Yousra, Hussein Fahmy and Gabi Khoury talk about their memories with Youssef Chahine at a symposium on the occasion of his centenary

 

On the fourth day of the activities of the eighth session of the El Gouna Film Festival, a dialogue session was held entitled “A Journey with the Professor: From His Lens to Their Private Worlds” – “Youssef Chahine Centenary”, moderated by Ahmed Shawky, Director of the Cine Gouna Finance Platform, and with the participation of director Farid Boughedir, director Daoud Ould El Sayed, producer Gabi Khoury, and artist Yousra, in the presence of Lebleba, Hussein Fahmy, Khaled Youssef, Moufida Shiha, Yousra El Lozy, producer Mohamed El Adl, Intishal El Tamimi, Bossi Shalaby, Mahmoud Hamida, Khaled Selim, and Amr Gamal. Angie Ali, Elham Shaheen, Hala Sedqi, Sarah Abdel Rahman, Dalia Shawky, and a large group of artists and filmmakers. Shaheen is the godfather of new cinema, and he has inspired entire generations of creators, while Ahmed Shawky explained that January 25, 1926 will mark the century since his birth in 2026, so the El Gouna Film Festival decided to begin celebrating his centenary a month and a half before the official date.

 

Producer Gaby Khoury began his speech by saying that Youssef Shaheen completely changed his life, as he said: “I was an electrical engineer and I returned to Egypt from abroad to complete my work, and one day I was surprised by Shaheen asking everyone in the office to come out to talk to me. He said to me: You bored me, so I asked him why? Reply: You have been working with electricity for 3 months, and I want you to work with me. I will sit with you for 3 hours every day and teach you.” Khoury added with a smile: “The salary was 2,000 pounds a month and we did not talk about financial matters after that. When Yousra jokingly asked him, ‘Did you take 2,000 pounds until he died?’” He laughed and said, “No, I took more, but I didn’t tell you.””

 

Khoury explained that Youssef Chahine had tremendous artistic experience and knew what everyone was doing on the set, as he was aware of every detail and had even composed before, even though the works he composed were not written in his name. Yousra commented on this by saying: “I entered the factory with Shaheen once and did not enter it after that day.” He put his hand on the tape and said, “This is enough to develop the film. He was able to know details that no one knows.”

 

Yousra continued her talk about her relationship with Shaheen, saying: “Youssef Chahine was my inspiration all along, and this is a situation that will never be repeated, at least in the current era. He is a great mixture of humanity, a dictator in his work, and a brave man. He loves work and lets you know how to love it as he does, and he loved the actor because he is the one who delivers the message to the recipient. When I visited his exhibition at the El Gouna Film Festival, I could not help but cry.”

 

As for Daoud Ould El-Sayed, he said: “I like Youssef Chahine’s imagination, and we have young actors in Morocco who are following in the footsteps of the great Youssef Chahine.” Farid Boughedir continued his talk about Chahine’s impact on Arab cinema, saying: “My interview with Youssef Chahine changed my life and my outlook on cinema, just as it changed the lives of a large number of Arab creatives.” In Tunisia, we discovered through cinema clubs and film discussions that film is not just for entertainment, and all the films we were seeing were Western, but when we watched the film Bab al-Hadid, we realized that it was a lesson in freedom. Through my work as a film teacher at the university, I show the film to students every year, and every year they discover something new in it. We learned from Shaheen that you can be an artist and address societal issues or even your personal problems. Youssef Shaheen taught us that the most noble lesson in creativity is freedom. She directed her words to Gabi Khoury, saying: “Do you remember?” He replied, laughing: “I wasn’t born at that time.” She pointed out that Shaheen was standing behind the camera in some scenes to give the actor strength and feeling during the performance, and he was affected when he saw an actor performing without passion. I recalled a scene in the same movie when he said to lighting engineer Ramses: “I want divine light, I don’t want you to enlighten.” After filming the scene, she searched for him and did not find him, only to discover later that he was sad because of the lighting. So they repeated the scene the next day after they made holes in the ceiling and painted the walls. Yusra said: “I painted with them myself so that the scene would look the way Shaheen wanted it.” Then he said: “This is the light.” Al-Rabbani.”

 

Yousra added about the movie “An Egyptian Story”: “He told me in the first meeting that you are very tall. I told him who is in front of me?” Nour Al-Sharif told me, I told him he is taller than me, he said you are a flash, he said you are blonde, dye your hair black and don’t talk to anyone. So I apologized for the film because I did not like the role of the sister. I read the script ten times and did not understand it. After 3 months had passed, he visited me at home, and then he did what he had in mind and I made the film. “Yes, his company has been running since 1952 until now, and this is the greatest evidence of success, and many directors have graduated from it, and some of them were guaranteed by donors on their personal guarantee.”

 

At the conclusion of the session, the artist Hussein Fahmy spoke, saying: “I knew Youssef Chahine In 1960, I was a student at the Film Institute, and in the last year of my studies, he was directing the film Dawn of a New Day, and we chose his assistants. We were going to clean the movie screen with soap because the show was two days later, and this brings us back to what Yousra said, that he knew what everyone was doing. He was the one who convinced me to return from America to direct my first film, and he used to visit me at my parents’ house so that we could write a series script together.” He added with a smile: “I had five characters in the movie Alexandria Again and Again, meaning five Youssef Chahines. I told him it was not possible.” A past time, but rather a permanent evocation of an artist who believed that cinema was capable of being a school of freedom and life.