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Interview with Basile Behna

"The different communities made of Alexandria the engine for the whole of Egypt and made it rank third in the world in the manufacture of cigarettes and in the film industry".

My father was three when he came to Alexandria. He was born in Aleppo at the end of the 19th century. But it was the patriarch of the family, my uncle Rachid, who started the family wealth. He more or less invented the kind of tobacco that is smoked in the narghile and convinced the Greek tobacco manufacturers, the Cotarellis, to manufacture this tobacco – moassel. This was the origin of the family fortune. The office still exists: 1, Maronite Church Street, Manshieh.

The family started the film business to augment the material success with social success. They chose a new industry, which was full of foreigners, a new cultural milieu of artists that attracted them, providing social recognition. Towards the end of the 1920s they began to import Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy films. These were the first foreign films that they imported and subtitled or dubbed. The dubbing was done by university professors, not just any old translators!

They started producing movies in the 30s. One of their first productions was Frankel cartoons, animations. They were the only ones to have faith in Frankel and the world of animation. The Frankels were two Jews who lived in Alexandria – true Alexandrians. They followed Walt Disney and launched themselves very slowly. They created the first animated Egyptian hero, Mech Mech. They spent seven years looking for a producer till my father took them on.

They started producing movies in the 30s. One of their first productions was Frankel cartoons, animations. They were the only ones to have faith in Frankel and the world of animation. The Frankels were two Jews who lived in Alexandria – true Alexandrians. They followed Walt Disney and launched themselves very slowly. They created the first animated Egyptian hero, Mech Mech. They spent seven years looking for a producer till my father took them on.

There was a certain atmosphere which helped development in all domains. It wasn’t just an economic growth but an accrued richness, a mix that would help bring everything to perfection, which would propel you forwards. Cosmopolitanism was an engine which would move you forwards, like new countries in the style of the USA are driven forwards. There was the proper social climate which helped the many nationalities that had amalgamated to blossom. This was exactly what we had in Alexandria during the 19th and early 20th centuries, up to the 40s and 50s. The different communities made of Alexandria the engine for the whole of Egypt and made it rank third in the world in the manufacture of cigarettes and in the film industry. This is how we evaluate cosmopolitanism, which was creative and fertile. It is not at all the caricature we think of, people who hardly spoke Arabic, etc. This kind of people could not create or integrate. They might have had money and made investments, but that is not what powered the engine. My parents were that engine and in my opinion they were 100% Egyptians. Those were people who knew how to integrate the wealth they integrated from different sources.

I have thousands of posters and documents about the history of the cinema. For instance, the first Greek speaking films were made in Alexandria, not Greece. My father was the producer and the director was Togo Mizrahi, while all those who participated were of different nationalities. Egyptians also played an important role in those films. These were Egyptian productions, because even people like Togo Mizrahi, who were called “foreigners”, were in fact 100% Alexandrians. I remember, for instance, that in his speech, insults, and comportment, my father was splendidly Alexandrian. Thus to say someone was a “khawaga” was all wrong. Togo Mizrahi was Egyptian. This wealth of cultures was principally Egyptian. And so those who went to Italy or France grouped together. The Egyptian Jews in France were different from the rest: they were Alexandrians.

My family became the principal distributors of Egyptian films in the Arab world. By 1961 we had offices in all the Arab world: in Baghdad, Khartoum, Beirut, Damascus. At the beginning my father used to produce films but he lost colossal amounts of money. For instance, he lost a lot of money in 1936 with Song of the Heart (Onchoudat el foâd), which was the first Egyptian sound movie. The public was still at the stage of finding out its taste; for instance, they didn’t know then whether musical films would be successful or not. They were trying things out, like a typically Occidental historical film that would be translated or adapted.

By the 1940s the studios had started moving to Cairo. In 1961 this saga ended, with the sequestrations of the Nasserite regime.

Source

EuroMed Heritage II Program “Mediterranean Voices: Oral History and Cultural Practice in the Mediterranean”. Cited in Voices of Cosmopolitan Alexandria. (eds). Mohamed Awad & Sahar Hamouda. Alexandria: Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 2006.