Photo Gallery Revisits Glory Days of Egyptian Cinema

BY NOHA SAHMOUD

The photo exhibition See You at the Movies makes use of stunning cinema stills and historical naratives to take the viewer back in time to the heyday of Egyptian cinema, when such icons as Farid Shawki, Hind Rostom, Suad Hosni and Ismail Yassine dominated the world of Arab celebrity.

The stills on exhibit at the Photographic Gallery, which opened on March 2, were arranged in chronological order from the 1930s to the 1970s beginning with Antar Afandi and ending with Shafika wa Metwali.

Photos of Suad Hosni in her movie Sagheera Ala El Hob (Too Young for Love) as well as the legendary Faten Hamama’s Imbratoreyet Meem (Empire M) were also on display.

Noura Bahgat, the gallery curator, said that the idea for the exhibit came up a year ago in cooperation with the Rare Books library, where the cinema stills were archived.

“We thought the collection was very interesting and would make a very successful exhibition,” she said, adding that it took her about two months to put the exhibit together.

Mohamed Abu Bakr, conservation and preservation curator at the Rare Books and Special Collections Library, said that most of the photos were selected from historical archive collections with help from archive specialists.

Nadine Awadallah, a Journalism major, appreciated that the exhibit harkened to a classic period in Egypt’s history.