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CAIRO, April 22 — Hollywood on the Nile, which produced up to 100 feature films a year in its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, appears to be in a nosedive. As late as 1993, the Arab world’s pioneering film industry in Cairo turned out 76 features — putting Egypt among the world’s top 10 producers. But the production figure dropped to only 22 in 1994, the Film Producers’ Association says, and prospects look equally dismal for 1995, the 100th anniversary of the start of the Egyptian film industry. Heavy taxes, censorship, satellite dishes and video piracy are cited as the major causes of the decline, including a large problem with video piracy in the United States. Producer Youssef Francis claims the Egyptian government levies no less than 36 fees and taxes on filmmakers, distributors and exhibitors, and says many producers are simply throwing in the towel. ‘The government has got to get off our backs,’ Francis says. ‘It is driving us out of business.’ ‘It would be unfortunate if in the same year we are celebrating 100 years of cinema, we should also be burying our own film industry,’ says veteran Egyptian director Youssef Shahine. Taxes range from 35 percent on theater tickets for the Ministry of Finance down to such nuisance fees as 3 cents per ticket for the Ministry of Social Affairs and another 3 cents for the Police Benevolent Society. Sometimes capricious censors offer further discouragement. The state censor’s office, which is attached to the Ministry of Culture, has set up a three-stage obstacle course for movies seeking approval — with yet more taxes and fees along the way.

First, a film’s story synopsis must be approved. After that, the censor scrutinizes the finished script. Finally, the completed film goes back to the censor for release approval. Where dialogue or scenes have been altered from the original script — not an unusual occurrence in the film production process — the producer runs the risk of seeing his investment go down the drain if the finished product is ultimately banned. Heavy scissor work is sometimes required to secure a film’s release. ‘The censor may make many cuts which can completely distort the film,’ says leading Cairo film critic Mustafa Darwish. Producers also complain that the Ministry of Tourism charges $75 an hour to use such sites as the Great Pyramids of Giza or Pharaonic temples as film backdrops — even though their presence in a film might encourage tourism. Egypt’s state-run television network pays producers only $2,500 to air previously released feature films in their entirety, but at the same time charges up to $1,000 a minute to advertise new films. (more)

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Widespread video piracy is a major problem, industry sources say. Paradoxically, the United States is cited by the producers’ association as a major culprit despite Washington’s recent war of words with Beijing over Chinese thefts of U.S. films and other intellectual property. Industry reports say U.S. piracy of Arabic-language films centers on major cities like New York and Los Angeles, which are home to large Arab immigrant communities. Francis, the producer, says he found all eight of the films he had produced for sale or rent in Arabic-language video outlets in Los Angeles during a recent trip to the United States. ‘They were all stolen and I’m not getting a dime in royalty,’ he complains. Producers charge the U.S. government with failing to help combat the problem. ‘The United States is keen to protect its own interests, but nobody else seems to count with the Americans,’ says producer Yussri Ashamwi of Karnak International Film. Egypt started producing silent features as early as 1923. Its first large production facility, Studio Misr, was founded in 1935 on the Hollywood model and three more studios followed. All are still operating, but these days directors are more apt to be yelling ‘action’ on TV soap operas than feature films. Television is also driving nails into the Egyptian film industry’s coffin — especially satellite stations watched by increasing numbers of Egyptians and other Arabs. Uncensored foreign movies and other entertainment from satellite sources keep many traditional filmgoers at home. Film critics point out, however, that at least some of the blame for the Egyptian cinema’s decline rests with the producers themselves. ‘You won’t fill the cinemas if you just feed the public trash,’ says the critic Darwish, adding that many recent films are pot-boilers or heavy-handed slapstick comedies mixed with belly-dancing and mildly suggestive songs. Many have flopped at the box office. Critics maintain there is a largely untapped market for thoughtful Arabic-language films, a theory proven by the two biggest financial successes in Egypt in 1994. Both were essentially serious films — ‘The Terrorist,’ starring actor Adel Imam, the Arab world’s leading box office draw, and Youssef Shahine’s ‘The Emigrant.’ ‘The Terrorist’ was the first Egyptian film to address the issue of religious extremism. It ran for over four months in major Egyptian cinemas and reportedly did spectacular business in other Arab countries.

Women are both essential and marginal in society: they are essential by virtue of being half of society, present in all classes and social groups. They are also marginalized given the economic, social and political roles they are assigned. Despite the fact that the first feature film was made by a woman, Alice Guy (1896), film – making remains predominantly a male profession. In Egypt, voices upholding women’s rights go back to the nineteenth century, but they have not been reinforced by the Seventh Art. At worst, women were presented unrealistically, stupidly, sentimentally and exploitatively (see for example Stephan Rosti’s film Layla, 1927). At best a more positive image was presented, but with it went the reduction of a woman’s problem to the question of her relationship to man (see for example Sa’id Marzuq’s film I want A Solution, 1975). The Third World, however, has offered fine alternatives in films that present intelligently and artistically the question of women. Two examples, one made in a revolutionary context and the other in a reactionary one, show how feminist issues can be sensitively depicted in their complexity on screen. Lucia (1968) by the Cuban director Humberto Solas and Yol (1982) by the Turkish director Yilmaz Güney attest to the possibility of a new vision of the question of women. Lucia presents in three cycles the lives of an aristocratic, a bourgeois and a peasant woman, all three named Lucia. Solas makes artistic use of techniques developed by European and Japanese directors to articulate his own views. Aristocratic Lucia is caught between her passionate love and international politics. She ends in madness. Lucia, the bourgeoise, on the other hand, chooses to join her revolutionary husband, and when he dies, she suffers alone. She is a subject of contemplation, not a maker of history. Finally, Lucia the peasant woman is presented with a realistic and somewhat satiric tone amidst the contradictions of post – revolutionary Cuba. This cycle depicts the complexity and inconsistency of Lucia’s position and humorously suggests the possibility of resolution. Yol (The Road) was partly conceived and directed when Güney was in jail in Turkey. The heroes of the film are prisoners allowed a short holiday. As they leave their actual prison, the director deftly shows how they are prisoners of traditions. Unable to escape the prison-house of patriarchal models, the characters are pathetically and unwittingly preserving authoritarian structures rather than maintaining human relations with their families. In subjugating women to unflexible rules, they are not the only ones victimized: men and society are also dragged into the tragic situation.

The author of the article, a legal expert and a judge, known for his critical interest in cinema, held the position of official censor on filmic productions in Egypt twice in the sixties for a cumulative period of two years. In this testimony, he explains the nature of laws enacted first by the British authorities when Egypt was a protectorate, and later those laws enacted in 1955 and 1992 that regulate the making and public showing of films. Darwish points out that in contrast to other domains of creativity, the director of a film has to undergo two separate censorial tests: once before he/she even starts and again once the product is finished. Other artists-be they painters or writers-have to abide by censorship rules once they have created their work, while cinematic production has to be approved even before starting to shoot and no changes in the course of work are allowed for. These laws leave very little room for creativity. Political, religious and sexual taboos play a prominent role in excluding practically all the major scenes of private and public life from representation on the screen, thus constricting the margin of creativity. Furthermore, beside the published laws, there are unpublished regulations-issued by the Office of Publicity and Guidance (under the Ministry of Social Affairs)-which have been effective since 1947. These regulations specify in detail the prohibitions and further constrict the creative space of visual representation. The author gives examples from his own experience as a censor, trying to promote films of quality within this restrictive space, yet pressured into banning them. These pressures came sometimes from auto-censorship, as in the film The Mailman (Al-Bostagi), based on the novella of Yahya Haqqi, the well-known Egyptian writer. The novelist Sabry Moussa, who wrote the scenario for the film, chose to suppress completely the religious identity of the characters, thus denying the cinematic rendition not only fidelity to the original but also artistic coherence. Despite the Censor’s request to clarify the religious affiliations of the characters (which are spelled out in the novella) in order to allow the complications in the plot to cohere, the scenarist stuck to his position because of the terrorizing authority of censorship and the unease felt over religious subjects. Even the documentary film about the Nile undertaken by John Feeney, the New Zealander, had its problems. He shot scenes in Upper Egypt, where peasants used traditional technology, but these scenes were deemed disparaging of a country committed to modernism and were viewed as a foreign filmmaker’s belittlement of a country set on industrial progress. Showing his rushes, Feeney appealed to the Censor’s Office to support artistic integrity against the demands made by no less than the Minister of Culture to refashion the film. Eventually, the director was allowed to show scenes of traditional Egypt on the condition that he would include shots of a ballet in the Cairo Opera House-in an effort to display modernity. A weird compromise was thus reached, not called for by censorship but by considerations of public relations. The third example disclosed is The Rebels (Al-Mutamarridun), directed by Tewfik Saleh, a film which was interpreted by some as an allegorical critique of the military regime of Egypt. Darwish stood behind it and refused to abide by the directive of the Minister of Culture to remove a decisive scene. However, Darwish was soon removed from the position of Censor and the film was heavily cut. Another well-known film that Darwish backed was The Mummy (Al-Mumiya’), directed by Shadi Abdel Salam. Pressures were coming from all directions not to approve the scenario of the film and mostly on the grounds that it would incur commercial losses, as was claimed by the head of The Agency of Cinematic Production. Darwish countered by explaining that economic considerations were not within the domain of censorship-which is supposed to consider only the message of the work and not its possible commercial success or failure. Darwish swiftly approved the project before further delays could prevent its production.