The Spat-on Messenger: Youssef Chahine in Conversation with Tom Luddy

Youssef Chahine

Bologna, June 2019. I spotted an Arab name on the badge of the hotel's night porter. When I asked, he turned out to be one—an Egyptian. I mentioned to him that Youssef Chahine's films would be playing in Bologna for the next few days. His face lit up. A floodgate of emotions, about Egypt, his past, and cinema opened, temporarily drowned him in nostalgia, passion and regret. He shared stories of Chahine, of his beloved Alexandria. He even cursed the extra who had forgotten to remove his wristwatch during the battle scene of Salah Eddin (a film about the Crusade, from the Arabs' point of view). According to him, by doing so he had prevented the film from entering the Oscar competition.

Very few directors can make that impact on their people, endowing them with a sense of pride and identity. Chahine's generosity with emotions is contagious. In reaction to a Chahine film, it is as legit to dance or holler as it is to write an essay. In Bologna the scholar and musician Amal Guermazi decided to sing, as her introduction to Al Ard.

Sometimes effortlessly Ophulsian (especially in the '70s, in the fluidity of his carousel-like narratives) and sometimes dialectically Chaplinesque, Chahine brought together the seemingly irreconcilable worlds existing in 20th-century Egypt and gave them a sense of harmony. There was a wise calmness about him. He had every reason to be angry, but instead he gave a sad smile which became the Chahine cinema.

Aligned with Pan-Arabic sentiments, he looked beyond Egypt, too. However, his Algeria-set Djamilah (1958) is nearly impossible to see in a cinema. Telling the story of the Algerian Independence War fighter Djamila Bouhired, it has been absent from recent Chahine retrospectives. It's an anti-French film, in exactly the same manner that hundreds of western films, including some French ones, have been anti-Arab. But it's more than just tit-for-tat—it is a celebration of change in the Arab world, done in the best of Hollywood traditions which Chahine adored. Find the film and show it!  (For the Chahine tribute at Il Cinema Ritrovato, we tracked down a print in Albania but the subtitles were so big, covering almost half the screen, in the process turning them into Godardian onscreen statements.)

Sight & Sound's 100 'Hidden Heroes' of Cinema: Lily Amir-Arjomand

Lily Amir-Arjomand

From Sight & Sound magazine, Summer 2021, Vol. 31, Issue 6, dedicated to unsung heroes of cinema. This was my contribution, trying to go beyond the familiar names and professions one hears on a film set. — EK

Lily Amir-Arjomand (b. 1938)

One of the key architects of the new Iranian cinema, Lily Amir-Arjomand was most likely unfamiliar with even the most basic film terminology. But no matter when she had one thing that no one else in Iran has possessed before or since: trust in the filmmaker.

Emerging from a privileged background, this former classmate of the Queen of Iran was a technocrat with imagination. In 1964 she founded a library for children. Four years later Kanoon had become an impeccably streamlined production house for first-rate cultural goods (including films) aimed at children, with centres spread all over the country. And everything was free.

Alias Nick Beal (John Farrow, 1949)

Alias Nick Beal, publicity still

Written for the catalogue of Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021. -- EK

In 1948 director John Farrow began a close, decade-long collaboration with writer Jonathan Latimer that resulted in ten films, including one marvel (The Big Clock), quite a few greats (Night Has a Thousand Eyes among them), and some obscurities. The intensely engaging Alias Nick Beal, their fourth collaboration, is a dark, claustrophobic variation on the story of Faust (Mindret Lord's original story was titled Dr. Joe Faust) in keeping with the increasingly relevant "political corruption" cycle of the late 1940s (the Oscar for Best Film in 1949 went to All the King's Men). Thomas Mitchell plays Joseph Foster, an ambitious district attorney who meets a shady character who offers to help him in his rise up the political ladder. But there's a price to be paid, especially when one is dealing with the Devil, alias Nick Beal.

Duke Ellington in Isfahan

Duke Ellington in Isfahan 

Director: Ehsan Khoshbakht

UK, 12', 2018/2021, colour/b&w

World premiere: Telluride Film Festival 2021

This short documentary by the Iranian filmmaker, writer and archivist Ehsan Khoshbakht tells the story of Duke Ellington's concert tour of the Middle East in 1963 and the development of one of the most beautiful jazz standards.  

The legendary composer and bandleader was seen as the ideal cultural ambassador for the United States at the height of the Cold War, when President Eisenhower's desired perception of the US as a moral force for good in the world was being undermined by an awareness of its treatment of African-Americans. 

Arriving in Iran with his band, Ellington was inspired by the historical city of Isfahan and especially its architectural riches. It would give its name to one of the pianist's most enduring compositions, and the tour as a whole helped to shape a Grammy Award-winning album, Far East Suite, which showed how much Ellington had absorbed from the sounds of his travels. 

Using archival images and video footage, and with added insight from broadcaster and jazz historian Alyn Shipton, Duke Ellington in Isfahan shines a light on a largely forgotten episode in jazz history and political history, and provides a clearer sense of the ways in which Ellington's music was affected by, and reflects, his vision of the East.

The Lady of the Harem (Raoul Walsh, 1926)

Hollywood Orientalism involving Iran#1: The Lady of the Harem

A lost silent from 1926, produced by Paramount, directed by Raoul Walsh.

"Jesse L. Lasky announced that The Lady of the Harem has been selected as the title for the Paramount picture which, under the working title of "The Golden Journey," Raoul Walsh has just made from James Elroy Flecker's play Hassan. The new title is considered exceptionally appropriate, as the story deals largely with the lavish harem of the Caliph of Khorasan, Persia, during the twelfth century. 

"Featuring Ernest Torrence, Greta Nissen, William Collier, Jr., and Louise Fazenda," said Mr. Laskey, "The Lady of the Harem will be one of the most colorful and sensational pictures ever produced by this company. Mr. Walsh, who directed The Wanderer and The Thief of Bagdad has filled  this new spectacle with all the colorful atmosphere of the East and I am confident that this production will receive an even  greater reception than was accorded The Wanderer." [From Moving Pictures, 1926]

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021: Favourites & Discoveries

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021 ended last week, on an uplifting note. More than 400 films and other projectionable audiovisual curiosities were shown and seen. While still in the post-festival haze, I sought the insight of some of the festival attendees on what they thought to be the essential — what was liked and cherished most, what was discovered and became a revelation.

I posed two questions on colleagues and friends who attended the festival in person: What was your absolute favourite film this year and which film turned out to be a major discovery or rediscovery at the festival. They were gracious enough to send me their picks which you can read here in alphabetical order. (Please feel free to add your favourites in the comment section of this post.) 

Some contributors have sent along some notes which I wanted to share with you. They come at the bottom of the post, marked by * (star)

You can also view this list on Letterboxd where it has been nicely compiled and illustrated by Jon M.

Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021 Opening Speech (July 20)

A Place in the Sun at Arlecchino on July 25. (C) Lorenzo Burlando

Short speech made at the launch of the festival at Cinema Jolly, July 20. — EK

We are back but some of our friends are not here.

During the weeks and months that have interrupted lives, movements and careers, I found myself filming the entrances of cinemas. Those that I wasn't able to shoot myself, I asked the people who worked there to shoot for me. These images of the factory, captured at a time when no workers were to be seen leaving, was intense. 

This longest of intermissions that any of us can recall when it comes to cinema might be unique in its universality, but interruption as a cruel reality is hardly new. In fact, it's old enough to have been used many times before as an intellectual and artistic tool of reinforcement.

Through the films we are presenting this year, you'll see a history of the many possible forms of interruption which filmmakers and viewers have experienced – particularly those living and working in the 20th century. At the same time they offer a mirror to what we have felt and experienced in the recent past.

The More the Merrier (George Stevens, 1943)

The More the Merrier

Restored in 4K in 2019 by Sony Pictures Entertainment at Cineric, Roundabout West and Prasad laboratories, from the nitrate original negative and the nitrate dupe negative preserved at Library of Congress and BFI National Archive. Playing at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna on July 24 & 27 and at Cinema Rediscovered in Bristol on July 31.

In this, George Stevens’s most sophisticated comedy, the wartime housing (and male species) shortage in Washington DC is the main excuse for the mischievous Charles Coburn – sharing a tiny flat with Jean Arthur – to sublet his half of the living space to Joel McCrea, deliberately pushing the two younger flatmates into a shared bed. The credit for the script should go to the uncredited Garson Kanin who wrote it for, and was paid by, the scrupulous Arthur, in search of a script that she could like (she was temporarily suspended from Columbia for rejecting too many). When the script finally reached Stevens’s hands in June 1942, it had a different ending in which the three characters continue to share the flat – typically of Stevens, he altered it.

All the Films of Il Cinema Ritrovato 2021

Bologna getting ready for Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXV

All the titles programmed for Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXV, listed by the year of production:

George Stevens Has Found a Place in the Sun... in Bologna

All photos by Margherita Caprilli