Projects

We host a series of major research projects, funded by organisations including the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the British Academy.

Please see below for more information on a selection of major research projects in English Literature currently taking place or recently completed.

section of visit Palestine poster — Palestine in the Popular Imagination

Investigating how Palestine has been imagined in the public sphere in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

magnified dna strand — Double Helix history

This project thinks about the popular understanding of the work of DNA and, more particularly, how we might understand, represent, and visualise it.

Communist march in Ukraine — Wars of Position

This AHRC funded project takes a new look at Communism in the West.

Modern cemetery with Irish flag — My Country, A Journey

A research based drama on the migrant experience in Britain.

Lady Emmeline Courtenay, c. 1375 — Medieval Cloth and Clothing Lexis

This project investigated the complex relationships between vocabulary, artefact and image.

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Explore more English Literature and Creative Writing projects.

Cairo Station (Bab el hadid)

Catalogue Code

FILM000018

Synopsis

As shocking today as it was in 1958, Cairo station is the great Egyptian director Youssef Chahine’s masterpiece-a street-level expose of sexual obsession and working-class madness that’s as grimy and claustrophobic as its Cairo railway station setting. From its noirish opening scene, in which a scruffy newspaper hawker discovers a rag-strewn, living quarters filled with cut-out girlie pictures, it’s clear that the film has departed from the upper-class realms of typical 1950’s Arab cinema.
Chahine moves his camera as fluidly as a sleepwalker through a nightmarish world where, as luggage porters strive to unionise and all sections of society swarm along the tracks, the crippled street vendor Qinawi (played by Chahine himself) feverishly desires a brash, beautiful and utterly uninterested lemonade seller with disastrous results. Combining Italian NEOREALISM, Egyptian romanticism and overheated film noir, Cairo station was unlike anything anyone had seen on movie screens before.

Year of Release

1958

Running Time

74 mins

Distributor

EIDR

Genres

Language

Arabic,

Country of Origin

Egypt

Permalink

http://arabcinemadb.alc.manchester.ac.uk/Public/Film/Show/FILM000018

Notes

It was entered into the 8th Berlin International Film Festival.

The film was selected as the Egyptian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 31st Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

People with a connection to this film

Publications related to this film

Ibrahim Fawal (2002) Joel Gordon (2013) Lina Khatib (2007) Terri Ginsberg and Chris Lippard (2010)

Copies in the collection

DVD ARA/FIL/0156

Last modified on 30/12/2013 18:06

Projects

Palestine in the Popular Imagination

Double Helix history

Wars of Position

My Country, A Journey

Medieval Cloth and Clothing Lexis

Discover more

Cairo Station (Bab el hadid)

People with a connection to this film

Publications related to this film

Copies in the collection

Record from the Contemporary Arab Cinema Database