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Date: April 17, 1998
Film Tour of ‘Four Women of Egypt’ to Make Princeton Stop
Director, three featured women to appear for screening, discussion
Princeton, N.J. -- The director and three of the women featured in the award-winning documentary, Four Women of Egypt will appear at Princeton University on April 29 as part of the American debut of this tale of friendship that thrives amid political change. The screening will be at 4 p.m. in Dodds Auditorium in Robertson Hall, at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. A discussion will follow.
Tahani Rached, the Egyptian-born director who now lives in Canada, will appear with Amina Rachid, Shahenda Maklad, and Wedad Mitry, three of the women who are profiled in the film. Four Women of Egypt chronicles the tale of four friends against the backdrop of tremendous political and social change in Egypt that began with the ascent of Gamal Abdel-Nasser in the 1950s.
These women differ greatly in their views and in their religious expression. Rachid, a university professor, is a non-practicing Muslim and political leftist who lived in Paris for years. Maklad is an advocate for peasants’ rights whose husband was assassinated. Mitry, a retired teacher, is a trade unionist and women’s suffragist. And Safynaz Kazem, the fourth star of the film, is an accomplished theater critic who advocates strict adherence to Islamic law, including the wearing of the veil. But the women have one thing in common -- they are strong believers in social justice.
"This is a film about friendship and tolerance," said Khaled M. Fahmy, assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies, who is organizing the group’s visit to the United States. "In spite of all their differences, they are able to maintain a high level of friendship. The film also portrays them as remarkable individuals -- they are mesmerizing figures."
Fahmy, who knows the women in the film, first saw Four Women while in Egypt and was struck by its artistic value as well as the compelling stories of its subjects. He also felt that the film would appeal to Western audiences and help break through stereotypes that Westerners may have about Muslims, especially women who adhere strictly to Islam’s rules. These are not complacent women, he said, yet the film lets their stories unfold at their own pace. "It challenges conceptions about Arab women on more than one level -- it is very sophisticated and subtle," Fahmy said.
And, according to one reviewer, very funny. "The film brought these four women home in the viewer’s mind, and did so with much mirth, song and laughter," wrote Nur Elmessiri in Cairo’s English-language newspaper, Al-Ahram Weekly. For example, one thread through the film is promise of the Aswan Dam, the "High Dam" that brought electricity and many other changes to the Egyptian people. But, as Elmessiri writes, the dam’s portrayal as the solution to all problems also makes it the butt of jokes: "After the high dam, we will have electricity ... after the high dam ... after the high dam," Kazem says at one point. " ‘And do you have snow in Egypt?’ After the high dam," she says. The director cuts to an image of a presidential motorcade, awash in white confetti.
The Princeton screening is part of a three-stop tour of the East Coast, which is sponsored by groups at Princeton and New York University, the joint owners of a collection of films on Middle Eastern culture based at NYU, and by Columbia and Georgetown universities and the American Research Center in Egypt. The film will be shown on April 27 in New York City at NYU and on May 1 at Georgetown. These are the first screenings of Four Women of Egypt in the United States; the film has already won the Public’s Prize and the award for best documentary at the Portugal Film Festival.
Princeton groups that are sponsoring the event are the Department and Program in Near Eastern Studies, the Committee for Canadian Studies, the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia; the Council of the Humanities, the Program in Women’s Studies, and the Princeton Middle East Society.