If you walk down Fouad street in Alexandria, at the crossing with Sofia Zaghloul street you will see the bright movie posters adorning the walls of the famous Cinema Amir. But if you look down, you will also see the mesh steel gates habitually blocking the entrance. While this isn’t true every day, more and more often the cinema remains empty and closed. It is a rather poignant image: the derelict cinema, once again out of bounds to passers-by, a nod to a forgotten era; and the waning institution of Egyptian Cinema. The Egyptian film industry, at least economically, seems to have had its heyday in the middle of the last century, when the industry produced upwards of 100 films each year. Currently, the ‘Hollywood of the Middle East’ struggles to produce more than 30 films in a year. In 2019, the industry made a total of $72 million in box office ticket sales. While this is a small figure in comparison to centres like Hollywood and Bollywood, it does remain the regional cinematic hub in the Middle East, according to the Egyptian Centre for Economic Studies. Then the COVID-19…
