The Land (1969), directed by Youssef Chahine. This is a film in the tradition of Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth (1930). It tells the story of a community of small farmers in Egypt who find their livelihoods put in jeopardy by a local landowner who sets out to build a road where the farmer's fields are. Their only hope rests in solidarity, a solidarity that proves illusory, impossible to achieve. Chahine's work, or at least the work of his that I have seen, champions the peasant and the worker, but rarely does this support for the common person end in disarray. We usually have a ray of hope at the end. Not so here. The workers cannot put aside selfish interests for the greater good. One member of the "camel police" proves a friend to the peasants, but his friendship is not enough to make things go well. Things definitely fall apart. The film sprawls, it tells a story with many characters and many story lines following the interaction of these many characters. The overarching theme is clear, but the intricacies of human interactions sometimes are less than clear.

Alexandria…Why? (1979), directed by Youssef Chahine. The film opens with shots of Rommel’s desert campaign during the Second World War cut with a shot of Esther Williams swimming in one of her MGM extravaganzas. The connection between theatres, the theatre of war and the movie theatre, introduces what is a collage of a film. Perhaps the collage effect reflects the Alexandria we see here with its collection of Muslims, Catholics, Jews, British, Australians, Nazis, Communists, aristocrats, the poor, the young and the old, male and female. It is very ambitious bringing together cultural identity, personal identity, politics, war, class tensions, and religious differences. It tries to follow the stories of several people, perhaps just a few too many. It just misses coming together, at least for me. I felt lost at times. At other times the family predicament and the various relationships crossing religions and cultures are poignant. Moments do stand out, especially the abrupt shift to Palestine near the end and the Statue of Liberty come to life at the end. At the centre of the film is Yehia (Mohsin Mohiedenne) who aspires to leave Egypt and go to film school in America. I assume Yehia represents the young Chahine. His interest in the theatre and film is a reminder of performance; this is a film about performance and perhaps its failures. That final shot of the Statue of Liberty clinches this in an amusing and unsettling manner. For me, the most powerful relationship in the film is the one between the young Jewish woman and her Muslim boyfriend. This relationship is both endearing and doomed.

 

Alexandria, Again and Forever (1989), directed by Youssef Chahine. Whereas Chahine’s Alexandria…Why? (1979) focused on the young Chahine during the war years, this film follows the older Chahine during the 1987 strike in the Egyptian Film Industry. He continues to be obsessed with Hamlet! Like the earlier film, Alexandria, Again and Forever is a collage of a film bringing together a variety of genres, most notably the American musical (a scene of dancing in the snow, rather than in the rain), the political focus of films by the likes of Godard or Costa-Gavras, and the comic antics of the Marx Brothers, especially in Night at the Opera! The film has the meta-aspect of a film such as Truffaut’s Day for Night. The scenes that give us the filming of historical stories about Alexander the Great or Cleopatra are amusing. Also, we have clips from Chahine’s Cairo Station a couple of times. Although the focus of the film is diffuse, it does dwell on the relationship between the director and his young actor, reminding me of the famous director/actor relationships such as von Sternberg/Dietrich, Ford/Wayne, or Scorsese/DeNiro. I suspect I am missing much here; nevertheless, the film has its charms. It shows a love of the medium that is infectious.

 A couple of films from Africa.

I Am All Girls (2021), directed by Donovan Marsh. I wanted to like this film. Its story about abducted girls in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa is important. Human trafficking is a huge problem and worthy of scrutiny. Race relations are a huge problem and worthy of examination. Corruption in high places is a huge problem and worthy of uncovering. In other words, this film has much going for it. However, the narrative is presented to us in a confusing (to me anyway) manner that gives us several timelines, the characters are sketched in a rudimentary manner, the social conditions are glossed over, and I cannot help but think we have another white person coming to the rescue. My apologies for all the passives in the previous sentence, but the film is a passive affair. It lacks grit. It lacks a firm grip on the narrative. It lacks characters we engage with in any important way. The cinematography delivers that murky dark look familiar to us from so many films of the thriller/revenge story kind. What we have is a sketch for a better film.

 

Mandabi (1968), directed by Ousmane Sembene. This is the first film ever made in an African language, Wolof. The title translates as “the Money Order.” The plot is straight forward: an unemployed Muslim man in Senegal receives a money order from a nephew who is working in France, and what follows involves neighbours looking for a handout and a bureaucracy nearly impossible to navigate. The system is corrupt, people are selfish and greedy. The man’s two wives are long-suffering. The sun is hot. The ground is dry. One moment in the film strikes me as crucial. As the man sits in the car of his relative who wears a suit and knows how the system works and participates in the corruption, he sees a white family emerge from the town hall with their papers and with their ease. We know that the troubles this man encounters, his name is Ibrahim Dieng (Makhouredia Gueye), stem from his not knowing how to cope with post-colonial life. He cannot read and he cannot understand how to deal with bureaucracy, a bureaucracy formed under colonial rule. The film has funny moments, but it is hardly a comedy. The final scene with the postman offers just a glimmer of hope, just a glimmer. This is an amazing film, an exercise in neo-realism and an indictment of the colonial past and what it leaves behind.