The Lady from Cairo

In 1990 Moumen Smihi briefly relocated to Cairo in order to work in the shadow of one of the worlds largest commercial film industries The film that resulted from his Cairo sojuourn is a complex painterly critique of the Egyptian musical and cinema star system At the same time the film shows the divergent states of possibility or despair faced by men and women within a changing Egyptian society Smihis film plays out over thirty years and the events of the Nasserite years and the Palestine Israel conflict become integral to the narrative By blending newsreel footage with his own lush cinematography Smihi creates a complex portrait of contemporary Egyptian society in the postwar years