would prefer his wife veiled and cloistered rather than more famous than him. Evidently, Mona Zaki has been the target of some heated disparagement from Egypt’s medieval quarters for her portrayal of the relatively liberated and assertive Younis. While she is a smart and attractive lead, Sanaa Akroud really steals the picture as Nahed, an older but still striking woman. Akroud brings out her intelligence and resoluteness, making her not-so uncommon circumstances a particularly effective indictment of Islamist Egypt.

Scheherazade would be bold for any Islamic country and is especially so in an Egypt where most media is wholly owned by the Soviet-sounding State Information Service. A feminist film in the best sense of the term, Scheherazade is honest look at the status of Egyptian women today. Timely and definitely recommended, it screens as part of the 2010 ADIFF this Friday (12/3) at the Anthology Film Archives and the following Sundays (12/5, 12/12) and Tuesday (12/14, the concluding night of the festival) at Symphony Space’s Thalia Theater.

NYADFF: Chaos

Fans of Egyptian popular cinema will always remember Youssef Chahine for directing Omar Sharif’s silver screen debut. For cineastes though, he is the auteur behind socially aware festival favorites, like Cairo Station. Completed by Khaled Youssef when ill-health forced Chahine to step down, Chaos (French trailer here) combines elements of his fêted issue films and the Egyptian melodramas that made Sharif a star. Screening tonight at the New York African Diaspora Film Festival’s Night in Egypt at Symphony Space, Chahine’s final film statement is in fact a harsh indictment of a corrupt Egyptian society.

Chaos begins and ends with a riot. In between, the crooked cop Hatem abuses his power and the general populace, extorting just about everyone he comes into contact with. After indiscriminately arresting people during the opening riot, the police are ordered by the new goody two-shoes DA to release all the accused. However, Hatem and his superiors have different plans for so-called troublemakers, illegally holding them incommunicado in a hidden basement cell.

Hatem, played with villainous gusto by Khaled Saleh, is not just venal, but also twisted in his personal life as well, stalking Nour, the pretty young school teacher living in his building. Of course, she is repulsed by the morally bankrupt policeman. The object of her unrequited love is the young DA, who happens to be the son of Nour’s headmistress. Unfortunately, he is engaged to a rich but shallow party girl, sort of an Egyptian Paris Hilton. When dealing with the romantic longings of its characters, Chaos approaches telenovela territory. However, back at the station house, the vibe is more Grand Guignol, with prisoners tortured in the dungeon as the prostitutes in the holding cell above put on a Bollywood-style show for the men watching through cracks in the wall.

Hatem acts with impunity, because his malfeasance amuses his superiors. Nour and her mother even seek help from the local Islamist party on the make. They promise big, but fail to deliver. Here Chahine seems to imply rampant public corruption in Egypt drives otherwise rational citizens to vote for radical Islamist parties. In a way, the film is so eager to indict Egyptian political corruption it lets the contemptible Hatem off the hook, as the product of sick society.

Somewhat uneven, Chaos is a big, angry morality play for the screen. It turns out Chahine had a particular talent for directing riot sequences. However, his attempts at popular melodrama at times feel a bit overwrought. While Chaos will probably not be considered one of the Chahine’s masterworks, it is certainly an interesting parting shot from the celebrated director. It screens tonight as part of the NYADFF, which continues through the weekend.