Atteyat El-Abnoudy Retrospective

Horse of Mud [Husan el-tin] (1971)  • 12 mins.

Sad Song of Touha [Oghneyet Touha Elhazina] (1972)  • 12 mins.

The Sandwich (1975)  • 12 mins.

Rawya (1995)  • 16 mins.

Permissible Dreams [al-Ahlam al-Mumkinna] (1983)  • 31 mins.

Egypt, DCP, ~83 mins.

The May program of Mizna Film Series: Feminist Visions presents a retrospective of Atteyat El-Abnoudy’s work. Often considered Egypt’s pioneer documentary filmmaker and “filmmaker of the poor,” El-Abnoudy’s oeuvre maps the intersections of class, labor, and gender in Egypt, largely through the perspectives of women. With training in law, journalism, and filmmaking, El-Abnoudy was active as a documentary filmmaker from the 1970s through the early 2000s. El-Abnoudy’s films offer an intimate glimpse into the lives of working-class Egyptians through politically engaged and socially preoccupied documentary form. Giving a voice to women outside of Egypt’s metropolitan centers, El-Abnoudy enables her film subjects to return the camera’s gaze and narrate their stories in their own words.

In 2011, El-Abnoudy donated her archival collection to the founders of Cimatheque, an alternative film center in the heart of Cairo, as they were setting up their space. The donation kick-started and shaped the center’s archival practice. Cimatheque is now a multi-purpose cultural space that provides resources, trainings, and programming for the independent filmmaking community in Cairo. Additionally, Cimatheque houses an archive comprised of rare films, prints, manuscripts, and other extracinematic materials spanning more than 60 years of Egyptian, Arab, and global alternative cinema history. Since it opened its doors in 2012, Cimatheque has strived to make Egypt’s cinematic heritage and El-Abnoudy’s film collection accessible. Part of that task includes safeguarding El-Abnoudy’s film collection, and Cimatheque is set to undertake a restoration project of select titles from the collection in order to digitize and preserve her work.

This program is co-presented with Cimatheque and ArteEast