Honouring the illustrious career of the iconic Egyptian artiste late Faten Hamama, Doha Film Institute (DFI) and the Cultural Village Katara are screening two of her best films for the local audience. Known as the Lady of the Arabic Screen, the talented and prolific actress was vital to the golden age of Egyptian cinema. She died in January this year at the age of 83.
Hamama’s career spanned nearly 100 films but her reach went well beyond the screen, with a number of her roles dealing with social justice and women’s rights. DFI will showcase Hamama’s films The Land of Dreams and Mouths and Rabbits today and tomorrow respectively at Katara Drama Theatre, Building 16.
Hamama made her debut in 1939, when she was only seven years old. Her earliest roles were minor, but her persistence and gradual success helped to establish her as a distinguished Egyptian actress. After many successful performances, she was able to achieve stardom.
Revered as an icon in Egyptian and Middle Eastern cinema, Hamama has substantially helped in improving the cinema industry in Egypt and emphasising the importance of women in cinema and Egyptian society.
The 1950s were the beginning of the golden age of the Egyptian cinema industry and Hamama was a big part of it. In 1952, she starred in the film Your Day will Come which was nominated in the Cannes Film Festival for the Prix International Award. She also played lead roles in Yousef Shaheen’s Ameen, my Father in 1950 and Struggle in the Valley (1954) which was a strong nominee in the 1954 Cannes Film Festival for the Prix International Award.
Hamama is also known for playing the lead role in the first Egyptian mystery film House Number 13. In 1963, she received an award for her role in the political film No Time for Love. Hamama was also able to make it to Hollywood in a 1963 crime film, Cairo.
After a seven-year hiatus from acting, Hamama returned in 2000 in what was a much anticipated television miniseries, Face of the Moon. In 2000, she was selected as Star of the Century by the Egyptian Writers and Critics organisation. In 2007, eight of the films she starred in were included in the top 100 films in the history of Egyptian cinema by the cinema committee of the Supreme Council of Culture in Cairo.
The Land of Dreams marks Hamama’s final film role in which she plays Narges Rihan, who is all set to emigrate to the USA, the titular land of dreams, but with her flight leaving next day, she discovers she has misplaced her ticket and her passport.
During her search for the missing documents, Narges encounters a magician, whom she follows around Heliopolis until dawn, thus realising a long-held desire of her own, to stay up all night. Finally, Narges comes to see that the land of dreams she seeks has been right under her nose all along. The film was shortlisted for the Academy Awards in 1994.
The Land of Dreams was directed by an Egyptian director and screenwriter, Daoud Abdel Sayed. Born in Cairo in 1946, he started as the assistant of the veteran Egyptian director and producer Youssef Chahine in film, The Land. He made several critically acclaimed films, and won several international awards notably for The Land of Fear which was produced in 1999.
In Mouths and Rabbits, a comedy drama, Hamama plays Nimaat who lives with Gamalat and Abdel Mageed, her fretful sister and lazy brother-in-law, and their nine children.
She works in a factory to support the family, yet they barely scrape by. When her eldest nephew steals two chickens from Batawi, the local poultry seller, Nimaat implores the well-off man to let the thieving youth go free. To her dismay, the besotten Batawi promptly asks for her hand in marriage, a union that would prove convenient for her financially troubled family.
However, despite their urging her to accept the proposal, Nimaat flees the village and falls in love with a wealthy man, only later to discover that she has already been married off. The director of the film, Henry Barakat, was one of the foremost film directors in Egypt.
Over several decades, he directed films featuring some of the most famous performers of the Arab world. His 1955 hit Days and Nights featured belly-dancer Zeinat Olwi in one of her most memorable performances. At the DFI showcase of Hamama’s films, filmmaker and industry journalist, Mona Ghandour will be in attendance for a question-and-answer session after the two screenings.
