Loading ...Lebanese-Egyptian filmmaker Nabiha Lutfi dies at 78
BEIRUT: Distinguished Lebanese-Egyptian documentary filmmaker Nabiha Lutfi died in Egypt Wednesday, local media reported. She was 78.
Lutfi, famous for her enthusiasm about Palestinian revolutionary movements, was born in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon on Jan. 28, 1937.
She joined the American University of Beirut in 1953 to pursue a B.A. in political studies, but was expelled for participating in protests against the 1955 Baghdad Pact, a U.S.-sponsored NATO-like state alliance that aimed to fight Soviet influence in the Middle East.
As a result, Egypt’s anti-colonialist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, a fierce opponent of the pact, invited Lutfi to continue her studies in Cairo.
She graduated with a degree in Arabic literature from Cairo University 1957. Three years later, she joined the Higher Film Institute in Cairo and was in the first class to graduate from the institute in 1964. Her first film, “Cairo’s Millennium,” was completed in 1969.
She returned to Lebanon in the late 1970s to shoot “Because the Roots Will Not Die,” a documentary recounting the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camp of Tal al-Zaatar by Christian militias in east Beirut.
In the film, Lutfi, who was a member of the Palestinian Film Institute, investigated the dynamics between women in Lebanon’s refugee camps and the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel that residents of the camps participated in after the 1969 Cairo Agreement.
Her filmography includes: “Prayer from Old Cairo,” 1972; “Because the Roots Never Die,” 1975; “My Bride,” 1983; “Where to?,” 1991; “Message from Hegaza,” 1994; “She Cultivates, She Irrigates,” 1999; “Mohamed Ali Street,” 2003; “Carioca,” 2009.
She also co-founded the New Cinema Community in 1986 and the Association of Egyptian Women Filmmakers in 1990.
Lutfi was honored by the Egyptian Film Festival in 2001, and received the National Cedar Medal in 2006 from then-Lebanese President Emile Lahoud.
She was honored by the Catholic Film Center in February, and the Egyptian Film Critics Association in April, both in Cairo this year.
Source: www.dailystar.com.lb