Egyptian cinema was built on the shoulders of a number of distinguished female pioneers. The filmmaker behind the first Egyptian feature was Aziza Amir, the star and the producer of the silent film Laila (1927). In parallel, Fatma Roushdy, Assia Dagher, Mary Queeny and Amina Mohamed were also active, along with Bahiga Hafez. The latter wasn’t just an actress but a producer, director, soundtrack composer, fashion designer, trade union activist and owner of one of the most famous literary and artistic salons in Egypt in the last century.
Bahiga Hafez was born 4 August 1908 in Moharram Bey district in Alexandria in an aristocratic family. Her father was Ismail Pasha Hafez, director of the Sultan Property in the era of Sultan Hussein Kamel, whose reign ended in 1917. Ismail Pasha Sedki, a former prime minister during the royal era, was her mother’s cousin. Bahiga was taught in both the Franciscan Sisters School and the Collège de la Mère de Dieu in Alexandria. She loved music through her father, who was skilful in playing on a number of musical instruments, along with her uncles and brothers. She played piano from when she was four years old and was able to compose her first musical piece when she was nine. In order to polish her musical talent she studied under Italian maestro Giovanni Gergizi in Alexandria before getting a diploma in musical composition from Paris in January 1930.
In the meantime, Bahiga married an Iranian prince from the Pahlavi dynasty, a marriage that didn’t last long and hampered her artistic projects for a while. After divorcing, she left her family in Alexandria and resided in Cairo, devoting her life to musical composition. She made a contract with the biggest two companies for gramophone records, Columbia and Odeon, to record her compositions. Ismail Wahbi, publisher of a magazine named The Future, decided to celebrate the first Egyptian female composer to be a member in the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (SACEM) in Paris by choosing her to adorn the magazine cover.
Ismail's brother, the well-known actor Youssef Wahbi, was searching for a female star for his debut as a producer in the silent film Zeinab (1930). The cover image of Bahiga caught the eye of both Youssef and director Mohamed Karim. Consequently, they chose her for the lead role with Serag Mounir as the leading man in the first film to be adapted from an eponymous Egyptian novel. It was written by prominent politician Mohamed Hussein Heikal.
Thus the path of Bahiga Hafez changed from being a composer to a film actress who afterwards would have a long history in this nascent art in Egypt and the Arab world. This especially after she married Mahmoud Hamdy, who was a member of an aristocratic family, immediately upon his return from studying in Germany. Together they founded a film production company they named Fanar Film, after the Alexandria Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The company’s first production was The Victims (1932, Ibrahim Lama), but it didn’t achieve the desired success because its release as a silent film came a few months after the first talking movies were shown in Egypt. Bahiga re-released the film in 1935, as a talkie this time, after adding some scenes and songs. This film was the famous songstress Leila Mourad’s debut, where she appeared as a voiceover in one of the film’s songs.
Between the two endeavours, the silent and the talkie, Bahiga Hafez made The Accusation (1934), in which she starred, and produced and co-directed, achieving resounding success. Thus, her presence on the cinematic scene was confirmed, encouraging her to repeat the endeavour in another film, which was distinguished in Egyptian cinema history for being banned shortly after its release. This was Leila, Daughter of the Desert (1937, Mario Volpe), based on an old Arab story about a chaste poetess whose beauty was so captivating that the Shah of Persia raided her tribe and took her captive so as to be one of his concubines. She refused and humiliated his pride.
After its release, it was decided that the film would be screened in the Venice Film Festival. However, the Egyptian foreign ministry telegrammed the Egyptian delegation in the festival a few hours before its scheduled screening, ordering that it not be screened but returned to Egypt. A royal decree was issued banning its release both domestically and internationally following a formal Iranian protest citing the film an insult to the history of Persia. The ban coincided with the marriage of King Farouk’s sister, Princess Fawzia, to the heir to the Iranian throne, Prince Mohamed Reda Pahlavi. As a result, the Egyptian government wished not to poison the atmosphere between the two dynasties and banned the film. Surprisingly, after the heir to the Iranian throne divorced Princess Fawzia, Hafez succeeded in securing a release for the film, in 1944, albeit with the title Leila the Bedouin and after making some changes.
This incident caused Fanar Film to lose 18,000 Egyptian pounds, a large sum in the 1930s. This drove Hafez to stop film production for 10 years after which she made The Flower of the Market (1947, Hussein Fawzi and Kamal Abu-Ela). However, this film didn’t make up for the losses of the previous one. Accordingly, she decided to withdraw from production and acting, satisfied from time to time with composing soundtracks for films such as Al-Sayyed Al-Badawi (1953, Bahaa-Eddine Sharaf). The renowned director Salah Abu-Seif persuaded her to return to the screen only once, in Cairo 30 (1966), in a famous scene in which she played one of the royal family princesses.
Throughout the last quarter of a century in her life, Bahiga Hafez remained keen on organising a salon in which the most important literary and artistic issues were discussed and new talents were introduced. She died 13 September 1983, having engraved her name as one of the pioneers of Egyptian cinema.
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