Liberating History: The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (2011)

Followed by a pre-recorded discussion between Rania Stephan and Hannah Feldman, Associate Professor of Art History at Northwestern

This film by Lebanese video artist Rania Stephan explores the life of famed Egyptian movie star Soad Hosni. Stephan relies entirely on images and sound from rare videotapes of Hosni’s films, produced between 1959 and 1991--once wildly popular, now mostly inaccessible–-to tell the story of her life. Hosni died in London in 2001 (by suicide, though conspiracies abound), and despite her fame, true details of her life are scarce and contested. The film explores Hosni as a sex symbol, song-and-dance queen, and tragic heroine, emphasizing changing and contradictory views on gender and sexuality in Egypt and mourning the lost mediums and modes of Egyptian cinema.

 

PART OF THE BLOCK CINEMA SERIES:
LIBERATING HISTORY: ARAB FEMINISMS AND MEDIATED PASTS

 Liberating History: Arab Feminisms and Mediated Pasts celebrates Arab women filmmakers. The films draw on archival material, Islamic visual culture, and ethnographic practice to bring a decolonial and feminist perspective to personal and national pasts. The series includes path-breaking films such as Heiny Srour’s LEILA AND THE WOLVES, which centers Arab women’s struggles in the region’s modern history, and Selma Baccar’s FATMA 75, an essay film combining history and fantasy, as well as other rare and recent selections from the Middle East and North Africa. The series will also feature two nights of short films curated by the Habibi Collective.