A Survey of the Editing Methods in Youssef Chahine's Alexandria Trilogy within the Deleuzian Framework of Minor Cinema

Abstract

In 1985 Gilles Deleuze published his second book on Cinema entitled The Image - Time, where he used Youssef Chahine’s Alexandria ... Why? (1979) the semi-autobiographical film as an example of ‘minor cinema’, and almost a decade later Youssef Chahine finished the semi-autobiographical trilogy with his film Alexandria: Again and Forever (1990). The thesis acts as a survey of the editing methods used by Rashida AbdelSalm in Chahine’s Alexandria trilogy; Alexandria...Why?, An Egyptian Story (1982), and Alexandria: Again and Forever. The framework of the thesis follows Gilles Deleuze’s three conditions for minor cinema; compositional mode of missing people, deterritorialization of language and collective utterances as its structure. Through the survey and through the analysis of micro and macro structures of the films, the thesis traces how progressively Chahine and AbdelSalam stray away from the Deleuzian concept of minor cinema to formulate an authentic Egyptian filmic language.