Egypt's renowned director Youssef Chahine in coma

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

Egypt's renowned director Youssef Chahine in coma

Jun 16, 2008, 12:55 GMT

Cairo - Youssef Chahine, one of Egypt's most distinguished directors, was evacuated by plane Monday to Paris for specialized treatment after he suffered a brain haemorrhage. Chahine, 82, was reportedly in a coma and in critical condition after suffering the brain haemorrhage on Saturday, his friend and filmmaker, Khalid Youssef, told reporters.

The director studied acting in California in the 1940s and returned home to start a distinctive career in film-making that drew both domestic and international acclaim.

One of his earliest film, Ibn al-Nil, (Son of the Nile) produced in the 1950s, secured him his first invitation to the Cannes film festival, which bestowed on him its 50th anniversary lifetime achievement award in 1997.

With his strong antipathy for religious intolerance and anti- government views, the director drew criticism from the country's ruling establishment and incurred the wrath of its Islamists.

Chahine, though cherishing the memories of the happy years he spent in Los Angeles as a student, has been critical of US policies in the Middle East, particularly the Gulf war against Iraq in 1991 and the 2003 invasion of the Arab country.

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Edited June 16, 2008 by Olivia*

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

Youssef Chahine, Egypt's Best-Known Filmmaker, Dies (Update1)

By Daniel Williams

July 27 (Bloomberg) -- Youssef Chahine, the Egyptian filmmaker who explored his country's politics, family life, and sexuality on camera, died in Cairo after weeks in a coma. He was 82.

Chahine, a recipient of a lifetime achievement award at the Cannes film festival in 1997, had a brain hemorrhage last month and was flown to Paris for treatment before returning to Cairo's Maadi Military Hospital on July 17, a spokesman for the hospital said by telephone. The spokesman, whose name cannot be used under hospital policy, said Chahine died this morning.

Chahine made 50 films over a 55-year career. Topics ran from bitter tales of struggles against landlords and evil officials to passionate affairs of the heart -- heterosexual and homosexual. He also broached Islamic fundamentalism, and, most recently, police torture and abuse of power in ``Chaos,'' his last film.

``Youssef Chahine took Egyptian cinema to the world stage,'' said Khaled Youssef, a filmmaker who co-directed ``Chaos'' with Chahine.

Born in 1926, Chahine was the son of a Lebanese father and a Greek mother. Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city and his hometown, exemplified, to him, a tolerant, open Egypt. He set three autobiographical films there: ``Alexandria ... Why?'' (1978) about the city during World War II; ``An Egyptian Story,'' (1982) on a filmmaker struggling over career compromises; and ``Alexandria Again and Forever'' (1990).

He also won a lifetime achievement award at the 2007 Dubai International Film Festival. Yet he lamented a failure to reach mass audiences in the United States. He studied theater at the Pasadena Play House in California from 1946 through 1948, and become entranced by the films of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.

`Blazing Sky'

His films took aim at successive Egyptian governments. In 1954, he released ``The Blazing Sky,'' a movie started during the reign of Egypt's last monarch King Farouk, which depicted a farmer's revolt against a feudal landlord. His 1972 ``The Sparrow'' critiqued Egypt's effort in the 1967 Middle East War, in which it lost the Sinai Peninsula to Israel. In ``Alexandria Again and Forever,'' the Egyptian film industry was shown going on strike to demand democracy.

Chahine also campaigned against Islamic extremism. ``Destiny'' (1997) showed a tolerant ruler in 12th-century Spain threatened by a Muslim sect that sought to prohibit the teaching of Greek philosophy. Variety, the film-industry trade publication, described it as ``the most courageous frontal attack on Islamic fundamentalism to come out of the Arab cinema to date.''

Chahine collaborated on two movies with Naguib Mahfouz, the late Egyptian Nobel literature laureate. One, ``Saladin'' (1963), dealt with the heroic Muslim conqueror of Jerusalem. The other, ``The Choice'' (1970), dealt with the murder of a sailor in which the chief suspect is the victim's writer-twin brother.

Criticized U.S.

In his final years, he criticized U.S. foreign policy and filmmaking. Both, in his view, had become overbearingly aggressive. In 2005 he said: ``All we see is Spider-Men and musclemen. America has become violent like the new movies.''

In 2006, Chahine took an active role in protesting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's crackdown on democracy activists. He sided with magistrates campaigning for judicial independence, who sought to overturn parliamentary and presidential elections which they claimed were fraudulent.

A funeral ceremony for Chahine will be held in the Roman Catholic Church in Cairo tomorrow, state-run television Nile News, reported. He will be buried in the family crypt in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, it added.

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Williams in Cairo at dwilliams41@bloomberg.net. Abeer Allam in Cairo at aallam@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 27, 2008 08:06 EDT

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...&refer=home

[tenderheartusa79 14]

GOD bless his soul

i love so many of his movies.