The Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room Resource Guide for
AL MOMIA and THE ELOQUENT PEASANT
(dir. Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969/1970)
Presented in The Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room in August 2023 in partnership with Cineteca di Bologna.
Table of Contents
1) Film Description for AL MOMIA from Martin Scorsese
2) Film Description for THE ELOQUENT PEASANT
3) Special Features
-Cecilia Cenciarelli Interview
3) EXPLORE Page Materials
-The Film Foundation on Letterboxd
4) Live Screening Commentary Script
“AL MOMIA, which is commonly and rightfully acknowledged as one of the greatest Egyptian films ever made, is based on a true story: in 1881, precious objects from the Tanite dynasty started turning up for sale, and it was discovered that the Horabat tribe had been secretly raiding the tombs of the Pharaohs in Thebes. A rich theme, and an astonishing piece of cinema. The picture was extremely difficult to see from the 70s onward. I managed screen a 16mm print which, like all the prints I’ve seen since, had gone magenta. Yet I still found it an entrancing and oddly moving experience, as did many others. I remember that Michael Powell was a great admirer. AL MOMIA has an extremely unusual tone – stately, poetic, with a powerful grasp of time and the sadness it carries. The carefully measured pace, the almost ceremonial movement of the camera, the desolate settings, the classical Arabic spoken on the soundtrack, the unsettling score by the great Italian composer Mario Nascimbene – they all work in perfect harmony and contribute to the feeling of fateful inevitability. Past and present, desecration and veneration, the urge to conquer death and the acceptance that we, and all we know, will turn to dust… a seemingly massive theme that the director, Shadi Abdel Salam, somehow manages to address, even embody with his images. Are we obliged to plunder our heritage and everything our ancestors have held sacred in order to sustain ourselves for the present and the future? What exactly is our debt to the past? The picture has a sense of history like no other, and it’s not at all surprising that Roberto Rossellini agreed to lend his name to the project after reading the script. And in the end, the film is strangely, even hauntingly consoling – the eternal burial, the final understanding of who and what we are…” - Martin Scorsese
AL MOMIA was digitally restored with the support the Egyptian Ministry of Culture using the original 35mm camera and sound negatives preserved at the Egyptian Film Center in Giza.
Restored in 2009 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, and the Egyptian Film Center. Restoration funded by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways, Qatar Museum Authority, and the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.
THE ELOQUENT PEASANT is a mystical combination of a folk tale and a poem, resulting in a stunning visual journey that could have only been made by the great Egyptian director Shadi Abdel Salam. Based on one of the major literary texts that survived from the Middle Kingdom, the classical period of Egyptian literature, the events are set between 2160 and 2025 BC and center on a peasant who is wrongly accused of theft by the nobles of the area. The peasant impresses his accusers with his use of language and thus starts a dialogue with the king. As they exchange ideas, Abdel Salam uses landscape, and especially light, to further the themes at hand, namely the meaning and power of justice.
THE ELOQUENT PEASANT has been digitally restored using the original 35mm camera and sound negatives preserved at the Egyptian Film Center in Giza. Special thanks to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Restored in 2010 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, and the Egyptian Film Center. Restoration funded by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways and Qatar Museum Authority.
AL MOMIA (1969) & THE ELOQUENT PEASANT (1970)
A tour inside the Shadi Abdel Salam Museum via YouTube
The Last Pharaoh, Shadi Abdel Salam Documentary via YouTube
AL MOMIA (1969) & THE ELOQUENT PEASANT (1970)
Barra and Zaman: Reading Egyptian Modernity in Shadi Abdel Salam's the Mummy, Youssef Rakha, Palgrave Pivot, 2020
Cinematic Cairo: Egyptian Urban Modernity from Reel to Real, Nezar Alsayyad, American University in Cairo Press, 2022
AL MOMIA (1969) & THE ELOQUENT PEASANT (1970)
"Historical and Personal Perspective in Shadi Abdel Salam’s Epic The Mummy" for Notebook
Milestones: Al-mummia for Sabzian
"Notes on Film & Restoration: Al Momia" for The Film Foundation
"The Cinema of the Pharaohs: Film, Archeology, and Sub-Imperialism" via Open Edition Books
"AL-MUMIA: THE NIGHT OF COUNTING THE YEARS" via Africa in Motion Film Festival
THE FILM FOUNDATION ON LETTERBOXD
Directed and Art Directed by Shadi Abdel Salam
AL MOMIA (1969) & THE ELOQUENT PEASANT (1970)
AL MOMIA + THE ELOQUENT PEASANT
Live Screening Commentary Script
8/14/23
Welcome to The Film Foundation Restoration Screening Room! Tonight we’re screening AL MOMIA (1969, d. Shadi Abdel Salam) and the short film THE ELOQUENT PEASANT (1970, d. Shadi Abdel Salam)
You can stay with us here in the chat to learn more about the films as you watch or you can view the films full screen on-demand at 7pm.
In this chat mode the screening is live and picture controls (rewind/fast forward/pause) will not be available. If you miss anything or need to take a break, that functionality is available when watching on-demand.
Thanks for being here and we hope you enjoy our live commentary. We also encourage you to share your thoughts on each film as we go, making this a communal virtual viewing experience!
00:00:00 - 00:15:00
Shadi Abdel Salam was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1930 and was also educated there. He moved to England in 1949 to study theater arts until he returned to Egypt to study architecture. He worked as an assistant to architect Ramses W. Wassef and eventually started designing costumes for Egyptian films. In the mid-60s he advised Polish director Jerzy Kawalerowicz on his film PHARAOH (1966).
AL MOMIA was an outlier film for Abdel Salam, as he primarily made short films during his career. You can also learn more about Abdel Salam’s film career via our Letterboxd list below:
https://letterboxd.com/tff/list/directed-and-art-directed-by-shadi-abdel/
00:15:00 - 00:30:00
After working on PHARAOH (1966), Abdel Salam would work with Roberto Rossellini on his project FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL, which was eventually released in 1970, designing the decor and costumes. Rossellini would not only encourage Abdel Salam to make his own films but he was also a key part of his being able to make AL MOMIA, procuring the funding for the project.
After the film was made, Rossellini helped it to find an audience in festivals across Europe. It would go on to screen at the Locarno and Venice Film Festivals and AL MOMIA won the Georges Sadoul Prize of the French Cinémathèque and the Golden Prize of the Carthage Cinema Festival in Tunis. Even with this success, it would be 5 more years before the film was seen in Egypt.
00:30:00 - 00:45:00
There’s another Italian connection to AL MOMIA, the film’s score was composed by Mario Nascimbene, who created over 150 film scores during his career. The Cineteca di Bologna’s head of research and special projects, Cecilia Cenciarelli, spoke to us about Nascimbene’s special contribution to Abdel Salam’s film:
“The score to this film is also something else, crossing between European sounds and Middle Eastern sounds and Egyptian folk music, it’s really quite unique.”
To learn more about the history behind the making of AL MOMIA and the people who collaborated on the project, be sure to watch our complete interview with Cenciarelli, available on this page.
00:45:00 - 01:00:00
In our conversation with Egyptian author Yasmine El Rashidi, she spoke about the immediate historical context in which Shadi Abdel Salam made AL MOMIA and why it’s important to keep that in mind:
“He made these films in the aftermath of the war of ‘67, which is known as the Six Day War. It was a war where Egypt led with other Arab countries against Israel. Egyptians thought that we were winning the war, Gamal Abdel Nasser was our president at the time and on the main radio station he kept delivering these speeches, basically saying that we were winning the war…”
“...My father, who was a university student at the time, he says that he was on campus one day, it was the beginning of summer, he was taking summer classes, and at some point he heard this drone or airplanes flying overhead and he and his friends looked up and they expected to see Egyptian planes flying overhead and to cheer them on. But instead what they saw was the Star of David, they were Israeli planes that had crossed into Egyptian landscape because we had been defeated, we had lost. And I think this deception is important to keep in mind watching these films.”
El Rashidi also spoke about how AL MOMIA is different from the Egyptian films that were being made at the time:
“Egyptian cinema was known for its melodrama, that’s what Egyptians were drawn to. His [Shadi Abdel Salam] films, the dialogue is very particular, he uses a classical Arabic that is not used in cinema and at the time broke away from the vernacular that people had come to expect.”
To learn more about AL MOMIA, be sure to watch our complete interview with Yasmine El Rashidi, available on this page.
01:00:00 - 01:15:00
Martin Scorsese has spoken about how he first saw the film, which was not under ideal conditions:
“The picture was extremely difficult to see from the ‘70s onward. I managed to screen a 16mm print which, like all the prints I’ve seen since, had gone magenta. Yet I still found it an entrancing and oddly moving experience, as did many others. I remember that Michael Powell was a great admirer.”
01:15:00 - 01:30:00
All of the film elements for AL MOMIA were kept for many many years in an old building in Cairo near the pyramids—not in a film archive—but they survived because of the structure of the building and the specific weather in Egypt, which is very hot but also very dry. This means that while there might be some fading, there usually isn’t much mold.
In our interview with Cecilia Cenciarelli, she also spoke about the film stock used to shoot the film:
“The film was shot in Eastman Color 5254, which is a specific stock that is very rich in color saturation. It was a technicolor film, so we had to do the work on the three strip separation.”
To learn more about the restoration process behind AL MOMIA, be sure to watch our complete interview with Cenciarelli, available on this page.
01:30:00 - 01:45:00
Thank you so much for joining us tonight for AL MOMIA (1969)!
AL MOMIA was digitally restored with the support of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture using the original 35mm camera and sound negatives preserved at the Egyptian Film Center in Giza. It was restored in 2009 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, and the Egyptian Film Center. Restoration funded by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways, Qatar Museum Authority, and the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.
Now, please stay tuned for Shadi Abdel Salam’s 20 minute short film, THE ELOQUENT PEASANT (1970).
TRANSITION BETWEEN FILMS
00:00:00 - End of the film
Shadi Abdel Salam made THE ELOQUENT PEASANT (1970) immediately following AL MOMIA. Like AL MOMIA, the starring role is played by Egyptian actor Ahmed Marei and the editing was done by Kamal Abou El Ella.
The film is based on one of the major literary texts that survived from the Middle Kingdom, the classical period of Egyptian literature, and the events are set between 2160 and 2025 BC.
END OF ELOQUENT PEASANT
THE ELOQUENT PEASANT has been digitally restored using the original 35mm camera and sound negatives preserved at the Egyptian Film Center in Giza. Special thanks to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Restored in 2010 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, and the Egyptian Film Center. Restoration funded by Armani, Cartier, Qatar Airways and Qatar Museum Authority.
