(A commercial from the channel that plays Indian movies with Arabic subtitles, Zee Aflam.)
Indian movies are really popular in Egypt, something I never would have guessed before I arrived!
Blogger Manisha writes of the Indian actor Amiabh Bachhan:
In our first month in Cairo, we would be very amused by cries of Hindi? India? Amitabh Bachhan? Vendors, passer-byes & shopkeepers, would want to know if we knew Amiabh Bachhan! I had guys in Khan recounting Hindi movies which I had probably seen when I was 10 or 11….
that’s him!
Hisham Abbas also sang a duet with an Indian pop singer. The all-out-Bollywood video was extremely popular here and, I’ve heard, in India.
In the opinion of an Egyptian language interpreter, these are the differences between Egyptian and Indian movies:
* Egyptian: all our Egyptian movies have become nothing more than silly and ridiculous comic ones, sexually oriented, with disappointedly imitated action, or vice-spreading ones. All these types of film contain at least one female actor who behaves in a very vulgar way.
*Indian: these are the professionals in making multi-plot movies; moreover, they engage multiple feelings and emotions that emerge within the same movie, i.e., you may cry, guffaw, dance, sing, and fall in love with the girl in the seat next to you. “
Going back to the commericial: what’s fascinating to me is how the story of a place sticks a little harder than the reality of it.
India has all the pollution, poverty, and crazy driving that Egypt does, but the fact that they make better movies gives it the image of an exotic escape.
The story of Egypt as some kind of mix between Disney’s Aladdin, sunny tourism posters, and dire news warnings of “militant jihadists” seems to stick pretty hard to some of my relatives too, despite what I tell them.
Then there’s the Egyptian dream that immigrating to America is a panacea for all economic and social woes. You can list of statistics of homelessness in the U.S. or inform people that there are places without running water, but the idea is somehow bigger!
Anyway, watching Zee Aflam is fun because I can piece together what is going on between the predictable plots, random English sentences, and readable Arabic words from the subtitles.
