Film Screening: "Once upon a Time … the Nile”

Dir. Youssef Chahine, Egypt/USSR, 1968
Date
Oct 12, 2024, 3:45 pm5:30 pm

Details

Event Description

The Nile’s story in Egyptian cinema begins in the early 1960s. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the iconic president of Egypt since 1956, wants to embark on a pharaonic project that would embody his dream of a new, modern and independent socialist nation. The task will be the construction of the High Aswan Dam aiming at better controlling the Nile’s waters in order to boost agricultural production in addition to generating electricity.

Nasser already knows the impact Egyptian cinema can have in echoing his grand vision. In fact, in 1963, the president funds “Saladin”, a historic movie celebrating the retake of Jerusalem from 12th century crusaders. It is then that the leader reaches out to Youssef Chahine for the first time, a talented young Egyptian filmmaker who was well acclaimed for his musicals and melodramas. Released a few years after the tripartite Suez Canal aggression against Egypt, “Saladin” aspired to incarnate a winning post-colonial nation in its fight against the coalescing imperial powers.

After the immense success of the film, Nasser and the Soviet Union request from Chahine to direct another film that would celebrate the inauguration of the Aswan High Dam and promote the collaboration between the two allied socialist nations. The movie “Once upon a Time … the Nile” is born! (“al-Nīl wa al-Ḥayāẗ” in Arabic, which literally means “Nile and life”).

It’s 1964, during the height of the Cold War, a period in which controlling the political discourse is of utmost importance. The two coproducing nations dictate tightly their guidelines to the film director. Amongst many supervisory actions, Chahine is provided with supporting archival and documental films spanning the Dam’s construction period. The music in these films is solemn and orchestral, deliberately expressing the glory of a new socialist era.

But despite this tight oversight, the first version of the movie is not to the taste of its sponsors and is consequently banned. Perceived more as a nostalgic and melancholic depiction of the Nubian region, the movie is deemed too personal and off-topic. Indeed, Chahine willingly disobeys the officials’ recommendations, ending up making a more personal film that shows, with more objectivity perhaps, the symbolic place the river occupies in the lives of peasants.

In the end, both Moscow and Cairo ban the first version of the film. The negatives of the film are destroyed and Chahine is summoned to remake the entire movie with a new script and a new cast of actors. The second version, renamed “Those People of the Nile”, is a film that Youssef Chahine himself will reject from his legacy.

While the first version is thought to have completely disappeared, the director manages to send the one and only positive copy secretly to Paris, in a diplomatic bag to be handed to Henri Langlois, founder of the French cinematheque. Thirty-five years later, the original work will be entirely restored in France, for a new release in 1999.

From: Amal Guermazi, The Nile and the Aswan High dam in Youssef Chahine’s cinema