Watching, as a child, the classic black and white Egyptian films, made
in the thirties and the forties of the twentieth century, was not only an
enjoyable experience, but also an enlightening one. The weekly screening of
Egypt’s classic movies introduced me and hundreds of Egyptian children and
teens to a period of Egypt’s sociopolitical history we would have never
otherwise, experienced. Tragic and funny tales of Egypt’s aristocracy, peasants
and Sha’aby (common) people who lived in the tiny alleys of Cairo, were
portrayed on the magic screen by adorable actors and actresses like actor
Stephane Rosti (1891-1964), Laila Murad (1918 -1995) and others. Some of them
were so influential in their performances to the extent of creating long-lived
phrases used by their spectators until now.
After more than five decades, Stephane Rosti’s words when he was
mistakenly shot, Nashent Ya Faleh (You shot me, idiot), is still well-alive.
Rosti, himself, directed ‘Layla’ in 1927, the first silent Egyptian film to be
financed by a native Egyptian, Aziza Amir, who was a theater actress. The
spectators rarely question the Egyptian authenticity and ethnicity of Rosti nor
think that their popular Egyptian actor and director is actually an
Austrian-Italian native who migrated to Egypt with his family in the early 20th
century. The same applies to Laila
Murad, one of Egypt’s prominent actresses and singers of the 1930s and the
1940s, who was not an Egyptian native, but born in Cairo to a Moroccan father
and a Polish mother, as some sources claim!
Based on the fact that it was the first long feature film to be financed
by Egyptian money, for many film historians, Rosti’s film ‘Layla’, though
directed by a non-native Egyptian, was considered the real birth of Egyptian
cinema. It was until two other feature films ‘Fi Bilad Tut 'Ankh Amu / In the
Land of Tutankhamun’n’, directed by Victor Rosito's in 1923 and Qubla
Fi-l-Sahra' / A Kiss in the Desert, directed by Ibrahim Lama and starring his
brother, Badr, were presented later as the first long Egyptian films. Also,
both Rosito and Lama were not native Egyptians: Rosito was Italian and Lama was
a South American of Lebanese origins. Lama and his brother established a film
production company, which financed a number of films in the 1920s and the
1930s. Their fist two films ‘A Kiss in the Desert’ and ‘A Disaster in the
Pyramids’, released in 1928, were criticized for the lack of understanding of
Egypt’s Arabic traditions and Muslim cultures. Press articles during this time
highlighted the fact that they were not Egyptians and advised them to learn
more about the Egyptian culture to be able to write films that would appeal to
Egyptians.
Prior to the appearance of feature films, the first shorts produced in
the history of Egyptian cinema were also made by foreigners, mostly Europeans.
Viola Shafiq, who writes extensively on Arab cinema, says in her article
‘Egyptian Cinema’, “The first cinematic activities like elsewhere in the Arab
world, were undertaken by foreign (mostly European) residents. Louis and
Auguste Lumière ordered shootings in the so-called 'Orient', among others in
Egypt. Their Place des Consuls à Alexandrie , by M. Promio, was the first film
shot in Egypt in 1897. (Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film,
2001)”
It is also worth-mentioning that the first talking feature film ‘Wedad’,
released in 1936, was directed by Fritz Kramp, a German native who was the head
of the editing department of Studio Misr, the first film production company
created in 1935 by an Egyptian businessman who founded Bank Misr in the 1920s.
Kramp was not the only German native contributing to the building up of Egypt’s
cinema, but Studio Misr hired many others to provide technical support and training
to the budding Egyptian filmmakers. It hired the German set designer, Robert
Scharfenberg and the Russian photographer, Sami Berl, who trained Egyptians
while working on the production of the studio. During World War II, the
production of Egyptian cinema was negatively influenced not only by economic
problems caused by the war, but also by the lack of the German technical
experts who were sent to British camps during the war, Hani Mustafa reported on
Al Ahram Weekly, issue 337.
The fact that Egypt’s early films were not totally Egyptian-made and its
early cinema industry, though sometimes financed by Egyptian money represented
by Bank Misr and its Studio Misr, was run by a mix of Egyptians and foreigners,
didn’t deter film scholars like Viola Shafiq, Ahmed Al Hadary and other film
scholars from considering them (the early films) the beginning of a national
cinema in Egypt. Perhaps Lama’s first two films well reflect this. The films
were written, directed and produced by non-Egyptians, but still counted by most
film historians among the early Egyptian films, for being shot and produced in
Egypt. There is almost consent in their writings on considering the 1920s the
age of the rise of Egypt’s national cinema, though dominated by non-Egyptian
filmmakers.
The debate around the concept ‘national’ versus regional and
international has been going on for decades, but the debate has made its way to
the public sphere strongly twice in the 20th Century. The first time the concept ‘national’ came out strongly and arguably
against others was in the 1950s and 1960s, decades labeled as ‘the postcolonial
era’. These years witnessed the rise of new regimes brought to power by
liberation movements across the African and Asian continents and other parts of
the world that were colonized by Western powers, namely Britain, France and
Italy.
The second time was towards the end of the 20th Century when
the ‘national versus global’ became material for heated discussions between pro
and anti-globalization observers. The discussions were not this time limited to
the developing countries of the global south, who always fear the dominance of
the developed north over their countries, but extended to the countries of the
north itself, who feared a global monster coming from the North American
continent, crossing the Atlantic and invading them with its very much appealing
ideas and products to the global audience.
Such a debate around the concept ‘national’ against ‘others’ has been accompanied by
another discussion over the cultural products of a certain country or a nation, including
cinema, and naturally the debate has extended from the production circles of
films to the scholarly writings and debates of film academics and critics.
This article is an attempt to shed some light on the concept of national
cinema around two periods of time, the 1950 and 1960s and then later in the
1990s, reveal the circumstances that led to conceptualizing national cinema,
and look at how it is interpreted by film scholars and critics.
Post-colonial ‘national’ cinema:
The date marking the making of the first film varied from one country to
another and it depended, to a great extent, on the country’s geopolitics: where
it is located and what political circumstances surrounded its cultural
environment. The nations of the West enjoy, relatively, a long and old history
of cinema and their political and economic advantages contributed greatly to
the rise and development of cinema as an art and as an industry.
Meanwhile, the nations of the East suffered politically and economically
under colonization and/or pro-colonizers’ regimes, which didn’t faithfully work
on developing the cultural life of the indigenous population leaving the
cultural space dominated by Westerners and pro-West intellectuals. This was,
for example, what the French colonization did in North Africa. “The French in
1946 created major studios in Tunisia (Studios Africa) and Morocco (Studios
Souissi), but they did so as part of a strategy to ensure the creation of an
Arabic-language cinema alternative (with colonialist French propaganda) that
could counter the popularity of Egyptian cinema. Films emerging from these
studios were all foreign-directed, produced, and written.”(Film Reference,
2009)
With very few exceptions and scattered attempts, the cinema in the East
was generally dominated by non-natives who created cinema alienated from the
reality of the common in the colonized countries. Western- dressed men and
women living in modern houses and leading a Western life style were common
scenes in films made in the colonized countries. Themes of serious concern to the natives such
as the political corruption of the pro-colonizers’ ruling regimes, the extreme poverty, illiteracy and
other underdevelopment issues were almost absent in these films.
For Galal Amin[1][1], an Egyptian writer and critic, films made
in the 1920s and 1930s didn’t represent the culture of Egypt as it should have
been. They were mostly focused on city life and a typical social and emotional
struggle between the two classes of the city: the poor and the aristocrats.
Amin questions the absence of the Egyptian peasants and the countryside in most
of the films made during this time with the exception of one long silent
feature film, Zeinab. Foreign words,
mostly French and Italian, were heavily present in dialogues, and women
dressing in a Western style and men drinking and smoking were common scenes in
Egypt’s 1920s and 1930s movies. (Hisham, 2008) (Samak, 1977)
As cinema remains a popular art, its growing popularity pushed the
liberation movements and the new rising regimes to take it seriously. They were
very much interested in creating a new cinema, alternative to the one created
by the colonizers and their agents; a cinema that mirrored the new era and its
dramatic political and socio-economic changes. On one hand, it was a means to
create their new national identity, through distinguishing their cultural
products, including cinema, from others. In the process of defining a national
cinema, Higson says, there is the establishing of some sort of unique and
self-contained identity… And, as Benedict Anderson has argued, the ‘national….
cannot be imagined except in the midst of an irremediable plurality of other nations.”
(Higson, 1989) & (Higson, 1997)
On the other hand, using cinema as a political tool to disseminate the
new regime’s ideological thoughts was a practice of most of the post-colonial
ruling regimes across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Perhaps they have
imported this from well-established socialist regimes (such as the former
Soviet Union and the National Socialist period in Germany) that successfully
managed to deploy and direct the cinema to serve their ideologies.
As Higson notes, “It is worth underlining again the role of the state,
and the terms of its intervention in the practices of a film industry, in
determining the parameters and possibilities of a national cinema (as both an
economically viable and a culturally motivated institution)- at least since the
mid 1910s, when governments began to recognize the potential ideological power
of cinema, and cinema itself could seem to be something like a national
cultural form, as institution with a nationalizing function.” (Higson, 1989)
In Soviet Cinema, for example, “the screenplay was thus of vital
importance, as it was the main means of conveying the propagandistic method….
The supervision of the cinema industry was carried out by Goskino, the
committee with sole responsibility to finance and distribute films. Goskino had
the power to prevent films from being shown if they did not conform,”
(Gillespie, 2005) Similarly, the Nasser’s regime in Egypt, seizing the power in
1952, “established the Supreme Council for the Protection of Arts and Letters
and in 1957 the Organization of Consolidation of Cinema with the aim of
achieving a higher level of cinematic art and strengthening the national cinema
industry” (Samak, 1977) In Cuba, a similar version of the saga happened when
Fidel Castro’s revolution took power and the Rebel Army sat up a film unit,
ICAIC, with the purpose of making films explaining reforms. “Cuban writers and
artists had no choice but to acknowledge and spread the image of the Cuban
regime as a benefactor and to serve the regime's political agenda against the
United States.” (Cuellar,1998)
The relationships among the trio: the political authority, the
filmmakers and audience reflected this. The young filmmakers who supported the
liberation movements in their countries and expected, in return a spacious art
and cultural landscape, were shortly disappointed with regimes that wanted to
use the popularity of cinema, as well as the press and other cultural tools
like songs to serve their cause.
The reaction of filmmakers, writers, journalists and intellectuals to
the will of the political authorities varied. Some chose the difficult path and
confronted the authorities with themes calling for freedom, democracy and
openness and it was a lost battle where filmmakers lost their films on the
hands of the government censors. Amid such circumstances, the ruling regimes
started to label some prominent cultural figures (filmmakers, writers and
journalists) whose ideas were not in agreement with the authorities
non-nationalist and their work, accordingly, non-national. Those whose work
reflected the ideology of the ruling regimes were described ‘nationalist’ and
their work is national.
The authorities’ stance of the cultural products were framed in a context
similar to their stance of non-cultural products as they either closed their
markets against the foreign products or incited the public to boycott these
non-national products. Meanwhile, the description ‘national’ echoed among the
public in the previously colonized countries who recalled years of exploitation
by the colonizers and their non-national supporting regimes. The authorities
managed to well-deploy the concept ‘national’ against ‘non-national’ and
reinforced it by the action of nationalizing the cinema industry. In a country like Egypt, the major industries
and sources of ‘national’ income (i.e. the Suez Canal) were nationalized by
Nasser’s government, and the ‘nationalization wave’ was welcomed by an overwhelming
majority.
Three conclusions could be inferred from
using the word ‘national-ize’ by the post-colonial ruling regimes. First, the
‘national-ization’ of cinema implicitly denounced the ‘national’ characteristic
of cinema existed during the colonization period and thus casting doubts on the
authenticity of films made earlier, before the new regimes took over, and
presented as national films. Second, films made under the umbrella of a
state-sponsored ‘nationalized’ cinema were naturally deemed national and the
governments were keen to highlight these films and present them as a national
product versus other imported films and films made during the colonization
time. Third, the post-colonial ruling regimes contributed to the re-definition
of national cinema in their own terms. State-sponsored films that carried
themes reflecting the agenda of the political authority and supporting its
internal and external policies were described as national cinema. The regime’s
internal and external opponents were ruled out of the ‘national cinema’
umbrella and lost the protection of the state institutions. In some countries,
the regime’s opponents were labeled apostates, and ended up voluntarily or
involuntarily in exile.[2][2] The concept ‘National Cinema’ was then
narrowly referred to films made by state-loyal natives, carrying anti-colonial
themes and sponsored by the native state to be consumed by natives. Therefore,
several post-colonial regimes arrogated to themselves the creation of a
‘national cinema’ and ‘a domestic film industry’ establishing their interpretation
of national cinema on both economic terms and text-based approach.
In this, post-colonial regimes have used two
of the various mobilizations of the concept ‘national cinema’ discussed by
Andrew Higson in his essay “The Concept of National Cinema”. Higson says,
“There is the possibility of defining national cinema in economic terms,
established an conceptual correspondence between the terms ‘national cinema’
and ‘the domestic film industry’ and therefore being concerned with such
questions as where are these films made, and by whom, who owns and controls the
industrial infrastructures, the production companies, the distributors and the
exhibitions circuits? Second, there is a possibility of a text-based approach
to national cinema. Here the key questions become: what are these films about,
do they share a common style or world view, what sorts of projections of the
national character do they offer? To what extent are they engaged in
‘exploring, questioning and constructing a notion of nationhood in the films
themselves and in the consciousness of the viewer? (Higson, 1989)
However, what seems contradictory and forces
us to cast doubts on the authenticity of the native-state cinema is the fact
that though films made during the colonization period were accused of being
alienated from the reality of the indigenous, such disengagement had not
revoked their (the indigenous) fascination of the pre-liberation cinema where
they were exposed to Western lifestyle and modern modes of life. Rather, it
evoked the post-colonial regimes to create films, though framed as ‘national
films’ and embedded with anti-colonial ideologies, surprisingly had images of the indigenous
themselves adopting a very Western liberal lifestyle. In reality, this was not
the case, as the new regimes allowed marginal space for liberal thoughts and
their censors were highly active in dictating filmmakers to produce what was in
conformity with the regime’s ideologies.
On one hand, this leaves us with a thought
that the concept ‘national cinema’ is an ‘invention’, purposely designed and
developed by the state (the post-colonial regimes) to cancel out previously produced cultural products and
their association with the colonizer and the pro-colonizer’s agents. “In the
1960s and 1970s, cinema was embraced by many nation-states as a potential tool
in the struggle to reassert national autonomy in the wake of decolonization.” (
Ezra, 2007) Such simplicity in defining ‘national cinema’ was the outcome of a
politicized cinema and a bi-polar post-colonial world where the notion ‘you are
either with me, or with the others’ prevailed.
This comes clearly in agreement with what Higson proposed as “histories
of national cinema can be understood as histories of crisis and conflict, of
resistance and negotiation.” (Higson, 1989)
On the other hand, such a limited
state-identification of national cinema is practically denounced by
anti-colonial films made by non-natives of the colonized countries and it
raises questions about where such films fit. The Italian Gillo Pontecorvo’s
1966 The Battle of Algiers is a clear example of a film that is made by
a foreigner and still stands on the side of the colonized (the Algerians) in
their liberation struggle against the colonizer (the French). ( Srivastava,
2005) Where do we also put a film like The
Lion of the Desert, directed by a US Syrian born director, Mustafa Al
Akkad, and starring Anthony Quinn. The movie narrates the struggle of Libyan
nationalist Omar al-Mukhtar, who led an armed revolt against the Italian occupation
of Libya and executed by Benito Mussolini in 1932.
Hollywood-izing national cinema:
Moving towards the end of the 20th Century carrying
perspectives inherited from the post-colonial period, the national cinema had
remained for a while referred to as films produced within a certain territory
and with boundaries separating them from films produced in different
nation-states. (Tawil, 2005) However, these boundaries shortly started to
collapse by forces of globalization[3][3], allowing new ideas, themes and styles to
flow from other territory/ies threatening the national culture. “The 1980s and
1990s have put further pressure on the national, with the global spread of
corporate capital, the victory of finance over industrial capital, the
consolidation of global markets, the spread and range of electronic
communications, and the further weakening of national cultural and economic
boundaries….Half a century after 1945 it is difficult to imagine a nation-state
retaining the congruence of polity, culture, and economy which characterized
most nation-states before then.” (Crofts, 1998)
And, if post colonialism led, to a considerable extent, to forging national cinema, then globalization and
neocolonialism have done a similar job. Globalization is seen by some scholars
as the driving force of neocolonialism and cultural imperialism where certain
cultures dominate, taking over whatever local on the way. The new communication
revolution, enriched by global trends to enhance the free flow of products (and
ideas), has brought the concept ‘national’ once more under the spotlight.
At government and non-government levels and in previously colonized
countries as well colonizing countries, the notion ‘national versus global’ has
become a significant issue. In vast areas of the previously colonized world,
globalization has been seen as neocolonialism, where countries, despite their
political independence, feel the domination by a powerful, usually Western
nation over their weak economies. The neocolonialism is usually accompanied by
the concept ‘cultural imperialism’ where domination and control is practiced
over the cultural aspects of life, including cinema. Countries that suffered
for decades under colonization and struggled to create their own national
identity and used all possible cultural products, particularly national cinema,
to assert their identity, are the first to feel that their own national culture
is vulnerable and do their best to strengthen their national culture against an
American global one. “The concept of a national cinema has almost invariably
been mobilized as a strategy of cultural (and economic) resistance; a means of
asserting national autonomy in the face of (usually) Hollywood’s international
domination.” (Higson, 1989)
The notion ‘national versus global’ has been cinematically translated
into ‘national cinema against American cinema’, which is globally dominant, and
‘American’ has become the equivalent of ‘Global’. Perhaps the Tunisian film
critic, Hassouna Mansour, has summed all
up in his interview with De Filmkrant in Rotterdam", the daily festival
edition of the Dutch film magazine "De Filmkrant, saying,
“We have to consider that African Cinema, especially in its early days
right after independence, was part of the great enterprise of desalienation. As
it grows, the task does not become easier. African filmmakers have to face
other challenges, in particular that of the historical rift between the West
and the Third World, between the colonizer and the colonized. Furthermore, they
are confronted, just like their Occidental colleagues, with the ogre called
globalization, which threaten to flatten tastes. The Hollywood system keeps
growing, forcing everyone, the Western independent as well as the Southern
directors, to play by its rules.”
(FIPRESCI, 2004)
‘The ogre’ Mansour has called
‘globalization’ and’ the pressure on the
national’ that Croft has referred to have generated visible concerns about the
national cultural products and have invoked efforts to highlight the concept of
‘national cinema’ to assert its existence once again against others. The
challenge facing the national cinema advocates this time is different since it
is not confronting with a defined known others (as it was the case with the
post-colonial regimes against the colonizers). Rather, they are confronted with
abundant global forces invading and affecting every aspect of the national
culture.
The former colonizing countries, mostly of Europe, are not excluded from
the globalization effect and the threat it has brought on its cultural
products. In this regard, the European experience is note-worthy as it is quite
linked to the strong re-emergence of the concept ‘national cinema’. At a time
when there are attempts to define
‘European Cinema’ and a European film heritage, the well-established European
art cinema seems to be losing the box office battle against Hollywood cinema.
The Hollywood wave of entertainment films that are very much appealing to the
audiences wherever they are has renewed the urgency to protect what Tim
Bergfelder describes in his article ‘National, transnational and supranational
cinemas? as ‘a vaguely defined yet strongly perceived European film heritage,
which supplied the major rhetorical tool for European member states (led by
France), to resist American media dominance during the GATT talks in 1993 and
1994.” (Bergfelder, 2005)
Not for the benefit of the advocates for a pure definable national cinema,
both the former colonizers and colonized have not been able to stand strongly
against the neo-colonizer, and its widely popular cinema. Thomas Elsaesser
argues that Hollywood is now “a major component of most national film cultures
where audience expectations, shaped
largely by Hollywood, are exploited by domestic producers. Many national
cinemas translate Hollywood genres into their own national contexts.” (Film
Reference, 2009) Bergfelder also agrees with Elsaesser noting that “one of the
most interesting developments since the GATT talks (and deeply ironic, given
the fervent rhetoric of the preceding political discussions) has been the
gradual erosion of art cinema as the master narrative of European cinema, both
in terms of industrial practice and in terms of academic debates and
preferences. In the 1990s, many European filmmakers moved increasingly towards
popular genres and narratives previously considered the domain of Hollywood.”
(Bergfelder, 2005)
Sung Kyung Kim, in his article titled, ‘Renaissance of Korean National
Cinema’ as a Terrain of Negotiation and Contention between the Global and the
Local”, has put it quite straightforward, saying, “National cinema and its
relationship with Hollywood film exemplifies the dialectical processes[4][4]. Unlike the belief of an essential-ized,
pure, national cinema, it is almost impossible to find a real ‘authentic
national cinema’ due to the massive dominance of Hollywood films across the
world and increasing interactions between the national and Hollywood….
Hollywood has indeed become part of each national cinema.” (Kim, 2006)
Slumdog Millionaire: “an Expression of
Globalization”:
For someone who lives in Dubai, a true cosmopolitan city with more than
200 nationalities living together, it is interesting to observe the film
preferences of the city’s residents. The cinema theaters in Dubai usually show
an amalgam of Hollywood, Bollywood and Arabic films (mostly Egyptian, some
Lebanese and very few Emirati films) catering to such an extremely cultural mixture
of the city’s dwellers. Normally, Bollywood movies are recommended by my Indian
friends, but this was not the case with the Oscars award winning film ‘Slumdog
Millionaire’. Counting on its global recognition and the amounts of
international awards it received, I went to see the movie. Looking around to
see who was there to see the movie, surprisingly there was no Indian audience
(Indians form the biggest expat community in Dubai, outnumbering the local
population of the city). The majority of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’
spectators were Westerners and Arabs. The film, which narrates the story of the
young man, Jamal, from the slums of India, who loses his mother as a child in a
violent sectarian strife, and then managed his way to participate and win the
top award in the Indian version of the popular TV show ‘Who Wants to Be a
Millionaire’
Also, it seems that the film was not received differently in India.
Sadanand Dhume says in his article: “Slumdog Paradox”, “The unexpected
international success of Slumdog Millionaire has pleased some Indians
while provoking unusually strong protests from others. The critical and
commercial success of the film, contrasted with sharp criticism and a
lackluster run in Indian theaters.” ( Dhume, 2009) Some Indian critics received
the film with a warm welcoming for being an Oscar award Indian film. Other
critics including the Indian critic Meenakshi Shedde, who dismissed the film as
“a laundry list of India’s miseries.”
heavily criticized it due to its focus on the ugly face of India, from their
own perspective, and the film was shown in half-empty theaters. (ibid)
Slumdog Millionaire represents a unique case of a film that
narrates a very local story and in its very realistic depiction of the poor
indigenous of India, the film has lost its local spectators in what seems to be
in favor of its international audience. “Amitabh Bachchan fired a salvo on his
blog that the film “projects India as a third world, dirty, underbelly
developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots,
let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most
developed nations.” (Shekhar Deshpande, 2009)
Much of the fuss about Slumdog Millionaire was because of its
foreign sources of funding and the foreign crew of the film. The director was
the British Danny Boyle and the screenwriter was the British Simon Beaufoy. The
foreign elements of the film have casted doubts on the authenticity of the film
and put it in a point of condemnation by the Indian spectators. Would it be
acceptable to categorize Slumdog Millionaire as a national film of
India? Shekhar Deshpande believes that “the trouble with the Slumdog
Millionaire for many people is the fact that it was produced by Britishers,
with “foreign money” employing Indian actors and set in India. This kind of
filmmaking breaks the traditional concepts of national films, national cinemas
and stories that belong to one people. It is increasingly popular trend among
the world and Danny Boyle’s intervention with Slumdog Millionaire may
just launch that trend on Indian sub-continent.” (ibid)
Summing up the unique case of Slumdog Millionaire, Atticus
Narain, in an article titled “Rethinking post-colonial representation after
Slumdog Millionaire”, says “The American and British film industries
acclamation of Slumdog Millionaire has raised media debates. Issues of
authenticity, cultural ownership, ‘burden of representation’, the nationality
of its director, its content and stylistic aesthetic, and Eurocentric and/or
re-Orientalist visions, have created a vast contact zone for analyzing cinema,
identity, and nationalism.” (Narain, 2009)
Slumdog Millionaire leaves us with the same questions that have
been raised from the beginning of the paper. Is the concept ‘national cinema’
definable’? Does it really exist or is it imposed and highlighted at certain
points of time to serve a certain cause?
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[1][1] Galal Amin is an Egyptian writer and a professor of Economics with
the American University in Cairo. He wrote ‘The Social Justification of the Egyptian Cinema in the
1930s’ in Hashem Nahas’s book ‘The Egyptian Cinema: Beginning and Development’
[2][2] “In Lebanon, from the
mid-1950s to the mid-1970s ( the beginning of the Lebanese civil war), an
influx of Egyptian filmmakers and film personnel fleeing the constrictions
placed on their work by the nationalization of various branches of the film
industry helped create a hub for film production investment and activity.”
(Film Reference, 2009)
[3][3] “Globalization usually Refers to the Declining
Significance of National Borders Brought About by Increased Trade, the Spread
of Information Technology, Cross-Border Financial Flows, and Cultural
Transfers.”( Terrill )
[4][4] “In this process,
globalization is characterized by “the dialectic of the local and the global”
(Giddens, 1991:22). In order to grasp the dialectic relationship between the
local and the global, Robertson proposes the term ‘glocalization’ to explain
the on-going processes of globalization.” (Kim 2006)
