Hussam Fahmy
Corona virus besieges the world and restricts movement in many countries, and governments and peoples began looking for a possible scenario for life during the spread of the epidemic, this scenario we usually follow in novels and literary and artistic works that conveyed to us stories similar to what we are living in today, and many examples if we search in world cinema, But it is very scarce at the level of Arab cinema in general and Egyptian in particular, which emerges throughout its history, and only two films are mainly exposed to life during a pandemic that kills human lives.
Where we find the films The Heroes' Conflict in 1962 and the sixth day in 1986, dealing with two stories about the cholera epidemic that swept Egypt in one of its waves in 1947, a pandemic that swept through Cairo and the countryside at the same time, during the period of the British occupation, and thousands died because of it.
Clash of heroes
The film, which was presented in 1962, and represents one of the first experiences of talented Egyptian director Tawfiq Saleh, starring Shukri Sarhan and Samira Ahmed, and the story revolves around a young doctor named "Shukri" who goes to a village in Egypt at the end of the 1940s, where he is shocked by the sudden death of repeated cases from the villagers, To question her and link her with the poor people of the village eating the garbage of the British soldiers camp, so that the cause of death is finally diagnosed as a "cholera" epidemic.
In its narrative, the film mixes a feudal society in which the rich control the fate of the poor and literally push them to eat from garbage, and an unforgiving epidemic sweeping a poor, unprepared society, so that the result is a refusal by this community to acknowledge the epidemic, then the stage of harvesting begins so that the villagers try to flee without thinking about the consequence And that they will spread death everywhere they will go to, and finally the catastrophe that has no solution except with the solidarity of everyone comes, starting with the doctors and the families and the security forces, but the solution usually comes very late and after the death of many.
The features of Tawfiq Saleh's left reference clearly show in the film, as the movie definitely ends with the first epidemic being poverty, which is the fertile soil for all other epidemics, as well as the realistic pattern of Tawfiq Saleh's cinema, where filming is in real locations outside the studios.
the sixth day
"Sixth Day" is perhaps the most famous and most prominent Egyptian film that talked about epidemics, the 1986 film produced by the famous Egyptian director Youssef Chahine about a novel that bore the same name of the writer and poet Andre Chedid.
The movie, which was starred by Mohsen Mohieddine in his last cooperation with Shaheen, as well as the international singer Dalida, revolves around the cholera epidemic as well, but this time in a neighborhood in the city of Cairo, where a light player called "Awka" falls in love with a woman who lost all her family Because of the epidemic, only her son, who is six days separated from death, remains.
Here, Shaheen presents a vision in which the laughter mixes with tears about a city on the brink of death, death that dwells in the clothes of cholera victims, then passes on to everyone who wears it afterwards. This particular detail corresponds to the historical evidence that talks about the cholera epidemic in Egypt, where people neglected to get rid of Victims' clothing and tools, which caused the disease to spread more fiercely.
On "Sixth Day", Shaheen accompanies us on a journey whose pioneers think they will find a cure to leave the crowded and infested Cairo to Alexandria on the shore of the Mediterranean. Here, the heroes try to escape the death of their souls as much as they try to escape from physical death.
"Shaheen" uses colors and shades throughout the events of the film to tell his story, as the endemic Cairo neighborhood always appears in dark colors and in many shades, while the Nile journey to Alexandria appears illuminated in bright colors, and the film ends with the victory of the epidemic over the child and the nascent love story, but hope remains in overcoming Bitterness of separation.
It is interesting to think that the two films agree on one element, as Yusuf Shaheen and Tawfiq Saleh refer the cause of the epidemic to poverty, poverty is what drives people to neglect their health, and this pushes people to deny the existence of the epidemic, and poverty is what leads to the spread of the epidemic so that it kills everyone.