In this program, film scholar Richard Peña introduces the legendary Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, who drew from the multicultural, cosmopolitan spirit of his home city of Alexandria to forge a passionate, extravagant, iconoclastic oeuvre that merged a quintessentially Egyptian sensibility with international influences ranging from Hollywood musicals and melodramas to European neorealism. With films like his international breakthrough, the florid psychosexual noir CAIRO STATION, and the searing portrait of rural class struggle THE LAND, Chahine displayed his willingness to court controversy through daring social and political critique, while in works like ALEXANDRIA . . . WHY? (the first in a quartet of autobiographical films centered around the city) he turned inwards to examine his own life, sexuality, and fluctuating position toward the political establishment. Replete with vibrant visuals, color, and music and shot through with an unwavering humanist spirit, Chahine’s films—which feature some of the Arab world’s biggest talents of their day, including a young Omar Sharif—are bold expressions of the many sides of the Egyptian soul.