with filmmaker Safaa Fathy
This documentary explores women's roles in Egypt through the lives of Soheir, a countryside belly dancer (Ghazeia in Arabic) and Lucy, a famous belly dancer in Cairo. The tensions and contradictions of a society, and of the entire Arab-Islamic civilization, are crystallized in the lives of the belly dancers, in the attitudes of the dancers' audience and of their immediate circle. Shown with Fathy's short narrative film, Le silence (10 mins). In an Arab immigrant family living in the suburbs of Paris, Samira's parents don't know how to talk to her because she speaks another language. Feeling the pressure of this silence, Samira decides to wear the Islamic veil, as a present to her father. Video projection and 35mm
1993, color, 52 minutes, France