Film-maker Youssef Chahine dies
Youssef Chahine, the Arab world’s greatest film-maker and recipient of the 50th annual lifetime achievement award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, died in his home in Cairo yesterday at the age of 82.
Born in 1926 in Alexandria into a Christian family, Chahine attended prestigious Victoria College, the alma mater of many Arab and Egyptian intellectuals who made major contributions to 20th century Arab culture. After spending one year at the University of Alexandria, he went to the US to study drama at the Pasadena Playhouse in California.
Back in Egypt, he turned his talents to directing and made a series of films which established his reputation as a serious figure in the country’s 20-year-old film industry. During his long career, he made more than 40 films. The last, This is Chaos, was premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2007. He was credited with discovering Omar Sharif, who starred in The Blazing Sun, released in 1954, and became the first Arab actor to rise to stardom in Hollywood.
Chahine did not confine himself to the cinema. When in 1992 he was asked to produce a play for the Comedie-Francaise, he made a highly successful adaptation of Albert Camus’s Caligula.
Some of Chahine’s best films:
Nile Boy (1951)
Raging Sky (1953)
The Blazing Sun (1954)
Cairo Station
Saladin (1963)
The Sparrow (1973)
Alexandria … Why? (1978)
The Emigrant (1994)
Adieu Bonaparte (1985)
This is Chaos (2007)
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