Adieu Chahine

Creativity has indeed lost one of its greatest champions. Youssef Chahine passed away on 27-07-08 in his home in Cairo.

The whole world mourned the death of this great filmmaker. Chahine always managed to move and provoke. Although some of his films are still bannned in the Arab world, they have been appreciated by non Arab audiences as important contributions to cinema.

The reaction to his death in Egypt has been that of genuine sadness at the loss of one of Egypt’s most important figures. However, the news coverage by Arab media, and the Egyptian “media” in particular, has been disgusting and disappointing. As the news of his death broke, the Egyptian channel failed to interrupt its ridicuilous vomit inducing makeover show. Instead, we had to endure the usual tedious irrelevence, much like the rest of the Egyptian channel’s content, to see if after the pathetic caller’s eyeshadow dilemnas are solved we would actually be given more information on his death, or, god forbid, actually watch one of his films! Naturally, nothing happened and stupidity ensued. This said a lot about the state of Egypt, just as he had in all of his films. Chahine was one of my heroes, and i don’t have many.

January 25 1926 – July 27 2008