Shadi Abdel Salam’s Cinematographic Works: Cinema As a Tool to Recover the Pharaonic Past
Keywords:
Arabic cinema, historical cinema, education, Pharaonic Egypt, historical memory, Pan-Arabism, cultural heritage, historical recovery
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Abstract
This article aims to carry out an analysis of Shadi Abdel Salam's cinematographic work. He is one of the most singular Arab directors, although his complete work is practically unknown to Western historiography. Through the bibliographical examination of his personal career and the analysis of works dealing with his films, as well as the viewing his films, it is possible to reevaluate the figure of this film director, characterized by a great intellectual depth and marked artistic intentionality.
Across his works, focused on historical milestones from different eras, he transmits his artistic personality and his thoughts about cinema. For Abdel Salam, the images themselves constitute an artistic element, the most significant one being the visual component. Moreover, he conceives cinema as a tool for the recovery of a past that remains outside the historical memory, a means by which deep discussions can flourish within Egyptian society. Abdel Salam sets his movies either in ancient Egypt or in other historical eras, but with this past very present, with the aim of recovering the socio-cultural legacy of the pharaonic past. This fact conferred him a unique and exceptional character, not only within Egyptian cinematography, but also among Arab productions
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References
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