Ali Hussein Al-Adawy
Ali Hussein Al-Adawy
Ali Hussein Al-Adawy
(Alexandria / Fellow of the Harun Farocki Institute)
Chair: Alia Mossallam
(EUME Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation 2017/18)
The Worker is an early film production that produced images of workers suffering in factories. Directed by Ahmad Kamel Mursi in 1943, the film was shot in a real factory and in the newly established national studios in Egypt. It was produced by its protagonist Hussein Sedky, who shortly after turned to produce films that supported conservative values. One of the film's main scenes is around a worker who is injured in an accident during his shift in the factory. The Egyptian authorities censored the film just after its second screening in 1943. The film was distributed by Behna Film Selections, which has become today Wekalet Behna, an art space and film archive project that has the film’s materials. But the film prints are lost, or perhaps were among the Egyptian films collection that was sold to Saudi media corporations.
This presentation attempts to investigate, imagine and restore The Worker through materials compiled from different resources.
Ali Hussein Al-Adawy is a curator of film programs and research-based art projects, editor, writer and critic of moving images, urban artistic practices and cultural history. He curated "Serge Daney: An homage & retrospective", "Harun Farocki: Dialectics of images, images that cover/uncover other images", and co-curated with Pau Cata "the art of getting lost in cities: Barcelona & Alexandria". He lives and works in Alexandria and other cities sometimes. Now, he is in Berlin as a fellow of the Harun Farocki institute residency program.