¹ Al-Musawwar even described the final song in the film, “Fi Ahdan al-Habayib” (In the Lap of Lovers), as “the most moving melody of our time”; ‘Abd al-Nur Khalil, “Ashja Nagham fi Hayatuna: Hatta fi Ahdan al-Habayib Shawk ya Qalbi,” al-Musawwar, 8 April 1977, 27.

² Ibid. For studies on ‘Abd al-Halim Hafiz, see Gordon, Joel, Revolutionary Melodrama: Popular Film and Civic Identity in Nasser's Egypt (Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2002), 117–29, 260–69Google Scholar; Stokes, Martin, “Adam Smith and the Dark Nightingale: On Twentieth-Century Sentimentalism,” Twentieth-Century Music 3, no. 2 (2006): 201–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, Joel, “The Slaps Felt around the Arab World: Family and National Melodrama in Two Nasser-Era Musicals,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39, no. 2 (2007): 209–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fawzi, Mufid, Halim: Ayyam ma‘a al-‘Andalib (Dar Dawin: Cairo, 2007)Google Scholar; Stokes, Martin, “Listening to Abd al-Halim Hafiz” in Global Soundtracks: Worlds of Film Music, ed. Slobin, Mark (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008), 309–36Google Scholar; Stokes, Martin, “‘Abd al-Halim's Microphone,” in Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia, ed. Nooshin, Laudan (London: Routledge, 2016), 55–74Google Scholar. Halim also has been the subject of countless memoirs and nonacademic works, recent examples of which include Hisham ‘Issa, Halim wa Ana (Dar al-Shuruq: Cairo, 2010).

³ “Ihsan ‘Abd al-Quddus ‘Ghayr Radin ‘an qubulat ‘Abi fawq al-Shagara,” Veto, 17 February 2017, https://www.vetogate.com/Section-32/%D8%AB%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%81%D8%A9-%D9%88%D9%81%D9%86%D9%88%D9%86/%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%82%D8%AF%D9%88%D8%B3-%D8%BA%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%B6-%D8%B9%D9%86-%D9%82%D8%A8%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A3%D8%A8%D9%8A-%D9%81%D9%88%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%AC%D8%B1%D8%A9-2589030.

⁴ See interview with Nadia Lutfi: “Nadia Lutfi: Faqadtu Wa‘i fi Film Abi fawq al-Shagara,” ON-E TV, 15 October 2018, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6viiyw.

⁵ “Abi fawq al-Shagara Yuwajih al-Man‘ ba‘d 43 ‘aman min ‘ardihi” al-Arabiya, 2 April 2012, https://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/02/204941.html.

⁶ Hammond, Marle, “The Kiss in Egyptian Film Language of the 1940s,” in Les Mots du désir: La langue de l’érotisme arabe et sa traduction, ed. Lagrange, Frédéric and Savina, Claire (Marseilles: Diacritiques Éditions, 2020)Google Scholar. Most scholarship on screen kissing in general focuses on the psychological aspects of the kiss, whereas I am interested in how the kiss is used and debated as it moves through time. For studies on screen kisses in cinema generally see Williams, Linda, Screening Sex (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) Chapter 1Google ScholarPubMed; Dengler, Ralph S. J., “The First Screen Kiss and ‘The Cry of Censorship,’” Journal of Popular Film and Television 7, no. 3 (1979), 267–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McKinnon, Scott, “Watching Men Kissing Men: The Australian Reception of the Gay Male Kiss On-Screen,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 24, no. 2 (2015): 262–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ On love and romance in Egypt, see Elsadda, Hoda, “Imaging the ‘New Man’: Gender and Nation in Arab Literary Narratives in the Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 3, no. 2, (2007): 31–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kreil, Aymon, “The Price of Love: Valentine's Day in Egypt and Its Enemies,” Arab Studies Journal 24, no. 2 (2016): 128–46Google Scholar; and Kreil, Aymon, “Territories of Desire: A Geography of Competing Intimacies in Cairo,” Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 12, no. 2 (2016): 166–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Armbrust, Walter, “Sexuality and Film: Transgressing Patriarchy; Sex in Egyptian Film,” Middle East Report 206 (1998): 29–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zuhur, Sherifa, “Victims or Actors? Centering Women in Egyptian Commercial Film,” in Images of Enchantment: Visual and Performing Arts of the Middle East, ed. Zuhur, Sherifa (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1998): 211–28Google Scholar; Shafik, Viola, “Prostitute for a Good Reason: Stars and Morality in Egypt,” Women's Studies International Forum 24 (2001): 711–25CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Shafik, Viola, Popular Egyptian Cinema Gender, Class, and Nation (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2007), 122–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph, Sabrina, “Representations of Private/Public Domains: The Feminine Ideal and Modernist Agendas in Egyptian Film, Mid 1950s–1980s,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 30, no. 2 (2009): 72–109Google Scholar; Abdel-Fadil, Mona and Eynde, Koen Van, “Golden Age Divas on the Silver Screen: Challenging or Conforming to Dominant Gender Norms?” Journal of African Cinemas 8, no. 1 (2016): 11–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bracco, Carolina, “The Creation of the Femme Fatale in Egyptian Cinema,” Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 15, no. 3 (2019): 307–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mahmoud, Rania, “Who Advocates for Egypt? Women Lawyers in Egyptian Film on the Eve of Independence,” Gender & History 33, no. 1 (2021): 192–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ This speaks to a broader historiographical turn in Arab cinema studies, with more and more scholars looking away from the screen toward broader contexts of production and reception and the use of parafilmic content. See for example, Hayek, Ghenwa, “Where To? Filming Emigration Anxiety in Prewar Lebanese Cinema,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 51, no. 2 (2019): 183–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hayek, Ghenwa, “Locating the Lost Archive of Arab Cinema,” Regards— Revue Des Arts Du Spectacle 26 (2021): 15–19, https://journals.usj.edu.lb/regards/article/view/660/550Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Gordon “Slaps Felt,” 209.

¹¹ Ibid., 212.

¹² Nizar Qabbani, “Notes in the Margins of the Defeat,” trans. Margaret Litvin, Hamlet's Arab Journey: Shakespeare's Prince and Nasser's Ghost (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 120.

¹³ Sabry Hafez, “The Egyptian Novel in the Sixties,” Journal of Arabic Literature 7, no. 1 (1976): 68–84; Elisabeth Kendall, “The Theoretical Roots of the Literary Avant-Garde in 1960s Egypt,” Edebiyat: Journal of ME Literatures, 14, no. 1–2 (2003): 39–56; Yasmine Ramadan, “The Emergence of the Sixties Generation in Egypt and the Anxiety over Categorization,” Journal of Arabic Literature 43, no. 2–3 (2012): 409–30; Yasmine Ramadan, “Shifting Ground: Spatial Representations in the Literature of the Sixties Generation in Egypt” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012).

¹⁴ Jesse Ferris, Nasser's Gamble: How Intervention in Yemen Caused the Six-Day War and the Decline of Egyptian Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 1.

¹⁵ On issues of fun and stifling of fun, see Asef Bayat, “Islamism and the Politics of Fun,” Public Culture 19, no. 3 (2007): 433–59.

¹⁶ For more on alternative visual cultures in the 1960s, see Mohamed Elshahed, “Shafiq's Bag of Memories,” in The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties: Between Protest and Nation-Building, ed. Chen Jian et al. (London: Taylor and Francis, 2018), 504–11.

¹⁷ Walter Armbrust's approach to the Egyptian cinema, to look beyond the film texts and the broader debates, has been important in this regard. See, for example, Walter Armbrust, Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For recent examples of this approach, see also Chihab El Khachab, “The Sobky Recipe and the Struggle over ‘the Popular’ in Egypt,” Arab Studies Journal 27, no. 1 (2019), 35–62; and Ghenwa Hayek, “Where To?” The literature on historic audiences also has been instrumental in helping me formulate my ideas. For some examples, see Charles Ambler, “Popular Film and Colonial Audiences: The Movies in Northern Rhodesia,” American Historical Review 106, no. 1 (2001): 81–106; Richard Maltby, Daniël Biltereyst, and Philippe Meers, eds., Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011); Laura Fair, Reel Pleasures: Cinema Audiences and Entrepreneurs in Twentieth-Century Urban Tanzania (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2018); and Daniël Biltereyst, Richard Maltby, and Philippe Meers, eds., The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History (London: Taylor and Francis, 2019).

¹⁸ Walter Armbrust, “When the Lights Go Down in Cairo: Cinema as Secular Ritual,” Visual Anthropology 10, no. 2–4 (1998): 413–42.

¹⁹ Ibid., 424.

²⁰ The topic of the kiss was also a familiar item in the early American film press. See Hazel Simpson Naylor, “Kisses According to Cecil B. DeMille,” Motion Picture Magazine, June 1921, 28–29; W. A. Williamson, “Kinema Kisses,” Picture and Picturegoers, December 1923, 32–33; and Dorothy Wooldridge, “The Truth about Screen Kisses,” Picture-Play Magazine, March 1926, 43–45.

²¹ Cartoonists in this magazine typically targeted women or children with their jokes, unmasking an anxiety about changing gender roles in the 1920s.

²² “Girls at the Cinema,” al-Fukaha, 28 December 1927, 15.

²³ “And the Cinema to Teach Boys and Girls Flirting,” al-Fukaha, 14 November 1928, 3.

²⁴ Although the films are lost, stills from the films can be found in surviving magazines of the period. See al-Kawakib, 26 December 1932.

²⁵ “Hadith ‘an al-Taqbil,” Kul Shay’, 4 June 1927, 9.

²⁶ Fann, “al-Qubla ‘ala al-Shasha al-Bayda’,” al-Kawakib, 27 June 1932, 12–13.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ahmad Sa‘id Nasir in al-Sabah, 3 February 1929, quoted in Ahmad al-Hadari, Tarikh al-Sinima fi Misr: Tarikh al-Sinima fi Misr: al-Juz’ al-Awwal (Vol.1) min Bidayat 1896 li-Akhir 1930 (Cairo: Nadi al-Sinima, 1989), 278.

²⁹ Ibid., 279.

³⁰ “Al-Sinima: Hamla did al-Qubla al-Sinima’iyya al-Tawila,” al-Sabah, 15 November 1935, 56. Thanks to Raph Cormack for drawing my attention to this article.

³¹ Hammond, “Kiss.”

³² Mahmud ‘Ali, Mi'at ʻAm min al-Raqaba ʻala al-Sinima al-Misriyya (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʻla li-l-Thaqafa, 2008), 147, 163.

³³ Motion Picture Association of America, Production Code Administration Records, “We Were Dancing (Motion Picture, 1942),” Margaret Herrick Library Digital Collections, https://digitalcollections.oscars.org/digital/collection/p15759coll30/id/16745.

³⁴ Motion Picture Association of America, Production Code Administration Records, “Love Crazy (Motion Picture, 1941),” Margaret Herrick Library Digital Collections, https://digitalcollections.oscars.org/digital/collection/p15759coll30/id/7788/rec/3.

³⁵ Husayn Bayumi, al-Raqaba ala al-Sinima: al-Quyud wa-l-Hudud (Cairo: al-Hay'a al-Misriyya al-ʻAmma li-l-Kitab, 2012), 128–30.

³⁶ “Al-Qubla,” al-Studiyu, 27 October 1948, 7.

³⁷ For the trailer, see “I‘lan Nadir film Hikayat Hubb Mariam Fakhr al-Din 'Abd al-Halim Hafiz 1959,” YouTube video, accessed 5 July 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_CQWqkANGU.

³⁸ Gordon, “Slaps Felt,” 219.

³⁹ Quoted in Eric Pace, “A Bad Case of Confusion Called Cairo,” New York Times, 22 December 1968.

⁴⁰ Samir Farid, Sinima 69, 39.

⁴¹ Raymond William Baker, “Egypt in Shadows: Films and the Political Order,” American Behavioral Scientist 17, no. 3 (1974): 412.

⁴² Gordon, “Slaps Felt.”

⁴³ Amal Dunqul, al-‘Amal al-Kamila (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2012), 189–94.

⁴⁴ For more on critical attitudes to frivolous or “vulgar” films, see Armbrust, Mass Culture; and Joel Gordon, “Class-Crossed Lovers: Popular Film and Social Change in Nasser's New Egypt,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 18, no. 4 (2001): 385–96.

⁴⁵ See translation of manifesto in Kay Dickinson, “The Naksa's New Cinema: New Cinema Group, ‘Manifesto of New Cinema in Egypt’ (1968)” in Arab Film and Video Manifestos: Forty-Five Years of the Moving Image amid Revolution, ed. Kay Dickinson (Cham: Springer International, 2018), 23–47. This was part of a wider push for a new cinema. See “Sinima al-Shabab wa Mahrajanuha,” al-Tali‘a, October 1969, 110–11.

⁴⁶ Dickinson, “The Naksa's New Cinema.”

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Ghali Shukri, “Thaqafat 68,” al-Tali‘a, December 1968, 83.

⁴⁹ Samir Farid, “Mata Narfa‘ al-Kamira fi Wajh al-‘Aduw,” al-Tali‘a, May 1969, 132.

⁵⁰ Samir Farid, “Hulliwud fi-l-Ma‘raka,” al-Tali‘a, August 1969, 134; Jack Cardiff, dir., The Mercenaries/Dark of the Sun, US, UK, 1968; Tom Gries, dir., 100 Rifles, US, 1969.

⁵¹ For more on the distinction between lowbrow and highbrow culture and the debates around taste, see Armbrust, Mass Culture, 165–220.

⁵² Muhammad al-‘Ashri, Iqtisadiyyat Sina‘at al-Sinima fi Misr (Cairo: Dar al-Hana li-l-Taba‘a, 1967), 355.

⁵³ Majda al-Khatib, “Madha Yurid al-Nas min al-Sinima,” al-Kawakib, 5 March 1968, 17.

⁵⁴ Yahya Haqqi, “Li-l-Kibar Faqat,” al-Masa, 18 February 1963, 8.

⁵⁵ Interview (Zoom) with Egyptian male, b. 1952, 23 April 2020, Cairo and London. Many of the interviews I conducted were during the COVID-19 lockdowns; therefore most were done through Zoom and telephone calls.

⁵⁶ Al-Khatib, “Madha Yurid al-Nas,” 17.

⁵⁷ “Hollywood Movies Are Top Box Office in Egypt: Nasser Sees Most New Films on His Screen at Home—Theater Prices Low,” New York Times, 7 November 1965, 132. The “bleachers at Ebbets Field” refers to the cheap seats at a baseball stadium in Brooklyn.

⁵⁸ Nadwat al-Hilal, “al-Shabab wa-l-Jins wa-l-film al-Misri,” al-Hilal, special issue on “Sinima wa-l-Shabab,” 1 January 1969, 14–29.

⁵⁹ ‘Abd al-Mun‘im Sa‘d, al-Sinima al-Misriyya fi Mawsim 1967–1968 (Cairo: Sharikat al-Qawmi li-l-Tawzi‘, 1968), 108. Film scholar Nagi Fawzi, a former member of the club, remembers that many young people attended the club's screenings for the sex scenes but argued that, even if their intentions did not align with the club's visions, the club still had the opportunity to teach them something; Nagi Fawzi, History of the Cinema Club, public lecture, 4 June 2022, Cairo.

⁶⁰ Interview (Zoom), 23 April 2020, Cairo and London.

⁶¹ Interview (telephone), 3 December 2020, Cairo.

⁶² Interview (Zoom), 23 April 2020, Cairo and London.

⁶³ ‘Abd al-Nur Khalil, “Fata Wahida Taqif Amam al-Sinima,” al-Musawwar, 15 July 1966, 16–17.

⁶⁴ Interview (Zoom), 23 April 2020, Cairo and London.

⁶⁵ Saʻd, al-Sinima al-Misriyya, 96–122.

⁶⁶ “Tharwat ‘Ukasha wa-l-Baltagi Yaftatihan Dar Sinima Sphinx,” al-Ahram, 16 July 1970, 10. A week after its opening, the Sphinx screened For Love of Ivy (1968) staring Sidney Portier; see advertisement in al-Ahram, 27 July 1970, 2.

⁶⁷ ‘Saʻd, al-Sinima al-Misriyya, 96–122.

⁶⁸ “Jawa'iz al-Sinima,” Alwan Jadida, 29 June 1969, 11–13.

⁶⁹ In multiple studies Egyptian women have argued that that the Nasser period expanded social and political opportunities. See, for example, Nadje Al-Ali, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East: The Egyptian Women's Movement (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 66–74.

⁷⁰ Iman Marsil, Fi Athar ʻInayat al-Zayyat (Cairo: al-Kutub Khan li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʿ, 2019), 48.

⁷¹ Laura Bier, Revolutionary Womanhood Feminisms, Modernity, and the State in Nasser's Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).

⁷² Ahdaf Soueif, Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground (London: Bloomsbury, 2004), 5.

⁷³ Examples include Sikina al-Sadat, “Kallam ‘an al-Hubb,” al-Musawwar, 22 October 1965, 22–24. See also ‘Inayat al-Zayyat, al-Hubb wa-l-Samt (Cairo: Dar al-Katib al-ʻArabi li-l-'Tibaʻa wa-l-Nashr, 1967); and Ihsan Kamal, “A Jailhouse of My Own,” trans. Wadida Wassef, in Arabic Short Stories, ed. Mahmoud Manzalaoui (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1985), 304–16.

⁷⁴ Al-Jins magazine, which circulated in the late 1960s and 1970s, blended soft porn and sex education. Yara Nahla, “Magallat al-Ibahiyya al-Munqarida,” al-Modon, 9 March 2017, https://www.almodon.com/society/2017/3/9/%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AC%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AD%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%86%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%B6%D8%A9.

⁷⁵ Sikina al-Sadat, “al-Mara’ wa Bayt al-Ta‘a,” al-Musawwar, 10 March 1967, 36–37.

⁷⁶ Al-Musawwar launched a campaign against the new personal status law proposed in 1967. The law was proposed by a committee of older shaykhs headed by Shaykh Farj al-Sanhuri. On its front cover, al-Musawwar (21 April 1967) declared “The older generation, those over 70, will not monopolize the right to legislate our lives.”

⁷⁷ Nawal al-Sa‘dawi, “Nawal al-Sa‘dawi Hawl Kitab Imra'a wa-l-Jins,” YouTube video, 19 March 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbZELE34Ee4. The university and the workplace become socially acceptable sites of courtship and romance; Sharon Maftsir, “Emotional Change: Romantic Love and the University in Postcolonial Egypt,” Journal of Social History 52, no. 3 (2019): 831–59.

⁷⁸ This seems to be different from places like Tunisia, where President Habib Bourguiba disapproved of the miniskirt. See Amy Aisen Kallander, “Miniskirts and ‘Beatniks’: Gender Roles, National Development, and Morals in 1960s Tunisia,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 50, no. 2 (2018): 291–313.

⁷⁹ “Nasser Ends Mini-Skirt Strife,” Canberra Times, 17 December 1968, 16.

⁸⁰ “Sira’ ‘Rahib ‘ala ‘Arsh al-Siks Bayna Su‘ad Husni wa Nagla’ Fathi,” al-Shabaka, 8 January 1967, 18–19; “Hammam bi-l-Khas li Nagwa Fu'ad,” al-Shabaka, 22 June 1967, 8; “Mini Jib fi Mahattat Banzin,” al-Shabaka, 22 June 1967, 9; ‘Isabat al-Suwwar al-‘Ariyya, al-Shabaka, 22 June 1967, 56–57.

⁸¹ “Ba‘d Arba‘ina Yawman Beirut Tantakhib Malikat al-Stibtiz,” Alf Layla wa Layla, 16 April 1970, 34–36.

⁸² “Ashha Shafatayn li-l-Qubla al-Sinima'iyya,” al-Shabaka, 15 September 1969, 20–22.

⁸³ “Al-Qubla al-Sinima'iyya Haram, Haram, Haram,” Dunya al-Fann, 12 November 1970, 44–45.

⁸⁴ “Al-Jins Yaghzu al-Sinima al-Gharbiyya,” Dunya al-Fann, 12 November 1970, 38–39.

⁸⁵ Ruz al-Yusuf, 4 December 1967, 33.

⁸⁶ Al-Hilal, 1 January 1969.

⁸⁷ Muhammad Khan, “Ra's al-Mal Amriki wa-l-Jins Mustamir,” al-Kawakib, 19 May 1970, 28–29.

⁸⁸ The title, For Men Only, plays on the “adults only” film classification popular at the time. For a good examination of the film, see Gordon, Revolutionary Melodrama, 153–56.

⁸⁹ Gehan Rachty and Khalil Sabat, “Importation of Films for Cinema and Television in Egypt,” Communication and Society, 1980, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000043411.

⁹⁰ “Hollywood Movies Are Top Box-Office in Egypt,” New York Times, 7 November 1965, 132.

⁹¹ John, Robert St., The Boss: The Story of Gamal Abdel Nasser (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), 231Google Scholar.

⁹² Advertisement for The Swinger, al-Ahram, 20 November 1967, 2; John DiLeo, Ten Movies at a Time: A 350-Film Journey through Hollywood and America, 1930–1970 (East Brunswick, NJ: Hansen, 2007).

⁹³ Nadia Kamil, al-Muwluda (al-Karma l-il-Nashr: Cairo, 2018), 249. Although censors often cut scenes they deemed too sexually explicit, Blow-Up was not cut and prompted debate; Ahmad Khalid Tawfiq, Aflam al-Hafiza al-Zarqa’ (Cairo: Kayan li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzi‘, 2017), 113.

⁹⁴ Al-Khatib, “Madha Yurid al-Nas min al-Sinima,” 17.

⁹⁵ Fikri Abaza, “Manazir Mu'dhiya,” al-Musawwar, 28 November 1969, 52.

⁹⁶ Fumil Labib, “Matlub Itifaqiya bayna Misr wa-l-Hind,” al-Kawakib, 9 November 1970, 34–35.

⁹⁷ Su‘ad Zuhir,” Li-l-Fann Faqat,” Ruz al-Yusuf, 21 November, 1966, 36–37.

⁹⁸ ‘Abd al-Rahman Sidqi, “Hal Hunaka Khatar ‘Amm min Ta'thir al-Sinima ‘ala al-Shabat wa-l-Shabab?” 1 January 1969, al-Hilal, 12–13.

⁹⁹ Jalil al-Bindari, “Husayn Sidqi yaqul: Ishtaghltu bi-l-Sinima li-Uthiraha min al-Qubla,” al-Kawakib, 13 August 1963, 14.

¹⁰⁰ For excellent study on Husayn Sidqi see Rahma Bavelaar, “Anti-Colonial Masculinity, the Catholic Film Center and the Screening of Religious Difference in 1950s Egypt: The Multiple Lives of Husayn Sidqi's Night of Power in, Cinema in the Arab World: New Histories, New Approaches, eds. Ifdal Elsaket, Daniel Biltereyst, and Philippe Meers (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), 93–120.

¹⁰¹ Edward R. F. Sheehan, “The Cairenes Still Cheer Nasser, Who Runs Egypt?” New York Times Magazine, 29 November 1970, 242.

¹⁰² Samia Mehrez, Egypt's Culture Wars: Politics and Practice (London: Routledge, 2008), 18. For changing cultural and social norms in the 1970s, see Relli Shechter, The Rise of the Egyptian Middle Class: Socio-Economic Mobility and Public Discontent from Nasser to Sadat (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018); and Aaron Rock-Singer, Practicing Islam in Egypt: Print Media and Islamic Revival (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

¹⁰³ “Sinima al-Qahira: Liqa’ ma’ al-Fannan Ahmad Ramzi wa-Kawalis Film Gunun al-Shabab,” YouTube video, accessed April 28, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1gBuUg-_rk.

¹⁰⁴ I’tidal Mumtaz, Mudhakkirat Raqibat Sinima (Cairo: al-Hai'a al-Misriyya al-‘Amma lil-Kitab, 1985, 204–8.

¹⁰⁵ Ra'uf Tawfiq, “Salah Abu Sayf fi-l-Hammam,” in Salah Abu Sayf wa-l-Nuqqad: Arbaʻun Filman Tu'arrikh li-l-Sinima al-Misriyya, ed. Ahmad Yusuf (Cairo: Abullu li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawziʻ, 1992), 393. For a good discussion of the film, see Koen M. Van Eynde, “Framing the Closet: Gay Men in the Egyptian Cinema in the 1970s,” in Sex and Desire in Muslim Cultures: Beyond Norms and Transgression from the Abbasids to the Present Day, ed. Aymon Kreil, Lucia Sorbera, and Serena Tolina (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 149–66.

¹⁰⁶ Samir Farid, “Sinima Fadiha Na‘am, wa Lakan Limadha?” Jaridat al-Jumhuriyya, 30 July 1973 in Yusuf “Salah Abu Sayf,” 398.

¹⁰⁷ This needs to be seen in the wider context of a battle between censorship and freedom of expression raging in Egypt at this time. Yasir Sha‘ban, a novelist whose book was banned for including “pornographic” scenes, had already humorously anticipated the reaction in his book, writing, “I will become the talk of the town. I will cause a lot of clamour. Even those who do not read will read me. It will be great, smashing, wild. The important thing is to be part of the frenzy before it's over.” See Samia Mehrez, Egypt's Culture Wars, 15.

¹⁰⁸ Muhammad Jamal al-Din and Lina Mazlum, “al-Sihr al-Aswad fi Firash al-Fannanat wa La‘ibi al-Kura,” Ruz al-Yusuf, 20 November 1995, 52–53; Nabil Abu Zayd, “Shurtat al-Adab Tusadir al-Aflam,” Ruz al-Yusuf, 11 December 1995, 68–69; “Jarimat al-Isbu‘, Haflt Jins Jama‘i fi Misr al-Jadida,” Ruz al-Yusuf, 18 December 1995, 70–71.

¹⁰⁹ Conversation, 9 April 21, Bab al-Luq, Cairo.

¹¹⁰ ‘Aida Riyad in “Hiwar ma‘a Suna’ film Balash Tubusni,” YouTube video, Elfasla, accessed 20 November 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFZwCcncX20). ‘Aida Riyad is a veteran actress who starred in Balash Tubusni.

¹¹¹ Nieuwkerk, Karin Van, “‘Repentant’ Artists in Egypt: Debating Gender, Performing Arts and Religion,” Contemporary Islam 2, no. 3 (2008): 191–210Google Scholar.

¹¹² “Fannanat Rafadna al-Qubulat fi-l-Tamthil,” Fi-l fan, https://www.filfan.com/galleries/24273, 29 July 2019 (accessed 10 May 2023); “Musarha Hurra, Ghada 'Abd al-Razziq: Mish bahib al-bus wa ma bahibish fath al-Susta w-al-taf'is fi-l-aflam” YouTube video, TeN TV, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ep9Dko40Ew (accessed 10 May 2023); “Wahid min al-Nas, al-Fannana Nilli, Rafadt al-Qubulat, ‘al-Bus’, fi-l Sinima ba‘d al-Murahqa,” YouTube video, Al Hayah TV Network, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCjOzuFJ5oU (accessed 10 May 2023); 'Abir Sabri: al-Qubulat fi-l Aflam Haram, al-Shorouk News, 6 May 2020, https://www.shorouknews.com/news/view.aspx?cdate=06052020&id=7725c601-2092-41b1-aefc-d37467ffd250 (accessed 10 May 2023).

¹¹³ “Ahmad Saqqa wa Hani Salama wa Adil Imam wa Sa‘id Salih Yarfudun al-Tamthil li Banatihim bi Sabab al-Qubulat,” YouTube video, Rooka20000, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frG8jLdvRF0 (accessed 10 May 2023).

¹¹⁴ “Adil Iman: Arfud Ihtiraf Ibnati al-Tamthil Khawfan min al-Taqbil,” alwatanvoice, 27 June 2010, https://www.alwatanvoice.com/arabic/news/2010/06/27/150652.html (accessed 10 May 2023).

¹¹⁵ Hassan ‘Attiya, “al-Raqaba ‘ala al-Ibda‘ al-Fanni,” al-Adab, November/December 2002, 47–52.

¹¹⁶ The author is referring to al-Wisada al-Khaliya (The Empty Pillow; directed by Salah Abu Sayf, 1957).

¹¹⁷ Tariq al-Shinnawi, “Qublat al-Fannanat wa Hikayat al-Shaykh Abu al-‘Ayun,” Ruz al-Yusuf, 16 July 1999, 55–57. Throughout the 1990s, Ruz al-Yusuf, a state-run magazine, routinely horrified and titillated readers with stories of sexual scandals.

¹¹⁸ al-S ennawi quoted in Burt, Ramsay, Ungoverning Dance: Contemporary European Theatre Dance and the Commons (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017), 185–86Google Scholar.

¹¹⁹ Hafiz quoted in Burt, Ungoverning Dance, 186. See also the interview with Adham Hafiz in “The Personal and the Political All at Once: Adham Hafez in conversation with Suzy Halajian,” Ibraaz, 25 Feburary 2016, https://www.ibraaz.org/interviews/182 (accessed 10 May 2023).

¹²⁰ Salma Tarzi investigates the violence agaisnt women in films in her excellent project. “Yatamana'na Wahuna al-Raghibat,” For more information see: https://www.arabculturefund.org/ar/Projects/6510.