Egypt's golden age of cinema: hundreds of rare photos come to Abu Dhabi

Akkasah, the Centre for Photography at NYU Abu Dhabi, launches photographs from the collection of prominent film critic

Love and Youth (1948) | Actors in Image: Mahmoud Shoukoko

Everybody is Singing (1947) | Actors in Image: Ismail Yasin, Hassan Fayek

My Only Love (1960) | Actors in Image: Omar Sharif, Nadia Lotfi

The Escaped Prisoner (1948) | Actors in Image: Amina Rizq

Al Zanati Khalifa (1948) | Actors in Image: Abdelalim Khattab

My Son (1949) | Actors in Image: Ismail Yasin, Camellia, Mahmoud El Meleigy

Midnight (1949) | Actors in Image: Reyad El Kasabgy, Ismail Yasin, Abdel Halim Elqala’awy 

Halawa (1949) | Actors in Image: Mohamed Kamal Elmasry, Mary Moneib, Laila Fawzy

Congratulations To You (1949) | Actors in Image: Mohamed El-Kahlawy, Sumaya Tawfiq

Les Miserables (1943) | Actors in Image: Abbas Fares 

Wedding Night Widow (1974) | Actors in Image: Nagwa Fouad, Bader El Den Jamgome

Dreams of Love (1945) | Actors in Image: Mohamed Amin, Ismail Yasin

First of the Month (1945) | Actors in Image: Faten Hamama

Angels in Hell (1946) | Actors in Image: Elsayed Bedir, Faten Hamama

he Musician (1946) | Actors in Image: Ahmed Allam, Laure Daccache

The Orphan (1946) | Actors in Image: Zeinab Sedky, Madiha Yousri

Fruit of the Crime (1947) | Actors in Image: Rawheya Khaled, Zouzou Shakib

My Heart and My Sword (1947) | Actors in Image: Ahmed Allam, Sabah

The Mighty Samson (1948) | Actors in Image: Mahmoud El Meleigy, Emad Hamdy, Hagar Hamdy, Serag Mounir, Mohamed El Deeb

The Escaped Prisoner (1948) | Actors in Image: Hussein Riad, Rashad Hamed, Amina Rizq

The Unknown Future (1948) | Actors in Image: Madiha Yousri, Ahmad Salem | Car in Image: 1940 Packard Custom Super 8 180 Convertible Victoria

More than 600 never-before-seen photographs from Egyptian cinema have been released online by Akkasah, the Centre for Photography at NYU Abu Dhabi. The collection of photographs and negatives belonging to Samir Farid, a prominent Egyptian writer, scholar, and leading film critic, was donated to the centre. It features a wide range of negatives taken on sets of various Egyptian films, from publicity shots, to candid pictures of cast and crew, and images captured while filming behind the scenes.

Included in the collection are a variety of negatives, dated between 1940 and 1990, demonstrating social and historical changes over 50 years. Many of the photographs are from the Egyptian cinema's golden age, which began in the 1940s and ended in the late 1960s. It was a time when the Egyptian cinema industry was considered the world's third largest.

Given the fragile nature of these negatives, Akkasah takes special measures to preserve and digitise these images. The negatives are scanned and then processed, in order to identify the metadata associated with the images, including the films from which they originate, and the actors and directors who appear in them.

The centre’s digital archive aims to preserve photographs that can easily be lost, and ensure the images are available to audiences online for ease of access. To date, the centre has published over 10,000 photographs online, with historical and contemporary collections from the UAE, the Middle East and the wider Arab world, including North Africa.

To view the entirety of the Samir Farid collection, visit www.akkasah.org