This is a 26" x 38.5" Egyptian poster designed by Samir Abdel Moneim
for the 1987 Mohammed Khan film Wife of an Important Man based
on story, screenplay and dialogue by Raouf Tawfik and starring Ahmed
Zaki as Hesham. Plot summary: The film tells the story of the rise
and fall of Colonel Hesham Abol-Wafa, an Egyptian police officer
during the Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat years (1962 - 1980). It
received the Silver Award at the Damascus Film Festival in 1987 and
was also shown in competition at the Moscow Film Festival in 1987. It
was shown as well at the Montreal, Valencia, Tetouan, Digne, Istanbul
and Nantes Film Festivals in 1987 and 1988.
Cast and crew: Mohamed Khan, Ahmed Zaki, Mervat Amin, Hassan Hosny,
Zizi Mustafa, Nahed Samir, Mohsen Ahmed, Ali Al Ghandour, Khairy
Beshara, Hafez Amin, Hassan Hosny, Abdel Halim Hafez, Nazim Shaarawy,
Mohsen Ahmed, Othman Abdelmonem, Abdel Ghany Naser, Mahmoud
al-Dardiri, Ahmed Moukhtar, Raouf Tawfik
This an Egyptian 27" x 39" one-sheet poster designed by Amal and
Gasour for the 1981 Mohamed Khan film Dinner Date based on a
story by Mohammed Khan with screenplay and dialogue by Bachir El Dik
and Starring Soad Hosny as Nawal. The film is set in Alexandria
Egypt; Ahmed Zaki plays the part of hairdresser Shokri, who falls in
love with Nawal. Plot summary: Nawal is oppressed by her husband
Ezzat Abul-Rous [Hussein Fahmy]. She catches him with another woman
and demands a divorce on the spot, but he refuses. Nawal despairs and
eventually divorces Ezzat anyway, then Marries Shokri. Ezzat has
Shokri killed to get revenge. Nawal learns of Shokri's death when she
is called to a morgue to identify his corpse. In the final "dinner
date" scene Nawal pretends to be resigned to resuming life with Ezzat,
but she serves poisoned food. Both of them eat it and presumably die,
but the film only shows a sad conversation in which the two seem to
know this is their last meal. Dinner Date was remade in the UK
in 1985 as Claudia (aka Claudia's Story) by Anwar
Kawadri, starring Deborah Raffin.
Cast and crew: Zuzu Madi, Ragaa Al-Gidawy, Mohsen Nasr, Soad Hosny,
Hussein Fahmy, Ahmed Zaki, Mohamed Khan, Bachir El Dik, Mohsen Nasr,
Eglal Zaki, Hamdy Gheith, Zuzu Madi, Claudia, Anwar Kawadri
This is a 27" x 39" Egyptian movie poster designed by Samira for the
1984 Mohamed Khan film Missing Person written by Assem Tawfiq,
starring Yehia El-Fakharany as Atia Abdel Khaleq and inspired by the
1958 H. E. Bates novel The Darling Buds of May. Mohamed
El-Assyouti wrote this plot summary on IMDB: "A culinary piece of
cinema. This humourous critique of dehumanisation in big-city life
depicts a depressed urban dweller who leaves for the countryside,
where he tries to sell a piece of land he has inherited. He is charmed
by the idyllic life, but has to keep up with the voracious appetites
of his hosts, who literally never stop eating, even waking up to
snack. He soon adapts to their eating habits but only after he is
taken to a hospital with severe indigestion due to his hosts'
generosity."
Cast and crew: Mohamed Khan, Assem Tawfiq, Tewfik El Dekn, Yehia
El-Fakharany, Laila Eloui, Farid Shawqi, Tarek El-Telmessani, Aida
Abdel Aziz, H.E. Bates
This is a 26.5" x 38.25" Egyptian poster for the 2007 Mohamed Khan
film In the Heliopolis Flat based on story, screenplay and
dialogue by Wessam Soliman and starring Ghada Adel as Nagwa Nour.
Plot Summary: Nagwa was a student from Minia attending a school on the
coast who became friends with Abla Tahani, a music teacher who was
fired from her job. Nagwa continued to write to Abla Tahani about
music and new songs, but a long time passed and Abla Tahani did not
answer Nagwa's letters. When Nagwa was in Cairo on a trip with her
colleagues she had a great desire to see Abla Tahani to see how she
was doing, but when she went to Abla's Heliopolis address she found
someone else named Yehia [Khaled Abol Nega] living there. Yehia did
not know anything about Abla Tahani. Abla went to see Yehia more than
once, then took the train back to the coast. These visits led Yehia to
his own investigation about Tahani.
Cast and crew: Mohamed Khan, Wessam Soliman, Ghada Adel, Youssef
Daoud, Khaled Abol Naga, Marwa Hussein, Nancy Abdel-Fattah, Wessam
Soliman, Aida Riad, Ahmed Rateb, Asma Youssef, Naser Mohamed Ali,
Mohammad Neshat
This is a 27" x 39" Egyptian poster for the 1986 Mohamed Khan
film Omar's Journey based on a story by Mohamed Khan and Raouf
Tawfiq and starring Farouk Al-Fichawy. Plot Summary: Omar [Farouk
Al-Fichawy] lives dependent on his father the wealthy Al-Gawahargi
[Mohamed Reda]. His father wants him to deliver a bag of jewels to a
colleague in Tanta. On the way he runs out of gas. A worker also
named Omar [Mamdouh Abd El Aleem] at a rural gas station tries to help
him refuel but uses the wrong type. While they are trying to solve
this problem a driver [Ahmad Abdel Waress] who had agreed to provide
the correct type of fuel arrives in a big yellow dump truck and beats
up Omar. The two Omars later continue the trip after picking up a
local prostitute named Negah [Mediha Kamel] who is on her way to Port
Said. With nothing to deliver in Tanta, they change the itinerary to
take Negah to Port Said. When they stop at a restaurant for food they
see the thieves in the bathroom and get into a brief inconclusive
fight. Then they continue, driving at night. That night the first
Omar and Negah sleep together when they stop at a hotel; then they
continue the trip. On the way they are attacked again by the same
thieves with the big yellow truck, who steal the jewelry and the car
and abandon the truck. The three of them continue to Suez in the
truck. There they find Omar's stolen automobile abandoned and wrecked
by the road on a rocky beach. Negah and the second Omar continue in
the truck, leaving the first Omar with the wrecked automobile. Negah
gets out of the truck and hitches a ride with another truck driver
after the two of them argue. She immediately begins coming on to her
new driver; the film ends with the first Omar sitting sadly in his
useless automobile. A radio is playing.
Cast and crew: Ahmad Abdel Waress, Mohamed Reda, Mamdouh Abd El
Aleem, Ahmed Bedir, Zahrat El-Ola, Madiha Kamel, Farouk Al-Fichawy,
Mohamed Khan, Tarek El-Telmessani, Raouf Tawfiq, Youcef Rajai, Samia
Al-Alfy, Ismail Mahmoud, Osman Abdel Moneim, Hanem Mohamed, Zakaria
Mouafi, Hosny Abdul Jalil, Ahdey Sadek, Ahmed Abu Abih, Mohamed
Al-Dardiri, Magdy Ahmed Aly, Hanan Youssef
This is a 27" x 38.5" poster for the 1985 Mohamed Khan film Half a
Million written by Bachir El Dik and Mohamed Khan and starring
Mahmoud Abdel Aziz as Youssef. Plot Summary: Serag [Yehia
El-Fakharany] cashed a check for a half million pounds at the Transfer
Bank company with his girlfriend Kawsar. The employee Youssef and the
thief Rafai [Saeed Saleh] wanted to get the bag with the money in it.
They grabbed the bag and took it to a deserted location but they found
it had been emptied of cash. They agreed to look for the original
bag. Serag killed Kawsar. Then he lived in a hotel with the cash.
They sent a girl to him to take the money from him. There was a
confrontation and they all died. Youssef found the case containing
the half million.
Cast and crew: Saeed Saleh, Hala Sedki, Mahmoud Abdel Aziz, Yehia
El-Fakharany, Tewfik El Dekn, Mohamed Khan, Ahmed Rateb, Bachir El
Dik, Farida Seif El Nasr, Aziza Helmy, Said Sheimy, Medhat Morsy,
Nahed Samir, Hafez Amin, Ahmed Hussein, Hoda Kamal, Safa Al-Sabaa
This is a 27" x 39" Egyptian poster by an unknown designer for the
1991 Mohamed Khan film The Knight of the City AKA fares
al-medina based on a story by Mohamed Khan with screenplay and
dialogue by Fayez Ghaly and starring Mahmoud Hemida as Fares. Plot
Summary: The film is set in Cairo in the year 1988. The filming was
done in 32 days beginning 26 May 1990. It tells a complex story about
the life of Fares Hassan al-Helali, a prosperous and somewhat
conniving mid-level businessman dealing in currency, automobiles and
real estate. His wealth comes from currency trading and the running
of a number of large commercial projects. The main line of this
multi-threaded plot is a conflict between Fares and another slightly
more prosperous businessman and drug merchant Ahmed Al-Wezzan [Abdel
Aziz Makhyoun]. As the film begins Fares worries how he will raise the
five million pounds he needs to pay a debt to Ahmed. He ends up
selling everything to manage it, but in the end it is Fares who
triumphs in a series of tense and sometimes violent encounters.
In the beginning Fares quarrels with his ex wife Dalal [Soad Nasr]
about their son [Abdel Aziz al-Qarantili]. He had separated from
Dalal to live with her son Bakr [Farid Naguib Sorur], a university
student, and with his new lover. This is the start of another plot
line in which the son is kidnapped by Ahmed's gang, disappears,
eventually becomes addicted to drugs and is then found using them and
beaten up by Fares in a public bathroom.
In the beginning Fares quarrels with his ex wife Dalal [Soad Nasr]
about their son [Abdel Aziz al-Qarantili]. He had separated from
Dalal to live with her son Bakr [Farid Naguib Sorur], a university
student, and with his new lover. This is the start of another plot
line in which the son is kidnapped by Ahmed's gang, disappears,
eventually becomes addicted to drugs and is then found using them and
beaten up by Fares in a public bathroom.
In a moment of despair, after having lost everything to Ahmed,
Fares hits an elderly pedestrian with his car and then takes him to a
big hospital, checks him in as his own father and pays for his
treatment. Although Fares does not know at first, the old man is in
the habit of throwing himself in front of fancy automobiles so he can
live comfortably for a while in a big hospital. Fares and the old
opportunist find a bond of some kind and eventually become drinking
buddies, replicating in a superficial way the false identities of
father and son, an idea the elderly man had first broached to Fares
while he was checking his "victim" into a hospital.
Soon after they establish the new bond of trust the old man
confesses to Fares with startling honesty his fraudulent practice of
fake victimhood. He recounts his specific encounter with Fares in
detail, and explains how he had sized him up and set out to dupe him.
Fares accepts this with equanimity and they remain friends. In this
moment of candor with the old man, Fares also tells the nurse in
attendance Hoda [Lucy] the story of their contrived relationship,
makes a date to meet her and begins a relationship with her.
There is much freeway footage in and around Cairo by
cinematographer Kamal Abdel Aziz as well as multiple insertions of
original cuts from old Om Kolsum performances to illustrate the
fondness Fares has for her music and sometimes to accentuate points in
the story line with her lyrics.
Cast and crew: Mahmoud Hemida, Mohamed Khan, Aida Riad, Soad Nasr,
Abdel Aziz Makhyoun, Hassan Hosny, Ahmed Bedir, Fayez Ghaly, Kamal
Abdel Aziz, Lucy, Osman Abdel Moneim, Mohamed Metwalli, Atia Oweysi,
Lotfi Labieb, Khaled El Sawy, Mahmoud Al-Lawzi, Abdel Aziz
al-Qarantili, Farid Naguib Sorur
This is a 27" x 39" Egyptian one-sheet designed by Amal and printed by
Gasour for the 1981 Mohamed Khan film Bird on the Road based on
a story by Mohamed Khan with story, screenplay and dialogue by Bachir
El Dik and starring Ahmed Zaki as Fares. Plot Summary: This is one of
several Mohammed Khan road films, where most of the action follows a
journey motif. The bird on the road in this film is the taxi driver
Fares, who apparently has no home other than his car and spends his
days driving passengers between Alexandria and Cairo. As the film
opens Fares awakens in the morning after spending the night in his
white station wagon taxi parked on a beach near Alexandria. He is
then shown breakfasting at a cafe and listening to a morning radio
broadcast as he prepares to begin a workday. Fares is innocently in
love with a tomboy named Esmat, [Athar El-Hakim] who works at a
ready-to-wear clothing store. He sees her on the street shortly after
driving to Cairo. Ismail, [Amin El-Heinedy] the personal driver for
the wealthy Gad, [Farid Shawqi] asks Fares to drive the old man's car
because he is feeling exhausted. Fares meets Fawzia, [Fardous Abdel
Hamid] when he is driving her and her husband Gad to the farm he owns
in Fayad. Fares knew Fawzia had been suffering from her life with
Gad, whom she had married because of threats from her father. Fares
and Fawzia fall in love. Esmat marries someone else after she sees
Fares's relationship with Fawzia. Fawzia agrees to marry Fares, even
though Gad had refused to grant her a divorce. When Gad learns from
his mother [Mimi Shakeeb] that his wife is pregnant he knows she has
betrayed him. Fares calls Fawzia and senses she is in danger. Gad
shoots at Fawzia with a shotgun as she is running from the farmbut
misses, and she escapes. Fares hurries in his taxi to save Fawzia in
Fayad, but is killed in a traffic accident on the way and never
reaches her.
Cast and crew: Mohamed Khan, Fardous Abdel Hamid, Farid Shawqi,
Ahmed Zaki, Athar El-Hakim, Mimi Shakeeb, Amin El-Heinedy, Said Shimi,
Bachir El Dik, Hafez Amin
This an Egyptian 27" x 39" one-sheet poster designed by Amal and
Gasour for the 1981 Mohamed Khan film Dinner Date based on a
story by Mohammed Khan with screenplay and dialogue by Bachir El Dik
and Starring Soad Hosny (1943 - 2001) as Nawal. The film is set in
Alexandria Egypt; the late Ahmed Zaki (1949-2005) plays the part of
hairdresser Shokri, who falls in love with Nawal. Nawal is oppressed
by her husband Ezzat Abul-Rous [Hussein Fahmy]. She catches him with
another woman and demands a divorce on the spot, but he refuses.
Nawal despairs and eventually divorces Ezzat anyway, then Marries
Shokri. Ezzat has Shokri killed to get revenge. Nawal first learns
of Shokri's death when she is called to a morgue to identify his
corpse. In the final "dinner date" scene Nawal pretends to be
resigned to resuming life with Ezzat, but she serves poisoned food.
Both of them eat it and presumably die, but the film only shows a sad
conversation in which the two seem to know this is their last
meal. Dinner Date was remade in the UK in 1985
as Claudia (aka Claudia's Story) by Anwar Kawadri,
starring Deborah Raffin.
Cast and crew: Zuzu Madi, Ragaa Al-Gidawy, Mohsen Nasr, Soad Hosny, Hussein Fahmy, Ahmed Zaki, Mohamed Khan, Bachir El Dik, Mohsen Nasr, Eglal Zaki, Hamdy Gheith, Zuzu Madi, Claudia, Anwar Kawadri
Pictured is an Egyptian one-sheet poster designed by Mad Marketing and
Design to promote the 2014 Mohamed Khan film Factory Girl based
on a story by Wessam Soliman and starring Yasmin Raeis as the factory
girl. Plot summary: Ha Yam [Yasmin Raeis] is a lower middle class
girl working in a factory. She has an affair with her manager Salah
[Hani Adel] that does not go well because their class differences
prevent them from having an open relationship. Salah refuses to
acknowledge her and tells her they can never marry. Ha Yam finds
herself ostracized by her peers for having broken a social taboo and
then refusing to conceal it.
Cast and crew: Mohamed Khan, Wessam Soliman, Yasmin Raeis, Hani Adel, Salwa Mohammad Ali, Salwa Khattab, Maha Abdallah, Hanan Adel, Soad Al-Kadi, Menna Al-Lithi, Yussria Al-Maghribia, Waffa Al-Sharqawi, Salma Dahab, Reham Dissouki, Noorhan Emad Edin, Ibtihal El Serety, Batul El-Haddad
This is a 27" x 39" Egyptian poster designed by Morteda
Anis to promote the 1995 92-minute Mohamed Khan color film A Very
Hot Day starring Sherihan based on a story by Mohamed Khan with
screenplay by Zeinab Aziz and cinematography by Kamal Abdel Aziz.
Plot summary: This film tells the story of the discovery of an
unsuspected betrayal in an Egyptian marriage. Gharib returned to
Egypt for a short vacation in Cairo after being away for eight years.
On that very hot day while he was talking with a friend on a public
telephone he saw a pretty girl have her bag stolen. Gharib chased the
thief and got the bag, but then could not not find the girl. He found
her name and number inside the bag. He called the number and a
businessman named Dia answered the call. Dia believed Gharib was
someone with whom he had made an agreement to kill his wife Hoda; this
was because Dia had exposed himself to a huge financial obligation and
his wife was refusing to help him. Dia gave Gharib his home address
and the key to his apartment so he could do the job. Gharib followed
Hoda to tell her he was supposed to kill her by agreement with her
husband, and an instant bond of affection was established between
them. Dia contacted his wife to express regret but his wife refused
his apology and decided to leave him. She left the marriage home to
go with Gharib on a journey to change the direction of their lives
forever.
This is a 27" x 39" Egyptian poster designed by Hassan Mazhar Gasour
and Morteda Anis to promote the 1984 88-minute Mohamed Khan color
film Vengeance [al-thar] adapted from the 1958 Henry King
film The Bravados based on the 1958 Frank O'Rourke novel of the
same title, starring Gregory Peck as Jim Douglass. This Mohamed Khan
adaptation is based on screenplay and dialogue by Fayez Ghaly with
cinematography by Said Sheimy. Plot Summary: When Engineer Ahmed
[Mahmoud Yassin] exited a cinema with his pregnant wife Neda,
[Youssra] four youths accosted them. They attacked Ahmed and
kidnapped his wife. Ahmed notified the police but he could not
remember the make of the automobile or its plate number. Neda went to
the hospital after having a miscarriage. Ahmed decided to take his
own revenge. He killed three people but was arrested before he could
commit a fourth crime. He discovered he had killed innocent people
and that the police had arrested the real criminals.
Cast and crew: Mohamed Gebril, Reda Hamed, Hamdi El-Wazir, Mahmoud Yassine, Farouk Youssef, Badriya Adbel Gawad, Youssra, Mohamed Khan, Fayez Ghaly, Adel Borham, Ibrahim Qadry, Mokhtar al-Sayed, Moheb Kaser, Sayed al-Hanawi, Samia Mokaram, Mostafa Kemal, Hamdy Youssef, Said Sheimy, Shaaban Hussein, Frank O'Rourke, Henry King
This 1972 10-minute short (with English subtitles) was the first film by the great Egyptian director Mohamed Khan, starring Mohamed Kinawy, with cinematography by Said Al-Shiemy. As far as I know there is no poster for it.
This is a 26.5" x 38" Egyptian poster designed by Hassan Mazhar Gasour
to promote the 1978 113-minute Mohamed Khan color film Sunstroke [darbet shams] starring Nour El-Sherif based on a story by
Mohamed Khan with screenplay and dialogue by Fayez Ghali and
cinematograpy by Said Al-Shiemy. Plot summary: This film is a remake
of the 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni film Blow-Up. Shams [Nour
El-Sherif] is a magazine photojournalist in love with a woman named
Salwa [Noura], a woman with a salaried job who supports him in his
work. Together they dream of big projects. Shams is called to
photograph a sumptuous party. He happens to photograph some papyrus
with words burned on it that are difficult to decipher. These words
lead him to a gang led by a woman [Leila Fawzi]. This gang is
smuggling rare works abroad and counterfeiting money. The gang begins
to pursue Shams after he discovers its secret and the police are
unable to reach this mysterious woman, who commits a series of
murders. The man investigating Shams gives him a picture of the gang.
The two of them look for Salwa after the gang kidnaps her but she
escapes after fleeing on the Helwan Metro at night. The gangleader
dies when she falls out the door from a moving train while Shams is
chasing her and the police are able to catch the rest of the
gang. Shams and Salwa resume their lives and are shown in a final
scene walking together on the old elevated pedestrian walkway in
Cairo's Tahrir Square.
This relatively unpeopled film relies heavily on night highway
chase scenes, and other tense escapades in the metro, in train
stations, on trains and in abandoned buildings. Nour El-Sherif and
Noura move about a great deal on a small blue motorbike through
various parts of Cairo and Helwan; these scenes are also shown in
aerial shots. The poster shows the film's emphasis on various modes
of transportation.
Cast and crew: Mohamed Khan, Nour El-Sherif, Noura, Leila Fawzi, Said Al-Shiemy, Tewfik El Dekn, Abel Salam Mohamed, Motafa Metwalli, Mahmoud Farag, Farouk Falawkas, Mahmoud al-Zoheiri, Amima Salim, Adib al-Tarabolsi, Mahmoud al-Gowhari, Hamdy Salem, Ahmed Hussein, Mokhtar al-Sayed, Abdel Hamis Onsi, Hussein Abdel Wahab, Zeinab Shamis, Reshwan Mostafa, Magdi Wahba, Hussein El-Sherbini, Mahmoud Farag, Hussein Oraby, Lotfy Mansour, Abdel Hamid Anise, Mansour al-Gowhari, Habi Gamil, Mostafa Qadri, Ezzat Fouad, Sayed Khatab, Zeinab Shamis, Reshwan Mostafa, Mohammadein, Lewis Youssef, Saleh al-Eskandarani, Mohammad al-Sisi, Seif al-Nasr, Farag Hamad
Shown here is a 27" x 39" Egyptian poster designed
by Morteda Anise to promote the 1993 111-minute Mohamed Khan color
film Mister Karate starring Ahmed Zaki (1949-2005) based on
story, screenplay and dialogue by Raouf Tawfik with cinematography by
Kamal Abdel Aziz. Plot summary: After Salah [Ahmed Zaki] gets his
intermediate educational certificate he moves from his village to
Cairo to take a job parking cars at the garage where his late father
had once worked. He meets Nadia [Nahla Salama] who works in a video
shop next to the garage. She introduces him to the Karate films she
is selling and an innocent friendship develops between them. He also
becomes friends with a Karate coach named Hassan, [Ibrahim Nasr] who
gets him into advanced training at a sports club and gives him the
nickname Mister Karate. Salah is injured in a traffic accident and
comes out of the hospital with a pronounced limp. He leaves his job
at the garage and goes to work parking cars at another garage. There
he occasionally uses his karate skills against local thugs and gets
favorable attention from a wealthy man; this represents a positive
move from the life of a homeless person with no purpose to that of
someone with slightly greater significance. When Salah discovers bags
of heroin in the trunk of the wealthy man's car, he is beaten up by
the man's gang. Nadia discovers she cannot live without Salah and
agrees to marry him despite his poverty; they go together to his
village where they become farmers after all their dreams in the city
have fallen through. In a March 2005 interview shortly before his
death Ahmed Zaki said he regretted the title because the film is
really about the troubles of a simple man trying to survive in Cairo.
Cast and crew: Mohamed Khan, Ihab Muntasir, Ibrahim Nasr, Nahla Salama, Zouzou Nabil, Mamdouh Wafi, Zouzou Nabil, Ahmed Zaki, Kamal Abdel Aziz, Raouf Tawfik, Nader Noureddine, Osman Abdel Moneim, Alaa Morsi, Wahid Agami, Hassan al-'adl, Ezzat Kamel, Fouad Ferghali, Ahmad Abutaleb, Sabah Mahmoud, Mahmoud Alwan, Ali Ragab, Hamdi al-Naggar, Said al-Tuhami, Gamal al-Toukhi
The Drowned Woman [al-gharqana] Egyptian film poster
This is a 26.75" x 38.75" Egyptian poster designed by Morteda to
promote the 92-minute Mohamed Khan color film The Drowned Woman
[al-gharqana] starring Nabila Ebeid as Warda based on screenplay and
dialogue by Mostafa Moharram and a story by Hassan Shah, with
cinematography by Mohsen Nasr. Plot summary: In a village on the
southern coast of the Sinai the pretty Bedouin woman Wafa was in
heartbreak and pain because she had become a widow to three husbands.
People were accusing her of being bad luck for men! Warda went to see
the village sorcerer, a swindler and a quack, to ask him how to break
the spell. He persuaded her to marry him and told her this would
purge the curse. She agreed to the marriage and gave birth to a
deformed midget, whom the father named Mabruk. The father attributed
miracles to him and accumulated much wealth by using simple devices to
promote superstition and quackery. Warda started supprting herself as
a dancer in a tourist village. Then Mabruk drowned while playing in
the sea in his parents' absence; the local women told the sorcerer his
wife had caused it, so he drowned her too. The sorcerer then went
back to swindling the villagers with the help of a local assistant,
who claimed Mabruk's soul had dissolved into the body of his father!
Cast and crew: Mohamed Khan, Mostafa Moharram, Nabila Ebeid, Mahmoud Hemida, Ahmad Tawfiq, Hassan Shah, Mostafa Moharram, Mohsen Nasr, Nahla Salama, Hamdi Al Wazir, Abir Al-Saghir, Ayman Ahmad, Ali Hassanein, Mohamed Sabri, Ahlam Khaled, Nahla Salama
I just posted the last of a new group of about 80 Iranian posters.
That was a change of pace for me because most of my posts have been
about Egyptian posters. The Iranians and the Egyptians tend not to be
interested in each other at any level, but they are both interesting
to me. In a Skype conversation a few days ago I offered to show some
Iranian posters to an Egyptian poster collecting friend, and he flatly
refused to look at any of them. He likes American, Italian and
Egyptian posters, but forget those Iranian ones! He doesn't know any
Persian, so in a way I can see why. Here are a few thoughts I've had
recently going back and forth between Egyptian and Iranian films:
Iranians don't have real glamor queens like Egypt's Hind Rostom or
Samia Gamal, even though they have a lot of very beautiful women in
their films. There is also less religion in Iranian films generally,
despite efforts by the current Iranian government to change that.
Egypt has a much larger film industry, also older and far more
diverse. Egyptian films are usually bigger productions with larger
budgets, casts and crews. Egyptian films are seen by much larger
audiences because they are distributed throughout the Arab world. If
someone wants to study one of the Arabic dialects for use in
day-to-day conversation, the Egyptian dialect would be the first choice
since every Arab has grown up with Egyptian movies and is very
familiar with Egyptian idioms. There are a lot more Egyptian remakes
of foreign films such as An Affair to Remember and Irma La
Douce. The Egyptian filmmaker has always had his eye on the rest
of the world's film community, and he plays to it. The Iranians have
done less of this, although that is changing.
Iranian films seem to be more introspective, exploring indigenous
ideas and domestic ethnicity. The Iranians haven't had successful
political filmmakers like Egypt's late socialist director Salah
Abouseif who spent his entire career using Egyptian film as a vehicle
for exploring international ideological themes. The Iranians also
lack multicultural internationlists like Egypt's late Youssef Chahine,
who was constantly contrasting Egypt's ethnic character and history
with competing and usually invasive foreign values. Because of his
high international stature, Chahine's films sometimes had a
distracting self-conscious, bombastic quality that one rarely sees in
the films of the great Iranian directors. To me the Iranian film
industry is much more genuine overall, probably because it is not as
heavily industrialized.
Egypt's most brilliant and original director for my taste is the late Mohamed
Khan, [1942-2016] who was of Pakistani extraction even though he lived in Egypt
all his life. His Iranian counterpart is the late Abbas Kiarostami [1940-2016]. Both
directors have made insightful minimalist films with improvised
stories told on real-life sets, often with characters played by people
who were not professional actors. Their movies sometimes look like
documentary fiction and they were mostlly low-budget.
This is a 27" x 39" Egyptian promotional poster designed by Hassan
Mazhar Gasour and Morteda Anise for the 120-minute Mohamed Khan color
film Desire [al-raghbah], with screenplay and dialogue by Bachir El
Dik and cinematography by Said Al-Shiemy; it is based on F. Scott
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Plot summary: Jaber [Nour
El-Sherif] was a rich businessman who lived alone in his villa after
leaving his wife, a long time after he had been injured in the 1967
war. Hala [Madiha Kamel] was now living in a villa with her husband
Hussein [Hussein El-Sherbini]. Jaber learned her address and bought
the villa next door to her so he could be close to her with his dreams
and old memories. He invited her to visit him but she refused because
she wanted him out of her life, which had become stable. A secret
relationship developed between Hussein and the wife of Hosan, [Nabil
al-Dessouki] who was living at the villa. Hosan watched his wife and
confirmed her relationship with Hussein, then he killed her. Hussein
had to run away with his wife Hala. Jaber heard about this and that
Hussein and Hala had left the villa, so he killed himself with Hosan's
rifle.
Cast and crew: Mohamed Khan, Madiha Kamel, Nour El-Sherif, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Imaqne, Hayatem, Hussein El-Sherbini, Essad Younes, Bachir El Dik, Said Al-Shiemy, Mahmoud Al Zohairy, Sabri Abdel Aziz, Nabil al-Dessouki
This is a 27" x 39" Egyptian poster designed by Mohammad Abdel Aziz
and Wahib Fahmy for the 1982 Atef-E Taieb film The Bus Driver
written by Mohamed Khan and Bachir El Dik and starring Nour El-Sherif.
Plot Summary: Hassan [Nour El-Sherif] was a bus driver for the Public
Transportation Agency and one of the heroes of the October 1973 war.
From time to time he would meet his war buddies. He lived happily
with his wife Khadiga [Mervat Amin] who owned a taxi and was
renovating its interior. His father Abu Soltan [Imad Hamdi] owned a
commercial workshop in the Bulaq area that was in financial
difficulties. He was trying to protect the workshop from the
imposition of back taxes. Hassan tried to gather funds and get help
from his two sisters who lived in Dumyat and Port Said, but without
success. He went to see his sister in Dumyat but she was not able to
help. He went to see his other sister in Port Said whose husband was
a merchant in the free trade zone; the husband did not give Hassan
anything despite his financial power; instead he wanted to sell the
workshop. Hassan even asked his wife to sell the taxi but she
demanded a divorce and left home. The father died while Hassan was
trying to collect the needed funds with the help of his army buddies.
This film was directed by Atef E-Taieb and written by my favorite Egyptian director, Mohamed Khan.
Cast and crew: Atef E-Taieb, Nour El-Sherif, Imad Hamdi, Hassan Hosny, Mervat Amin, Nabila El-Sayed, Bachir El Dik, Said El-Shiemy, Wahid Seif, Zahrat El-Ola, Aziza Helmy, Mohamed Khan
