2010 09 14 - SFS - World Cinema Series: Al Momia / The Night of Counting of the Years

World Cinema Series: Al Momia / The Night of Counting of the Years


Al Momia / The Night of Counting of the Years


Director: Shadi Abdel Salam

1969
Egypt
103 min
35mm
Rating to be Advised

In Arabic with English subtitles

Al Momia, rightfully acknowledged as one of the greatest Egyptian films

ever made, is based on a true story. In this film, archaeologists from the

Antiquities Department in Cairo noticed that several artefacts bearing

royal names from the 21st dynasty kept appearing on the antique black

market. An expedition was sent to Thebes, the capital of the Pharaonic

Empire, to ascertain the cause, where the Pharaoh’s tomb was discovered to

have been plundered for millennia by the Horabat mountain tribe. Their

ancient way of life becomes disrupted when the two sons of the tribal

chieftain refuse to perpetuate the plundering further,


Al Momia has an unusual tone ­ stately, poetic, with a powerful grasp of

time and the sadness that carries. The ceremonial movement of the camera,

the desolate settings, the unsettling score by the great Italian composer

Mario Nascimbene all work in perfect harmony to contribute to the feeling

of fateful inevitability. The picture has a sense of history like no

other, so it came as no surprise that Roberto Rossellini readily agreed to

produce the film after reading the script.


Notes on the restoration

The restoration of Al Momia used the original 35mm camera and sound

negatives preserved at the Egyptian Film Center in Giza and the digital

restoration produced a new 35mm internegative. The film was restored in

2009 by the World Cinema Foundation at Cineteca di Bologna / L’Immagine

Ritrovata Laboratory, with the support of the Egyptian Ministry of

Culture.


Tickets for Al Momia will be on sale from 1 July 2010.

About the Director Shadi Abdel Salam (1930 ­ 1986)

“I think that the people of my country are ignorant of our history and I

feel that it is my mission to make them know some of it and let others go

on with the rest. I regard cinema not as a consumerist art, but as a

historical document for next generations.” ­ Shadi Abdel Salam


Shadi Abdel Salam, who directed only one full-length feature film has

become firmly established as one of the most important Egyptian directors

of his time.

Born on 15 March 1930 in Alexandria to a family that originally came from

Upper Egypt, he received his education at Victoria College where he

fostered his love for drama. After graduating from Victoria College, he

travelled to Paris, London and Rome to study drama but returned to Egypt

without achieving his goal. On his return, he joined the Architecture

Department of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo University, where he

graduated in 1954. After graduation, he returned to England once more to

study drama in 1956, to fulfil his original dream.


Abdel Salam started his career in cinema as an assistant director to Salah

Abou Seif. In their first film, The Thug (el Futuwwa), he was more of a

spectator, jotting down the duration of each shot. He later became the

assistant director to Henri Barakat and Helmi Halim, and it was during the

latter’s A Love Story (Qessat houbb) that his talent in set design was

discovered unexpectedly. Many filmmakers were impressed with his décor for

A Love Story, and he subsequently received many designing offers. In fact,

he is still considered as one of the most extraordinary Egyptian set- and

costume-designers in the film industry. In 1967, he designed the set and

costumes of the documentary film Mankind’s Fight for Survival by Roberto

Rossellini. The influence of this great Italian director surpassed that of

any directors he knew and worked with, and after the completion of the

documentary film, he decided to become a director himself.

Thus, in 1969, Abdel Salam started directing his first and only

full-length feature, Al Momia, also known as The Night of Counting of the

Years. The visual impact of the film was his expression of the very

essence of things, which he sought through image, architecture, light and

colour, rather than dramatic action, literary narration or linguistic

dialogues. His choice of classical Arabic also contributed to the

monumental influence of the film, which stands out as a great epic peopled

with larger-than-life characters.


His next ambitious project was The Tragedy of the Great House which was

never completed in spite of twelve years of intensive preparation and

research. Abdel Salam died of cancer at the age of 56, on 8 October 1986,

in Cairo.