EGYPT: Many actresses are wearing the veil and retiring from the industry, leading to tensions between artistic expression and the changing tastes of cinema audiences, writes Mary Fitzgerald
When Egyptian actress Hanan Turk announced her decision to start wearing the Muslim headscarf three weeks ago, the Arab media buzzed with the news for days. Newspapers and magazines devoted editorials to it, TV presenters hosted heated debates on the meaning of hijab and celebrity-watchers wondered who would be next.
Turk was photographed wearing a turquoise blue headscarf trendily tied in a new style known as Spanish hijab. Why, she asked an interviewer, couldn't Egyptian films become more like Iranian cinema and feature more women characters in hijab?
Abeer Al Sharqawi, a former actress who gave up her career after taking the veil, has been more critical of the industry. "The Egyptian media does not accurately reflect ordinary life in Egypt. It glosses over many facts. The majority of Egyptian women wear the hijab."
Inas El Degheidy is having none of it. One of Egypt's most famous and controversial film directors, she has firm opinions on actresses and hijab. "I believe we should not allow them back in the industry wearing hijab to play ordinary roles," she says. "If we allow it, the hijab becomes the norm and we all have to accept it.
"I grew up as an Egyptian girl of the '60s. I cannot remember seeing one girl wearing a hijab during my school or university days."
The tension between artistic expression and the changing tastes of cinema audiences in Egypt is a subject much discussed within the film industry here, the biggest in the Arab world. Cairo is the Arab Hollywood and Egyptian film-makers have long produced a wide oeuvre, from mindless farce to unflinching examinations of the country's social problems.
Now many in the industry fear that is changing due to an increasingly censorious atmosphere, emanating not from the government but from filmgoers themselves.
El Degheidy's films have always courted controversy, none more so than her 2001 work Diary of a Teenager, which dealt with the issue of backstreet hymen reconstruction surgery to "restore" girls' virginity. A lawsuit filed against the film on its release was later to fail. She says producers are becoming increasingly cowed in the face of rising public conservatism.
A new genre has emerged, known as cinema nadhifa (clean cinema). It refers to films that do not offend conservative and religious sensibilities through sexual explicitness, obscenity or critique of religion.
Religious-themed films have proved particularly sensitive. Yussef Chahine, the acclaimed Egyptian director, incurred the wrath of Islamists with his film The Emigrant, based on the biblical figure of Joseph. They claimed the film violated Islam's ban on the depiction of holy prophets.
The Al Pacino movie Devil's Advocate ran into similar problems and more recently, the film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code failed to pass the state censor.
Filmgoers have booed and hissed during movies they find offensive, at times leaving the cinema in protest.
"You have audiences asking to have scenes cut out because their children are watching even though the censor has already passed the scenes," says El Degheidy. "People in the industry will recall films and cut scenes because of this demand."
It's a long way from the 1960s, when glamorous actresses such as Shams Al-Baroudi starred in films such as Woman with a Bad Reputation, a notorious tale of adultery. Tellingly, the vampish al-Baroudi was one of the first actresses to renounce acting as sinful and don the veil in the 1980s.
Today, she wears niqab - the all-enveloping black garment that reveals only the eyes - and appears only on religious TV programmes.
The glut of actresses taking the veil and retiring has prompted some to speculate about their motives, resurrecting old suspicions that some actresses and bellydancers have been paid to give up careers regarded as "sinful" as part of a Saudi-backed proselytising drive. "They face a lot of criticism from people telling them their job is sinful and they shouldn't be doing it. This affects them a lot," says El Degheidy.
Some have changed their minds and returned to acting. Less than two months after she stopped acting and donned hijab in early 2003, the young actress Hala Shiha shed her veil and resumed her career.
Defending her decision in a magazine interview, she said: "The real hijab is that of the heart and soul ... and not just the covering of the head."