Aug 26, 2008
R.I.P.
Youssef Chahine died a few weeks ago. I used to live in his building. At the time I'd never heard of him, but after hearing so many wow, you live in Youssef Chahine's building?'s I started paying attention.
His movies aren't as hard to find as a lot of other Arab films are, but they're not easily accessible, either. The Alexandria series is on Netflix. I watched it, and I think I can say I liked it, but because it's meant to be a biography that mirrors Egypt's modern history you have to know a lot of modern Egyptian history to understand it as anything but a biography. I understood just enough of that to understand how much I must be missing. (I'm guessing it'd be like trying to watch a highbrow Wayne's World if you're not American. You'd think the story was the point, not the 9560949032845 inside references.) I'm hoping some of his other stuff eventually becomes available in the U.S. Or maybe it is and I'm not looking hard enough.
Here's a guide to his work, going back to 1950, just before the revolution.
