Untitled Document

Re-presenting Asmahan as a Photogenie in the Labyrinth of Cinema

The public identity of Asmahan, the singer/actress who rose to fame in 1940s Cairo as the beautiful and talented sensation in the Egyptian film and music industry, was continuously shrouded in myth, intrigue, and romance. In keeping with this manufactured reality it follows that any mode of representation dealing with Asmahan will inevitably have access only to manipulations of her identity. This paper tries to look for the ways in which the tools of cinema are used to know, to represent and to search for Asmahan. Through a reading of Hisham Bizri's film Asmahan (which is a re-photographing of the 1940s Egyptian melodrama Gharam wa Inteqam ), this paper argues that in representing this singer/actress, cinema takes on a double mirror-like quality that constantly reflects and manipulates an already existing reflection. In doing so it creates a vast labyrinth of unending repetitions that subvert both existing conventions of melodramatic filmmaking and stereotypical views of remembering Asmahan.

ADITI CHANDRA
	SHORT BIO
	Aditi Chandra is a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota specializing in Islamic art. One of her earlier projects have dealt with the ways in which trauma must be yet cannot be represented in Vietnam War films. Her dissertation will explore the ways in which the visual and literary representations construct urban spaces and in particular the city of Delhi. On the one hand Delhi is conjured up as a cohesive and eternal utopia for national metanarratives and on the other they cannot help but stress the transient and nomadic nature of the city’s historic and the present settlers. It is a keen engagement with the concepts, modes, and the politics of representation that she brings to the study of cinema. Her method involves both the reception and the involvement of the viewer with the artwork and the qualities intrinsic to the medium.
ABSTRACT
Re-presenting Asmahan as a Photogenie in the Labyrinth of Cinema The public identity of Asmahan, the singer/actress who rose to fame in 1940s Cairo as the beautiful and talented sensation in the Egyptian film and music industry, was continuously shrouded in myth, intrigue, and romance. In keeping with this manufactured reality it follows that any mode of representation dealing with Asmahan will inevitably have access only to manipulations of her identity. This paper tries to look for the ways in which the tools of cinema are used to know, to represent and to search for Asmahan. Through a reading of Hisham Bizri's film Asmahan (which is a re-photographing of the 1940s Egyptian melodrama Gharam wa Inteqam ), this paper argues that in representing this singer/actress, cinema takes on a double mirror-like quality that constantly reflects and manipulates an already existing reflection. In doing so it creates a vast labyrinth of unending repetitions that subvert both existing conventions of melodramatic filmmaking and stereotypical views of remembering Asmahan.