Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. In this book, Deborah A. Starr recuperates the work of Togo Mizrahi, a pioneer of Egyptian cinema. Mizrahi, an Egyptian Jew with Italian nationality, established himself as a prolific director of popular comedies and musicals in the 1930s and 1940s. As a studio owner and producer, Mizrahi promoted the idea that developing a local cinema industry was a project of national importance. Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema integrates film analysis with film history to tease out the cultural and political implications of Mizrahis work. His movies, Starr argues, subvert dominant notions of race, gender, and nationality through their playfuland queeruse of masquerade and mistaken identity. Taken together, Mizrahis films offer a hopeful vision of a pluralist Egypt. By reevaluating Mizrahis contributions to Egyptian culture, Starr challenges readers to reconsider the debates over who is Egyptian and what constitutes national cinema.