Documentary Educational Resources - Geography / Africa / Egypt / All Films

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El Moulid

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

El Moulid
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Moulid (spoken Arabic meaning “birth”) refers to a public religious festival celebrating the life and legacy of a holy person. The film vividly captures the festive and religious mood of the very 700-year old moulid of the 13th century Muslim Wali, Sayyid Ahmad Al-Badawy, held annually in Tanta, Egypt during cotton harvest. Using “layering” as a method, this visual ethnography analyzes the moulid’s structure and symbolism, revealing various levels of religious experience – scriptural, mystical, ritual, mythical, interacting with secular traditional life. It culminates in a dramatic procession following the Friday public prayer led by the khalifa (Badawy’s current successor) on horseback, followed by drummers on camels, a Sufi parade, workers representing medieval vocational guilds, and finally circumcised boys in horse carriages. A transmission of vigorous masculinity and potent spirituality is symbolized as a journey from boyhood to manhood embedded in a regenerative cycle from life to death to rebirth.

Films in the Egypt series

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El Sebou'

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:05:00 GMT

El Sebou'
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In Egypt, a birth ritual called el-sebou', meaning "the seventh", happens on the seventh day following the physical birth of a child of either sex and is celebrated by Coptic and Muslim families of all status groups, rural and urban. Characteristic of this ritual is the gender-linked imagery also manifest in the ritual clay pot. The ceremony celebrates the newborn's crossing a threshold from a neutral gender and status into a world of gender differentiation and family hierarchy. This particular sebou' is celebrated for twins, a boy and a girl, in a rising middle class Muslim family in urban Egypt.

Anthropologist Fadwa El Guindi portrays the sebou' ritual as a rite of passage with the universal three phases of transition (separation, liminality, incorporation) and as the key ceremony in an individual's life cycle until marriage. Focusing on — and showing the proveniences of — the variety of objects and materials, the film's perspective highlights the central role of the female ritual leader and provides a kinesthetic spatial sense of the ceremony. The editing combines both an analytic and an emic approach, allowing the participants to speak for themselves without losing a broader anthropological perspective.

Films in the Egypt series

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Ghurbal

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 13:26:00 GMT

Ghurbal
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This film examines the Egyptian rural craft of making a sieve called ghurbal (from the Arabic ghurbal meaning “to winnow” which is used to both “winnow” babies on their seventh day of life and to winnow grains for making ceremonial dishes, particularly kouskousi. Embedded in this material culture artifact are layered meanings of creative regeneration of the cosmic and human worlds.

We visually follow the material process from tree log cutting to making the tara (ghurbal frame), to ghurbal crafting, through the voice and image of two key persons: Na’ima, the craftswoman and owner of the frame shop, and Hoksha, the rural ghurbal craftsman. The ethnographer/filmmaker engages them to speak and we are drawn into their lives by their stories as we view self-confident mastery of their craft. While Hoksha relates how he has kept this child from his father, we see his son next to him making a modern flour sieve, having never learned the family tradition. Hoksha sits in the courtyard of his village home skillfully weaving animal skins to create a ghurbal that celebrates a new life in sebou’ ceremonies, as his own identity intertwines with the sacred and earthy rhythms of daily Egyptian rural life. This is woven by the anthropologist into a visual ethnography of the sociology, technology, economy, politics and religion of a traditional Egyptian sieve.

Films in the Egypt series