Tag Archives: Silence on Tourne

An Egyptian Perspective on the Cinema of Youssef Chahine Part IV

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

Hussein returns for a fourth episode to offer us a fascinating Egyptian perspective on the last epoch of Youssef Chahine’s career, beginning with Cairo as Seen By Chahine (1991) and talking us through The Emigrant (94), Destiny (1997), The Other (99). We also touch on The Choice (1970), Silence, on tourne! (2001) and other of his works, though they do remain peripheral to this particular discussion. Hussein offers us a historical and cultural perspective on these later works and also tells us about their reception in Egypt. At the end of the podcast, Hussein presents  us with an extended discussion on what he sees as recurring concerns in the cinema of Youssef Chahine: The first can be characterised as labour but is inclusive of Labour unions, the worker, the ‘ordinary person’, the downtrodden; another recurring concern, appearing sometimes as a main subject, sometimes as a throwaway is The Algerian War; lastly, a third major strand is the concern with travel, displacement, immigration, liminality: an exploration that takes on different shape within different films. We are very grateful to Hussein for fleshing out so many of these ideas for us, articulating them so clearly, and giving us many more things to think about when considering Chahine’s ouevre. 

The discussion on The Emigrant with Martin Stollery referred to in the podcast can be found here

Also, Hussein provides us with the following links referred to in the podcast:

The song from Destiiny

The song performed by Mounir just a few weeks ago on a popular Egyptian tv program
The emigrant sound track, one of Hussein’s favorites in any Chahine film
Enjoy!

José Arroyo

The Youssef Chahine Podcast No. 22: Tara Shehata on C’est toi mon amour and Silence, on tourne!

The Youssef Chahine Podcast talks to Cairo filmmaker Tara Shehata about two Youssef Chahine musicals, C’es toi mon amour/ ENTA HABIBI (1957) and Silence, on tourne!/Skoot hansawwar (2001).

The podcast can be listened to here:

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

Hind Rostom and Farid al-Atrash in C’est toi mon amour:

Farid Al-Atrash and Shadia Yassmin:

Opening number of Silence, on tourne!:

Cinematographer Pierre Dupouey on filming with Chahine:

 

In response to a comment on the podcast, Saudi filmmaker Yaser Hammad, who featured in our of our recent podcasts, notes that: ‘That also happened in “An Egyptian Story” the AD on set in the first scene is Youssry Nassrallah. Who also became a director and Chahine produced his first films which are on Netflix as well. He had a number of ADs who later on became great directors. like Dawood Abdelsayed, Redwan Elkashif, Khaled Youssef and many more’.

José Arroyo