Films: Egypt, City of the Dead (Égypte: cité des morts), dir. Jocelyne Saab, Egypt 1977, 37 min., Arabic with English subtitles
The Ghosts of Alexandria (Les Fantômes d’Alexandrie), dir. Jocelyne Saab, France 1986, 18 min., Arabic and French with English subtitles
The Architect of Louxor (L’Architecte de Louxor), dir. Jocelyne Saab, France, 1986, 18 min., Arabic and French with English subtitles

Jocelyne Saab (1948-2019) is best known for her Beirut trilogy, shot between 1976 and 1982, in which the filmmaker tries to come to terms with her experience of the civil war in Lebanon. Initially a journalist and war reporter, Saab became a central figure in Arab cinema, documenting the social transformations and political conflicts in the Middle East. Saab’s curiosity and enthusiasm for the culture and the people of the countries where she filmed extended to the fiction films that she directed in the 1980s, and to the photographic works and installations created in her later years, before her death in 2019. In this programme, Mathilde Rouxel, the person responsible for the preservation and distribution of Saab’s work, presents three films made by Saab in Egypt in the 1970s and 1980s.