PHOTO CREDIT: Above photo by John Rickman Photography, San Jose, California.

• Introduction
• The Movies
  • Gharam fil-Karnak (Love in Karnak)
  • Habib el Omr (Love of a Lifetime)
  • Khally Balak Men Zouzou (Pay Heed to Zouzou)
  • Tamra Henna (Henna Flower)

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• Related Articles

The very first full-length motion picture in the Middle East or North Africa was Leila, made in 1927. It was a silent movie, and it included a dance scene featuring Bamba Kashar. In the decades that followed, as "talkies" found their way into the movie industry, Egyptian filmmakers made many musicals, and dance was prominently featured in many of them.

Today, those of us who appreciate raqs baladi can find much pleasure in watching these vintage movies. But, it can be hard to discover which ones contain good, satisfying dance scenes. Here's a look at a few of them, with comments on what they are like.

PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by Marie Wilkes, Iowa City, iowa.

A fellow named Salah (Mahmoud Reda) starts up a dance company (Reda Troupe) and prepares it to perform at the Luxor temple. Salah and his dancers must overcome a number of obstacles, but in the end they succeed and the movie ends with an extended dance sequence showing their debut performance. There are a total of 9 dance scenes in this movie. Some of them are very reminiscent of the Hollywood movie musical, in which people are doing ordinary everyday things (such as going to the train station to board the train to Luxor) and then dance just bursts out of them. Others are more folkloric, such as the rehearsal scenes and the grand finale. All of them are delightful to watch. Highly recommended!

Six musicians (including Farid al-Atrache) and a dancer (Samia Gamal) travel from their small town to the big city to seek their fortune in show business. The dance clips all show Samia performing in various nightclub environments. The editing interferes with enjoying the dance scenes by cutting away from Samia too often to show close-ups of other characters. It seems to treat the dancing itself as unimportant, as peripheral.

A young woman named Zouzou leads a dual life - college student by day, working dancer by night. There are 7 dance scenes total. These include three dance scenes in which the character Zouzou performs as a soloist, two featuring a group of college students rehearsing an ensemble piece, one in which Zouzou's clan dances around at a party, and a brief one in which a fellow does a comic dance in his boxer shorts. Souad Hosni was never a working dancer - she was an actress who was coached to dance for this movie role. But even though dancing wasn't her primary profession, she performs skillfully and this movie is enjoyable to watch.

This Egyptian movie explores a theme similar to that of My Fair Lady. A rich fellow named Ahmed uses his wealth to help a Gypsy dancer named Tamra Henna (Naima Akef) transform herself into an upper-class lady. In the first two dance scenes which are 5 minutes and 3 minutes respectively, Tamra Henna performs as the star of the show at a moulid (saint's day carnival), which offers us a glimpse into what one of the environments for public raqs baladi was like in villages throughout Egypt. In the third dance scene, which lasts about 3 1/2 minutes, Tamra Henna is a guest at a society party and is bullied by her rival into dancing.

• Mini-Reviews:
  • North American and European Movies With Either "Belly Dance" Or Middle Eastern Touches
  • Egyptian Movies with Dance Scenes
  • Television Shows
• Mass Media, Mass Stereotypes. How the North American and European entertainment industry has portrayed "Middle Eastern Dance"
• Have Belly, Will Travel. A review by Shira of Tanya Lemani's autobiography in which she describes what it was like to perform belly dance in plays, movies, and television shows during the 1960's.
• Full-Length Reviews of Movies with "Middle Eastern" Themes. By Shira.

• Lists:
  • Television Episodes with "Belly Dancing". By Maria.
  • Maria's Lists of Movies with "Belly Dancing"
    • Part 1, Made by U.S. production companies. Compiled by Maria.
    • Part 2, Made by European Production Companies. Compiled by Maria.
    • Part 3, Made by Production Companies Elsewhere. Compiled by Maria.
  • Egyptian Movies with Raqs Sharqi. Compiled by Maria and Shira.
  • Cartoons Featuring "Middle Eastern Dance". Compiled by Shira.