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"The relationship between the city and cinema is formidable. The images and sounds of the city found in movies are perhaps the only experience that many people will have of cities they may never visit. Films influence the way we construct images of the world, and accordingly, in many instances, how we operate within it. Cinematic Cairo offers a history of Cairo's urban modernity using film as the primary source of exploration, and cinematic space as both an analytical tool and a medium of critique. Cairo has provided rich subject material for the Egyptian film industry since the inception of the art form at the end of the nineteenth century. The "reel" city-imagined, perceived, and experienced-provides the spatial domain that mirrors change and allows for an interrogation of the "real" city as it encountered modernity over the course of a century. Bringing together chapters by architects and art and literary historians, this volume explores this parallel and convergent relationship through two sections. The first uses films from the 1930s to the end of the twentieth century to illustrate the development of a modern Cairo and its modern subjects. The second section is focused on tracing the transformation of the cinematic city under conditions of neoliberalism, religious fundamentalism, and gender tensions. The result is a comprehensive narrative of the urban modernity of one of the most important cities in the Arab world and Global South."--
List of contents
Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
Cinematic Cairo and the Discourse on Egyptian Urban Modernity: A Prologue,
Nezar AlSayyadPART I: Cinematic Cairo, 1930 to the PresentChapter 1: Bourgeois Cairo, 1930: Cinematic Representations of Modernity of Place in the Middle-Class City,
Ameer Abdurrahman SaadChapter 2: Naguib Mahfouz's Cinematic Cairo: Depictions of Urban Transformation in Twentieth Century Egypt,
Nezar AlSayyad and Mohammad SalamaChapter 3: Bridge as Border and Connector: Class and Social Relations in Cinematic Cairo, 1940-1950,
Nezar AlSayyad and Doaa Al AmirChapter 4: Cinematic Cairo of the United Arab Republic, 1958- 1962,
Kinda AlSamara Chapter5: Kafkaesque Modernity: Cairo in the 1980s and the Middle-Class Housing Crisis,
Ahmed H. AbdelAzimChapter 6: Escaping Cairo: Bureaucratic Modernity in the Cinematic Portrayal of the City in the 1980s,
Tayseer KhairyChapter 7: Cairo Beyond the Windshield: From Modernity of Realism to Surrealistic Postmodernity, 1980s-1990s,
Mariam S. Marei
PART II: Themes in the Transformation of Cinematic CairoChapter 8: Transformations in the Cinematic Space of a Cairo Suburb in the Late-Twentieth-Century,
Farah GendyChapter 9: From Hara to Imara: Social Transformations in Cinematic Cairo,
Mirette AzizChapter 10: Cairo's Cinematic Coffeehouses: Modernity, Urbanity and the Changing Image of an Institution,
Khaled AdhamChapter 11: Gendered Modernity: On the Changing Role of Women in Modern Cinematic Cairo, 1950s-2000s,
Nour Adel SobhiChapter 12: Religious Tolerance in the Cairo of the Movies,1950s-2000s,
Hala A. HassanienChapter 13: The City of a Thousand Minarets and a Million Satellite Dishes: The Dilemma of Islam and Modernity in Cinematic Cairo,
Muhammad E. FetehaChapter 14: Women's Right to the City: Cinematic Representation of Cairene Urban Poverty,
Heba Safey Eldeen and Sherien Soliman
About the author
Edited by Nezar AlSayyad and Heba Safey Eldeen
