Egyptian Movie Posters

[DarvishJo]

[img width= height=]http://www.musicman.com/00pic/gameofdeath.jpg[/img]

This one has a lot of nice memories for me.  Once while I was in Cairo I was told about an Egyptian film distributor who was going out of business and selling all her posters and other stock including reels of film, cutting tables and supplementary paper such as lobby cards, foreign posters and studio catalogs.  She was also selling her apartment on Naguib al-Reyhani Street, which I ultimately decided not to buy.  Her name was Nadia Farhat (written in Arabic in the upper right corner of this poster in the phrase "Nadia Farhat presents"); I eventually made a deal with her and moved her inventory to an apartment I had in 6 October City, about 40 KM outside Cairo.  This move was an enormous adventure involving a hired moving crew and truck, I ended up with six big floor-to-ceiling cabinets full of posters; these were mostly Egyptian posters for foreign releases whose printing Nadia had commissioned, along with the foreign originals that had come to her as part of the distribution materials she'd had sent to her from Italy.  These cabinets, stacks of reels and boxes of odds and ends took up most of the free space in my apartment in 6 October City and were a perfect use for the space, which I never used as habitat.  I discovered soon after leasing the apartment that I didn't want to spend much time there because it was too far from most of the people I was dealing with in Cairo, but after I obtained these goods from Nadia the apartment became a perfect storage room.  I kept the apartment for two years before I eventually decided to ship the best posters back to myself in the USA and give the rest of Nadia's stock to my friend Mohsen, a Cairo paper seller specializing in posters.  Mohsen was very happy and I was glad I could do him some good.  I now have a roll of about 50 of this Game of Death poster here at home with me, along with a few similar batches of other favorites that came from Nadia.   

[ddilts399]

musicman is your site?? Boy that brings back memories, I used to visit that site AGES ago.

[brude]

Cool poster and side story, DarvishJo.
Keep them coming.
 

[DarvishJo]

Just got these in the mail today:

[img width= height=]http://www.musicman.com/00pic/arabfilmdirectors.jpg[/img]
Encyclopedia of Arab film directors

[img width= height=]http://www.musicman.com/00pic/arabdreamfactory.jpg[/img]
Collection of photos and descriptions of Egyptian lobby cards

[img width= height=]http://www.musicman.com/00pic/arabmovieposterbook.jpg[/img]
The best Egyptian movie poster book so far: The Art of the Egyptian Film Poster by my friend Sameh Fathy

[img width= height=]http://www.musicman.com/00pic/arabmoviesongs.jpg[/img]
Seven-volume encyclopedia of all the lyrics to all the songs in all Egyptian films - over 6000 pages!

[img width= height=]http://www.musicman.com/00pic/arabmusicals.jpg[/img]
Reference work on Egyptian musicals

Sameh sent me these as part of a trade for some rare posters I sent him about six weeks ago

[erik1925]

Wow, John.

Those are quite the sets of reference books. 6000 pages.

They all look great.

 

[DarvishJo]

[img width= height=]http://www.musicman.com/00pic/3106.jpg[/img] [img width= height=]http://www.musicman.com/00pic/12005b.jpg[/img]

In 1969 we had Dean Martin as Matt Helm with his wrecking crew.  The Egyptians liked the idea so much that in 1985 they made a new film called Watch out for the Gang of Women [احترس نصابة النساء] starring Sameer Ghanem. 

[DarvishJo]

[img width= height=]http://www.musicman.com/00pic/11791b.jpg[/img]

Old Egyptian poster for a 1968 documentary film about an appearance of the Virgin Mary in the town of Zeitun.  I could not find the documentary referenced on the poster, but I found several shorter films about the event.  None of them actually shows anything like the luminous figure drawn on the poster; there were some shots of what looks to me like artificial illumination of parts of the church roof, and a lot of excited talk about the wonders of the experience.  Whatever they were, these wonders must have been invisible to the camera.  The art is by Wahib Fahmy, whose work is seen frequently on Egyptian posters for foreign films.  The poster was made in the years when egypt and Syria were known as the United Arab Republic. 

[brude]

I like that art by Fahmy.
If you do find the original documentary online, I'd appreciate a link.
 

[DarvishJo]

I like that art by Fahmy.
If you do find the original documentary online, I'd appreciate a link.
 

No problem Ted, I'll be sure to do that.

 

[erik1925]

Hi Everybody

I just put up a new blog entry for a rare 1945 Egyptian billboard originally issued in eight sheets:

http://www.mopopoc.com/2015/03/miss-bossy-nour-al-hoda-1945-egyptian.html

I sold this one to a library about a year ago but never got around to posting it on the blog.  The blog post has a link to the original 1945 film, for anybody who understands Arabic. 

Hey John.

I came across this post again, and wanted to ask about where this billboard was printed. From the wording on the lower left corner, it suggests it might have been done in France? And the artist, Marcel -- is he French? Do you know anything about him or other posters that he did?

[DarvishJo]

Hey John.

I came across this post again, and wanted to ask about where this billboard was printed. From the wording on the lower left corner, it suggests it might have been done in France? And the artist, Marcel -- is he French? Do you know anything about him or other posters that he did?

Hi Jeff,

Marcel was Greek according to what I've read, and was one of the prolific early Egyptian poster designers (I don't know if he is dead or alive), but I'm pretty sure he is no longer active.  I'm virtually certain L'Art Graphique was in Alexandria Egypt, but I don't know much about it.  There is no reason to believe this particular Egyptian print shop would be in France, since everything else about the poster is so characteristically Egyptian.  As far as I know the French printed posters for Egyptian films (think of the logistics of shipping the paper to Egypt) only when the film was released in France, and in those cases most of the text on the poster would also have also been in French.  That was the case for a lot of films directed by Youssef Chahine.  The film advertised on this billboard was directed by Niazi Mostafa, who had no particular connection to France.  Marcel was one of the early classic Egyptian poster artists and was quite prolific.  The following is a list of posters I have that were either designed by Marcel or by Marcel in collaboration with someone else.  The key on the left from my database references what I recorded about the signature that appears on the poster.  There are a lot of different keys because I tried to note variations such as street addresses and telephone numbers when I found them: 

marcele   df   1965   00pic/6833.html   Wisdom and Money [al-aql wal-mal] (1965) - (Ismail Yasseen) Egyptian film poster F, NM $75 *
marcele   snil   1955   00pic/10396.html   Love's Madness [gonoun al-hob] (1955) - (Raqiya Ibrahim) Egyptian oversize stone litho film poster F, EX $150 *
marcele   nahas   1944   00pic/egypt/e6.html   Hassan and Hassan (1944) - (Mohammed Al Kahlawi) Egyptian film poster $550 *
marcelswf      1962   00pic/13429.html   Ulysses against Hercules (1962) - (Georges Marchal) Egyptian two-piece film poster F, VG $95 *
marcelv   sst   1955   00pic/13877.html   Flesh [al-gessad] (1955) - (Hind Rostom) original Egyptian oversize film poster F, NM $750 *
marcele   sst   1958   00pic/13876.html   Gift from Heaven, A [rahma min al-sama'] (1958) - (Hind Rostom) original oversize Egyptian poster F, EX $300 *
marcel   sssh   1964   00pic/4951.html   Thousand and One Nights, A [alf layla wa layla] (1964) - (Shadia) Style B stone litho Egyptian movie poster F, NM $125 *
marcel   asf   1969   00pic/11432.html   My Father Is up the Tree [abi fawq al-shagarah] (1969) - (Abdel Halim Hafez) original Egyptian film poster F, NM $175 *
marcele   snil   1954   00pic/5950.html   Love's Madness [gonoun al-hob] (1954) - (Raqiya Ibrahim) Egyptian stone litho film poster F, NM $125 *
marcele      1965   00pic/13321.html   Pistol for Ringo, A (1965) - (Giuliano Gemma) Egyptian film poster F, EX $45 *
marcele   mtcsf   1963   00pic/10658.html   Letter from an Unknown Woman [resalah min emraa maghula] (1963) - (Farid Al Atrache) original three-piece stone litho Egyptian film poster F, EX $250 *
maz   mss   1970   00pic/10978.html   Ticket Thief [harami al-waraqa] (1970) - (Naglaa Fathy) Egyptian film poster F, NM $45 *
marcele      1957   00pic/13432.html   Phantom Stagecoach, The (1957) - (William Bishop) Egyptian film poster F, EX $45 *
marcele      1962   00pic/13323.html   Fire Monsters against the Son of Hercules (1962) - (Reg Lewis) Egyptian film poster F, EX $45 *
marcele      1965   00pic/13324.html   Man Called Gringo (1965) - (Goetz George) Egyptian film poster F, EX $45 *
marcele   sqs   1967   00pic/13416.html   Oscar (1967) - (Louis de Funes) Egyptian film poster F, VG $55 *
marcele      1954   00pic/13409.html   Jesse James vs. the Daltons (1954) - (Brett King) Egyptian film poster F, EX $65 *
takiaz   sssh   1963   00pic/13689.html   Soft Hands [al-aydi al-na'ema] (1963) - (Sabah) Egyptian one-sheet film poster F, EX $95 *
marcelv   sst33   1956   00pic/6509.html   Heart Has Commands, The [al-'alb lu ahkam] (1956) - (Faten Hamama) Egyptian stone litho film poster F, NM $125 *

best

John

[erik1925]

Great info, John.

In looking up Marcel, I found this link from the Princeton University Library that had an exhibit of Arabic posters and lobby cards, in 2013-2014. Marcel's name as well as Studio Marcel are mentioned a couple of times.

http://libguides.princeton.edu/c.php?g=84432&p=541925

[DarvishJo]

Great info, John.

In looking up Marcel, I found this link from the Princeton University Library that had an exhibit of Arabic posters and lobby cards, in 2013-2014. Marcel's name as well as Studio Marcel are mentioned a couple of times.

http://libguides.princeton.edu/c.php?g=84432&p=541925

Thanks Jeff.  I don't know if you noticed, but one of the key elements of that Princeton exhibition was a reproduction of a contract to print a poster, which they obtained from yours truly.  The original is still in my collection.

[erik1925]

Thanks Jeff.  I don't know if you noticed, but one of the key elements of that Princeton exhibition was a reproduction of a contract to print a poster, which they obtained from yours truly. The original is still in my collection.

I hadn't noticed that, John. But i will have another look.

And how great that you still have the original document. 

[Tang Lung in Rome]