Youssef Chahine

I just want to adda note about the passing of Youssef Chahine, the great Egyptian director. I've seen a handful of his films, and heard him speak once, promoting Al-Massir, his Averroes musical. The best of his films, for my money, was Alexandria, Why? - an autobiographical/national epic told in a breakneck style - there are swarms of characters, representing the cultural richness of Egypt (though some of it about to be lost): the main (autobiographical) character, Yehia, and his family; a Jewish family, with a daughter who loves a communist; a pair of bumbling Egyptian nationalists; an evil rich man and his more decent son; a decadent aristocrat who falls in love with a British soldier he kidnaps; a petty crook - and mobs of people around these, people who keep popping in out of nowhere and taking surprisingly substantial places in the story, all of a sudden.... Chahine tells his stories fast, getting a wealth of incident and plot into a short amount of time, and does it in many registers - melodrama, politics, musical numbers, love scenes, intercut documentary footage, etc. It's a great film, and not the only great film he did.