The celebrated Egyptian film director Yousef Shahin presents this week his new film “Lights, Camera, Action,” a foray into the topsy turvey world of musical comedy with the seductive Tunisian singer Latifa.
In front of the neon-lit Tahrir movie theater, onlookers gawked on Tuesday night at sleek black Mercedes arriving for a showing of the film.
Bodyguards cleared the pavement for starlets in low-cut dresses, a few meters (yards) from the avenue's daily life of strolling veiled women and shopkeepers, who stared at the celebrity spectacle from their doorways.
The film also contrasts scenes of glamour and misery through images of the rich’s luxurious apartments and villas along the Mediterranean, juxtaposed with footage of packed crowds rumbling through Egypt's urban jungles.
Shahin, 75, said in a June interview that "Lights, Camera, Action" reveals the personal sacrifices artists make via the story of a "dangerous love affair" between a singer and an arriviste.
The script, a product of his own ideas and those raised during brainstorming sessions with friends, is designed to make people reflect on the harsh demands of artistic commitment.
"The film shows how, when someone is devoted to his art, the commitment becomes total, without the possibility of straying from it," the bespectacled Shahin said.
"When one makes such a choice, one cannot say: 'I also want to make money, have a private life'. It's a very hard commitment," Shahin said.
The film is then a drama disguised as a comedy, a series of sketches and music hall numbers, that give a searing comment on the human condition.
It is only a step away from the dramas that won him the special prize at the Cannes film festival in 1997, for his film "Fate," about how religious extremism stifles intellectual life, and his life work, including films like "Central Station" from the 1950s.
His newest movie, touted as a blockbuster, is produced by MIF and the French firm Onion, represented by Shahin's longtime collaborator Humbert Balsan, with help from the French television stations Canal Plus and France 2.
The Paris-based National Center of Cinematography (CNC) is also involved in the production of the musical which is due to hit movie screens in Cairo in September.
The frail-looking and emaciated Shahin has had to watch his step after having been hospitalized frequently in the last few months for high blood pressure and a pulmonary edema.
But the former chain smoker has been active in recent months with politics.
He joined a rally in October on behalf of the Palestinian uprising against Israel and in June rushed to defend peasants against government plans to expel them from Dahab island in Cairo for an unspecified development project.
"I'm going to make a documentary film to denounce both the people and the system which allow people to be thrown out of their homes," Shahin said at the time -- (AFP)
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