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Alexandria Again and Forever
(Iskanderija, Kaman Oue Kaman)

Screening on Film
Directed by Youssef Chahine.
With Yousra, Youssef Chahine, Hussein Fahmy.
Egypt/France, 1989, 35mm, color, 105 min.
Arabic with English subtitles.

The third installment in Chahine’s quartet of autobiographical films finds the director’s work stalled by a strike. During the interruption in filming, Chahine reminisces about a past relationship with one of his actors while finding himself gradually drawn to an actress. The intimacy between director and performer is depicted symbolically, in a tender dance number clearly in homage to the Hollywood musical and set on a snow-covered street in Berlin during a film festival. A masterful amalgam of realism and fantasy, Alexandria Again and Forever is Chahine’s paean to the power of imagination and the artist.

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