Bahiga Hafez on YouTube and Feminist Archives of Egyptian Cinema

Abstract

Since YouTube’s inception in 2005, scholars of Egyptian cinema have enjoyed access to films in unprecedented ways. Remediated to the digital from a variety of formats – satellite broadcasts, VHS, celluloid – Egyptian films and other parafilmic material are available on YouTube and accessible to nearly everyone. Despite the growing dependence of scholars on YouTube for research on Egyptian cinema, and the possibility of complicating male-centered narratives through its collections, there has been little theoretical consideration of YouTube’s role in their work. In this essay, I draw on the idiosyncratic collection of Bahiga Hafez-related material on YouTube to argue that the site serves as a potential feminist archive for Egyptian cinema. The idiosyncrasies, temporalities, geographic specificities, and conflicts over ownership that are characteristic of YouTube, as well as the various users that upload content, preclude any myths that YouTube as an archive is complete, stable, and neutral. Rather than encouraging authoritative claims about Bahiga Hafez and other Egyptian female cinema pioneers, YouTube as a potentially feminist archive of Egyptian cinema helps us think of alternative cinematic futures.