ITALY/FILE: Venice film festival pays tribute to late Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine

Record ID: 721384

  • Title: ITALY/FILE: Venice film festival pays tribute to late Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine
  • Date: 2nd September 2008
  • Summary: (MER1) CANNES, FRANCE (FILE - MAY 1997) (REUTERS) CHAHINE POSING POSING FOR CAMERA WITH CANNES FESTIVAL'S LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD HE WON IN THE 50TH CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
  • Embargoed: 17th September 2008 13:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVA5V9PH104BRGF1BMGY71ZA7QXC
  • Story Text: The career of acclaimed Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine, who died after six weeks in a coma, is remembered at the Venice film festival.
    The 65th Venice Film Fesival on Sunday (August 31) paid a special tribute to the late Egyptian director Youssef Chahine who died in July at the age of 82.
    Following his death, the festival director, Marco Muller, announced that the festival will dedicate its current edition to Chahine, who was a Lido regular and presented his last film, 'Chaos', at the festival last year.
    Muller attended on Sunday a special screening of Chahine's classic film 'Cairo Station' (Bab al-Hadid).

    "I would like to remember him. It is incredible that three weeks later (after meeting Chahine), another strong personality from the Arab cinema died. He was very famous here in Venice," Mueller said before the screening.
    Chahine's niece and producer Marianne Khoury arrived at the film and said her late uncle wished to come back to Venice.

    "Just before his death, a few weeks before he left us, he confessed to me that it was time for him to tell Marco (Mueller) that he wanted to come to return to Venice and to be the president of the jury. He wanted me to call him (Mueller)," Khoury said.
    Chahine, a leading light of Egyptian cinema for more than half a century, died in Cairo after six weeks in a coma. Best known for his series of films linked to the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Chahine suffered from a brain haemorrhage in June and spent several weeks in a Paris hospital before returning to Cairo 10 days before his death. hahine's ill health.
    Chahine, a French speaker with a following in France, made the first of 40 films in 1950.
    During his career, he has been honoured with several prestigious awards in Europe and the Middle East.
    Last year, Chahine was honoured by the American University of Beirut (AUB) for his film work. He received an honorary doctorate alongside Syrian-born poet Adonis and French historian Andre Raymond for their life-long achievements in their fields.
    In 1997, at the 50th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, he was granted the special Cannes' Lifetime Achievement Award.
    The festival gave two of its top awards to Chahine and Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami in a strong show of support for their battle against censorship.
    The veteran film maker was awarded in 2006 the French Legion of Honour, one of France's highest honours, for his artistic lifetime achievement.
    Some of Chahine's film work is overtly political. The director of classics such as "Bab al-Hadid" (after a Cairo Station called "Iron Door") and "al-Nasser Salah al-Din" (Salah al-Din the Victorious) has been a highly vocal critic of the governance of long-time Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as well as the Islamic extremists who have opposed Mubarak.
    In recent years the film director spoke out in support of the opposition group Kefaya (Enough), which campaigned against the re-election of President Hosni Mubarak in 2005.
    In his 2004 film "Alexandria New York", he turned his camera on the United States, portraying what he saw as American political fanaticism and media bias fuelling hatred of Arabs.
    Chahine also criticised U.S. foreign policy in a short 2002 film to mark the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
    He is credited with discovering actor Omar Sharif, whose first starring role was in Chahine's 1954 film The Blazing Sun.
    Born a Greek Catholic Christian in Alexandria in 1926, Chahine studied acting in Pasadena, California, in the late 1940s and began work in the cinema on returning to Egypt.
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