Keywords
Egyptian cinema
city
camera
How to Cite
Abstract
Khairy Bishara's Boat No.70 (1982), a seminal film representative of new Egyptian cinema from the 1980s, is the subject of this study, which aims to examine the camera and its status in the crime city.
The film is part of a new cinema that uses a neorealist style and a narrative that is free from traditional patterns. In the background, the social changes brought about by the liberal economic policies that shook Egypt during the reign of Anwar El Sadat: Socio-political corruption, the growth of organized crime networks, and the alienation of individuals within systems that oppress them.
Barge 70's study will enable us to identify the various aspects of the crime city, a place for criminal intrigue, by exploring its distinctive locations. We will examine the role of the camera — that of the filmmaker and, in a mise en abyme, that of his hero — in capturing the unusual nature of the crime scene and in the process of unraveling the truth.
On the other hand, the criminal adventure in this story seems to function as an artifice that leads the hero to confront his existential concerns: from filmmaker, he is drawn to become a detective: to what extent is he able to accept this fate? His torments represent those of a younger generation, those of the 1980s, torn between commitment and disengagement. What is the function of the camera in the problematic relationship between the criminal plot and its ontological resonances?