December 2023
Ateyyat El Abnoudy, Maged Nader, Mohamed Abdelkarim, Assem Hendawi
EGYPT: DREAM AND NIGHTMARES is a film program investigating questions of utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares in modern and contemporary Egypt following the army officers movement in 1952. This survey features works by filmmakers and artists from different generations who work across various film styles and narrative frameworks. The first three films – Permissible Dreams, Rawya, and Girls Still…
Ateyyat El Abnoudy
, 1983
, 31 min
Synopsis: Permissible Dreams traces the life of Oum Said, a woman farmer living in a small town on the Suez Canal. Although she does not read or write, the woman in question is her family’s economist, doctor, and the planner of its future, as she dreams ‘to the limits of her possibilities’ where home is the premise…
, 1995
, 16 min
Synopsis: A portrait of an ambitious peasant female artist.
, 24 min
Synopsis: In persistent close shots, the film follows the challenges facing girls in a country where one in four marries before the age of sixteen and one in five ever attends school. An affecting view of how Egyptian women and girls still struggle for their autonomy through such basic human rights as education and for the…
