Revolutionary melodrama : popular film and civic identity in Nasser's Egypt / Joel Gordon.

Author
Gordon, Joel (Joel S.) [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Chicago : Middle East Documentation Center, 2002.
  • ©2002
Description
300 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Availability

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Firestone Library - Stacks PN1993.5.E3 G67 2002 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Series
    Chicago studies on the Middle East [More in this series]
    Summary note
    "Revolutionary Melodrama explores intersections between cinema and politics during the Nasser era, a period in which a military regime embarked upon the construction of a new civic identity for an independent Egypt. The way in which filmmakers participated in this venture provides the focal point, with their cultural production as the central texts which both shaped and were shaped by an emerging sense of a new Egypt. With the blessing of a "revolutionary" regime, filmmakers began to explore issues of social inequity, colonial and feudal exploitation, changing gender roles, religious and cultural traditions and, finally, the disappointments of the revolutionary project itself. No realm of cultural production holds greater import for the Nasser era than the cinema. Even those who are active in deconstructing the last vestiges of the Nasserist state trumpet the Nasser era as a golden age of the arts and media. The faces and voices on big and little screens, many still alive, some still working, constitute a pantheon who many Egyptians, young and old alike, feel will never be replaced. The author approaches his subject as a scholar of the early Nasser years who has turned his attention to questions of civic identity and its relationship to art and political symbology. The work is enriched and informed by extensive interviews with a large circle of people engaged in the production or analysis of Egyptian cinema and broadcast, then and now: directors, actors, critics, historians, scenarists, censors, musicians, writers, politicians, and government ministers. Egyptian film remains a largely ignored topic in an ever-growing literature on film and culture. This book sheds new light on what many consider to be the greatest era of Egyptian filmmaking, one that remains formative for many engaged in creating Egyptian films today.
    Bibliographic references
    • Includes bibliographical references (pages 280-288) and index.
    • Includes filmography (pages 288-292).
    Contents
    • We've lost a lot : cinema and longing since Nasser
    • Playing to the people : studios, stars and social texts
    • God and the censor : history and politics in revolutionary film
    • Revolutionary melodrama : torch songs and other tropes
    • Free to be "bad" : the revolution's new woman on screen
    • New peasants, old ways : tradition and nation in Nasserists films
    • Unhappy endings : the rise and fall of Nasserist cinema
    • Nostalfia in black and white : Nasser's streets and public memory
    • References
    • Index.
    ISBN
    • 0970819900
    • 9780970819901
    LCCN
    2002108997
    OCLC
    51056246
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