Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt - by Heba Arafa Abdelfattah (Paperback)

About the Book

Explores over 30 feature films from the formative years of Egyptian cinema (1919-52) to contest the contradiction between Islam and innovation.

Book Synopsis

This book studies the rise of cinema in colonial Egypt as a supplemental secular public sphere that is not anti-religion. To this end, it investigates the reception of film by three centres of power: the colonial authorities, the Muslim clergy, and the Cairene bourgeoisie. It inquires about the representations of modernity in films produced during the time and the place filmmakers assigned to Islam in these representations. The result is a story of survival and coexistence told through the lens of cinema as modern art and popular culture negotiating its overt and covert censorship in the public sphere, despite colonization and war.

Review Quotes

Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the Egyptian cinema in its engagement with dominant socio-political forces; Islamic institutions, colonialism and the Cairene nationalist bourgeoisie. Heba Afara Abdelfattah's work is a much-needed contribution, richly researched and intellectually engaging.--Hanan Hammad, Texas Christian University

Abdelfattah takes Arabic cinema studies in daring new directions, challenging - as do so many of the classic movies she covers - frozen critical framings of social class, faith, national identity and, above all, what it meant to be 'modern' in colonial Egypt. This book will compel us to re-view so many of our favourite films.--Joel Gordon, Revolutionary Melodrama

Heba Abdelfattah's fascinating book shows how different interest groups, ranging from British colonizers to conservative religious scholars and progressive urban elites, tried to make the emerging Egyptian film industry work for them. This is a masterful analysis of how their interactions shaped the new media of cinema and its discourse on modernity and on Islam.--Frank Griffel, Yale University