Mohamed Bakr’s Exhibition Extended Until April 6

BY: Mirvat Elhanafy

Photopia’s founder and managing director, Marwa Abou Leila, announced that the “Fifty Years of Cinematic Portrait” exhibition is to be extended due to high turnout. The exhibition was held in honor of the exceptional photographer Mohamed Bakr. It includes the most significant cinematic portraits of Bakr over the course of 50 years, selected from over 2000 cinematic works that were photographed since 1956. Today, Sunday, March 10th was set to be the last day of the exhibition. Its opening was on February 25th, as part of Cairo Design Week.

Abou Leila stated, “Due to high attendance, especially young people, we decided to extend the duration of the exhibition after the meeting of photographer Bakr and photography lovers. At Photopia, we are proud to host and organize part of the cinematic archive of the esteemed photographer Mohamed Bakr, who documented over 2000 cinematic films. It was crucial to celebrate a significant part of his work, through which he highlighted the backstage scenes of well-known films, as well as his unique career in cinematography. It is also beneficial for Photopia to highlight the archives of the most prominent photographers in Egypt throughout history in diversified fields”.

Bakr is regarded as a second-to-none cinematographer after working over 60 years. Through his camera, he highlighted the most prominent cinematic scenes. He possesses a huge number of images when it comes to Egyptian cinematic scenes from black and white up to now, either in cinema or behind the scenes. Bakr got to know numerous stars when it comes to arts, politics, culture, sports, and science. His best-known works include Naguib Mahfouz’s trilogy; “Palace Walk”, “Palace of Desire”, and “Sugar Street”, by Hassan El-Emam. Among his works are: “the Bullet Is Still in My Pocket”, “the Mummy”, “Maabodat El Gamahir”, “the Water-Carrier Is Dead”, “Al Fetewa”, “the Nightingale’s Prayer”, “Abnaa El Samt”, and other memorable works.