A consumerist amnesia - Comedians strike back during the upcoming summer season, writes Mohamed El-Assyouti, but singers vie for a share too

Here's some excerpts from the Al-Ahram Weekly article (see link at end)

Both Amr Diab and Mohamed Fouad -- among the most successful pop singers of the 1980s -- ventured into film. The former starred opposite Madiha Kamel in Hossameddin Mustafa's Al-Afarit (Demons), and the latter opposite Suhair El-Babli in Ahmed El-Nahhas's Al-Qalb wi ma Yi'ashaq (Whoever the Heart Loves). Both release dates were delayed -- and the films were commercial flops. In the early 1990s filmmaker Khairi Bishara, on the strength of the late Ahmed Zaki's Kaboria (1990) made Ice-Cream fi Glim (Ice-Cream in Glim, 1992) and Amrika Shika Bika (America, Abracadabra, 1993) with Diab and Fouad, respectively. Scripted by Medhat El-Adl, both were commercial triumphs and received critical acclaim. Along with Hassan El-Seifi's Loulaki (1993), starring Libyan singer Ali Hemeida, whose hit Loulaki had become ubiquitous, however, other films starring Diab and Fouad didn't do so well: Tareq El-Telmissani's Dihk wi Li'b wi Gadd wi Hobb (Laughter, Play, Seriousness and Love, 1993), Mohamed Khan's Yom Har Gidan (A Very Hot Day, 1995) and Khairi Bishara's Isharit Murour (Traffic Lights, 1996).

By that stage a new wave of young comedians were fast rising .... far from vitality or creativity, what this amounts to is a handful of producers monopolising the market -- and consuming talent at an alarming rate. In the span of two years in the early 1990s, the number of films produced annually had dropped from 90 to six.


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