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Youssef Chahine’s Cinematic Alexandria

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies

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Synonyms

Alexandria as an imagined city; Cinematic Alexandria; Contemporary Alexandria; Alexandria as a cosmopolitan city; Autobiographical view of Alexandria; Impressionistic view of Alexandria; Multiethnic Alexandria; Idiosyncratic Cinema; Multicultural Alexandria

Definition

Alexandria as an imagined city in Youssef Chahine’s autobiographical cinema.

Introduction

In the case of Alexandria, where it has substantially mattered that a city-oriented corpus of cinematic work has come out of it, or has shaped it in a phantasmic way, trying either to construct it, represent it, or make it a text, Youssef Chahine’s four-film series about the city seems to stand on the highest ground. The importance of Chahine’s films on Alexandria is that they do not describe the city or show its features as much as present the viewer with a conscious autobiographical yet intentionally imaginative and unrealistic account of the director’s version of Alexandria as an imagined city. Chahine invented a...

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References

  • al’Aris, Ibrāhīm. 2004. On the personal and the language of the personal in Youssef Chahine’s trilogy: In any case, did he talk ‘about anything’ else in his cinema? Cinema (special issue) 24: Youssef Chahine: ‘The sparrow of pugnacity … and anger, April–May (2004), 34–45.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hong Kong, China

    Ahmed Elbeshlawy

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  1. Ahmed Elbeshlawy
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Correspondence to Ahmed Elbeshlawy .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. London, United Kingdom

    Jeremy Tambling

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© 2018 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

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Elbeshlawy, A. (2018). Youssef Chahine’s Cinematic Alexandria. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_12-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_12-1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62592-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62592-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Youssef Chahine’s Cinematic Alexandria
    Published:
    26 July 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_12-2

  2. Original

    Youssef Chahine’s Cinematic Alexandria
    Published:
    18 April 2018

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_12-1

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