Egypt's celebrated film director Chahine in coma

Date: 6/16/2008 12:16:00 PM

Egypt's Youssef Chahine, Arab cinema's most celebrated director, was to fly to Paris on an emergency flight on Monday after falling into a coma following a brain haemorrhage.

Chahine, accompanied by his niece Marianne Khoury, was to fly out of Cairo on a specially chartered medical flight to France, Khaled Yussef, who co-directed Chahine's latest film "Chaos" in 2007, told AFP.

The 82-year-old "is in a coma following a cerebral haemorrhage," Mohammed Abdel Daher of Cairo's Ash-Shuruq hospital told the MENA news agency on Sunday, adding that Chahine was in a "serious" condition.

Chahine won official plaudits for his pioneering role in Egypt's film industry and was awarded the Cannes film festival's 50th anniversary lifetime achievement award in 1997.

But he has never shied away from controversy during his long career, criticising US foreign policy as well as Egypt and the Arab world.

Chahine made his first film in Egypt in 1950 and it was there that he also discovered and launched the career of Omar Sharif, who shot to stardom with "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Doctor Zhivago."

He claimed Cairo stopped subsidising his movies after his 1973 cult movie Al-Asfur (The Bird) which attributed the Arab defeat in the 1967 war against Israel to the corruption of the political classes at the time.

He also made three highly acclaimed films in the late 1990s -- Al-Muhajer (The Emigrant), Al-Masir (Destiny) and Al-Akhar (The Other) -- which focused on tolerance and the distinction between Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism.

Despite his often abrasive tone, Egyptian authorities -- officially at least -- hailed Chahine's contribution to the nation's cinema and his "daring" representation of its society.

His last film, "Chaos," was typical of the man who sought to uphold the rights of the oppressed, depicting a popular uprising in a Cairo district against a corrupt police officer and his abusive subordinates.

Born in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria on January 25, 1926, Chahine received a French schooling and studied briefly at university there before moving to the United States to study theatre.

His happy memories of his time in the United States were in contrast to his later "fury" at Washington's policies against the Arab world, particularly in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"I am still very attached to my professors who taught me film-making 60 years ago in California," he told AFP in an interview in 2003.

"I fell in love there during that time ... but (now) there is also the fury I feel against American politics."

Although his frenetic work pace slowed in recent years, Chahine in 2001 took part in demonstrations to defend the rights of Cairo farmers in the face of government efforts to appropriate their land.

He controversially compared then prime minister Atef Ebeid to then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, saying both leaders were expelling people from their homes.

His declaration at the time that "the enemy is not only outside, but also inside" summarized much of his cinematic opus

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